It is without a doubt that industrialization and capital both brought us great things to enjoy as a society. With the technology created along with both, we are able to produce more for less cost. It has eliminated the need for low skilled high paying jobs, therefore, created an opportunity to elevate the people to higher skilled jobs available through education. Towards the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, industrialization, as like other great things in life, had a bad effect on society as a whole by the creation of two distinguished far apart classes: the laborer and the employer thus, creating social problems with money as the main cause (Brownson 216).
The competition between those wealthy enough to have the money, also known as stewards, puts making money and increasing their wealth their main focus. The wealthier the stewards were, the more distinguished they became from their laborers. Some laborers were extremely poor trying to have enough money to stay alive. In life in the iron mills by Davis, it is clear that Mitchell, a wealthy man, recognized the fact that money is a major difference between the laborer and the steward; "Yes, money-that is it" (Davis 57). The wealthy few have an enormous influence on the well being of the entire society. They were the one's with the most money therefore, they had it in their hands to change the laborers wages, benefits and working hours.
Since the wealthy were just into getting wealthier, only a select few showed concern to the problems their workers faced outside their organizations. The stewards only recognized wages as their main obligation to the workers, and to give them their wages in a timely manner was sufficient. That is evident from Kirby, another character in the novel and the son of the mill owner " I wash my hand of all social problems, --slavery, caste, white or black. My duty to my operatives has a narrow limit, -- the pay-hour on Saturday night.