So you really haven’t studied early-industrialized pre-labor union factory politics?
12 to 16 hour shifts, 70+ hour weeks were regular.
No safety standards – regular loss of limb and life.
No age standards. Ignorant children were commonly employed.
Pre-air conditioning. Hot, loud, poor conditions.
Shanty towns characterized by overcrowding, poor sanitation, and diseases (cholera anyone?)
A single-family home? Laughable. These people lived in disease-ridden tenements and had to pay laughable sums of money for that privilege. No one was building generational wealth… certainly not during the era of “Robber Barron” industralization. Factory owners would employ spies, they would play labor forces against each other using racism (albeit “White” racism: Germans vs Irish vs Protestants, but that’s the 1800s for ya. Racism looked different back then).
There weren’t any ecological standards either. All the pollution for the factory seeped into the living quarters. Lead, toxins, smog, you name it and it was in the drinking water. Smog was so thick, that Vitamin D deficiency was widespread, leading to rickets.
You didn’t even have a damn private toilet, let alone a damn house to yourself. 1800s was the era of shared and communal outhouses, and those outhouses went right back into the drinking water, leading to Cholera outbreaks. Its utterly laughable to suggest that factory-worker time of early industrialization was a good time to live and/or raise a family.
And I got some pro-Trump comics to share if you don’t care much about historical accuracy. The reason why comics / words / discussion works is because people should be spreading the truth and/or revealing truths about the world.
I see you’ve missed my point. Let me dumb it down a bit: there’s a highly popular politician out there who is reinventing the past with fake history, and invoking fake-nostalgia upon this fake-history to gain political power.
how shit has gotten progressively worse under Capitalism
Glorifying early-industrialization factory conditions, a time of the robber barons, laissez faire politics, and literal corporate overlords spying + sabotaging labor movements sounds like a bad way to create that discussion. There’s a fucking reason why Leninism / Communism was invented in the late 1800s to early 1900s.
I think that’s an acceptable answer. 1910s wasn’t perfect but it was better than 1880s for sure. Hmm, its just that “factory job” has so many implications depending on exactly which decade you’re talking about.
The only “really good” factory job times IMO were 1950s, post-war. Even by the 1970s, USA factory jobs began to lose out vs rise of Japanese products and giants. So its a really short period in the great scheme of things. Arguably, the rise of 1950s-era economic miracles was only made possible because Europe + Japan was so wrecked by WW2 and the USA was one of the only undamaged industrial nations, so our products did extremely well around the world. I don’t think its going to be possible to replicate that era.
The 1910’s were the first time in American history where a single factory worker could sustain a household on one salary, including purchasing a car. It wasn’t a perfect system and included a lot of corporate paternalism, but it was far better than what came before.
Um, no. 1910s was still “Henry Ford builds town because none of the workers can afford a house” time of history. Workers weren’t just dependent on corporate leaders for their job, you also were dependent upon them for your house, well being, schools, and more. Henry Ford advertised his towns of workers under a utopian dream, but in practice there were all kinds of warts.
Workers wouldn’t “own” their own house until well into the 1930s when laws were finally being passed to encourage home-ownership as part of the New Deal. But in practice, people were too poor during the Great Depression to actually afford homes in practice, but at least the dream existed. It wasn’t until the 1950s where postwar economic miracle combined with the legal changes to banking (from decades prior) finally combined into an environment that allowed for large scale homeownership.
In the 1890-1940 period, the homeownership rate fluctuated in the 43- to 48-percent range. From 1890 to 1920, the homeownership rate fell as immigration and urbanization offset the rise in income. Income growth increased the homeownership rate during the 1920s, but the Depression more than wiped out this gain so that the rate had fallen to a low of 43.6 percent by 1940.
During the 1940-1960 period, the homeownership rate rose by over 18 percentage points, from 43.6 to 61.9 percent. This remarkable transformation was facilitated by higher incomes, a large percentage of households being in prime homebuying age groups, the FHA-led revolution in mortgage financing, the GI bill of rights, improved interurban transportation, and development of large-scale housing subdivisions with affordable houses. While all of these factors played an important role in making the United States a Nation of homeowners, it is important to note that a Department of Labor study (cited in the Housing and Home Finance Agency’s Housing Statistics Handbook of 1948) reported a 53.2-percent homeownership rate for 1945. If this survey was correct, then approximately half of this change took place prior to many of these factors becoming fully effective and during a time when wartime needs virtually halted residential construction. Higher wartime incomes, the absence of many competing consumer goods, and shortages of rental housing may explain this wave of homebuying.
Bruh, no shit, you clearly missed my point, this comic is depicting how the housing crisis has gotten progressively worse.
Home Ownership rates in 1950-1960 was like 61%.
Homeownership rates today is 65%.
Go back to 1900s and you’re down to like 45% home ownership rates.
That’s why we take the census, so that people know how this country progresses. Part of the problem with today’s politics is that people go with vibes and feelings and MAGA and fake nostalgia instead of looking at the fucking data.
The first picture is either Homestead act-era, which was “funded” by US Citizens just stealing lands from the natives (on purpose mind you), such as Homestead act of Oklahoma. Or its from an even older era funded by slavery and/or indentured servitude. I don’t know exactly what period panel#1 references, but… its not exactly nice politics.
Ex: If its 1800s, then free land in the frontier was a tactic for negotiating with Canada for where the borders would be set. If we got enough settlers out there, we knew that USA’s side of the border would be larger. Too bad about the natives though, amirite?
Early 1900s factory workers, a-la “The Jungle” era (Upton Sinclair), were children who got their hands regularly mangled by machinery and had to live in the slums. The idea of mortgages was non-existent and most people were trapped in a forever rent cycle, unable to build generational wealth. Bonus points, banks and their silver and/or gold deposits would disappear randomly every 20 years because the metal standards were utter crap to base an economy over.
Pre-WW2 was the Great Depression, and with 20%+ unemployment and the great dust bowl, farmers were moving into the cities and just being unemployed bums. (Their original homes on the plains lost their ability to grow food due to 1920s climate change issues). Post-WW2 was the economic miracle that led to a relatively easy life and is finally representative of Panel#2.
So I argue that panel#1 never existed and/or only existed due to literal conquest of other people (Native Americans mostly), and panel#2 is a very isolated time in our history.
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