The second industrial revolution radically altered the way in which most Americans earned a living. And after leaving family farms for the cities and their promises of good jobs, many Americans were disappointed by life in the factories. Workers became faceless employees of large factories rather than craftspeople running their own businesses and deriving satisfaction from the reputations they built. These new industrial workers, especially in the steel industry, were often forced to work twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Then, during economic downturns, such as the panics of 1873 and 1896, these same workers would lose their jobs.

In many industries, laborers were treated little better than slaves or indentured servants. Their pay was low, with most earning around $480 a year. In our time, a comparable salary would be about $13,000 a year, and the federal threshold for poverty is about $11,000 a year.

Factories and other work sites were also both ugly and dangerous. They were poorly lit and not well ventilated—smoke, fibers, and fumes wafted constantly through the air. Machines did not have safety guards to protect workers from their moving parts, and workers could easily lose fingers, arms, and legs.

Interior of nineteenth-century machine shop

In 1892, workers in the Osage Coal and Mining Company's No. 11 mine in Krebs, Oklahoma accidentally set off explosives used to blast out new tunnels. Largely unskilled and untrained, the miners did not know how to properly handle dangerous dynamite. The explosion burned or buried 100 workers. Another 150 workers were seriously injured. These kinds of accidents were common during the second industrial revolution.

Smoke from a mine explosion

The dangerous working conditions in factories, mines, and mills were made worse by long working hours and weeks. Heavy machinery and tired workers created a recipe for disaster, and safety regulations were unheard of. As a result, over thirty-five thousand workers died in work-related accidents during the second American industrial revolution. People were crushed in mines, mangled by machines, and killed in falls from bridges and buildings. The price of industrialization was high in terms of human suffering.

Industrial accidents were so common in the nineteenth century that entire hospitals were created for the treatment of injuries.