The Iron Mills By Rebecca Harding Davis Essay

Rebecca Harding Davis wrote “Life in the Iron Mills” in the mid-nineteenth century in part to raise awareness about working conditions in industrial mills. With the goal of presenting the reality of the mills’ environment and the lives of the mill workers, Davis employs vivid and concrete descriptions of the mills, the workers’ homes, and the workers themselves. Yet her story’s realism is not objective; Davis has a reformer’s agenda, and her word-pictures are colored accordingly. One theme that receives a particularly negative shading in the story is big business and the money associated with it. Davis uses this negative portrayal of money to emphasize the damage that the single-minded pursuit of wealth works upon the humanity of those

The daily life of a miner was far from perfect. The way the papers and other means of propaganda had portrayed getting rich quick, but it was far from easy. All the equipment that was needed to start out as a miner was for the most part outrageous. The earning wages from gold was” sixteen dollars an ounce” pg.8. Even so, the work was backbreaking. There was swarms of minors trying to get rich quick. To many miners that traveled to get a piece of the precious metal they where resorted to taking land from previous land owner just to get ahead in the Gold Rush. Not to mention that the living conditions where also outrageous. The “rentals of hotels and other business structures, whether of boards or of canvas, reached even dizzier heights than did commodity prices” pg.8. This spaces where set prices at 3,000 dollars a month or 40,000 dollars for a year, there was also other prices around the area of San Francisco. And in some cases miners where resorted to living in a room filled to the brim with other miners. This lead to very poor conditions for any one to live in. But nothing was better then being rich in a few months or

Iron ore mining was very successful in the late 1800s, and it is still going today.

During the rise of industrialization, the United States had just ended the Civil War and was starting to move on. People had an aspiration at this time to make a more than decent living for themselves, and the economy was at the right spot for this to be possible. This time period in American History is referred to as the Gilded Age, termed by the famous author Mark Twain, which simply means covered in gold; however, Twain did not necessarily mean this in a good way. He believed right under the surface of this gold plating was still problems with the American society that didn’t look so appealing. This essay will discuss how practices during the rise of industrialization during the Gilded Age shaped the American work and labor force.

Beginning with Rebecca Harding Davis’s Life in the Iron-Mills, readers can find within the text a clear oppression of lower class peoples that is also an indirect oppression of women as lower-class individuals. Davis tells this story with a man named Hugh Wolfe as her main

William Attaway’s novel, Blood on the Forge, displays a family torn apart as a product of systematic exploitation. In the compelling narrative, the Moss brothers, Big Mat, Chinatown, and Melody, migrate to the north in motivation of Big Mat committing the murder of his riding boss. As they begin to adjust, their perception of the north’s assumed and rumored opportunities quickly conforms to the reality of what is actually offered. Through plot lines of the very act of migrating, acclimating to regenerated labor and norms, and, finally, the dissolution of the brothers’ identities and close family connection, it is observed that their exodus to the north is just as empty of benefits as the south. Attaway accomplishes depicting an accurate account of the contrasting exploitation that occurred in both the north and the south by portraying the Moss brothers’ demise as a result of their migration from a systematic, rural setting to an industrial, diminishing, and, ultimately, unfamiliar environment along with how the two regions parallel in similarities concerning economical and social consequences, permanently affecting the brothers altogether mentally and physically. Where there was great potential for a rebirth of opportunity and success, the result was a contrasting reality of misery and permanent damage.

For six, long years, many man slaved away on the railroad tracks, shaping America into what it is today. In these six years, man and women faced sickness, injuries, and low wages. In two different documents, these obstacles are expressed, one through knowledge, and one through personal experience. They talk about hardships, and the danger, but there are also many contrasting ideas in both articles.

With the essay narrated in third person, it becomes easy to notice a difference between the lives featured. Furthermore, one of the life’s that were mentioned often was John Barton. All the struggles John was facing regarding his life at the mill was soon contrast to others who as well lived a time period at the mill. Similar to Mr. and Mrs. Hunter who seemed more wealthy and did not have the

In William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning”, one can see the social inequity between the poor whites and those that they worked under, the aristocratic landowners. The setting of the story takes place in the agrarian society South of the 1930s. Much of the occupations that are held at the time are dictated by the social classes that you were born into. Faulkner further illustrated the distinctiveness between the two classes by highlighting the stark differences in terms of social and economic standards. These differences lead to discord and eventual resentment and animosity between the two as one is able to see with the conflicts between the Snopes family and their landlord, Major de Spain.

Lucius Beebe critically analyzes Edwin Arlington Robinson’s, The Mill best. Beebe’s analysis is from an objective point of view. He points out to the reader that what seems so obvious may not be. She notes “The Mill is just a sad little tale of double suicide brought on by the encroachment of the modern world and by personal loss.” Thus meaning The Mill carries a deeper underlying theme. Lucius Beebe expresses that a minor overflow of significant details has been exposed over Edwin Arlington Robinson's "The Mill," much of it concerned with whether the miller's wife did indeed drown herself after the miller had hanged himself. Another, even more provocative question has never been asked: did the

The factories and the mills are a mixed blessing. They drastically changed the way we live and work, but also introduced a variety of problems. I am a female factory worker in London. Thousands of families migrated into the city in hope of better life and prosperity. A million people now live in London. The city has quadrupled in size. More about urbanization?? The factories brought us job opportunities and increased the production of goods. Inventions and ideas are still being introduced to us left and right. Overall, the outcome from the factories and the widespread of new ideas has raised our standard of living. However, it is mostly for the upper and upper middle class. The upper class receives healthier diets, better housing, cheaper mass

without a voice in history. As one can see throughout history, historians neglected much of the history of the lower classes until the 1960s and 1970s, which produced massive amounts of works pertaining to the social interactions of people. Walton, throughout his article, continues to carry on the story of the underprivileged and lower class people, “We have seen that there was clear and sometimes very direct relationship between severe poverty and behavior which could be defined as insane by the relevant authorities.” Focusing on the less fortunate became commonplace within the historical writing world of the 1960s-1970s, and these precise topics were different than any before it. Social historians approach to writing about the Industrial

Lucius Beebe critically analyzes Edwin Arlington Robinson's, The Mill best. Beebe's analysis is from an objective point of view. He points out to the reader that what seems so obvious may not be. She notes "The Mill is just a sad little tale of double suicide brought on by the encroachment of the modern world and by personal loss." Thus meaning The Mill carries a deeper underlying theme. Lucius Beebe expresses that a minor overflow of significant details has been exposed over Edwin Arlington Robinson's "The Mill," much of it concerned with whether the miller's wife did indeed drown herself after the miller had hanged himself. Another, even more provocative question has never been asked: did the Miller actually hang himself? Beebe

The bourgeoisie obtained power contrary to those before them, they failed to realize that they wouldn’t be able to survive without the classes below them, the proletarians. Those who

The Marxist approach to literature is often associated with labels and the act of exposing illusions or deceptions. This specific approach deals mainly with the many problems of socialism including the struggle of the social classes. It also deals with the dictatorship of the wealthier class over the poorer class. The lower-class suffers in a Marxist economic system because their life is basically controlled by whoever the high-class landowner is that they are working for during the time. In “Barn Burning,” the Marxist critical approach can be used to show the differences between social classes in the real world throughout the entire fictional short story through the wealthy Major de Spain who has power over the poor Snopes family.