HST 210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Gilded Age, Sweatshop, Piece Work
6 Feb 2017
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Document Summary
Workers are the economic engine of the gilded age. Before g. a: goods are produced in small workshops in small batches by skilled artisans (who had significant control over the work process) Mechanization shifts the site of work to the factory: large batches of goods by semi/unskilled workers. Workers lose control over work process (subject to round the clock surveillance by foremen/supervisors) New theory of management; work is to be divided between semi-skilled and unskilled tasks: workers are closely monitored (in order to increase efficiency, work is now interchangeable, repetitive, and boring. Taylorism creates tension between worker and supervisors over shop floor control (pace of work, arbitrary treatment of foremen, unsafe working conditions: industrial accidents are pervasive and deadly. In the g. a: 35,000 workers died of work-related accidents. Sweatshops: contractors or middlemen have pieces sewn together in the tenement homes of workers/small workshops. Sweatshop workers labour long hours & are paid by piecework: done mostly by immigrant women and children.
