Karis Kracke-Bock

Common Writing Task

Industrialization is the development of factories and businesses on a very large scale.

This helped change America’s way of life in many ways. Development of transportation,

electricity, and communication all helped greatly in the development of Industrialization in

America. Infrastructure, employment, and labor strikes all contributed to the change in urban

lifestyle. Industrialization had more challenging impacts on urban lifestyle than positive impacts.

Infrastructure had challenging impacts on urban lifestyle during the Industrialization of

America. Infrastructure in America expanded urban areas and caused more people to migrate.

This is shown in a picture from The Detroit News called “Hazardous Traffic”. In this picture it

shows many cars, trolleys, people, etc… running around. This shows how the development of

these things caused a huge effect on urban life. Traffic caused everything in urban life to become

more chaotic. This made it harder for everyone to get around and therefore adopted the busy

lifestyle we see today in big cities and towns. This is why infrastructure had challenging impacts

on urban lifestyle during the Industrialization of America.

Employment had challenging impacts on urban lifestyle during the Industrialization of

America. During Industrialization, employees became more apart of the machines they worked at

rather than real people. This is shown in an excerpt from a statement made by Clara Lemlich

called “Life in The Shop”. In this excerpt Clara Lemlich states “The bosses in the shops are

hardly what you would call educated men, and the girls to them are part of the machines they are

running. They yell at the girls and they "call them down" even worse than I imagine the Negro

slaves were in the South”. This shows how Industrialization changed the way that workpaces ran.

More factories were put into place and owner to employee relationships became non-existent.

This changed urban lifestyle because life became so impersonal. No one connected with each
other and life became all about the ‘machine’. This is why employment had challenging impacts

on urban life during the Industrialization of America.

Some people could say that Industrialization had positive impacts on urban life because

of the outcome of labor strikes. Labor strikes created many benefits for America and established

the way jobs work today. They created Labor Unions which allowed citizens to be protected

from unfair working conditions, have fair pay, not have child labor, etc…. They also helped to

establish fair day to day working hours and gave employees holidays and weekends. Although

this benefitted urban life in many ways, I still believe that Industrialization had more challenging

impacts than positive because Labor Strikes caused many people to be hurt in the process. Also,

Industrialization caused many people to lose their jobs because machines were able to do their

jobs better and faster. While Industrialization had some positive impacts, ultimately it had more

challenging.

Industrialization had more challenging impacts on urban life than positive impacts.

Infrastructure negatively impacted urban life by making it harder for everyone to move around.

Employment negatively impacted urban life by making everything impersonal and all about the

machines. Labor strikes had some positive impacts, but ultimately had a negative impact because

many people got hurt in the process. This is why Industrialization had more challenging impacts

on urban life than positive impacts.