Blog #4

Blog #4

Nick Mitterando

The first reading was “Factory Girl” in the textbook. In this reading we go along on a tour of an 1800s factory as a little girl. The reading goes into detail about every part of the factory. It paints a very detailed picture in your head of what the factories are like. During the explanation of each part of the factory we can see the terrible conditions like mud on the floors, smoke filled rooms and sky, and dangerous machinery. It is said to the girl multiple time to “Watch her step” because the machines are so dangerous and open one can get killed. Overall this reading does a great job of explaining the terrible and dangerous conditions of the factory, and just how brutal it was to work in one.

The second reading was by the New York Times. It talks about modern day business practices and capitalism and how it has many roots in slavery. It starts by talking about a businessman who raised the price of a needed drug by over 52 times, when asked why he said capitalism. Many believe that this idea was first started on the plantations in the south with slaves. One quote that stood out to me was about how modern-day work feels and how it is similar to years ago in slavery. “You report to someone, and someone reports to you. Everything is tracked, recorded and analyzed, via vertical reporting systems, double-entry record-keeping and precise quantification. It feels like a cutting-edge approach to management, but many of these techniques that we now take for granted were developed by and for large plantations”. The article ends by saying how the culture of getting rich without working hard has been responsible for slavery, the panic of 1837, both recessions, and much more.