1880 Steel Manufacturers

 Average Hours Worked/Week/Laborer in Iron and Steel Manufacturing in 1880 as Compared to the 1880 Population


https://data2.nhgis.org/main# (more information on the steel/iron workers)

This map shows the average number of hours worked by individuals living in each county at iron and steel mills. I chose to leave the gradient as hours since that made the most sense in terms of visualizing the data.

Notice that most of the counties are missing in this map. I ran into some trouble with this data set because I did not realize that many of the values were null. I thought at first that some of the data was just not showing up, while in reality it was just too little to catch without changing the color scheme and assigning a color to the counties with null data. I tried doing as much research as possible in order to find the reason for why only these mills were included, I found the answer in NHGIS itself. Only steel manufacturing locations were asked about these topics. Possibly, one may notice more hours closer to the NYC area. I think what is more important to note is the number of hours that people were working at these locations during the Gilded Age, many were working upwards of 62 hours/week. This is over 9 hours per day working at the steel manufacturing locations. (I chose to give the missing counties a color and outline in order to put the ones with data into perspective, thanks to Professor Kennedy).

This connects to Monmonier's piece, How to Lie with Maps, he talks about something that I notice in my own key. On page 160, figure 11.6 shows how maps with the same data but different ranges can yield completely different choropleth maps. The key that is on this map is showing the ranges I use, which were admittedly the ones that were there automatically. Once it is showing 62+ hours, the ranges get much smaller than the first. I wonder how different the map would look if it separated even 1-40, and 41-61 hours!

Reference

Monmonier, Mark S. How to Lie with Maps. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. (digital chapter scans available through the Library) 

Comments

  1. O'Malley JenkinsSeptember 15, 2024 at 12:20 PM

    I thought this was a super interesting topic for a map and I really appreciate your investigation into the reason for these counties specifically being included in the data. My main takeaway from How to Lie with Maps in relation to this assignment was also regarding the key and the distribution of categories for choropleth maps!

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