1. Gilded Age Day 3: People, Businesses, Corruption

3. Social Darwinism: How the elite justify their position and treatment of their employees

4. Father of Social Darwinism
Herbert Spencer, an Englishman, was a philosopher who is best remembered for his ideas that have become known as “Social Darwinism”.
The term “Social Darwinism” didn’t come about until the 1930s & 40s.

5. Social Darwinism
Spencer believed that competition was “the law of life” and resulted in the “survival of the fittest”, a phrase he used years BEFORE Darwin.
Society is best served when its fittest members operate without opposition.
Social Darwinism advocated laissez-faire capitalism, an economic system that allows businesses to operate with little government interference
Social Darwinism advocated laissez-faire capitalism, an economic system that allows businesses to operate with little government interference

6. The Differences… Passing on Learned Traits…
Spencer’s Progress: Its Law and Cause (1857)
Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and First Principles (1860)
Passing on Learned Traits…
Unlike Darwin, Spencer believed that individuals genetically pass on their learned characteristics.
This meant the fittest persons inherited positive qualities such as intelligence, the desire to own property, and the ability to accumulate wealth while the unfit inherited laziness, stupidity, and immorality.

7. Spencer’s Beliefs…
He was against any government aid to the poor because it would interrupt the correct evolution of civilization.
Against a public school system since it forced taxpayers to pay for the education of other people's children.
Opposed laws regulating housing, sanitation, and health conditions because they interfered with the rights of property owners.
Disease was punishment for the ignorant and should not be tampered with.
Was against any legislation that regulated working conditions, maximum hours, and minimum wages because they interfered with the property rights of employers.
The number of unfit would eventually disappear because of their inability to compete.

8. More of the Same Mentality
Sociologist William Graham Sumner praised the new class of industrial millionaires.
Social progress depended on the fittest families passing their wealth to the next generation.
Sumner believed that humans were born with different capacities and the weaker would be eliminated naturally.
"Sumner's 'social Darwinism,'" he writes, "although rooted in controversies during his lifetime, received its most influential expression in Richard Hofstadter['s] Social Darwinism in American Thought," which was first published in Was William Graham Sumner an advocate of "social Darwinism"? As I have indicated, he has been so described, most notably by Richard Hofstadter and various others over the past 60-odd years. Robert Bannister calls this description "more caricature than accurate characterization" of Sumner, however, and says further that it "seriously misrepresents him." He notes that Sumner's short book, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other, which was first published in 1884, when the author was in his early 40s, "would ... earn him a reputation as the Gilded Age's leading 'social Darwinist,'" though it "invoked neither the names nor the rhetoric of Spencer or Darwin
“What Social Classes Owe Each Other”

9. Inherently Un-American? Or Uniquely American?
"Before the tribunal of nature a man has no more right to life than a rattlesnake; he has no more right to liberty than any wild beast; his right to pursuit of happiness is nothing but a license to maintain the struggle for existence..."
William Graham Sumner, "Earth- hunger, and other essays," p. 234.

10. Andrew Carnegie Gospel of Wealth
What does Andrew Carnegie see as his role in society?

11. The Gospel of Wealth an Essay by Andrew Carnegie
2,509 libraries built in 1880s-1920s
Carnegie Public Library in Lawrence

12. Gospel of Wealth …SYNTHESIS!

13. Rugged Individualism
The idea that a person should not rely upon others for success.
This philosophy was evident from the beginning of United States history.
“Boot Strap” Mentality
Author Horatio Alger made this concept the theme of his books in which a poor young man is able to create extreme wealth and success through his hard work.
Later the term “rugged individualism” becomes popular.
Many modern scholars offer criticism to the extreme nature of Alger’s morality, some even claiming that it is socially detrimental
Essentially, all of Alger's novels share the same theme: a young boy struggles through hard work to escape poverty. Critics, however, are quick to point out that it is not the hard work itself that rescues the boy from his fate, but rather some extraordinary act of bravery or honesty, which brings him into contact with a wealthy elder gentleman, who takes the boy in as a ward. The boy might return a large sum of money that was lost or rescue someone from an overturned carriage, bringing the boy—and his plight—to the attention of some wealthy individual.

14. Strikes: Pullman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIzp vrwk160
Homestead: carnegie/videos/homestead-strike (5 min)
cYa4F6M (22 min)
Haymarket: _ZWCB_1cM

15. Disparate Sources Short Answer (Question from the 2016 AP exam) Homework for next class
How to write a disparate sources short answer (there will ALWAYS be ONE short answer question that is a disparate sources question):
Read both passages
Determine the topic of BOTH
They both take a different stance on the same issue
Maybe a different interpretation, maybe different causes, maybe two different sides of a particular way of thinking or battle
What is the main idea of each passage AND how do they differ?
This is always at least a part of the answers for A, B, or C of the short answer. Depending on how the question is worded, you may not need outside information to support your answer for one of these parts. If it asks exclusively about the differences, the question wants you to use interpretation so you wouldn’t need outside evidence (see part A on our question for today)
You do not get points if you quote the passage. That doesn’t show understanding. You must interpret it and discuss this message of the passage.
Answer questions A, B, and C. For any questions that require outside evidence, remember our structure:
Answer the question
Provide a specific, college level piece of evidence that supports your answer
Utilize your example: explain how/why that evidence is a good example of the point you make in that part of the question.