Agrarian Soceity to Indutrial Soceity Essay

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Agrarian Society to Industrial Society

After the civil war the United States switched from an agrarian society to an industrial society. There were many effects that happened in the United States during this time, such as political, social, and economic. Some examples of these effects were political; unions were created to get rights in the work place. A social effect was children were working at very young ages all day to help their parents survive. An economic effect was the creation of machine goods were made faster and were cheaper. Unions in the work place were created to sway managers to give fair wages and protect their employees. The unions pushed the government to create rules in work places to make them safer and offer fair wages. Children and women’s hours were reduced by a little, they had a slight raise in pay and they had a little more off time. Unions got what they wanted by boycotting, striking, and collective bargaining. During 1877-1896 all strikes and boycotts were to no avail, the management won because they were so strong. There were two industrial revolutions, the first half of the nineteenth century and the other was the second half of the nineteenth century. The second half of the industrial revolution was in the United States; it was driven by invention and innovation, such as the Bessemer process for making steel which enabled the ability to build skyscrapers. Unions believed that new immigrants would take the jobs of currently working people or people looking for jobs. Children would go to work from dusk until dawn six days of the week to help their parents survive and pay for food. Child labour prevented children from getting an education and furthering themselves in life. Child labour laws were set in place to decrease the time children were allowed to work, increase the minimum age of a child to legally work, and to make safety regulations the would help children to be safer. With these labour laws in place it allowed for less time to be spent at the factories for children, but the managers may have had to hire more employees to get the same amount of work done. There were many injuries in the factories such as loss of limbs, fingers, hair caught in machines, scalps ripped off, and