Title: The Working Class in the Early 1900s | The Classroom
Headings: The Working Class in the Early 1900s
The Working Class in the Early 1900s
Rural Farmers
Factory Workers
Survival in the Lower Class
Growing Middle Class
Women in the Workplace

Content: Some also worked in lumberyards and shipyards that exported goods to other U.S. cities or across the Atlantic. Men, women and children worked in factories, often receiving pay that was incommensurate with their labor. In the early 1900s, labor unions petitioned for child labor laws, women’s workplace rights, better working conditions, fewer weekly work hours and higher pay, but it wasn’t until 1938 that the Fair Labor Standards Act was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. By 1900, 30 million people, comprising 30 percent of the U.S. population, lived in cities, according to the Library of Congress. Survival in the Lower Class
Even though the early 1900s are part of the Progressive Era, a majority of the working class didn’t experience the benefits of urban life. Many struggled to survive. The Library of Congress estimates that by 1904, one in three people living in the cities was close to starvation. Poor urban workers experienced overcrowded living conditions, dirty and poorly lit working conditions, insufficient clean water supplies, poor sewage methods and disease. The poor working class resided in slums and relied on low wages for basic survival. Many had a better standard of living as rural farmers in America or in their native homelands than in industrialized American cities.