Now and Then

I lead a typical teenager life where I go to school to receive education and play sports. I also work on the weekends and work that is not to difficult to complete. I live in a house with 6 bedrooms and 3 bathroom facilities. The people whom I live with consist of my mother and father, my sister, and my uncle. Everyone besides my sister works because she is too young. The typical hours that my parents work is 8 hours when the hours are convenient to them. My parents both receive benefits from their work and healthcare if anything ever happened to them. Now thinking back to a time before any work reforms or health and sanitation reforms, before human resource reforms were made, the working conditions were often brutal and inhumane.

Like my family, the typical coal mining family was large but the pay they received was significantly less than what our entire family makes. Their hours usually range from 10 to 12 hour days and their pay around 50 to 70 cents per day. They did not receive any healthcare or were not properly equipped to survive a fatal roofing collapse that would instantly kill them. The safety of the coal miners was in jeopardy because safety laws were not created to ensure the safety of the miners. The life of a coal miner begins at an early age and they rise up in their ranks throughout their lives. Their lives were on the line because their jobs are very dangerous. I think that I would never be able to work in the mines. The working conditions in the mines are dangerous and unsafe in this period. Now that I think of it, miners never really had any personal possessions besides their pick and what they wore. The miners were never really had anything that they could call their own.

Along the way, a movement to end Child Labor ensued. One particular position that children held at work was newsies. They are usually between the age of 8 to 10 and they worked late hours. Sometimes they worked very late until midnight and the work was dangerous. They could catch illnesses such as pneumonia for selling newspapers in the rain or get killed by cars. Many of the newsies are young and they carry tons of newspaper. They always look unhappy in pictures but when grouped together with a bunch of newsies, a little enthusiasm can be found. I think that child labor was a bad idea because young children were exploited and lost their education and future as well as their lives. I think it was a good thing that child labor was abolished. Imagine my little sister going off into a factory to work 8-10 hours a day with little time for rest and little pay and no healthcare or safety codes. It would be a very dangerous job for them to do.

Living conditions in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries were as horrible as they working conditions. The sanitation in the city was horrendous. The current sewage system was ineffective and many people lived in houses that were on the brink of destruction. Spaces in the houses were cramp with only a window to allow fresh air. Usually there would only be one bedroom where all of the family had to sleep in and the living room would be near the kitchen. I prefer to live in my house because I have more space and freedom to arrange whatever I want in my room and the fact that I have multiple rooms in my house. The Hull house is an example of a modernized building. It is acceptable to our standards today because they have the modern things such as plumbing, sanitation and open living quarters.

The comparison between the working conditions, the age limit to when someone can work and the living conditions now and then are entirely different. Without the necessary reforms, children would still be working at an early age of 8 and men and women of all ages would be working in unsanitary and dangerous situations where they risk life and limb to gain so little pay.