WW: CH 17 Documents

     The first document of this chapter is the testimony of a female factory worker by the name of Elizabeth Bentley. I read the first couple lines and immediately knew what was going on in this little interview session. For some odd reason I instantly started imagining workers being trapped on a floor up in a building on fire. As I progressed through the document I found more and more difficult to read. I started feeling angry because the owners of the factory should have been more thoughtful in how they treated their workers; however, I then realized that the only thing that the factory owners wanted was to be making a profit and lose as little as possible. They had no intention on protecting their "employees" because to them they were expendable. It absolutely disgust me how when we got the testimony of the Mill Owner how he only mentioned how drastic his losses would be should he cut his business hours down to ten.
     The second document is a song about Weavers and how due to industrialization they were left pretty much jobless and how they had to cope with that. I could definitely sense the despair in the voice of the lyricist. Due to large manufacturing companies these really skilled people were no longer skilled in the eyes of these large company men. They often ended up selling their looms to the bigger companies.
     The third document is trying to justify the actions of the middle class and above. It goes on to say that although their civilization is very much well Christian, that the poor class are resembling "savage tribes". I find this insulting to the poor class. They are working their hearts out day in and day out just to put food on the table and here comes this guy completely trashing what they do. If it weren't for those "savage tribes" he wouldn't be at home with enough space to himself and all the food at his disposal. So to close this out, I completely disagree with their argument that the wealthy are not to blame, because they are certainly responsible for the vast majority of it.