Metropolis by Ben Wilson;

Author:Ben Wilson; [Wilson, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House LLC
Published: 2020-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

The greatest proportion of factory workers were aged between sixteen and twenty-four; many of them were Irish, economically vulnerable, discriminated against and therefore easy to control. Alongside the textile mills grew chemical plants and engineering works. But thousands more were employed in casual or seasonal labour outside the factory gates. One survey found that 40% of men were “irregularly employed” and 60% were on subsistence wages. “Could there be any kind of life more outraged, more opposed to man’s natural instincts?” asked the French philosopher Hippolyte Taine when he visited Manchester.

The Chicago meatpacking houses struck fear into visitors with their squealing animals facing slaughter, the pools of blood, viscera and grease. But even more appalling were the conditions of the humans working there, soaked in blood and gore and half-frozen. Dependent on the pitiful wage, the plant gates were crowded each morning with workers hoping for a day’s work. “These are not packing plants at all; these are packing boxes crammed with wage slaves.”6

“All America,” wrote a German of Chicago, “looks with fear at this city that hurls her threat over the country.” The city was the “storm center of civilisation,” warned Josiah Strong, founder of the Social Gospel movement. “Here is heaped…social dynamite.” “Manchester is a name of deep and even of awful significance,” intoned the civil servant and evangelical Sir James Stephen. For him, the city of industrial wealth and urban degradation was a sign “that we are approaching a great crisis and catastrophe in human affairs.”7

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.