Further on in my reading of The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Gordon writes about conditions of steelworkers in America. Steelworkers would work 12 hour shifts, 6 days a week. The steel industry went through boom and bust cycles that were incredibly difficult on the workers. The workers were overseen by foreman known as "pushers" who would try and get workers to work faster, harder, and most likely, longer.
Gordon cites the observations of one Edward Aveling and his wife Eleanor Marx Aveling. Yes, that Marx. Specifically, his daughter. Marx never really took off in America, at least not as much in Europe, and thus the working class movement manifsted different in America.
The Avelings wrote:
American laborers startred to work at an earlier age than their British counterparts, worked more strenuously, and died, on the average, almost a decade earlier.It was also reported to them, by the workers themselves, that they were afraid to even talk to the Avelings for fear of losing their jobs. They even had to sign an oath that they would not join any sort of union when they were hired.
Gordon goes on to write even more about the conditions of the steelworkers, coal miners, and other workers in America. I found the observation by the dauther of Karl Marx interesting, especially at the time when the legacy of these people who made so much of American growth possible, the actual laborers who did the work and lived so that the country could get built, is still being fought over. Getting the facts right about how they were treated seems important to me, instead of merely putting them up on a pedastal and using them as a victim to hide behind for political purposes.