What were the negative effects of industrial expansionism during the Gilded age?

During the Gilded age there was rapid economic growth, this growth created vast amounts of wealth. There were new products and technologies that led to the improvement in the quality of life of the middle class. However this new prosperity was not shared by everyone, the industrial workers and farmers worked in dangerous conditions for long hours with very little pay. The politicians during the Gilded Age were ineffective and corrupt. The majority of Americans...

During the Gilded age there was rapid economic growth, this growth created vast amounts of wealth. There were new products and technologies that led to the improvement in the quality of life of the middle class. However this new prosperity was not shared by everyone, the industrial workers and farmers worked in dangerous conditions for long hours with very little pay. The politicians during the Gilded Age were ineffective and corrupt. The majority of Americans during this time desired social and political reforms, however there were huge disagreements about what type of reform was needed. The unskilled workers of the day worked for long hours in dangerous conditions. These workers got paid very little and did not share the prosperity of the Gilded age. Many of these workers lived in slums. While the industrial giants made huge contributions to the development of the American economy the vast majority of Americans did not benefit from these changes. The economy allowed for few to gain large fortunes but the unskilled laborers had to work 60 hours a week for 10 cents an hour. Over a million people lived in the cramped New York dumbbell tenements which were overcrowded, fire traps. In Chicago, the slums were around three times as packed as those in New York. The living conditions in these settlements were horrible, city governments were not able to build sewage or water facilities fast enough for the growing populations. Diseases such as cholera, TB, consumption, and typhoid became common in these settlements. In cities like New Orléans the poor walked in their own sewage.

The period of the Gilded Age was one of horrible labor violence where the industrialist and workers fought for control in the workplace. This resulted in the workers forming the first labor unions. The employers were against such unions and tried to stop them for forming which led to conflicts. The key events that came out of this was the Railway Strike of 1877, Haymarket Riot of 1886, Homestead Strike of 1892, and the Pullman Strike of 1893. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 started a time of serious conflicts in the industrial industry. The strike ended when federal troops attacked the protesting workers. After 1877 the laborers started to form large unions. In 1892 there was a strike at the Carnegie Homestead Steel plant that was outside of Pittsburgh. There was fighting between armed security and workers which left 12 men dead. The steel industry stayed free of unions until the 1930s. Pullman ran a railroad car factory in Chicago and built a city for his workers to live in but the rent in this city was high and workers were generally unhappy. The Pullman Strike started after wages for the factory workers were reduced but rent for living in the town was not. Workers who went on strike received support from the national American Railways Union. The strike however ended up being a failure due to intervention by government troops. The Industrialists were convinced by the violent strikes that labor conflict was an inevitability. So most of the big industrialists desired to stop unions from forming instead of trying to reach a compromise. The rapid industrialization of the American workplace changed the role that work played in people's lives. The workers were not just unhappy due to the pay, hours and conditions but they also loss the status and satisfaction that work had previously given them. The introduction of machinery plus the subdivision of the manufacturing process led to workers only understanding the one tiny part that they played in the process. The laborers also lost the opportunity for advancement resulting in them being demoralized. The manufacturing process gave the workers no transportable skills, they often had no real skills at all. In fact the process was subdivided so much that a child was capable of doing the work. It wasn’t until the 1920s that industrialists decided to improve productivity and morale by improving factory conditions.