homework

In this visualization I decided to research the differences in the payment of pensions for people that had the same injuries but started receiving pensions at different time. From this visualization I organized the data into years and injuries and then went from there. My original question for this visualization was to find the differences in amounts of pay for each individual. As you would guess many of the payments are equal, however I had also thought about how there would be differences in pay, and I was right about that as well. When you look at this data the person who created it did not include how severe certain injuries were, like there are labels for various gunshot wounds but the severity is not specified. This was the basis of my question. Why was there discrepancies? If there wasn’t a reason for there to be a difference in classification why is there different pay? The amounts also fluctuated by time of issuance. It wasn’t like there was a correlation going up or down the numbers were just random, again, a reason to include the severity of the injury that each person had received. This could’ve all been cleared up by a couple extra words on the sheet.

There are some very different stories that come from this chart as well. Like the many people who are affected by gunshot wounds, presumably from the Civil War. This shows the variety of injury that come from having such a bloody war. There appears to be a a gunshot would for every appendage possible. I suppose that there is the possibility that the injury happen during some incident outside of the war but I think it’s reasonable to say that the most of injuries occurred as a result of the war. When you look at some of the other ailments You see some injuries like an axe to a particular appendage and see that they only see that they receive like $4 a month. That number is very surprising to me,even in those days where four dollars was a nice amount to have for some income but I feel like that wouldn’t be enough to support someone who was severely hobbled by an injury. There were some cases like a dependent mother who might have multiple kids and use that as their only income and the pension was eight dollars Again that seems incredibly low. The pension for women, especially in those times would most likely be the only opportunity for women to make money so this seems low in the sense that these women could have multiple kids. Conversely, there were a couple people who were blind who received $70, this was interesting to me because that seems like it would be a reasonable amount for people who probably don’t have a lot of expenses.

Overall I feel like that given these circumstances, in my opinion people could’ve been paid more, but I don’t know what a good salary per month was for the time, so this could’ve been fair.

I think there’s a few interesting points to take away from the graphic and data behind occupations in Albany in 1915. There’s a few jobs that no loner exist or are called different names now, plus a surprising difference in the number of women and men who worked (or at the very least, were listed as working) at the time. I purposely chose “gendered” colors for the bar graph, but I think the story behind that has to go in a separate part of the final post. But there are a few interesting stories behind the data itself.
I’m assuming no one here really knows what a “teamster” is (or maybe you do, being history buffs and all). Today we’d use the plebeian term “truck driver.” But it’s hard to imagine an 18-wheeler peeling down the dirt roads of Albany a hundred years ago; a little more research shows that these were the men who delivered goods to stores, usually on an animal-driven vehicle. A whopping 12 men in the city of Albany were blessed with sitting behind the back-end of an ox or horse for a living, twice the number of the next most popular listed job in the city. But I’m sure they weren’t only delivering groceries to the whopping 2 grocers in Albany at the time; out of 64 employed males at the time, about 5 of them weren’t directly related to selling or handling delivered goods (and that’s taking a good guess at what some of these other jobs are). So I’m sure these 12 men were nice and busy staring at these animals’ backsides all day as they delivered books, ice, and masonry tools.
Of course, when you first look at the graph the first thing you probably notice is the big pink bar shooting up highest. With only a dozen less listed workers than men, more than half of the women listed as employed are employed in “Housework.” What sort of housework? Not homeschooling, as school teachers are listed in another category, nor seamstressing, as dress and shirtmakers are categories unto themselves. Perhaps, even though it was work that was expected of them as women, house work within their own homes was considered an occupation? No, I think that since it was listed as an occupation, it was something that they were paid for, and not something they did in their own homes. Or rather, it wasn’t something they were acknowledged for doing in their own homes. They just had to come home from cleaning someone else’s home all day, and then clean their own.
There are some jobs which are surprisingly gendered (as there is not one single listed occupation that has both men and women working in it) occupations, ones that might expect from the other sex. The only listed gardener in the census is a male, while the only person in charge of manufacturing boxes in all of Albany is a woman (at least, according to the census). Weren’t they afraid that her wandering uterus would make her unable to deal with such a heavy workload?
All in all, I think the most important and interesting piece of information to take away from the graphic is that there were an almost-equal amount of men and women listed as being employed in Albany a hundred years ago, when we usually imagine that the men went out to make the money for the family while the women sat at home and either tended to their children or made sure the house was comfortable for their husbands, fathers, and brothers to come home to.

Education and the type of occupation one holds are often correlated with one another. From the time a child is put in school until the time they finish, it is drilled in the head of the individual that a good education is needed in order to obtain a well-paying job. It is taught that hard work breeds success and young men especially are taught to be providers for their families which comes into play with the types of jobs they seek and level of education they want to achieve. This proved true for those living in Albany in the 1940s; the 1940 census helps to show that those that received a decent education held jobs that not only benefitted them but their families as well.
The census provides a wide range of information including the types of jobs that were held, the gender of those that held these jobs and their level of education. It seems as though many women did not work and often stayed at home to care for their children and other household duties. Although many of the women did not work, some did and they held quite prestigious jobs. The women that worked seems to not begin work until they are well in their late teens if that but most are in their very late twenties, early thirties and older. The census does show that a greater amount of men worked in comparison to women and they began to work quite early. As previously stated, although mostly men worked, some of the women that did had higher education levels then that way which made it possible for them to work higher paying jobs. The census shows that a few of the women received college degrees or higher and began lawyers and doctors whereas that was not quite the case for the men.
There are numerous jobs held by the people in the 1940 census; some of the jobs include accounting, barber, bartender, book keeper, lawyer, carpenter, cook and much more. The different jobs shows the level of education that the people that held these jobs had and how many people the criteria applied to. For example, one of the jobs held is a file clerk. Some of the people that were file clerks had different backgrounds in education. The census shows that twenty-four people completed high school and eleven completed elementary school and this shows that being a file clerk is not a job that may qualify as being of high standing or one that a person needed to have much experience in. In comparison to those that are lawyers, three people completed college and nine people went beyond a college degree and that shows that being a lawyer was a great accomplishment, one that not many could achieve for one reason or another. This pattern could be seen throughout the entire census; there are jobs that people hold which require little to no education and then there are the few jobs that require a higher education level. This comparison between the education level and occupation is an interesting one because it is evident that a good education gets you a better job but it is clearer on paper.