RobertBuzzanco-TheStruggleForAmerica-NunnMcginty(2019)

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from economic independence to wage labor, immigration, and urbanization--

fundamentally transformed U.S. life, creating national markets, unifying the

political structure, and establishing new social relations with a huge, poor

working class creating wealth for a small powerful capitalist elite.

The American Working Class, 1870-1900

With the emergence of the American proletariat, the nature of work changed

dramatically and caused greater divisions among workers. Skilled and

unskilled workers, women and children all had different work experiences,

made different wages, and endured different hardships. Skilled  workers were

those men who had weathered the move to industrialization with their craft

intact and still worked as tailors, carpenters, shoemakers, and the like. Skilled

work made up about 15-20 percent of the labor force and it was almost exclu-

sively male, native-born, or Americanized. They often got their jobs through

FIGuRE 1-6 Immigrants crowded on ship arriving to the u.S.