capitalism and industrialization, including the physical, spiritual, and intellectual starvation of immigrant wage earners. In fact, the novel is recognized as being the first literary work in America to focus on the relationships among industrial work, poverty, and the exploitation of immigrants within a capitalistic economy". Life in the Iron Mills is an explosive study of the working poor, prophetic of the class struggle that would fill the main chapters of nineteenth century labor history. Davis's story is remarkable for its solidarity with the cause of the workers. Writers who took up the subject of the labor wars more typically enlisted on the side of corporate authority. As Davis shows, the Industrial Revolution also brought with it class distinctions clearly exhibited by the material wealth of capitalists and industrialists who possessed the means to build lavish homes with elaborate architecture. In contrast, factory workers and other unskilled laborers often lived in crowded boardinghouses and small apartments. Because they lived in such deplorable and disorderly conditions, held such lower-class status, and faced the stress and uncertainty of work, many wage earners indulged in alcohol consumption. Davis effectively captures these conflicts in Life in the Iron Mills. As far as the country was concerned, immigrants saw America as a place with many job opportunities due to industrialization and urbanization. In the 1840s the nation received 1.7 million immigrants, and then 2.6 million in the 1850s. Many owners of industrial plants and mills became rich by exploiting the immigrant workers in order to provide cheap goods. Davis was said to have, "sought to make her readers aware that their material comfort was enabled neither by palliative classical gods nor by cheap coal and river barges but by real human beings, who ate, slept, and toiled in unspeakable conditions" (4). In this short story, Davis is allowing the readers to not only experience the true reality of what work was like during this time, but she is also encouraging the readers to become social activists and take action towards change in the real world. During the beginning times of industrialization, the working conditions were terrible. All of the characters in the story lived in a town that was overtaken by pollution due to the iron mills; therefore, their town had no clean air for the residents to enjoy and the town always seemed “dirty.” Since all of these different characters had to work long