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Life in the 1800s has taken on an almost Utopian quality in the minds of many Americans. The images associated with this era of our history are, on the surface, pleasant to recall: one room school houses with a heavy dose of the 3 Rs; rugged self-reliance; living close to the earth, no income tax, steam-powered railroads and individual freedom.

Topics:   A Typical Workday   Child Labor   Workplace Safety   Industry and Energy   Birth, Life, & Death   Hard Times

All-in-all, we seem to recall a well-scrubbed past taken from the pages of those Currier & Ives prints.

Maybe, as we move forward in this new century, it's time to take another look at the so-called "good old days."

On the job
Workdays in the mid to late 1800s were long and hard. The average worker could expect to labor anywhere from ten to fourteen hours a day, six days a week. A sixty or eighty hour work week was the rule, not the exception.

By 1830, a skilled worker or experienced machinist earned as much as $1.25 a day. However, jobs that paid that well were uncommon. An average worker could expect to earn between fifty and seventy-five cents a day. A woman lucky enough to find a paying job earned far less than a man. Her standard wage was anywhere from half to two-thirds less than her male counterpart.

Unions were almost unheard of. Where they existed they were considered, by factory owners and industrialists, to be "un-American." When horse-car drivers in New York City demanded that their traditional 16-hour work day be reduced to only 12 hours, their demands were branded as "communistic" by state assemblyman Teddy Roosevelt. When strikes did occur, they were often put down by troops and militiamen.

Child labor
Children often worked the same long hours as their parents. By 1900 there were nearly two million children under fifteen years of age working in factories across the nation. Child labor was in great demand by employers who considered children to be a bargain. Kids were paid between $1.50 and $2.50 a week for up to 84 hours of work. (Two or three cents an hour was considered low pay, even by the standards of the day.)

Safety in the workplace
In the days before government regulations and the union movement, the place where you worked could easily become the place where you died. President Harrison observed in 1892 that, "American workmen are subjected to peril of life and limb as great as a soldier in time of war."

During the 1890s it was estimated that nearly a million workers were killed or injured each year in the work place. Power shafts and belts to drive the machines were open and unprotected. Factories were dimly lighted and the workers' machines and equipment were not equipped with the safety devices now required by law. The rule of thumb,for those lucky enough to still have one, was, "if you take the job - you assume the risk."

Railroads were especially dangerous places to work. In 1900 alone, more than 2,600 rail workers lost their lives in rail accidents and more than 41,000 were maimed or injured. Between 1898 and 1900 American railroads lost as many workers to accidents as the entire British Army did in its three-year Boer War.

Workers' compensation was unknown. Disabled workers received no pay, benefits, or social security. During this same period, the wealthiest men in America were the owners of railroads. Railroad Barons amassed fortunes ranging into the billions of dollars.

Industry and energy
In the early 1800s people and animals were the number one and two sources of energy. In that order. Machinery was relatively uncommon and the amount of work a person could complete in a work day was almost entirely dependent upon strength and personal endurance. As the century progressed, there was a noticeable decline in wood cover around America’s growing communities. By 1860 most of the firewood used in Boston, Massachusetts was being hauled by ship from Maine. Energy was expensive in terms of human labor and cash. Getting enough fuel to last the winter was a year-round chore for rural folks. A miscalculation in the amount of wood collected could mean, at worst, freezing to death and at best, a long miserable winter. In the industrialized north, water power was the source of energy for mills. By the 1830s, five to ten horse power was typical for a country mill and twenty-five to fifty horse power was standard for a large city mill.

Mills often had to shut down for extended periods in the summer and winter months because water power was not available due to droughts or frozen ponds and rivers. Clocks in many mills were tied to the water wheel. The slower the flow of water – the longer the work day. It was a practice called "mill time" that came to an end when towns and churches installed clock towers on the commons.

When "Old Days" prices are translated into the numbers of hours worked and then charged against today’s typical wage of $12.00 an hour, a different picture emerges. For example: butter at 19 cents a pound meant that an average worker making 75 cents a day on a 12 hour shift had to work just over three hours for his pound of butter. If it took as many hours to earn a pound of butter today as it did in the 1800s, butter would sell for about $36.48 a pound. Hardly a bargain.

Hard times
Without the safety-net of unemployment insurance, food stamps, or other state or federal service programs, folks of the 1800s were pretty much at the mercy of their employer and the whims of a changing American economy.

In the early days, when a man lost his job, he faced the very real prospect of watching himself and his family starve to death. To a large extent, employers realized this and had a steady, if not willing, pool of people ready to work at any price.

In 1887 America experienced a depression that saw nearly three million workers loose their jobs. Many families lost their homes or were thrown out of their city tenements. Thousands of homeless families lived on the streets of major cities.

Between 1893-98, another economic crisis swept the country throwing nearly four million workers off their jobs. Almost one in five workers was jobless.

Factory owners faced with diminishing profits often cut wages. When workers refused wage cuts or attempted to unionize, the factories simply shut down. Lockouts usually ended after workers pledged to the owners that they would not form a union.

Continued in part two >>