L5: The Gilded Age: Working ConditionsThe Shifting Size and Scope of the National

Government: Part One

AgendaObjective:1. To understand what

working conditions were like in the Gilded Age.

2. To understand how the meaning of work was transformed in the Gilded Age.

Schedule: 3. Group & Whole Class

Discussions

Homework:1. Consult unit

schedule for background reading

2. JT Dates:1.Annotated

Bibliography (Red & Blue = Mon 1/28; Tan = Tues 1/29)

2.Rough Draft #1 (Fri 2/1)

3.Rough Draft #2 (Tan = Thurs 2/7; Red & Blue = Fri 2/8)

4.Final Draft (Fri 2/15)

Labor Conditions During the Gilded Age

• Last class we looked at the growth of corporations and how corporations became the defining feature of the Gilded Age.

• Today, we want to understand what working for this corporations was like.

Labor Conditions During the Gilded Age

• We know what working conditions were like in a factory system between 1870s and 1890s.– Poor wages, long work hours, dangerous conditions, tightly

regulated schedules• Our discussion today will be more nuanced. In particular

we want to understand:– What was the experience of work like for workers?– How was the experience of workers during the Gilded Age

different from the experience of workers during the Industrial Revolution?

– What role did the corporation have in structuring these working conditions?

– How did work become a tool of social control?– What was the value/meaning of work?

Labor Conditions During the Gilded Age

• Group Work– Working in groups you will look at 3 sources that

talk about working conditions in the Gilded Age.– Based on these sources note:

• What was the experience of work like for workers?• How was the experience of workers during the Gilded

Age different from the experience of workers during the Industrial Revolution?

• What role did the corporation have in structuring these working conditions?

• How did work become a tool of social control?• What was the value/meaning of work?

• Whole Group Discussion

The Assembly Line

Henry Ford’s Five Dollar Day• On January 5, 1914, Henry Ford announced a minimum five dollar salary for all eligible

employees working eight-hour days. It was conceived as a profit-sharing plan which would motivate Ford employees to adopt efficient and productive habits at both the factory and the home. The Ford Sociological Department was created to administer the plan by sending field agents into the community to visit workers at home to determine the quality of their home lives…All employees over 22 were eligible for the plan, which included a shortened work day from nine to eight hours in addition to the opportunity to earn five dollars per day. In order for a worker to be eligible to receive his share of the company’s profits he “must show himself to be sober, saving, steady, industrious, and must satisfy the..staff that his money will not be wasted in riotous living.” Workers who didn’t comply risked being paid half as much for performing the same work as their co-workers and could eventually lose their jobs. Ford's plan invoked a variety of responses. Ford disregarded his criticisms because he knew the importance of acknowledging the human element in mass production. He believed that retaining more employees would both lower costs and lead to greater productivity. His beliefs proved his critics false, as the company's profits doubled from $30 million to $60 million between 1914 and 1916. "The payment of five dollars a day for an eight-hour day was one of the finest cost-cutting moves we ever made," Ford said. Other benefits also resulted in the implementation of the Five Dollar Day. It dissolved the effort to unionize the Ford factory and also turned auto workers into auto customers. Their purchases brought some of Ford's own money back to him which increased production and lowered per-car costs.

Adapted From: http://web.bryant.edu/~ehu/h364proj/summ_99/armoush/page3.html

Scientific Management (Taylorism)• Theory of management that

analyzed and synthesized workflows. Its main objective was improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering process and to management.

• Taylor believed that production processes based upon tradition and rules of thumb should be replaced by precise procedures developed after careful study of an individual at work, including via time and motion studies which would tend to discover or synthesize the “one best way” to do any given task. The goal and promise was both an increase in productivity and reduction of effort.

• Pictured: A time and motion study of an industrial worker.