Economic Restrictions in the Nineteenth Century
With the excessive expansion of capitalism in the United States, the economic class of the late nineteenth century was split up and it allowed for movement between the new two classes. During this time, civilians were jumping at the chances of goods and fortune at a tremendous pace. Since urbanization was increasing rapidly, the money that was being cycled within the United States stayed in the upper wealthy class. Lower and middle class people never got a chance and stayed to themselves in there class. Sister Carrie is a novel about a girl, who travels from Columbia City to live comfortably in the large metropolis hardworking city of Chicago. It’s a novel about citizens that could conquer or lose everything with unordinary occurrences, rather than earning their own successes through effort and dedication. It also exemplifies the poor workers lifestyle compared to amazing life of the upper and middle class. The economic status of excellence was hard to achieve during the early nineteenth century. Urbanization occurred and people moved from their rural farms to low paying factory jobs. Capitalism was also large and this permitted the rich to become in fact richer, or stay wealthy. The money that cycles within the upper class goes around the small group at the top of the totem pole. The classes beneath, unfortunately, share with what remains. Then as the classes above increase in size, the lower ones are forced into another class, underneath them all. Of course when you have people who are very successful and can stay at the top for a while, there are going to be people who aren’t successful at all and stay at the bottom even longer. Urbanization was increasing rapidly and citizens moved from all over to the big city very fast. Chicago had a population of over 500,000 during the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s, This was as much as five times as many people as in mid 1800’s. So many people in one place meant that living was expensive and very hard to find. The luxurious lifestyle was hard to come by, it was almost like a dream. In Sister Carrie Minnie and her husband lived a hard life because of their money problems. They always needed to focus on their money payments and their keeping their job. On the other hand, Carrie sums them up to be boring but they are just trying to get by, they don’t spend money wildly on luxuries items. Urbanization also caused prices to rise faster than ever! The wages were low still and that meant less things for your own satisfaction. It wasn’t just the American citizens that moved to the city for employment and money but also European immigrants. The railroads made for easier travel of exported goods and a more inexpensive way also. Since railroads were new, this meant more room for new employment and more money to be made. The cons to this were, it continued separating the rich and the poor and since there were more people, more were fighting for the same amount of jobs. Urbanization causes uncomfortable and unfortunate living. It lowers the resilience of clients and it also moves more and more people into the same working habitat. Business owners did not fear any of the problems other working citizens did. They already had the money and thats what everyone else was in search for.
Capitalism, from the dictionary, is defined as, “an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods,” during the the early nineteenth century this is what America came to be. It was private ownerships and these people were known as “Robber Barons”. Jay Gould, a famous Robber Barron said, “I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half." Robber Barons were people who greatly gained from the first and second industrial revolution, with new technologies advancing in a world that was already difficult for most people, this meant immediate expansion of industries. Henry Bessemer patented the “Bessemer Process” in 1855,