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Immigrants During The Gilded Age

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While the elite of this time period enjoyed unheralded success, many of the lower classes were exploited. The Gilded Age was a time of economic growth for the U.S.; the industrialization of the country and the technological advances made it possible for certain individuals to achieve extraordinary amounts of wealth. However, this wealth came at the cost of the general population. This economic and social inequality is what led to the terrible living conditions as described in Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives. In his pioneering work of photojournalism, Jacob Riis draws attention to the horrifying living conditions in the poor slums of New York. Although there were many reasons for the terrible living conditions, three of the most influential …show more content…
The rise of big corporations allowed these titans of industry to essentially control every aspect of their respective industries. These robber-barons were able to set up these monopolies by a system we know as vertical integration. This basically ensured that the robber-barons could control every aspect of industry from the raw product to the finished product, as a result, it also ensured that any competition would be crushed or bought out. The rise of monopolies and the growth of industrialization allowed for workers to become expendable. The newfound expendability of workers, led to the hiring of cheaper labor, in the form of desperate immigrants. Unlike the rest of the working class, immigrants were willing to work in terrible conditions for little pay. Due to their situation, they were also not ones to rock the boat, and would not demand labor reforms like their working class counterparts. A sense of resentment towards the immigrants filled many other working class Americans, mostly due to their belief that immigrants were taking their jobs. Immigrants were desperate to work, many fleeing from persecutions and their economic conditions in their respective countries. They were so desperate, that they were willing to work in unsafe conditions for little pay. Despite working long shifts, they were not making enough to earn a …show more content…
As a pioneer of the photojournalist movement, Riis certainly set the stage for -the- modern advocating of civil and basic human rights. Jacob Riis was one of the first to draw attention to inequality during the Gilded Age, and his works have withstood the test of time. Despite our critique of social and economic inequality throughout the Gilded age, many of the issues remain to this day. In our society, the rich continue to get richer at the expense of the poor and the working class. Despite what we have witnessed from our predecessors, we have not learned from their flaws, quite frankly, there is still a lot of work to

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