Winners and Losers

When we left off on Monday we talked about how the American Industrial Revolution changed the economy. The US changed from a rural republic to a nation with a new urban identity. Big businesses were fueling these moves to urban cites for the American people. The new railroad system was the first big business that helped shaped the new world of America. Railroads would need a more efficient way to make steel. When Andrew Carnegie mastered how to make steel cheaper and at a fast rate he would own the monopoly of the steel industry, and would revolutionize the way businesses were run. Steel and railroads brought jobs to those moving into the city. Railroads ran on steam engines and created the need for more coal, consequently coal mining would be another business that would boom during the Industrial Revolution. It was the season of innovation and technology continued to create new ways of doing things easier and helped businesses to prosper. The government was pro-business and did little for labor reform. The winners of the industrial revolution were the owners of the big businesses and the losers were the workers. Big business seemed to own the government while most of its working population struggle for the bare necessities. Child labor was a big part of the new industrial era, and families were okay with that because sometimes the children were the only ones with jobs. Having more children gave the average family more chance of income.  The industrial Revolution was not just in the United States but also in Europe, all around the world workers were struggling to survive in this new era of industrial life.  The question is why did big business seem to own the government when the government is supposed to be for its people and not just the rich?

Many would question the practices of the big time capitalist like Carnegie and Rockefeller. These men become rich by using capitalism and exploiting its new found evils. These men did whatever they could do to increase profits. Their ultimate goal was to weed out all competition to maximize their power and create monopolies to dominate profits in their industry. Keeping the production cost down was another method they used to increase profits. To enact this method they gave their workers low wages, horrible working conditions, and no chance for advancement. To the poor big business capitalist were looked at as “Robber Barons” and to the rich they were “Captains of Industry”. Those that saw them as Captains of Industry had a Social Darwinist point of view.

Social Darwinism was introduce by Herbert Spencer and become popular among the rich. Social Darwinist believed the human race had its winners and losers. The rich were the winners because they were naturally strong and able to adapt. The losers were they poor, and were looked at less human. The poor were looked at as inferior to the rich due to natural selection. This gave the rich a reason to continue their practices and not feel bad about them. The next question that was brought up was how could Christians could oppress the poor and not feel bad about it? Beecher a devout Christian man split Social Darwinist theology and the Christian religion.  He said God favored those who were in the pursuit of money, and that God did not favor the poor. The poor were in this position because God favors the practices of the capitalist. Malthus’s thinking is a part of Social Darwinism and some believed if the poor died it would be a good thing for the human species, because they were inferior beings. Their opinion was that poor would no longer bring the human race down. Men of all kinds of Authority preached this Social Darwinism, it was being taught in school like Yale. It became the common way of thinking not just in the United States but all around Europe also. This way of thinking would create tension between the rich and the poor for years to come.

In England industrial life was described as, “Industrialization resulted in the total destruction of the laborers’ traditional way of life” (pg. 153 Hunt, Lautzenheiser). The new way of life had low wages, bad working conditions, and economic insecurity. Workers would try and combine into labor unions to resist the evils of industrialization. Employers knew individuals could only do so much, and the only way they could get anything to change was to combine. When an individual worker demonstrated radical thought they were often replace, and therefore fires were put out. One this was were certain though, someone would try and change this new way of life. They would try to equal the playing field. Karl Marx and his Communist Manifesto would create a new way of thinking for many.