20th Century American Industry: The Bitter Smell of Progress

                                      source:“child.jpg (497×356),” 23 Feb. 2016.

           America in the 20th century had glamour, but it didn't share its 

glamour with everyone. 

       In the early 20th century, more than half of the American 

population was poverty stricken. For this reason, families sent 

their children to work in factories: they needed all the income they 

could get. While the reason seemed understandable, the factories 

the children were sent to were a death sentence. A horror show of 

machines that emitted bitter smog and waited to devour children in 

the horrific symphony of machinery. 

     The working conditions in the factories were terrible; many 

people got injured because of them. In the picture, one of the 

children is barefoot. Both of the children look worried, which 

makes sense as they are standing on a device that can injure them

at any second. The factory looks windowless, which gives the 

impression the children do not have the right to see the light of 

day. The monochrome grey fits this photograph as it accentuates 

the gloominess of the situation. 

      Fortunately,  around the first decade of the 20th-century 

reform movements were implemented in America's industrial code

of law. Reform movements that stripped this picture of its 

melancholy, and brought more favorable working conditions to 

American factory workers. Conditions which rendered American

industry from then on, until this very day. And freed children from

the enslavement of industrial life, and catapulted them to what 

today is a modern day educational system.