4) Tuesday, January 30. Society and Politics in the Gilded Age

Story Line:
"Robber barons" industrialized the land. Some justified their great wealth by a theory called "social Darwinism." The labor movement exposed inequality. But as a class, industrial workers were deeply divided along lines of ethnicity and race.

Review Questions for Discussion III

 

[Lecture 3] Outline [Lecture 5]

Readings for lecture 4

  • Document Number: DJ2313026904
  • William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other, 1883
  • Andrew Carnegie, Wealth, 1889
  • Terence Powderly, The Labor Movement: The Problem of Today, 1888
  • Samuel Gompers and the AFL, Labor's Triumphs, 1889
  • Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus, 1883
  • Chinese Exclusion act, 1882
  • Booker T. Washington, Atlanta Exposition Address, 1895
  • W. E. B. DuBois, Of Mr. Washington and Others, 1903

Images for lecture 4:


1893 World's Fair Columbian Exposition, "Court of Honor"
1893 World's Fair Columbian Exposition, "Transportation Building, Interior"

1893 World's Fair Columbian Exposition, "Ferris Wheel"
1893 World's Fair Columbian Exposition, "German Village"
1893 World's Fair Columbian Exposition, "Dahomey Village"
Lecture Outline [return to top]

 

Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Natural Selection, 1859

Herbert Spencer, Principles of Ethics, 1879-93: do not interfere with the "natural process of elimination by which society continually purifies itself."

I. Inequality

II. The World's Columbian Exposition, 1893

A Pictorial Interlude

III. "Job Conscious" Organized Workers

1) The labor movement was uneasy with socialism and did not overcome the ethnic divisions of the American working class

    1. Werner Sombart
    2. the ballot box
    3. violence
    4. judicial conservatism
    5. skill levels

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