William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) was an influential sociologist, acquiring perhaps the most renown for his 1907 book Folkways , in which he argues the difficulty of social change due to long-established customs and traditions. Sumner was the most prominent American "Social Darwinist."
Andrew Carnegie was 54 when he published this piece in the North American Review in 1889. He had moved to the United States from Scotland 41 years earlier. It is in the 1880s that Carnegie strengthened his position in the steel industry.
Terence Powderly became Grand Master of the Knights of Labor in 1879. In "The Army of Unemployed" Powderly argued that a nation-wide law implementing the eight-hour day would enable most workers to find employment and thereby lower the jobless rate. Moreover, such a law would help to create better working conditions.
Samuel Gompers, an English immigrant and cigar maker, was founding president of the American Federation of Labor from 1886 to 1924 with the exception of the year 1895. He was an exponent of craft unionism.
A New York City poet, Emma Lazarus organized relief efforts for the poor and refugees. The New Colossus was chosen as inscription for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1886. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act prohibiting the immigration of Chinese laborers for ten years stands in sharp contrast to the ideal expressed in Lazarus's sonnet.
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), who entitled his autobiography Up from Slavery , urged blacks to focus on economic advancement as the key to improving their lot. His critics dubbed the speech Washington gave at the 1895 Cotton State and International Exposition in Georgia, the "Atlanta Compromise." Among them, W. E. B. DuBois (1868-1963), born a free black, refuted Washington's call for economic progress through industrial education; DuBois argued that desegregation and complete social and political equality had to come hand in hand.