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As late as 1900, most industrial workers in the United States worked a 10-hour day (12 hours in the steel industry), yet earned 20–40% less than the minimum deemed necessary for a decent life; [158] however, most workers in textiles, which was by far the leading industry in terms of employment, were women and children. [44]
This was partly due to a transportation revolution happening at the same time, low population density areas of the U.S. were better able to connect to the population centers through the Wilderness Road and the Erie Canal, with steamboats and later rail transport, leading to urbanization and an increased labor force available around larger ...
[45] [46] The US was also the only industrial power to have no workman's compensation program in place to support injured workers. [46] From 1860 to 1900, the wealthiest 2 percent of American households owned more than a third of the nation's wealth, while the top 10 percent owned roughly three-quarters of it. [47]
In the 1800s, the US switched from charcoal to coal in ore smelting, adopted the Bessemer process, and saw the rise of very large integrated steel mills. In the 20th century, the US industry successively adopted the open hearth furnace, then the basic oxygen steelmaking process. Since the American industry peaked in the 1940s and 1950s, the US ...
The action was precipitated by a strike when workers' demands (including improvements to safety and working conditions at the local copper mines, an end to discrimination against labor organizations and unequal treatment of foreign and minority workers, and the institution of a fair wage system) went unmet. The "deportation" was organized by ...
Labor history is a sub-discipline of social history which specializes on the history of the working classes and the labor movement.Labor historians may concern themselves with issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and other factors besides class but chiefly focus on urban or industrial societies which distinguishes it from rural history.
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By the end of the 18th century, the threat of deforestation forced the English to use coke, a fuel derived from coal, to fire their furnaces. This shift precipitated a drop in iron prices since the process no longer required charcoal, the production of which was labor-intensive. This was a practice that was later adopted in the US as well. [55]