Therefore, they had to turn to furnishing merchants, who would give the ex-slaves farm animals, tools, and seeds. However, interest rates on these goods were astronomically high, and a farmer would barely be able to pay back the loan, even after a substantial harvest. Other former slaves were less fortunate, and were not awarded land after the Civil War. These people turned to sharecropping, through which they would receive a piece of land to farm, and all the tools to farm the land. In exchange for these considerations, sharecroppers would basically sign their lives away to the land owner. Stipulations of sharecropping contracts would mandate a percentage of the crop, and forced the ex-slaves to maintain the land, a job which was never finished. Ex-slaves who signed on to become sharecroppers often never left that land again, because their contract forced them to stay. Tenant farmers rented the land they cultivated, but often never earned enough money to keep up with the interest rate on their loan. Ex-slaves were in the same situation as immigrant steel workers, in that the only way the slaves could stay alive was to enter a situation that would entrap them for life.
Treatment of the Slovakian immigrants in Out of This Furnace was similar to the treatment of blacks post Civil War, but to a lesser extreme. During their time at the steel mills, both Kracha and Mike found absolutely no room for promotion, because of their ethnic background. All promotions went to the Irish, or workers who were American born. Similarities in voting pressure can also be found between these immigrants and ex-slaves. Even though ex-slaves were allowed to vote due to the Reconstruction Act, which forced former Confederate states to accept the 14th Amendment, they were often forced away from polls by threats, violence, and Jim Crow laws. The immigrants in Out of This Furnace faced political struggles, and were intimidated by their peers to vote Republican.