Another Example, from “How I Was Ruined by Rockefeller,” by George Rice states that the Standard Oil Company was in cahoots with the Rockefeller Railroad Company, they conspired to make smaller oil companies like his own not succeed (Doc 6). This shows the corruption of the major companies during this time period, making agreements in order to make smaller companies fail and make big business thrive. This change is important because it shows how corrupt the companies became and how apparent it became to everyone in
These people challenged the federal bank’s constitutionality (2). He shows the farmers malcontent attitude in this statement, “They mistrusted the central bank, seeing in it both the subordination of the states prerogatives and a federal government that was exceeding its powers”(2). McDonough also feels that the farmers or agrarians could be held responsible for the destruction of the second bank. They were able to do this under the leadership of President Jackson. The failure to renew this second bank charter allowed for a generation of “bank anarchy and monetary disorder ”(2).
Sinclair had attacked the corruption of industries, especially the meat-packing industry in this popular book, The Jungle, which led to the passage of a federal legislation, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, to address the problems in these industries. Furthermore, Sinclair had attacked the industries for being self-serving and too ignorant of the lives of the workers. In The Jungle, Sinclair had depicted the poor lives of immigrant and workers working for American industries. In short, the Sinclair was critical of the wealth created in the industrialization and had questioned the asserted values of industrialization by exposing the corruption and the poor lives of workers. Sinclair had greatly differed from Carnegie in that he had wrote genuinely to expose the social and industrial ills and problems that America faced during and shortly of
“Many Americans held the president personally to blame for the crisis and began calling the shantytowns that unemployed people established on the outskirts of cities “Hoovervilles” (B, 676; CD) The 1930’s also show examples of our continuing inequality in America. As the white males began to lose their jobs and some African Americans continued to work, people believed in this crisis white males had first priority when it came to jobs and started replacing the African Americans. (B, 665; CD) Mexicans during the depression were rounded up and were forced to
During the period between 1880 and 1900, agrarian discontent increased as a result of the rise of cities, deflation of the American money, and problems with railroads and freight shipping. Farmers also complained about unfair railroads policies towards shippers. Railroad companies discriminated, by charging bigger businesses lower priced shipping rates and charging individual shippers highly overpriced shipping rates. In the Octopus, by Frank Norris, the con of the practice is displayed as the main character, farmer Dyke, discovers that the shipping rate being charged will put him at a loss rather than profit. Congress believed that farmers were right and passed the Interstate Commerce Act, in order to regulate railroads and ensure fair rates to all people.
Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat” (Marx and Engels 1848). Social class, therefore, is based upon economic criteria and conflict occurs between those who own the means of production (bourgeoisie) and the wage-labourers (proletariat). As well as having economic control over the proletariat, the bourgeoisie also have the power to determine the superstructure; the ruling class can distort perceptions of the world and hide the true nature of social relationships and the exploitation of the proletariat and, above all, promote bourgeoisie interests. Marx defines production as workers selling their labour for wages in order to exchange money for commodities that will meet their most basic needs. As Marx
One of the pioneers of conflict theories is Karl Marx. He sought to explain the struggles between social classes. Marx saw society as a polarization between two dominant classes: the Capitalists and the Workers (Robbins et al., 2012). Marx defined these classes as: property is concentrated in the hands of the Capitalists and the Workers are forced to sell their labor to the privileged owners (Capitalists), thus creating a divide between the classes and creating oppression (Robbins et al, 2012). The effects of the class differences include exploitation, poverty, and the control of ideas by the wealthy.
Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath recounts the particular story of the Joad family so as to represent the hardship and persecution endured by transient workers amid the Great Depression. It is an unequivocally political tract that champions collectivist activity by the lower classes over representations of nonconformist premium toward oneself and reprimands corporate and BANKING elites for silly approaches intended to boost benefit even while compelling ranchers into dejection and even starvation. The novel starts with the portrayal of the conditions in Dust Bowl Oklahoma that demolished the yields and impelled gigantic dispossessions on farmland. No particular characters rise at first, a method that Steinbeck will come back to a few times in the book, comparing depictions of occasions in a bigger social connection with those more particular to the Joad crew. Tom Joad, a man not yet thirty, methodologies a cafe wearing spotless, to a degree formal dress.
McMath, Jr., Edward C. American Populism: A Social history 1877-1898. Hill and Wang, 1992, 211 I believe that McMath wrote the book because he wanted the reader to understand the hardships of the lower classes back in the populism era. He gave us key area’s to look at such as New York and Texas. It shows how the workers and farmers were treated unfairly as well as looked down upon by the upper class. He captures the populism of that time from the strikes all the way to the farmer’s debt.
Social Complexity: the Cause of Class Division H. G. Wells’s theory on a receding evolution and his displeasure with the social factors of his own time contribute to the cynical tone of his novel, The Time Machine. During the late eighteen hundreds Europe had undergone an Industrial Revolution. During this period, society split into two social classes: the Proletariat (lower class) and the Bourgeoisie (the upper class). The Bourgeoisie were the dominant figures of society whereas the Proletariat would endure long brutal hours in the treacherous and detrimental factories that were sometimes underground. “Man no longer treated men as men, but as a commodity which could be bought and sold on the open market.”(Kreis).