Western Civilization Reading Response #11

 The theme of this reading is to show what the first manufacturing city of the world was like and how people lived then. I think this is an interesting lifestyle for an entire population of people to follow.  I thought it was interesting because people of today have such high standards now as compared with back then. Anyone who lives like this today is considered a slob or even a homeless person because they live in such filth that there is no wonder why there was so much disease back then. I feel like people are caught up in work and not paying attention to their health they just want to live for the moment and not for the future. The TV Show Hoarders is similar to how people lived back in the first manufacturing city. They don’t throw anything out and they live in absolute filth. Unlike people back then there is help for them and living in filth is not normal.

-A.Webb  

Western Civilization Reading Response #10

The overall theme of the reading is that child labor is a bad thing but was very common in the 18 Hundreds. Many children were forced to work ridiculous hours and with minimum pay, they were also forced to work under unsafe conditions and a lot of them were killed because of this. I feel like it was their parents fault for making the kids work at such young ages, but then again maybe they really needed the money.

I thought it was interesting that all of the people who worked in the coal mine in the first article worked in the nude. I was also concerned that these people could have contracted asbestos because they did not have any protective gear in case of an explosion.  I was amazed at the age at which a child would start working in a factory from the second article. I am glad that the standard for everything has changed over the years.

This reading made me think about sex trafficking, I have been hearing a lot about it lately and I think that they have a relationship. Basically children are being forced to work beyond their will and have no chance of getting out of the vicious cycle. The only way they have out of this is by death. It sounds extreme but it is reality. This also made me think of sweat shops that are in foreign countries. These places don’t have child labor laws like the America, and children are forced to work under unreasonable conditions for little pay.

-Amanda Webb