The Setting Of August Wilson s Gem Of The Ocean - 1610 Words

Jessica McNamara English 104 Freed 16 October 2017 The setting of August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean is 1904 Pittsburgh. It has been 40 years since the abolition of slavery and the Second Industrial Revolution is alive and well. Between 1870 and 1914 the United States saw an important change in the labor and working-class, technological advancements took production from a handmade to an automated factory setting. The development of manufacturing produced a necessity for numbers of factory laborers. These laborers faced extensive hours, unfortunate working conditions and job insecurity. In Gem of the Ocean, several of the characters have memories of servitude and have come to the understanding that what they believed to be liberation has†¦show more content†¦I m just starting out sleeping there. I asked one fellow what board meant. He say they supposed to give you something to eat. They ain t give us nothing. I say okay. I can t make them give me nothing. What I m gonna do? I got to eat. I bought a loaf of bread for a dime. A bowl of soup cost ten cents around the corner. I wasn t desperate. I had sixty-five cents to make it to payday. I ate half the bread and say I would get a bowl of soup tomorrow. Come payday they give me three dollars say the rest go on my bill. I had to give the man what own the house two dollars. What I m gonna do, Miss Tyler? I told the people at the mill I was gonna get another job. They said I couldn t do that cause I still owed them money and 22 they was gonna get the police on me. The incidents in this excerpt that Citizen describes were not uncommon for that time. During the Industrial Revolution, company towns, communities built by businesses, developed up across the country. Although the concept may have appeared ideal a number of companies made more money from cheating their workers than from what they produced. During the boom in textile, coal, steel and other industries, workers often earned what’s called scrip instead of real money: a kind of credit they couldn’t spend anywhere but the company store, where prices were often higher than elsewhere. (Hirsch) A real life example can be seen in that of the Pullman Place Car Company in order to work for Pullman, one had toShow MoreRelatedPrimary Sector of Economy17717 Words   |  71 Pageslife expectancy, literacy rates and food security, although the beneficiaries have largely been urban residents.[58] While the credit rating of India was hit by its nuclear weapons tests in 1998, it has since been raised to investment level in 2003 by Samp;P and Moodys.[59] In 2003, Goldman Sachs predicted that Indias GDP in current prices would overtake France and Italy by 2020, Germany, UK and Russia by 2025 and Japan by 2035, making it the third largest economy of the world, behind the US andRead MoreContemporary Issues in Management Accounting211377 Words   |  846 Pagesunderstandings of both conceptual and practical issues, in recent years providing a voice of reason amidst all the consultancy excitement of seemingly new ways of costing the business world. He has played a similar role in the area of accounting standard setting, both taking forward the British tradition of the economic analysis of financial accounting and, of possibly greater significance, providing some very original analyses of the possibilities for meaningful accounting standardization. With an agenda