Preview

Family Wage During The 19th Century

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
370 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Family Wage During The 19th Century
The family wage economy is the area and amount of production it took to provide a family with enough money to survive. During the 19th century, most working class families relied on every able bodied member of the household to contribute to the overall wage of the family. Due to this, they were driven by a greater need for cash over specific labor within the household. This meant that as soon as children, male or female, were capable of working, they would be expected to work within the household, outside with a parent, or completely on their own. Often times it would be the girls of the family who would end up working away from home in city based mills and factories, and although they were functioning with a level of independence and autonomy,

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Providing for yourself and your family is a basic necessity, but for generations this need was only allowed to be addressed by men. A woman had always played the supporting role in a household while the man worked and contributed to the house financially. Before it was acceptable for a woman to work, her role in society was simple; a caregiver that looked after the house and cared for the children. While this may sound appealing to some, women in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the Progressive Era, yearned to do their part in earning wages for their families. To overcome the difficulties that came along with reestablishing a social norm, women were forced through many hardships to prove that they were able to stand among men as a prominent…

    • 1116 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Traditional works days were 12-14 hours long and the working condition were terrible. The work itself was arduous however they did not receive the respective compensation. Women were exploited for cheap labor and were paid unfairly, often getting paid a meager 8 dollars a week. Many didn’t know what their wages were and succumb to accept anything that was given to aid their families: “At present, no consumer however enlightened and conscientious can know the varying wages paid” (Florence Kelly, Journal of the Political Economy). Florence Kelley believe women had to get paid an adequate wages as they had children to look…

    • 1242 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Starting off by explaining the typical family roles in the turn of the century, Piess expresses how while the men may spend his evenings at a local saloon, at a baseball game or reading his daily paper, the women would often be expected to work her “double day”. Piess explains this concept of the double day to be that the woman is expected to go about her daily work day of typically “domestic servants, needlewomen, laundresses…” (Peiss 1986), and come home to start her other job, being the housewife. The housewife duties usually entailed cooking, cleaning, washing, scrubbing, and most importantly… making her husband and kids happy. All the while, when the woman got her hard earned paycheck, it was expected to go towards family needs. Even as young women in the family home, young working girls were expected to hand over their paychecks in their entirety while their male counterparts were only asked for a small portion of their earnings. Even though women were getting paid at lower wages and it being justified because women were seen as “temporary wage-earners who worked only until marriage” (Peiss 1986), Piess automatically…

    • 1679 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Working class women during the 1800s-1900s most often had no choice but to work to help provide for their families. Female wage earners were mainly unmarried women, single mothers, or African American women. Often women’s wages were believed to be secondary to the earnings of the men in the household; even though women’s earnings were also vital to the family’s survival. “In 1890 three-quarter of white working women were unmarried.” (297) These women either worked in domestic service for richer families or they worked in factories.…

    • 486 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The American labor force of the late 1800s and early 1900s was weak, uneducated, and forever trapped by the low-pay and harsh conditions of work and life; there was virtually no way out, as explained in Thomas O’Donnell’s Testimony. Everyone was caught in a rut, starving and poor; hoping for a better future, yet knowing that nothing else awaited them. “How could [they] go…walk?” (O’Donnell 31).…

    • 796 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the 19th century the majority of the working class were workers, domestic servants, factory hands and agricultural laborers. The remaining of the working class were people that were unskilled, semiskilled, or skilled in jobs like mining, fishing transporting, garment industry, building or any other manual trades. Since manual labor was in great demand in the 19th century the working men’s income was higher in their twenties because they were at their physical peak. As their physical conditions weakened so did their pay. Children born into the working class society also starting working at a young age in order to help with the family expense, and try to raise their income above the poverty level.…

    • 212 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Before the nineteenth century, Americans were an agricultural-based community. There were many farmers, which were a family-based business and many tobacco farmers with plantation using a bunch of slaves. But as the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century approached, there was a dramatic shift in production growth, as well as a drastic shift in the communities. While industrial industries were booming as it resulted in the creation social-economic class between the workers. As stated in Licht’s article, “The wealthier you were the more removed you chose to be from the often crowded, noisy, and hectic new industrial reality.…

    • 582 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Before the Industrial Revolution, families were interdependent on the roles of each other to survive, and each family member worked together to ensure the happiness of the family as a whole. Most work occurred at home or on the land belonging to the family and there was very little distinction between the roles of women and men, or between work and home. As people moved to the cities, work began to be something that was performed away from the home. Men were considered to be more valuable workers and therefore were paid more. Women were seen as less valuable than men, and were expected to have less of a role in the public sphere.…

    • 495 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    During the late 1800s and mid-1900s, women and women's associations not just attempted to pick up the privilege to vote, they likewise worked for wide based financial and political equality and for social changes. Somewhere around 1880 and 1910, the quantity of women utilized in the United States expanded from 2.6 million to 7.8 million. Despite the fact that women started to be utilized in business and industry, the greater part of better paying positions kept on going to men. When the new century rolled over, 60 percent of every single working woman was utilized as residential hirelings. In the region of governmental issues, women picked up the privilege to control their income, own property, and, on account of separation, take care of their…

    • 255 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Child Labour In The 1800s

    • 814 Words
    • 4 Pages

    During the 1800s, Great Britain was making great new changes to its nation new advances in technology, and a rapid growth in the population, especially, in urban areas of the country which resulted the increase of supply and demand. Factory owners only had one problem they didn’t have enough workers, and didn’t want to take lots of money out of their pockets to provide new employees. The solution was finally found they found people who could be paid the cheapest wages, work long hours, and are fast learners, children. These children were working in factories and mines things such as that as young as the age of six years old. Child labor was the momentous component to the Britain Industrial Revolution succeeding.…

    • 814 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The working-class people resisted economic inequality in the early nineteenth century throughout various cities in forms of chaotic movements such as demonstrations in riots and strikes. Men and women constructed and collaborated in creating of each own union group in the fight against inequality through involvement of strikes and uprising protests for the better their livelihood. During the time when Civil War ended, people and soldiers returning home to their normal lives encountered another fight for survival in the country’s evolving industrial economic struggle. With the lack of employment, living conditions was a challenge for many especially the poor people.…

    • 577 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Poorer women had to manage families and work in factories at the same time to make ends meet. With the gender roles present, women would be expected to manage the household without any help regardless of whether they also had jobs or outside affairs, since the participation in those activities in addition to the duties she was expected to fulfill would be seen as a choice. Having these…

    • 1678 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Female employment in factories and manufacturing increased because women were weaker and earned less than men. In addition, children worked in factories also to contribute towards family income because working-class families struggled to support themselves. The transformation into industrial society caused some…

    • 534 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Impact upon the Family Most families were rural, large, and self-sustaining; they produced and processed almost everything that was needed for their own support and for trading in the marketplace, while at the same time performing a host of other functions ranging from mutual protection to entertainment. (Cowan) We then start to see the shift of the family not being as much of importance. We see with the introductions of the mills and textiles, the family shifts away from production.…

    • 602 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The bosses of factories, mills and other work places didn’t care enough about their workers to make their work area safe enough for them to work safely without getting harmed. They cared more about their income then how the products were being made. As a result of this, “Women earned $1 to $3/day” (entry 6). Since people only made a few dollars a day, the whole family had to work in the factories as well. This made it so families couldn’t get a proper education and not have any free time since they had to work so much.…

    • 894 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays