The Laissez- Faire Takeover In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, America is at one of its highest points in history going into the twentieth century; it has so many resources and space still to provide for people. When the word had gotten out about America and what it had to provide, a vast amount of immigrants started pouring in, in search of a better life and better fortune. The industries of Eastern United States keenly employed these immigrants because they were willing to work long hours for low wages, and the rich capitalists took advantage of this situation. Capitalists and the incoming immigrants never saw eye to eye, and strikes would break out often, some ending in violence or death. Most workers had no political freedom nor even have a voice in the company that employed them because of the industrial system that curtailed their rights. The life of a nineteenth century American industrial worker was far from easy, even during what seem to be good times, wages were low, hours long and work conditions dangerous. The general issue that raised between the two, what has for many years before is that, little of the wealth being made is being distributed to the working class. This situation was worse for women and children who took up more of the work force than men, and still made half of what men usually would make. Work conditions were often tedious because workers would do tasks over and over while working an average 10 hour days, six days a week. Since there was a lack of government regulation, it led to unsafe and unhealthy work sites; and most employers did not offer payment if any of their workers got hurt or killed on the job site. An example of poor work conditions is in Out of This Furnace when Mike describes the post environmental conditions at a Pittsburg mill, "The mills had filled in the shore line for miles up and down the river, destroying trees, obliterating little streams and the pebbly beaches where as recently as the turn of the century campers had set up tents in summer, burying the clean earth under tons of cinder and molten slag. The banks no longer sloped naturally to the water's edge but dropped vertically, twenty-foot walls of cold slag pierced at intervals with steaming outlets and marked by dribbling stains" [ (Bell 153) ]. Another example of injustice, was when the industries forced the workers to vote for certain politicians that would favor the employer, in Out of This Furnace Mike faces the same issue, " Mike had registered as a Republican, anything else would have been suicidal, but had determined to vote for Eugene Debs, the Socialist. He knew the risk. Should he be found out, and that the company had ways of learning how a man had voted nobody in Braddock doubted he would be fired" [ (Bell 189-190) ]. Worker responses to poor work conditions and low wages were varied. Some workers started work their advantage over the employer by intentionally decreasing their production or break their machines, while some would quit and look for other factory jobs. When the word of the work conditions got out to the public, ideas of a new political party between all the industrial workers in America to take down the big business was forming. From the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century, America was dominated by laissez-faire capitalism in favor of big business, while heading towards a more progressive America in the midst of the twentieth century. The problem with capitalism, is that it promotes cheating and is easy to get away with cheating, for example, big corporations would have the benefit of having the judiciary branch to rule in favor of them. Laborers were behind the railroads that stretched across over 3,000 miles of the continent, the steel rails that provided the tracks, the skyscrapers that dominated the city skylines, the textiles that clothed the Western world, and the coal and oil that fueled a transportation revolution. Progressivism, a new political party, which was an urban middle class reform movement, which supported the government taking a greater role in addressing such issues as the control of big business and the welfare of the public. Capitalism and progressivism ideals never meshed together well because the point of progressivism was to end capitalism. For example, the progressives made it capable for other progressives to be included in the direct primary, a preliminary election giving all members of a party the chance to take part in a nomination and that was intended to limit the influence of political machines. The government in the early twentieth century passed the 17th amendment in 1913 which allowed state citizens to directly elect representatives to the U.S. Senate, instead of allowing party controlled state legislatures to do so, which was paving a new road for the industrial worker in America. Workers were not encouraged to vote, and if they decided to vote, the company forced them to vote for the politicians that would favor the company. Having the progressive party gain support throughout the nation, it helped the industrial worker take back his rights taken away from the government, workers resorted to a more organized approach by joining labor unions, which was a completely new concept to most people. Having starting to figure out how to beat the capitalists, workers started moved towards different tactics by creating labor unions and strikes. The first major efforts to organize workers groups on a nationwide basis was the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor in 1869, which was a society organized by Philadelphia garment workers, which was open to all workers. They didn't gain much success because they got taken over by the American Federation of Labor in 1886 which focused mainly towards skilled workers, and the main objective was to increase wages, reduce work hours and improve work conditions. The labor unions didn't seem to have much affect at first, so the workers moved towards striking, when in 1877 the Great Rail Strike happened in response to a ten percent cut in pay; the strike was successful in the sense of the word of the railway companies cutting pay, but federal troops ended each strike. Nine years later in Homestead, Pennsylvania a group of workers from one of Carnegie's steel factories started a strike due to pay cuts. Two years later, the Pullman Palace Car Company workers started a strike due to pay cuts and work conditions, which gained support from the American Railway Union to keep the rails open, after president Cleveland sent federal troops to end the strike. The Triangle Shirt Waist Factory Fire incident in 1911, which killed 146 garment workers because the owners locked the doors to the stairwells and exits so the worker couldn't take breaks. This incident had gotten America's attention to improve the work conditions in America. But as the new election of 1912 is forming, Woodrow Wilson becomes president, a Republican who by the end of his presidency, left America in a disillusioned mindset. Through this age of capitalism takeover through the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, industrial workers went through a lot of hardship to achieve what they did in the beginning of the twentieth century. An important passage to take from Out of This Furnace that talks about how a worker made progress In America was when Dobie mentions, "It was the way you thought and felt about certain things. About freedom of speech and the equality of men and the importance of having one law -- the same law -- for rich and poor, for the people you liked and the people you didn't like. About the right of every man to live his life as he thought best, his right to defend it if anyone tried to change it and his right to change it himself if he decided he liked some other way of living better." [ (Bell 411) ], this passage showed what was important to workers, and most importantly how they took on gaining success in America. The workers formed groups that had a progressive platform; they were the backbone of American society, and these people strove for true progress, without their efforts towards the working class, who knows what America could have been like.