Objective:​ Explain the socioeconomic continuities and changes associated with the growth of industrial capitalism from 1865 to 1898.

Class Notes for the Day:

6.7- Labor in the Gilded Age
6.7 Slides

Class Starter: "Captains of Industry" or "Robber Barons"?

You have been provided with two opposing viewpoints expressed in primary source documents.  Read each one and respond to the statements that follow.
Allan Nevins, John D. Rockefeller, 1940

“The question of motive enters into any consideration either of economic vision or of business ethics; and it is important because some writers of the muckraking school have grievously misconstrued the motives…of a whole generation of business leaders.  They sum up these motives in the word “greed,” as if it were greed which led Carnegie to build steel mills, Rockefeller to organize the oil industry, Westinghouse to develop the electrical industry, and Ford to manufacture motor cars.  If we wish to misuse the word greed we can apply it in many contexts.  We can say that Shakespeare was greedy for fame, Lincoln greedy for political power, and Duse greedy for applause.  But such a word means nothing in the analysis of motive.  What these figures were really interested in was competitive achievement, self-expression, and the imposition of their wills on a given environment.  And these were precisely the motives which actuated Carnegie, Westinghouse, and Rockefeller….The men who built the really towering economic structures were not thinking primarily of dollars, or they would have halted at the first story.”
Henry Lloyd, Wealth Against Commonwealth, 1894

“If our civilization is destroyed…it will not be by…barbarians from below.  Our barbarians come from above.  Our great money-makers have sprung in one generation into seats of power kings do not know.  The forces and the wealth are new, and have been the opportunity of new men.  Without restraints of culture, experience, the pride, or even the inherited caution of class or rank, these men, intoxicated, think that they are the wave instead of the float, and that they have created the business which has created them.  To them science is but a never-ending repertoire of investments stored up by nature for the syndicates, government but a fountain of franchises, the nations but customers in squads, and a million the unit of a new arithmetic of wealth written for them.  They claim a power without control, exercised through forms which make it secret, anonymous, and perpetual.  The possibilities of its gratification have been widening before them without interruption since they began, and even at a thousand millions they will feel no satiation and will see no place to stop.  They are gluttons of luxury and power, rough, unsocialized, believing that mankind must be kept terrorized.”
Answer the following for each excerpt.
  1. Summarize the author’s main point in one sentence.
  2. ​Based on your knowledge, provide an additional piece of specific, factual information that would support the author’s argument.
  3. What does the excerpt add to your understanding of corporate consolidation and the accumulation of wealth by a few industrial giants during the Gilded Age?
Answer the following.
  1. Which of the sources makes the most convincing case and why?
  2. How might industrialists such as Carnegie or Rockefeller (or even today like Zuckerberg or Bezos) respond to allegations that they are guilty of predatory wealth?

Review Prompts

Agree or disagree with the statement based on the history of the United States from 1607-1877.  In your paragraph response, cite at least 3 pieces of SFI.

​1A     3A     3B

Recap: Explain the socioeconomic continuities and changes associated with the growth of industrial capitalism from 1865 to 1898.

Practice Questions: p. 334 1-5

Submit $20 Bill Projects

Labor Union Movement

  1. What is the historical context?
  2. Who is the intended audience?
  3. What is the point of view?
  4. What is the purpose?
  5. From whose perspective is this cartoon an accurate and fair portrayal?
  6. From whose perspective is this cartoon an inaccurate and unfair portrayal?
  7. Explain how popular movements and activist groups attempted to impact U.S. society in the Gilded Age.

Lecture: Labor Union Movement

Major Labor Disputes

Labor and management battled over wages and working conditions, with workers organizing local and national unions and/or directly confronting business leaders.  Here are some of the more significant confrontations in U.S. history.  Think about how each strike was similar.

​1A     3A     3B
Using information from the chart above:

  1. Describe similarities in the causes of the four disputes.  Provide SFI to support your response.
  2. Describe differences in the causes of the four disputes.  Provide SFI to support your response.
  3. Describe similarities in the outcomes of the four disputes.  Provide SFI to support your response.
  4. Describe differences in the outcomes of the four disputes.  Provide SFI to support your response.​

Closer: Explain the socioeconomic continuities and changes associated with the growth of industrial capitalism from 1865 to 1898.

On Deck

Next Topic: Immigration in the Gilded Age
Ch. 25 Outline due next class
​Quiz: Business and Labor

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