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U.S. History 1877-Present 3: Industrial Era Working Conditions and Child Labor 16802 Views
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Description:
Think your chores are bad? During the first Industrial Revolution, children as young as ten often worked more than eight hours a day for less than six dollars a month. Yugh. We're tired just thinking about it.
Transcript
- 00:03
By the time the first Industrial Revolution got fired up
- 00:06
machines were making everything iron for construction chemicals for medicines and [Machines making iron]
- 00:11
cleansers cement glass paper list keeps going huge machines even made parts for
- 00:17
other huge machines there's something kind of creepy about that well factories
- 00:21
built mechanized farm equipment like tractors and Reapers to industrialize [Tractors driving in a field]
Full Transcript
- 00:26
agriculture iron factories produced train and the track to run them on
- 00:30
industrializing transportation that's why we call it a revolution everything [Train travelling on the tracks]
- 00:35
about everything changed how people traveled changed how people got clothes
- 00:39
and food changed and most crucially the meaning of work changed work used to be [Woman looking through clothing rack]
- 00:45
something everyone did together ninety-nine point nine percent of humans
- 00:49
before 1750 or farmers they lived on small family farms and raised food to [Man and son farming]
- 00:55
eat in to sell they made their own clothes and shoes candles plates and
- 00:59
soap making stuff by hand wasn't a fun hobby for yuppies on the weekend back
- 01:04
then it was how most people survived and the thing was that people made all this [People constructing a house]
- 01:08
stuff together older more experienced people taught younger people how to do
- 01:13
all these things everything was hands-on and very personal people had a close
- 01:17
relationship with the people they work with they usually called one of them mom [Mom and kids cooking]
- 01:21
once machines took over however things got a lot less personal I don't really
- 01:26
we should say the humanity of individual workers kind of stopped mattering much
- 01:31
at all let's just say that when the motto was the machine must keep running
- 01:34
well if the machine was stuck a boss would say jab your hand in there and [Man fixing a machine]
- 01:39
wait a little round yeah well it's probably no surprise at the end of the
- 01:42
day there were a lot of hands on the floor or reps you know mixed into the [Man carrying bucket with hand in]
- 01:45
soap the machine was making gives a new meaning to ants out there people doesn't
- 01:49
it think about it with no safety regulations or laws protecting workers
- 01:53
horrific workplace accidents were basically businesses you [Man running around factory with bucket on his head]
- 01:57
why did this kind of horrible treatment occur money of course factory owners
- 02:03
could make a ton of money producing manufactured goods so they put the
- 02:07
machines that made the goods first ahead of human workers and out of necessity [Injured man working in a factory]
- 02:11
the factory workers did too they could make more money working in a factory
- 02:15
than they had ever dreamed possible working on a farm a little dismemberment
- 02:20
here and there an arm leg now seems like a risk worth taking if it kept your [Man stood beside KFC bucket]
- 02:23
family fed where else could a ten-year-old girl make six bucks a month
- 02:27
in the 19th century yep you heard us right a ten-year-old girl on top of
- 02:32
there being no safety regulation there also weren't any child labor laws most [Children working in factory]
- 02:37
factory workers in the first Industrial Revolution were young women or girls why
- 02:42
didn't they want big strong men to work in the factories because women an [Man reading a book]
- 02:45
especially young girl had the least amount of power in free white society so
- 02:51
they were the easiest to horrifically exploit and underpay many of these young
- 02:55
women even lived in the factories and they had to pay rent for the privilege
- 02:58
of being there oh and they also had to learn to apologize if they gummed up the [Woman crying with bandaged arm]
- 03:02
work by losing a finger how dare you dinguses hey
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