It has been some time since I last wrote; the year is now 1844 and many things have changed. Being a gunsmith in Massachusetts has been a struggle; many new people have come to the area and are causing me competition. The journeymen I have been training for years to eventually take my spot when I’m too old to work has now left and began his own gunsmith shop. It seems that this world has become a battle to the top now. Whoever has the best and cheapest products succeed and the rest struggle to get by. This change of being trained to be a skilled craftsman is going out the window, and being replaced with this capitalistic style of living where outsourcing work creates products at an alarming rate. Sir de Tocquevillle has written an article…show more content… Titled: “Treatment of Help in Those Days Was Cruel”, the article spoke of the hardships he has been through when growing up in our society of laborers. Being a gunsmith my entire life I have had the luxury of doing the grunt work and learning a trade from my father just like how Mr. Munger did with his father at the mill. Although my life did not possess as much day to day physical labor as did his, I learned that life could be cruel to laborers who depended upon their backs and hands for a payment. Mr. Munger seems like the general population of farmers and pioneers of the time, all of whom had a strong will to work and supply the family with food and money in order to…show more content… I have been able to take out money to invest in new store fronts and machinery, but most of the money is in the pockets of the court thinkers so wealth has been segmented. In 1819 there was a panic evolving around the banks and currency. After the war of 1812 and the rush of business to America people began to spend and invest wildly, but after the rush ended and things turned back to normal people were left with large debts. Many people were left to file bankruptcy and become unemployed especially around the northeast (Foner, 366). This affected me a great deal because some of my friends across town had taken out large loans and are now left searching for jobs that are far and
