Lost in the Smoke

Our world of urban ingenuity has been overcome with the everyday smog of a working man. Inventors have structured many systems together into a harmony we call “machine”. These machines are put in factories and run by men, men that have moved from the spacious country to the cramped city in search of jobs and opportunity. But what is the price that we have given up in order to obtain these factories and
The many cities of our wonderful country are now covered in layers of the pollution caused by the giant machines creating what we need. Their waste has been dumped into rivers and canals, causing the water we used before to become inhabitable and unsafe. Unfit houses and tenements disgrace the beautiful city streets we were so proud of. How is this way of work so popular when it is so unhealthy?
The way workers are treated is intolerable as well. 12 t o14 hours a day, six days a week, with no breaks, and men barely get paid minimum wage, and children and women are paid far below that. And yes, I just said children. Kids as young as six are exposed to extremely hard and hazardous labor, from six in the morning to seven at night. If they were working too slow or business was bad, their wage will barely even reach seven shillings. The machines that employees are ordered to operate are hazardous and can rip a man to shreds, yet if that happens; the big guys just go and find a replacement. The factories are about 80 degrees Fahrenheit with grungy, polluted air, and have low ceilings, locked windows, dirty conditions, and loud machines running constantly. The bosses don’t care who gets hurt or what happens; it’s simply what they can make more of that won’t cost them a lot of money.
The conditions in the coal mines were even more hazardous! The only bathroom is your pants, there are hardly any light, poor walls subject to cave-ins, underground floods, lung disease, explosions… and of course there’s always the hanging suspense of being crushed by tons and tons of coal! Honestly how are people expected to make a living off of that? If they even have a life to live!
There are lot of inventions and developments that make knowledge available to everyone, and laws that make it mandatory. Children are required to go to funded schools for a certain amount of time, and then they have to go work in some factory and/or coal mine. New machines were orchestrated to obtain other resources, such as cotton, coal, and materials to make railways. The new education may give the working class common knowledge that had been reserved just for the first class, but it mainly gave them the ability to see just how badly they were being cheated. And when you’re only career is in a factory or coal mine, how can that benefit you in any possible way, other than knowing that you’re being cheated out of a good salary?
We fast-forwarded into this way of life, leaving what we had established far behind in the dust. It’s not like we can really do anything about this, either, we can’t rewind time. Our world has developed this way, and there’s no turning back. We can’t get rid of all the factories, then life will seem pointless and slower. The unemployment rate will increase and we’ll be in a downward spiral of economic destruction. We’ll have to push further; adapt and advance what we have today into safer, easier way of life. Let’s just hope and pray, no matter what happens, that we don’t get lost in the smoke.

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