The Improvements of Working Conditions of the American Worker

 

    Hello, I know it has been a long while and it might be too late to reply to your comment, but I still had to do some reading before being able to reply to you with some real ground. I will take the liberty of writing without citations because: first, this is not an academic paper; and second, it would take me too long to track back where I read what I read. Having said that, please take the following as my main source of information, as it is my assigned book of study:

 

> Brinkley, A. (2019). The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People Volume 2. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.

 

    In the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, America experienced an extraordinary period of economic prosperity known as the Gilded Age. This prosperous era was possible thanks to the following factors: the emergence of scientific management or Taylorism; an incredible availability of natural resources; the extraordinary technological advances; the improvement of transportation, thanks primarily to railroads; and an influx of immigration, which increased the supply of labor in the nation. While immigrants faced a hard life when they arrived to the United States, their conditions cannot be described as exploitation once it is examined within its historical context; rather, they obtained the best possible deal they could get during this period, and immigrants and businessmen innovators of this period became the real factors that improved working conditions, instead of Unions as you previously suggested.

 

    To begin, immigrants did face harsh conditions as a consequence of the industrial revolution, but even this event meant an extraordinary improvement in their living conditions when compared to the alternative and their past circumstances. Children were indeed sent to work at an early age, but they were sent by their families rather than being forced by "evil corporations." One must wonder why would these families sent their children to work if they were aware of what they were going to face, and the reason is simple: it was the best alternative. During this period, there were no public schools for these families to send their children, and due to their poverty, they couldn't afford to leave their children back home. They could either send their children to work, or potentially face starvation because they did not make enough to sustain a non-working children. The reason why they made low wages was because these group of immigrants were un-skilled, and predictably, the less skills you have the less money you will make; businesses are not at fault so far. Quite the contrary, businesses provided a reliable source of income for these families that they could not find anywhere else, not even in their countries of origin, hence why they immigrated. Before working for industries, immigrants lived in harsher conditions working in family farms, where child-labor was still arduous and dangerous, but the standard of living was inferior to that achieved thanks to industrialization. You can only describe their situation as exploitation if you compare it to our modern standards, but for the standards of the time, they had just found themselves a miracle. And later on, this industrialization generated a demand for skilled labor, and from these impoverished immigrants emerged the American middle class of the 1920s.

 

    To continue, some businesses were crude and relentless in their activities with regards to their workers, working hours were long and working conditions were low compared to today's standards (again, for the standard of the time and the alternative of these workers, these were rather good conditions,) but the market forces -which depend directly on individual decisions- moved forward to improve this situation. Businesses were moving to states where labor was cheaper, and people were immigrating to states that offered better conditions. For example, the "Mass Immigration" of former slaves from the Sothern states to Northern states, and the movement of businesses to Southern states to take advantage of cheap labor from these same former-slaves. This movement of businesses and people was possible thanks to the connection of the railroads, which had created the most efficient form of transportation of the time. For you to say that these immigrants would not be able to look for another job with better conditions is to deny the development of the historical time: Businesses and people were indeed finding common ground with each other thanks to the technological advancements of the era, which connected the nation as it had never been connected before. In relation, you also mention the Great Depression as a consequence of the mistreatment of immigrants, but this is nonsense: The Depression would hit in the 1929, whereas the time of industrialization we are discussing happened much prior to that, so you would have to jump over World War I, Wilson Woodrow's presidency, and the emergence of progressivism in order to attribute the Great Depression as a direct consequence of the Gilded Age. With all due respect, that is a nonsensical leap.

 

    Moreover, Unions were NOT the determining factor of the improvement of working conditions; on the contrary, it was the implementation of Scientific Management which increased effectiveness in the workplace that generated a better deal for workers. First, Unions were not even popular among workers: The public, both businessmen (obviously) and workers did not approve of their activities; unions did not represent the workers, they only represented their members, and often resorted to violence to force cooperation with other workers and to achieve their ends. Unions effectively monopolized the market of their labor, because by negotiating higher salaries, they destroyed the competition with low-skilled workers, who could provide a service for a cheaper price, therefore were a threat to the stability of the members of the Union, this means that they improved the working conditions of their member at the expense of the working conditions of everyone else. Second, Scientific Management was the real determining factor of the improvement of working conditions. The best example is Henry Ford, who implemented a production model called "line of assembly," which allowed him to mass produce cars at a higher rate and lower cost, and allowed him to reduce the working hours to 40 hours a week. Contrary to popular believe, the reality is that businesses DO NOT want you to work long hours, because that signifies an expense; businesses want you to be more PRODUCTIVE at a faster pace, so they will be able to reduce cost of production without compromising efficiency. The competition forced American businesses to implement Scientific Management, which increased effectiveness and at the same time reduced working hours, it also reduced the risks of injury on workers, because injuries slowed down production.

 

    Let me be more specific about Scientific Management (SM) and its impact on improved working conditions: SM simplifies a production workflow, which breaks down production into small simple steps. This renders the job so easy that makes workers interchangeable and replaceable. While this posed a risk to workers, and employment was very volatile during the time, it also allowed them the freedom to choose where to work, because now they could perform a job in any of the many emerging industries of the time. This emerging availability of work on many competing businesses directly supports my previous argument about the competition for labor: Workers can choose to work for businesses with better working conditions, and competition for labor will generate improved working conditions as a result of businesses trying to attract as many workers as possible, who can now easily jump from job to job and still perform.

 

    Lastly, your complains about your working-related frustrations is an empty argument, but it illustrates the trend of improvement of working conditions across time. People from the era we were discussing did not have "sick days" to negotiate, much less any type of benefit from the company as we see it today. As previously argued, Unions were not responsible for the improvement, so you are a direct beneficiary of the individualistic efforts of millions of people across generations who gradually improved these conditions. You can participate in this process: You must inform yourself on your options of employment and keep hunting for the most convenient; if you lack options, you must find why: Is it because you lack a certificate, or is it because there are not that many businesses in your region? If the former, you must then invest in your education, and in the future you will be able to choose; if the later, then you must invest in relocation, and then you will be able to choose. This is more of a philosophical argument based on a model of free will: Usually, if you cannot make a decision directly is because you are not in a position where such a decision is possible, but there are still decisions that are indeed possible that can change your State of Existence (SE,) one of these decisions will lead to a new SE with different possible decisions, and you can eventually find yourself in the SE with the possible decisions you were originally looking for. This is relevant because free-will is the fundamental assumption of individualism; so yes, individualism is "great stuff" indeed.

 

    To conclude that the Unions of the late 19th Century were responsible for the improvement of the conditions of the American worker is to ignore the many factors and historical events of the Gilded Age, and it also a wild disregard for theoretical scientific knowledge from economics. It was innovation, technological advancement, competition for labor, and Scientific Management which improved the working conditions of these people. Not only that, but to say that these people were all being exploited, or to suggest that they generally had a bad life, is to unfairly compare their situation to that of the modern day, to disregard the fact that their standard of living increased dramatically compared to their previous generations, and to ignore that they had the best possible deal compared to the alternatives of the time. You also disregard the market forces as a process requiring time: you observe a fixed time in a fixed region to make your argument, while ignoring the developments in the general economy, which trended positively for the nation as a whole, to the point of this era being recorded as the Gilded Age in American History. Finally, your counter points to individual success is empty: the fact that sometimes you need to rely on other people's skills or aid does not mean that you cannot determine your own destiny, it is rather an illustration of how the free-market, ruled by individualistic behavior, produces a system in which we must cooperate with each other in order to achieve our selfish goals: If you need someone's help, just save money and pay him, and now you helped each other. Only a fool would refuse money in exchange of providing services, also referred to as employment. Moreover, I did not totally make myself; I needed plenty of help from other people, whom I usually worked for at a very low wage. This allowed me to gain experience and save money to go to college, who are people on which I relied on to learn. It also allowed me to hire cheap lawyers that helped me gain an immigration status of Authorized Resident. Perhaps, my friend, you should reassess your philosophy of free-will, and perhaps you should not consider me as the "exception to the rule" and rather "an example of" individualistic potential. Potential which you, as an individual with free-will, also posses.

 

    Cheers, stranger, and good luck.