The story The Treatment of the Help in Those Days Was Cruel: Hiram Munger Remembers Factory Life Is about a young Massachusetts boy and his life/career as a working-class factory work. The story illustrates the typical working family in the 1800s. The story starts off in Monson, Massachusetts where the narrator Hiram Munger was born and raised. A typical working-class family usually was born and raised by poor low-income families and usually have a bunch of kids who usually work for the family. Hiram Munger was born into a poor family where he had five brothers and about six sisters. The father ends up finding a better job at Grist Mill where he has his son Hiram tend the toll gates. For a kid to hold a gate toll position was very stressful, because of one incident where a colored man almost …show more content…
The factory was a cotton-picking factory it was very small and Benjamin Jenks & Co. His perception of life in a factory was very depressed, he even stated "I recollect of thinking that life must be a burden if I was obliged to work in a factory under such tyrants as Jenks."(Munger) One thing found very interesting since he was brought up in the world to be mainly working with grist-mills he decided to make it his education and started studying about the matter. Hiram is the oldest usually when his parents are out of town, he usually is the one that takes up the responsibilities of taking care of all his siblings, especially when his sister was caught on fire and he had to help her that should not be any job for a child to handle. I feel like the condition of the American working class is not good because there are poor, they usually have a big family all living under one roof and we could not imagine the dirtiest of the place. Another thing is that the poor children do not usually get a good education because they get shipped out factories to work for the family and they usually have no time to go to school.