<\/p>\n
Living in the Industrial Revolution must have sucked. Honestly, can anyone here really say they haven\u2019t started to appreciate life a little bit more after having read everything we have about life in factories? Both Davis and Melville basically describe the factories as the Devil\u2019s armpits, and Chaplin\u2019s character quite literally goes mad working there. I, for one, can definitely say that I am very happy to be sitting comfortably in my dorm room, unmarried, and reading<\/em> about this life, than being unmarried and shipped off to go live it.<\/p>\n Having said that, I should probably get to my point. In this day and age, humans are treated like indispensable and important beings, which is what we are. Sadly, that wasn\u2019t always the case. Take \u201cLife in the Iron-Mills\u201d for example. The hundreds and hundreds of mill-hands working there were treated like filth. Davis says, \u201cA reality of soul-starvation, of living death, that meets you every day under the besotted faces on the street,\u201d (Davis 2769) giving an accurate account of what the lives of the workers were like, their pain clearly visible on their faces. She mentions the conditions that they worked under and things are brought up that would never happen in our current day in age. Men in an iron mill working without shirts? Unfathomable! But back then, nobody cared about the lower class. They were just there to do the work.<\/p>\n Similarly, in \u201cThe Tartarus of Maids\u201d the working girls are hardly given a second thought. They aren\u2019t even seen as human beings anymore. Melville even compares them to horses, tied up to a rack (Melville 1272) at one point. After being asked why the females are always called girls, the factory owner says something very striking: \u201cFor our factory here, we will not have married women; they are apt to be off-and-on too much. We want none but steady workers: twelve hours to the day, day after day, through the three hundred and sixty-five days.\u201d (Melville 1278) He basically says that he doesn\u2019t care about anything other than them getting work done. He refuses to hire a married woman because she might possibly not show up for work one day. This right here shows again that the humans in this time were not humans to their bosses, or owners rather, but merely slaves.<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s Chaplin\u2019s Modern Times<\/em>, which takes a completely different approach to convey the same message. Chaplin\u2019s movie is seen as a comedy or parody of how working life was for the working class during the Great Depression. While the factory doesn\u2019t exactly look <\/em>like Hell, like it did in \u201cLife in the Iron-Mills,\u201d it\u2019s still clear that it is not a fun place to be. In the beginning of the film, the workers all settle at their stations and start their work. Immediately the factory owner demands that they work faster. We cut to Chaplin and see the repercussions this brings: he can barely keep up with the speed of the conveyor belt. This, of course, is viewed as humorous, but when you really think about it, it\u2019s awful. This goes on for a while; Chaplin struggling to keep up with the work and messing up. Then lunchtime rolls around, and a company wants to demonstrate their feeding machine so lunch breaks can be cut out entirely. Now, let\u2019s think about this concept for a second. A feeding machine? Really? I\u2019m sure we can all agree that breaks are imperative to perform. I highly doubt anyone here has sat down and banged out an entire six-page paper without checking Facebook at least once or grabbing something to eat. But getting back to the movie, this feeding machine obviously doesn\u2019t work. And once again, because it\u2019s a comedic movie, we all laughed when it didn\u2019t. I\u2019ll admit, it was funny when Chaplin\u2019s face got covered in food and the mouth-wiper hit him in the face repeatedly, but can you imagine if that happened in real life? And then here\u2019s the kicker: instead of turning down the machine because it was injuring a member of his staff, the factory owner doesn\u2019t want to buy the machine because it wasn\u2019t efficient<\/em> enough<\/em>. I mean, seriously? That\u2019s<\/em> your reason for not wanting to buy it? Once again it becomes clear that the upper class really doesn\u2019t care about the workers. And I\u2019m sure everyone caught the comparison in the opening act of the movie: workers going to work aren\u2019t any better than sheep being driven into their cages.<\/p>\n If you ask me, the slogan for the Industrialization should have been: \u201cHumans don\u2019t matter, as long as our stuff gets done!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Living in the Industrial Revolution must have sucked. Honestly, can anyone here really say they haven\u2019t started to appreciate life a little bit more after having read everything we have about life in factories? Both Davis and Melville basically describe the factories as the Devil\u2019s armpits, and Chaplin\u2019s character quite literally goes mad working<\/p>\n