The Negative Influences on Workers at the Gilded Age

The Gilded Age was an era of rapid economic growth and industrialized expansion. After the Civil War, there were significant developments in railroads, coal mining and modern steel factories in America. The rich accumulated massive wealth from these growing industries but the working class people received negative influences. The skilled workers lost their advantages, and the terrible working environments caused diseases among workers. Numerous children worked in dangerous factories to make livings. The laborers earned less than before while the rich made huge profits. In all, the Gilded Age was a terrible time for the treatment of workers.

First, the skilled workers lost their advantages due to the mechanization in industries. In 1885 Winslow Homer created the painting, the fog warning, in which a skilled fisherman who could catch fish with a few tools was left far behind of the main ship, and the smoke-like shades were approaching him like threatening fog. Through smoke-like shades, which symbolized the development of modern industries, Homer suggested that the skilled workers had lost their advantages at that age of industrialization. The reason was that there was a rise of mechanization in big industries in the Gilded Age and the machines replaced the skilled workers to complete the most technical works. The skilled workers had been “strong, even arrogant, in their indispensability.” Their advantages were their skills that were crucial in factory operations such as steelmaking. However, their “sharp sense of independence disappeared in the later years,” because each man “was training for the next higher job,” also, “usually capable of filling it.” The mechanization made complex works so simple that “no workman was irreplaceable.” Consequently, it was unpractical for the skilled laborers to ask the factories for favored treatment such as higher wages or better working conditions since the factories did not have to meet their requirements to retain them and their skills. The managers were more willing to hire cheaper unskilled laborers such as foreign immigrants including “Slovaks, Poles, Lithuanians, Russians, Croatians and the Roumanians,” because they could also complete work with machines but demanded less.

Second, the poor working conditions of laborers at the Gilded Age threatened workers’ health and safety. An article published in 1894 “In the Depths of a Coal Mine” documented the harsh working conditions of coal miners at the Gilded Age. The author described the factory as “huge and hideous monster” where “a might gnashing sound filled the ears,” and “the dust lay deep on every motionless thing, and clouds of it made their air dark as from a violent tempest.” These descriptions showed vivid images of one cacophonous dirty coal factory. Undoubtedly, there was no perfect sanitary, and noise control in this coal factory and the workers exposed in this dirty and noisy environment could get diseases physically and mentally. The conditions were similarly awful underground. The author wrote that the coal mine inside was “inscrutable dark” and a “soundless place” with “a subtly strong odor of powder-smoke, oil, wet earth.” The workers underground were likely to catch lung diseases when they breathed such feculent air daily. The dangers for underground workers were more than their poor physical health because such a working environment might threaten their life safety as well. There were not thorough safety facilities in the coal mines at that time, and as the author suggested “sometimes their enemy becomes exasperated and stuffs out ten, twenty, thirty lives,” the workers had little chance to escape when natural disasters like collapsing happened.

Third, child workers suffered from lousy factory environment, heavy workloads, and dangerous jobs. The author of “In the Depth of a Coal Mine” wrote that these coal mine child workers in “ragged shirts” “breathe this atmosphere until their lungs grow heavy and sick with it,” and “have this clamor in their ears until it is wonderful that they have any hoodlum valor remaining.” All child laborers worked in this situation without any special care regarding their young age. They were “slate-pickers” and needed to “grabbed deftly at the pieces of slate” to make sure the purity of the coal coming out. It was a hard job because as one picture in the article showed that these children had to bend their heads down in order to pick the slates. Their immature backbones suffered from keeping this position for a long time, which increased the possibility of deformation of the spinal column. Apart from the heavy workloads, certain risky jobs could left child workers with permanent pain. For example, one photograph from Lewis Hine’s collection in the 1880s, titled Boy Lost Arm Running Saw in Box Factory, showed a disabled boy with one arm left. The plain title might suggest that disabled child workers were prevalent at that time.

Last, the high concentration of wealth enlarged the gap between the rich and the working class. Andrew Carnegie wrote in Wealth that one of the problems of the Gilded Age was “proper administration of wealth.” Most of the wealth created at the Gilded Age was in the hands of the rich. Working people, as the creators of the wealth, could only receive a tiny part of it. For example, the Carnegie Steel Company’s net profits reached 4,000,000 dollars in 1894, but the same year the company had cut the wages in Homestead to half of the wages in 1892. Statistic revealed that the wage of rollers in homestead steel company was 12.15 dollars in 1982 and dropped to 6 dollars in 1894. Meanwhile “the increased cost of living,” made life harder for workers.

The Gilded Age was the symbol of progress and economic expansion in many people’s minds. It was undeniable that the wealth and the technology advancement in this era paved the way for future development of America. However, the terrible treatment of the laborers at that time was a reminder to modern people. Behind the surface flourishment of the Gilded Age, there were skilled workers losing jobs and poor working conditions that were harmful to workers’ health, and wide employment of child workers and the enlarged gap between the rich and the working-class. Reflecting the negative side of the Gilded Age is as important as learning from its developing side because it reminds people to solve similar laborer treatment problems in today’s society and prevent them from happening again.