immigrant during the gilded age
Hi my name is Sophia, I am 24 years old and from Berlin, Germany. Two Years ago I decided to move to New York, U.S. with my 2 brothers. My brothers couldn’t go to school because we had no money after traveling. They were forced to work in factories at 12 & 17 years old.
It is September 5, 1882, I was on my way to work like I do everyday at 5:30am. When I was about to walk into the factory a boy around the age of 19 came flying out of the building with his hand wrapped up with blood pouring down his arm, following behind him was this big man well dressed with a long beard. The man yelled at the man because he had made a mistake and then sent him off telling him to never come back. It was absurd, I walked by with my head down and went to work.
As the end of the day rolled around I slowly walked home, it was getting dark and I had to get home to feed my brothers. When I walked in my youngest brother was in the corner crying. I asked him what’s wrong and apparently that afternoon he had gotten fired for falling asleep on the job. That was it I was done, I had dealt with long hours and only $0.10 an hour but I couldn’t handle it. I needed some way to fix this but what could I do?
The next morning I went into work and did as I was told, I was planning on during my 10 min break to take a few of my coworkers for help to fix this problem. After about 6 hours of working it was finally time for lunch. I didn’t have much time so I had to act quickly. I first talked with all women in the area. Many had children and family to take care of.
