Why did the nineteenth-century Americans tolerate the enviromental ravages of rampant industrialization?

Question

Please also try to answer the following and be as specific as possible:

2. What features of working-class life must have been most troubling to laborers in the late nineteenth century? How is industrial different today?

3. Is organized labor today tending toward the Gompers or the Powderly approach? Explain. Why does the United States not have a labor party?

Answer 1

They tolerated it because they felt it was a big world, and if they ruined one area, there was always another fresh new one over the hill. Industrialization was seen as progress and a sign that God favored industrialized nations. It was also another example of how mankind had learned to truly have dominion over the earth.

As for questions 2 & 3--here's some hints:

2. Most laborers came from a rural setting into an urban one. There were no benefits, no safety measures, no minimum wage/hours laws.

3. But the US DOES have a labor party--the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota! The name is a clue as to why we don't have a labor party here. As for Gompers and Powderly--look them up in wikipedia or your textbook and figure out what their approaches to labor were and then look at labor today. If you don't know what labor is doing today, look up AFL-CIO, NEA, Teamsters, USWU, UAW, etc.

Answer 2

1. There were no environmental ravages. It was a big country. Every one was happy to have a job and to make a living. The environment absorbed everything thrown at it.

2. Uncertainty.

3. The labor movement today tends toward the CIO approach. This approach organizes industries rather than crafts. The largest unions today are those of public employees.

There is no labor party in the U.S. because, historically, labor parties tend to socialism and nationalization of industries. U.S. workers are not interested in either. They do not want to own the means of production. They just want to get paid a fair wage and not have the assembly line speeded up to fast.

In the election of 1972, Democratic nominee George McGovern proposed a tax of 100% on all incomes of $1 million or over. Polls showed that U.S. workers were opposed to this. They replied that if some one could make $1 million a year, he should be allowed to keep it.