Courses
Courses for Kids
Free study material
Offline Centres
More
Store Icon
Store
seo-qna
SearchIcon
banner

How did the second industrial revolution affect the United States?

Answer
VerifiedVerified
547.2k+ views
Hint: The high scale impact of industrial revolution started in the year 1900 within the United States of America. Lives of people changed and millions of dollars were made by individuals who started enterprises or factories. Working class was established between who were living across in the countryside and some were now living in cities. But there were some huge scale dilemmas spreading at the time within these industries as the workers started uniting.

Complete answer:
The second phase of the industrial revolution created a huge change in the social structure. This was visible through the large gap of workers income and company profit. This discrimination and factors like overwork created groups of workers protesting against the management. In the majority of these industries, working conditions were brutal and often wildly unsafe. And if the production numbers reduced, the employees were fired without prior notice.
All these treatments lead to the formation of workers unions and labour unions. They demanded higher wages, shorter hours, and other improvements in their working conditions. The reasoning behind a union is that an individual worker can easily be dismissed, but a large group of workers stands a chance of success by threatening not to work until their demands are met.
Business owners opposed unions and didn’t appreciate the needs including power over the terms and conditions of work and payments. Workers who initiated the process of forming a union were fired immediately and were banned from the area. To most business owners, labour was a commodity to be bought and sold, just like raw materials, and workers who tried to gain bargaining leverage by joining a union were treated as a threat to the power and economic well-being of industrialists. The unions became a major threat to the capitalist mindset of the owners and when it grew, the majority of these businesses went broke or shut down as employees refused to work.

Note:Although employees formed labour unions, employers frequently turned to the government for assistance in defeating them. Workers were seen as citizens who could consent or not work at all to work for such salaries. English law, like governments in general, frowned upon the coming together of unofficial groups to achieve their goals. Such groups have been labelled and punished for criminal conspiracies. It was not until 1935 that federal laws were passed giving labour unions the right to strike and to maintain picket lines.
WhatsApp Banner