Poor, Jewish Woman

It’s 1892 and you, Esther Klein, are a 17-year-old textile mill worker in the American northeast. You are new to the country and to industrial work, having worked previously on your parents’ farm in the old country. As much as you longed to come to America, your life as a poor Jewish industrial worker in the United States makes you have second thoughts. And life at the mill—why you and some of the other girls dream of organizing and standing up to the mill owners, but what you’ve seen of other labor organizing worries you! So tell me, Esther, what are the sources of your dissatisfaction as a poor woman, a worker, and a Jewish immigrant? Why have your dreams, of what life in America would be, changed?

I came to America to change my stars. I fled with hopes of seeking a better life than the political and religious persecution I received as a Jewish girl in Europe. America was portrayed to be a land with a boosting economy and industrial revolution, not to mention the freedom to be who you are. It was the land of the free. We were thrilled to come. It didn’t take long for me to see the true colors of America, beneath the natural resources and the boom of transportation, communication through scientific breakthroughs, such as electricity and railroads.
There were many jobs, but with harsh conditions. I experienced my first discrimination working as a girl in the textile mill industry. I was forced to work extreme hours, with less than half the pay of the men workers. I was unskilled, coming from Europe, to do the entrepreneur sorts of jobs that were making America explode. Because I was unskilled, I could be easily replaced. I had to work under my employers conditions, simply because I needed a job. Not to mention, some of the jobs a young woman such as myself were forced to do were monotonous. They were tedious. We had little respect and our employer had no relationship with me.
As a poor, Jewish woman I couldn’t rise to be anything else than the condition of an unskilled worker. I had no advantage. The white supremacy Americans had never seen dark hair and eyed Europeans. They made it a point to separate us, therefore we separated ourselves. I was also thought of as a job stealer. I came to America to seek the prosperity of the west, only to find that it was nearly impossible for me to get out of poverty.
The land I once sought so dear and full of hope, left me, a poor, Jewish woman, hopeless. I once thought of America as the land of the free. I came to witness unequal pay for the same job, a culture that was completely against the individual, completely for the rich. The government feed the rich and deprived the poor. We were forced to stick together in a close-knit community by sticking to the only thing we’ve ever known, our culture, our language, our religion.

Social Darwinism

What, in your own words, is Social Darwinism? How was it used to explain a variety of circumstances (e.g. economic and racial/ethnic) in the late 19th century? Do you hear any of the same sentiments echoed today? Evaluate the theory. Do you find it valid? Why or why not?
Although it wasn’t introduced by Herbert Spender until 1879, Social Darwinism, though immoral and unethical, was established and enforced since our historical founding fathers. It was written in the United States Constitution in 1878 that “all men were created equal”, the actions by our political leaders as well as the American citizens reap otherwise. The theory leads to believe in a “survival of the fittest”, “dog-eat-dog society”, with the fittest predominately meaning the rich, white Europeans that came to America to seek the same freedom as did the “weak”.
Although it seemed that they were naturally born superior, they established the laws to keep anyone who was weak from climbing out of the poverty circle into a life of prosperity, thus, establishing the appearance that they were better. It was all that they had ever known. The African Americans served them, for no other reason than they were born weaker, they were to “kill or be killed”. It is a terribly hard thing to break cultural habits and the theory of Social Darwinism was the only thing the southern knew, it was acceptable to so many people and it was easier to sit back and let it go than expressing the courage to stand up, because they knew it was wrong. It also benefited them, why would they risk working harder. Isn’t it ironic that the white southerners were less physically fit than the African Americans, yet they were the weaker ones?
After the tragic and brutal American Civil-War, they still didn’t get it. The white southerners promoted Social Darwinism by finding for ways to escape the new constitutional amendments such as the 13th Amendment, ending slavery. They would take any African American that was unemployed and make punish him by making him work – free labor or slavery. They were still determined to promote white supremacy whichever way they could through prohibiting them sit in on juries or testify against whites.
Although it took over a century to get to where we are today, a first world nation that just inaugurated its first African America president, the most powerful man in the country, there are many areas that display Social Darwinism. People that are born in the poverty circle rarely escape. High income jobs come through education, the government gives less funds to the low class schools, thus not giving them the equal education as the children of higher income parents. The only advantage they have today is the resource of the internet. If they seek further knowledge, they can find it through the internet. But, it is handed to the higher income students, which is a feeding the fittest, and starving the weak.

Social Dar