Hannah Shew

Section 2

In-Class Historical Analysis Writing

Although the Industrial Revolution drove the United States to become the largest economic
superpower of the modern world, aspects of this era, including child labor, and the unequal
control of money between classes, created an inhumane nation and society.

The Industrial Revolution, which brought new technology and knowledge along with it,
drove the United States to become the largest economic superpower of the modern world.
Investopedia writes that during the Industrial Revolution in the United States, “GDP per capita,
which had been fixed for thousands of years, grew dramatically with the emergence of the
modern capitalist economy.” The Industrial Revolution, which was a relatively very short period
of time, grew this economy at a rate never seen before. For example, according to the
organization Our World in Data, the United State’s GDP per capita in 1820 was $2,080 and in
1920, it had grown to $8,485. This growth was so remarkable in fact, that the United States grew
to be the largest economic superpower in the world. Prableen Bajpai reports in “The World’s
Top 20 Economies”, “The U.S. is often dubbed as an economic superpower and that’s because
the economy constitutes almost one-fourth of the global economy.” The Industrial revolution
caused economic growth internally for the United States, but more importantly, it pushed the
nation way ahead of the rest of the world. Our nation definitely has the Industrial Revolution to
thank for its success as the largest superpower in the world but at the same time, its workers and
citizens paid a heavy price for this success.

One of the most inhumane aspects of the Industrial Revolution was child labor. As
economic pressure grew on families, children were forced to become wage earners. The working
conditions these children faced were often horrific and inhumane. For example, John Spargo
writes in “The Bitter Cry of the Children”, “From the cramped position they have to assume,
most of them become more or less deformed and bent-backed like old men.”Another inhumane
story similar to this one was reported by Mother Mary Jones in “The March of the Mill
Children”. She reports seeing little children “some with their hands off, some with their thumbs
missing, some with fingers off at the knuckle.” Not only were these stories (and every other
child’s story who were forced to work in these horrific conditions) inhumane, but as Mother
Jones further points out they were also illegal. “Many of them were not over ten years of age,
although the state law prohibited their working before they were twelve years of age.” Clearly,
these ruthless Industry owners were not only willing to put children in inhumane and unsafe
conditions, but they were willing to break the law to do it.
 The Industrial Revolution and the capitalist system, which created an unequal division of
wealth in the country, not only created an inhumane society for children, but it created an
inhumane society for workers of all ages. Lily Rothman, a reporter for Time magazine writes in
“How American Inequality in the Gilded Ages Compares to Today”: “... by the time of that 1897
ball, the 4,000 richest families in the U.S. (representing less than 1% of the population) had
about as much wealth as the other 11.6 million families had altogether.” By the middle of the
Industrial Revolution, the unequal control of the money in the country had already grown
exponentially. Not only did the money shift to the upper class, but 1% of the population had the
majority of the money. As corporations grew larger, so did the divide between the classes. The
business owners that controlled the money had such a large percentage of it, that no amount of
hours of hard and grueling labor would ever free the workers from their wage-slavery. The
amount of money it took to start your own business was large, but the amount of money you had
to produce to even ​start competing with these corporations grew exponentially higher during this
era. Edward Bellamy, a member of the upper economic class during the Industrial Revolution
and author of Looking Backward, reflects on the problems that came with the great divide of the
money between the working and capitalist class. “...Servitude not to men but to soulless
machines incapable of any motive but insatiable greed.” Even a wealthy member of society
during this time, who benefited from this divide on a daily basis, understood the unequal control
of the money was and is an inhumane was to subsist as a nation. These “soulless machines” as
Bellamy speaks of, can be motivated but nothing but making the most absolute profit. The
well-being of their workers, including health and fair wages, was clearly not on their list of
priorities.