Life In The Iron Mills Alienated Labor

The Industrial Revolution was a time of drastic change in the economic and social structures of the developed world. Factories and cities began to crop up all over to keep up with the rapid expansion pace of the time, and the living conditions of the middle and lower class quickly degraded with the increase of urban living. Society was soon divided into two classes: employers and laborers. The employers rapidly accumulated wealth and lived luxurious lifestyles while the laborers lived in complete filth and poverty. In Harding Davis’ Life in the Iron-Mills, the reader can clearly see the dehumanizing effects that the industrialization had on working individuals, and Marx’s idea of alienated labor coincides with Davis’ depiction of the daily
“The externalization of the worker in his product means not only that his work becomes an object, an external existence, but also that it exists outside him independently, alien, an autonomous power, opposed to him. The life he has given to the object confronts him as hostile and alien” (Marx). According to Marx, the products exist independently from the laborers, and this concept can be seen in the structures of industry. The laborer does not own the product, but rather the product belongs to someone with more authority such as the owner of the company. Wolfe pours his whole life into his work, but none of the products he creates during his extensive and exhausting hours in the iron-mills belong to him. His life force goes towards creating products that then exist completely independent and often in opposition to him. Labor naturally alienates the worker and degrades the human essence of the
As an individual loses their innate nature, “his superiority to the animal [changes] to inferiority” (Marx). Traditionally, humans are viewed as high and more complex beings than animals, but if one loses their humanity, are they still superior to animals? The essence of humanity is difficult to define, but it is often viewed as existed in higher cognitive processes such as philosophical thought and the arts. As seen in Wolfe’s inability to pursue his sculpting due to his economic constraints, labor conflicts with the existence of human nature. The result of losing one’s human nature is “that man (the worker) feels that he is acting freely only in his animal functions-eating, drinking, and procreating, or at most in his shelter and finery-while in his human functions he feels only like an animal. The animalistic becomes the human and the human the animalistic” (Marx). Wolfe is forced to focus solely on surviving from day to day. He works to earn money to buy sustenance so that he can keep working, and the cycle continues on with seemingly no end. He must now feel most free during these essential functions of life because he no longer experiences a truly free human lifestyle. Alienating labor completely removes an individual from their human nature, and then they are merely akin to