1908 Living and Technology in America
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It was bad news for us after the Liberal landslide victory in 1906. Like most with Tory landlords, we were thrown off our small land plot (Armstrong 149). Our landlord, McKracken, evicted us to our own luck. We were smallholders in Norfolk. The General Election was good for our cousins, all of us being Slaters. The cousins, George Slater, Peter Slater and Linda (née Slater) Bombwick, lived in North Walsham and got caught up in the post-eviction thrills with the Agricultural Labourers and Smallholders Union of the eastern counties over that way. George and Peter rose in the ranks, bought more than 4 acres of land from their employers, and they now own an automobile. Linda's husband works in the factories on 13 shillings a week. Patricia, our ten-year-old son, and I moved to America with the pounds we had saved. We decided to settle in Chicago. It was clear to my pa that, as early as 1853, our days as plough people were were over. The reaping machines were being used by all types of progressive farmers on all their lands. In the 1870s, we saved enough to buy a mechanical mower. It set us back 30 pounds. We still could not afford to buy a double-engine steam ploughing set, which would have cost 2,600 pounds (Armstrong 93). We had to find a new way of life, and America was calling. Patricia had a brother out that way who set us to assimilating in the city. That was last year. I remember how astounded we were by the skyscrapers coming up in that city. We had heard a
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k hard to pay the rent on the dumbbell tenement we were living in on the South Side. The foreman noticed and fired me. Patricia and I were devastated.
We decided to leave Chicago at that point because Patricia's brother had settled nicely into Detroit. We figured it would be good to be around family while trying to find another job. Unfortunately, we did not have much savings and the abruptness of my firing did not leave much time for planning. We had to pay the last month's rent and then we left.
In Detroit there is plenty of work at the Ford plant, just outside of the city. Plus, Patricia got a job along with plenty of other women in a canning factory (Jones 165). The mechanized conveyor belt processes are not hard for me to figure out. All I have to do is operate the machine that bolts the same part of an engine chassis every minute of every hour, but I am paid well, five dollars. It is a simple process, really. Wood fires and electricity power the steam engines and boilers, which in turn power the machines (Jones 156). The most I have to do is guide the machines to the right locations and be sure the positional bolts are put in correctly.
It is nice how Ford makes it easy for the loads of other immigrants who are t
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Czechs Slovenians, IT&T Strowger, George Peter, George Jackson, Plus Patricia, Chicago Patricia's, England Norfolk, Home Insurance, , African Americans, rail system, textile mills,
Approximate Word count = 1371
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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