1. Imagine you work in a steel mill in a large industrial city in England in the late 1800s. You work 10 to 12 hours a day in a
dark, dirty building for very low wages. Workers are often injured on the job, and there is no health insurance or provision for injured workers. You live in a neighborhood with other factory workers, and the buildings are dirty and overcrowded. Disease spreads quickly. Many of your neighbors are so poor they must send their children to work. The children work the same long hours as their parents, in the same unhealthy conditions.
Write a letter to your representative in Parliament explaining what you think the government should do, if anything, about the plight of factory workers in England. To get you started, review the points below:
• Types of laws that the government might pass, including steps factory owners should take to improve conditions or steps that the government could do to protect workers and insure better living conditions
• Ideas you have for improving urban life such as city planning, technological innovations, and so on
Our working conditions are horrible. We long hours in dirty, unsafe environments just to be able to provide for our families. Some of us even have to send our children to work in these same conditions because we are so poor. People in our communities are getting sick because these conditions are so bad. Whats worse is that we can't afford medicine or doctors to treat there illnesses, so we just have to watch them slowly die.
We need change. We cannot live like this anymore. We suggest that there be laws put in place so that we can lead happier, fuller lives. Laws that increase the cleanliness of the places we work long hours everyday. Laws that say that they have a minimum they can pay us. So that we can afford simple things, like food and shelter. Make laws that keep the cleanliness of the public to a standard, so the we don't get sick walking to the store because there is raw sewage and trash on the streets. I propose these things so that the people in your country can have safer, happier lives.
Amputations were used a lot during the Civil War to remove limbs. These surgeries were performed in battle field hospitals. They were so common because surgeons weren't as skilled as they are now and just resorted to procedures they knew how to do.