Angels or Devils: The Gilded Age

The Essential Question for the lesson on Carnegie and Rockefeller was created by the students this week. What we came up with was: Should Andrew Carnegie and John D Rockefeller be classified as robber barons or captains of industry? The structure for this lesson was divided into days. On the first day we watched videos explaining the Gilded Age, or time period following the Reconstruction after the Civil War. Then on the second day we decided on the essential question and then we began writing our blog posts. On the third day the class decided on how to create the forty exam questions we would need to have completed on the fourth day.

This political cartoon by Udo J. Keppler appeared in the September 7, 1904, issue of "Puck." It shows J.D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil tank as an octopus with many tentacles wrapped around the steel, copper, and shipping industries, as well as a state house, the U.S. Capitol, and one tentacle reaching for the White House, as it crushes the competition

John D Rockefeller is a Robber Baron because he meets most of definition. Rockefeller bought out his rivals after destroying them. His method was to lower his prices until his competition could not match them and went bankrupt. John D Rockefeller was also known to bribe politicians. To keep his prices low, Rockefeller treated his workers poorly. In the end, he had become the head of a massive oil monopoly. All these actions of Rockefeller are what make him a Robber Baron.

Andrew Carnegie is not a Robber Baron. Instead, Carnegie is a Captain of Industry because he does not fit as much of the definition as Rockefeller. In Carnegie's “Wealth”, published in 1889, his main point is that those with wealth have a duty to those that do not. “…the man of wealth thus becoming the mere trustee and agent for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience and ability to administer, doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves.” Carnegie is no hypocrite, and donates a lot of his money to fund public needs like libraries and other organizations that advance the cause of education, eventually founding the Carnegie Mellon University. Another positive attribute of Andrew Carnegie is that he believed in meritocracy, promoting his workers based on their skills. Carnegie’s one slip up was the Homestead Strike. Beginning on the 29th of June in 1892, the strike made the public aware of Andrew Carnegie’s plot to terminate the iron and steel workers’ union. However, the rest of his life, Carnegie was apologetic. In a letter he wrote to William E. Gladstone, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, on September 24th of the next year, Carnegie admitted, "This is the trial of my life (death's hand excepted). Such a foolish step - contrary to my ideas, repugnant to every feeling of my nature. Our firm offered all it could offer, even generous terms. Our other men had gratefully accepted them. They went as far as I could have wished, but the false step was made in trying to run the works with new men." By writing this, it is clear that Carnegie regrets what he has done.

Today, while governments are still trying to stay out of economies, the two things still have a big effect on one another. In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan might not be re-elected due to Turkey's current poor economy. This year's Turkish General Election will be on Sunday, June 7th. The President's political party, the Justice and Development Party, first came to power after a financial crisis and has since won six elections in a row. This year, the belief that the economy is poorly run, might sway voters to elect a different party. If Laissez-Faire worked the other way, economy staying out of government, the Justice and Development Party might not be so uneasy about tomorrow's election.