8labor

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 * The Problem(s)**
 * Factories were becoming overcrowded with large numbers of workers who wanted to work for factories, //including// women and children
 * Employees rarely communicated with their bosses. There was no inter-level connection
 * Workers worked insanely long hours, usually around 10-14 hours a day 6-7 days a week.
 * The pay was lousy with little or no pay for overtime. Companies didn’t pay workers for days off if they were lucky enough to have some.
 * Working conditions were were unsanitary to the point of being dangerous. The employees weren't given anywhere near enough safety equipment. Many people were maimed by getting body parts getting caught in machines.
 * Whenever a worker would talk back to their boss, or show up late to work, they would be either fired or fined.
 * Many children worked in sweatshops as well, in order to help there family afford life, and they all too easily caught their fingers in the machines. They were also paid even lower wages than the meager pay adults would get because owners could pay kids even less than half as much as an adult and get away with it.
 * Labor unions were usually unsuccessful because major companies often successfully countered the unions by hiring strikebreakers and with lockouts.
 * It was also easy to just get new workers during a strike. If a major factory needed workers, it would be only too easy to find replacements for the workers on strike.

_ The Department of Labor was formed, which is responsible for the administration of more than 180 federal statutes that cover protection of workers' wages, health and safety, employment and pension rights, equal employment opportunities, job training, unemployment compensation and workers' compensation, and collective bargaining.
 * The Solution(s)**

The Image(s)**
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-Mining long has been a dangerous profession. Historically, numerous miners died from accidents, explosions, or mine-related illnesses before the age of forty. As you can see, this man won’t live long because all the dangerous gasses in the air will soon kill him.

-So workers went on strike and were often punished by the federal government by doing so. Even though these strikes sometimes got out of control, they were quickly put down by the government.

The Primary Sources** An excerpt from Leon Stein's __The Triangle Fire__ "I need it the first thing in the morning," he would give as an excuse. I understood that he was taking advantage of me because I was a child. And now that it was dark in the shop except for the low single gas jet over my table and the one over his at the other end of the room, and there was no one to see, more tears fell on the sleeve lining as I bent over it than there were stitches in it. ~Rose Cohen An excerpt from Leon Stein's //Out of the Sweatshop: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy// The bosses in the shops are hardly what you would call educated men, and the girls to them are part of the machines they are running. They yell at the girls and they "call them down" even worse than I imagine the Negro slaves were in the South. There are no dressing rooms for the girls in the shops. They have to hang up their hats and coats—such as they are—on hooks along the walls. Sometimes a girl has a new hat. It never is much to look at because it never costs more than 50 cents, that means that we have gone for weeks on two-cent lunches—dry cake and nothing else. The shops are unsanitary—that's the word that is generally used, but there ought to be a worse one used. Whenever we tear or damage any of the goods we sew on, or whenever it is found damaged after we are through with it, whether we have done it or not, we are charged for the piece and sometimes for a whole yard of the material. ~Clara Lemlich
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Citations Leon Stein's __The Triangle Fire__ and __Out of the Sweatshop: the Struggle for Industrial Democracy__, ABC-CLIO,** http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/25/newsid_2516000/2516687.stm., http://www.tellurideminersmemorial.coyotekiva.org/miners.html.,
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