I wonder how this panned out for living wages. A common poverty benchmark is when the majority of your salary goes towards food, and I wonder what the cost of living would have been in accordance with this. How were people able to make a living wage despite the immense struggle of their salaries? Were government subsidies at play?

It's interesting how this fear has not subsided as we get to modern times, just been redirected. Even though the overwhelming majority of Americans trace their roots to immigration, there is constantly a sense of "us versus them", born from the fear of the unknown. This also reminds me of a book set around this time that I'm sure a lot of us have read in our English classes --- The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.