Impact of Industrialization: Wage Earners (WXT, SOC) (apr 26, 1890 – apr 26, 1910)

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During the late 19th century and 1900s, the majority of America worked industrial jobs and worked on a wage. They worked 10 hours a day for 6 days of the week in physically demanding working environments. A large number of wage earners were immigrants desperate for a job which made them a target to significantly low wages. These low wages barely gave individuals enough money to survive in the American economy and it did not help that people like Dacid Ricardo justified low wages with flawed logic, saying that a cycle of misery and starvation would form as a result of raising wages which would result in more workers and again falling wages. Despite the gradual increase of wages during the 19th century, working families were still struggling and depended on the women and children of the households to work for a wage as well. Regardless, most working families, with combined incomes, fell short of producing 380 dollars a year. In other words, working families during the 1890s and 1900s were persistently overworked and direly underpaid, giving workers reasons to strike and form unions.

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