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: Rural workers performed hard labor to ensure their crops and livestock survived, despite droughts, famines and pestilence. Farming was often considered part of the lower socioeconomic class because farmers lived simple lives, without luxury, fame or prestige. However, rural workers didn’t face the poor working conditions, unsanitary housing environments, poor sunlight, smoggy air and disease-infested close quarters that many of the poorer city-dwellers encountered. The rural population remained a majority until 1920. Factory Workers
The working class in industrialized cities consisted primarily of immigrant and native workers who labored at clothing factories, industrial plants and meat packaging facilities. 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.