Common interests
Families were torn apart as the long,hard hours with no relief took their toll.
Laborers' common interests have always been at stake. From the need for increased wages to keep a family going, to more reasonable hours, to a lack of safety precautions, having a job came with huge risks. In some cases, desire for safety outweighed the risks that came with working. In the 1800s, the average adult male worker made a sum of about $16/week. With inflation taken into account, this adds up to approximately $215/per week today, hardly enough to sustain a family. For this reason, women and children, both boys and girls, were forced to find work, and earned considerably less, usually anywhere from two to six dollars a week. Some factory workers were paid as low as one shilling, or thirty-five cents, per day. These poor sums were one of the many reasons that families went hungry and without new clothes or a decent home.
For the low wages that laborer's earned, one would expect them to work short hours and return home to spend time with family and complete chores. However, the exact opposite is true. Work days could range from ten to sixteen hours, depending on the occupation and tasks for the day. In all, the average work week in the early 1800s was seventy hours of backbreaking work every week, mellowing out to only sixty hours per week by 1880. Such long hours in addition to household tasks and raising a family added up. Many people lived on the streets with hardly anything to eat. Everyone was stressed, and one mistake at work and you were fired with a line of hundreds of people desperate for your job. Families were torn apart as the long, hard hours with no relief took their toll.
The third common interest that workers fought for was safer working conditions. Everyone from the youngest children to the oldest elders worked. Young children lack strong hand-eye coordination and the elders were frail and shaky. Quivering hands combined with primitive technology led to many injuries, more prone in children and older workers, though injuries happened to everyone. Statistics show that most factory injuries were fatal and at least one worker died every other day at work. Sickness rates were extremely high as well. When one person got sick, the disease traveled quickly, which made working conditions go from bad to worse.
For the low wages that laborer's earned, one would expect them to work short hours and return home to spend time with family and complete chores. However, the exact opposite is true. Work days could range from ten to sixteen hours, depending on the occupation and tasks for the day. In all, the average work week in the early 1800s was seventy hours of backbreaking work every week, mellowing out to only sixty hours per week by 1880. Such long hours in addition to household tasks and raising a family added up. Many people lived on the streets with hardly anything to eat. Everyone was stressed, and one mistake at work and you were fired with a line of hundreds of people desperate for your job. Families were torn apart as the long, hard hours with no relief took their toll.
The third common interest that workers fought for was safer working conditions. Everyone from the youngest children to the oldest elders worked. Young children lack strong hand-eye coordination and the elders were frail and shaky. Quivering hands combined with primitive technology led to many injuries, more prone in children and older workers, though injuries happened to everyone. Statistics show that most factory injuries were fatal and at least one worker died every other day at work. Sickness rates were extremely high as well. When one person got sick, the disease traveled quickly, which made working conditions go from bad to worse.