Fasttrack to America's Past
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Page 152


Page 153
 		Pages 152 & 153 - Big Industry and Labor Unions

The reading selection

   The three selections on these pages give a variety of viewpoints about the big industries that grew in the Gilded Age, and the challenges this presented to working people.  The views come from:

   Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish immigrant who created a great fortune by improving the steel making industry. 

   Ida Tarbell, a woman journalist who exposed crooked dealings in John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil trust. 

   Samuel Gompers, who formed the American Federation of Labor, a national labor union


The pictures

1.   Andrew Carnegie, who built up the American steel industry and grew fabulously wealthy in the process.  After retiring from business, he gave most of his fortune away to projects that would help the public, such as building libraries in hundreds of American cities.

2.  Samuel Gompers, who formed the American Federation of Labor to help working people win better pay and working conditions.  He continued his work as a champion of the labor movement well into the early 1900s.
 

Group discussion questions

   Andrew Carnegie makes the argument that big industry has been good for both rich and poor Americans.  The poor of the Gilded Age, he points out, enjoy many things that the rich of previous times could not afford. 
   The "good old times," he says, were not really very good.  Products made in small shops and homes were not of high quality and were expensive.  The great industries, however, could make "commodities of excellent quality" at prices that were "incredibly low."
   Carnegie does not deny that a large gap had opened between the riches of the millionaires and the modest pay of the factory workers.  However, he believes the gap represents the result of "the law of competition" that allows the best people to rise to the top.  Such people, he believes, lead businesses to continually improve their products, benefiting all of society.

   Ida Tarbell points out that what businessmen called fair competition often fell far short of fairness.  She accuses oil millionaire John D. Rockefeller of using "force and fraud" to build up the Standard Oil Company.  His goal, she says, was the creation of a monopoly to control the industry. 
   What seems to bother Tarbell as much as crooked dealing in business is the lack of concern about it shown by the public.  Often, she says, crooked dealing is "more or less openly admired."

    Samuel Gompers makes a plea for the workers of the Gilded Age factories.  He agrees that the changes brought by big industry are beneficial in many ways, but he argues that workers are often cast away without mercy or concern when they are not needed in their workplace.  He points out that "to the hungry man and woman and child our progress is a hollow mockery."
   Gompers also points out a kind of double standard in the thinking about competition.  Many wealthy people criticized labor unions for trying to take competition out of the labor market through collective bargaining and other tactics.  But these same people were usually happy to overlook the ways big corporations worked up schemes like trusts to eliminate competition in the business world.

   There is an important point on which Andrew Carnegie and Samuel Gompers agree: big industry was improving life for everyone.  Gompers, in fact, declares that "the entire civilized world are the beneficiaries."  This belief set him apart from the most radical labor leaders of his day, who believed that capitalism and big industry should be overthrown.
   Gompers, however, says that workers need to organize into strong labor unions to find protection from the disruptions created by growing industry.  He describes how the introduction of more efficient machinery sometimes threw men and women out of work faster than new industries were started that could employ them.  As a result of such changes, workers at times suffered badly during periods of unemployment.
   Carnegie does not appear overly concerned by such realities, but Gompers considers the situation deeply unfair.  He wants progress, but also fair protection for workers that will ensure "a nobler manhood, a more beautiful womanhood, and a happier childhood."







Copyright Notice

   Copyright 2018 by David Burns.  All rights reserved.  Illustrations and reading selections appearing in this work are taken from sources in the public domain and from private collections used by permission.  Sources include: the Dover Pictorial Archive, the Library of Congress, The National Archives, The Hart Publishing Co., Corel Corporation and its licensors, Nova Development Corporation and its licensors, and others.  Maps were created or adapted by the author using reference maps from the United States Geological Survey and Cartesia Software.  Please see the home page for this title for more information.