DBQ
Question: Analyze and explain the various arguments, strategies and philosophies that
capitalists and industrialists used to increase their wealth in the late 19th century.
Document A
I say that you ought to get rich, and it is you duty to get rich. How many of my pious brethren say
to me, "Do you, a Christian minister, spend your time going up and down the country advising
young people to get rich, to get money?" " Yes, of course I do." They say , "Isn't it awful ! why
don't you preach the gospel instead of preaching about making money?" " Because to make
money honestly is to preach the gospel." the men who get rich may be the most honest men you
find in the community....
.... ninety-eight out of a hundred of the rich men in America are honest. That is
why they are rich.
Acres of Diamonds by Russell H. Conwell, 1900.
Document B
The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts
and luxuries, is also great; but the advantages this law are also greater still, for it is to this law that
we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train.... We
accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great
inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands
of the few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential
for the future progress of the race.
"Wealth" by Andrew Carnegie, 1889.
Document C
These forms of corporation served a useful purpose, but within the past few years these
corporations have been consolidating many separate corporations located in one or several states,
selling out their plants to a corporation organized for the purpose of buying up all these separate
plants and conducting them under one management; and it has been found that the increased
power possessed by these large consolidated corporations or trusts as they are commonly known
have caused them to pursue a policy that has infringed on the rights of individuals, or have used
their influences in restraint of trade, been detrimental to the rights of labor, destroyed the value of
other property, and deprived other individuals of the use of their capital, and as so far this has
been done, is clearly against public policy and subversive of best interests of the republic...
Chicago Conference on Trusts testimony of
Aaron Jones Chicago. 1900.
Document D
Document E
The Businessman's Creed, Defined: "By the superior intelligence of the employer a certain
amount of wealth is produced, of which capital gets less if labor gets more...Organized labor is
the enemy of capital. Strike leaders must be gotten out of the way, by bribery or otherwise.
Immigrants...need not be supported during hard times; when injured they can be sent to hospitals
for repair..."
Frederick Howe, Journalist & Reformer
Document F
U.S. district court judge: "[the sugar trust] can close every refinery at will, close some and open
others...artificially limit the production of refined sugar, enhance the price to enrich themselves
and their associates at the public expense, and depress the price when necessary to crush out, and
impoverish, a foolhardy rival."
The Rise of Industrial America: Volume Six by Page Smith
Document G
This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of wealth: first, to set an example of modest,
unostentatious living, shunning display or extravagance; to provide moderately for the legitimate
wants of those dependent upon them; and after doing so to consider all surplus revenues which
come to him dimply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer, and strictly bound as a
matter of duty to administer in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce
the most beneficial results for the community—the man of wealth thus becoming the mere agent
and trustee 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…..
“Gospel of Wealth” by Andrew Carnegie, 1889