Research Topics

Choose from the following titles:


Monopolies

Monopolies

Overview

How did Americans perceive the rise of monopolies? 1870-1914, Big Business, Rockefeller and the Oil Trust.

Economic growth in the late 19th century brought with it new forms of industrial organization. Seeking to lower costs and maximize profits, business leaders formed pools, trusts and holding companies. This process of industrial combination, as it was known, led to fears that business monopolies would hurt consumers and, through corrupt practices, undermine democracy.

1234567

John D. Rockefeller on Industrial Combinations (1899)

Rockefeller argues that large corporations brought numerous benefits to the American economy.

Topic: Monopolies

Please study this document and answer the following questions.

Q. What are, in your judgment, the chief advantages from industrial combinations—(a) financially to stockholders; (b) to the public?—

A. All the advantages which can be derived from a cooperation of persons and aggregation of capital. Much that one man can not do alone two can do together, and once admit the fact that cooperation, or, what is the same thing, combination, is necessary on a small scale, the limit depends solely upon the necessities of business. Two persons in partnership may be a sufficiently large combination for a small business, but if the business grows or can be made to grow, more persons and more capital must be taken in. The business may grow so large that a partnership ceases to be a proper instrumentality for its purposes, and then a corporation becomes a necessity. In most countries, as in England, this form of industrial combination is sufficient for a business coextensive with the parent country, but it is not so in this country. Our Federal form of government, making every corporation created by a State foreign to every other State, renders it necessary for persons doing business through corporate agency to organize corporations in some or many of the different States in which their business is located. Instead of doing business through the agency of one corporation they must do business through the agencies of several corporations. If the business is extended to foreign countries, and Americans are not to-day satisfied with home markets alone, it will be found helpful and possibly necessary to organize corporations in such countries, for Europeans are prejudiced against foreign corporation as are the people of many of our States. These different corporations thus become cooperating agencies in the same business and are held together by common ownership of their stocks.

It is too late to argue about advantages of industrial combinations. They are a necessity. And if Americans are to have the privilege of extending their business in all the States of the Union, and into foreign countries as well, they are a necessity on a large scale, and require the agency of more than one corporation. Their chief advantages are:

  1. Command of necessary capital.
  2. Extension of limits of business.
  3. Increase of number of persons interested in the business.
  4. Economy in the business.
  5. Improvements and economies which are derived from knowledge of many interested persons of wide experience.
  6. Power to give the public improved products at less prices and still make a profit for the stockholders.
  7. Permanent work and good wages for laborers.

I speak from my experience in business with which I have been intimately connected for about 40 years.

11. Q. What are the chief disadvantages or dangers to the public arising from them?—

A. The dangers are that the power conferred by combination may be abused; that combinations may be formed for speculation in stocks rather than for conducting business, and that for this purpose prices may be temporarily raised instead of being lowered. These abuses are possible to a greater or less extent in all combinations, large or small, but this fact is no more of an argument against combinations than the fact that steam may explode is an argument against steam. Steam is necessary and can be made comparatively safe. Combination is necessary and its abuses can be minimized; otherwise our legislators must acknowledge their incapacity to deal with the most important instrument of industry. Hitherto most legislative attempts have been an effort not to control but to destroy; hence their futility.

12. Q. What legislation, if any, would you suggest regarding industrial combinations?—

A. First. Federal legislation under which corporations may be created and regulated, if that be possible. Second. In lieu thereof, State legislation as nearly uniform as possible encouraging combinations of persons and capital for the purpose of carrying on industries, but permitting State supervision, not of a character to hamper industries, but sufficient to prevent frauds upon the public.


[From U.S. Industrial Commission, Preliminary Report on Trusts and Combinations, 56th Cong., 1st sess. (30 Dec. 1899) Document no. 476, Part 1, pp. 796–97.]

Click here for sample answers | Read the document again

fiogf49gjkf0d

Observation

1.
fiogf49gjkf0d
What type of document is this? (Ex. Newspaper, telegram, map, letter, memorandum, congressional record)
2.
fiogf49gjkf0d
For what audience was the document written?
fiogf49gjkf0d

Expression

3.
fiogf49gjkf0d
What do you find interesting or important about this document?
4.
fiogf49gjkf0d
Is there a particular phrase or section that you find particularly meaningful or surprising?
fiogf49gjkf0d

Connection

5.
fiogf49gjkf0d
What does this document tell you about life in this culture at the time it was written?

Submit to Gradebook:

First Name:
 
Last Name:
 
Your Email Address:
 
Your Professor's Email Address:
 
Section:


Organized Labor

Organized Labor

Overview

Why did American workers form labor unions?

Laborers in the factories of the north sought to improve their standard of living. However, they often faced obstacles in this effort. Workplaces were unsafe and wages were low. Business owners wanted to make money, not share it with workers. Government officials, hoping to ensure law and order and to promote economic growth, often sided with industrial leaders. Labor unions took on these challenges and met with varying degrees of success. The Knights of Labor offered a grandiose vision of economic reform, but it did not survive the century. The American Federation of Labor was more successful but only aided skilled workers, a minority of the nation's labor force.

1234

The American Federation of Labor (1883), Samuel Gompers

Gompers, head of the American Federal of Labor, claims that unions prevent radicalism from arising in American life.

Topic: Organized Labor

Please study this document and answer the following questions.

The American Federation of Labor supplanted the Knights of Labor, and it developed a quite different philosophy. Rather than trying to abolish the wage-labor system, it sought to use strikes to gain higher wages, lower working hours, and better working conditions for its members. Unlike the Knights of Labor, the AFL organized only skilled workers into unions defined by particular trades. The AFL also emphasized relatively high dues in order to create a treasury large enough to sustain the members during a prolonged strike. Under the leadership of Samuel Gompers (1850Ð1924), a London-born cigarmaker, the AFL became not only a powerful force serving the interests of its members but also a conservative defender of capitalism against the appeal of Socialism and Communism. In 1883 Gompers testified before a Congressional committee about his organization.


. . . There is nothing in the labor movement that employers who have had unorganized workers dread so much as organization; but organization alone will not do much unless the organization provides itself with a good fund, so that the operatives may be in a good position, in the event of a struggle with their employers, to hold out. . . .

Modern industry evolves these organizations out of the existing conditions where there are two classes in society, one incessantly striving to obtain the labor of the other class for as little as possible, and to obtain the largest amount or number of hours of labor; and the members of the other class, being as individuals utterly helpless in a contest with their employers, naturally resort to combinations to improve their condition, and, in fact, they are forced by the conditions which surround them to organize for self-protection. Hence trades unions. Trade unions are not barbarous, nor are they the outgrowth of barbarism. On the contrary they are only possible where civilization exists. Trade unions cannot exist in China; they cannot exist in Russia; and in all those semi-barbarous countries they can hardly exist, if they can exist at all. But they have been formed successfully in this country, in Germany, in England, and they are gradually gaining strength in France. . . .

Wherever trades unions have organized and are most firmly organized, there are the rights of the people most respected. A people may be educated, but to me it appears that the greatest amount of intelligence exists in that country or that state where the people are best able to defend their rights, and their liberties as against those who are desirous of undermining them. Trades unions are organizations that instill into men a higher motive-power and give them a higher goal to look to. . . .

The trades unions are by no means an outgrowth of socialistic or communistic ideas or principles, but the socialistic and communistic notions are evolved from the trades unions' movements. As to the question of the principles of communism or socialism prevailing in trades unions, there are a number of men who connect themselves as workingmen with the trades unions who may have socialistic convictions, yet who never gave them currency. . . . On the other hand, there are men—not so numerous now as they have been in the past—who are endeavoring to conquer the trades-union movement and subordinate it to those doctrines, and in a measure, in a few such organizations that condition of things exists, but by no means does it exist in the largest, most powerful, and best organized trades unions. There the view of which I spoke just now, the desire to improve the condition of the workingmen by and through the efforts of the trades union, is fully lived up to. . . . I believe that the existence of the trades-union movement, more especially where the unionists are better organized, has evoked a spirit and a demand for reform, but has held in check the more radical elements in society.


[From U.S. Senate, Testimony of Samuel Gompers, August 1883, Report of the Committee of the Senate upon the Relations between Labor and Capital (Washington, D.C., 1885), 1:365-70.]

Click here for sample answers | Read the document again

fiogf49gjkf0d
fiogf49gjkf0d

Observation

1.
fiogf49gjkf0d
What type of document is this? (Ex. Newspaper, telegram, map, letter, memorandum, congressional record)
2.
fiogf49gjkf0d
For what audience was the document written?
fiogf49gjkf0d

Expression

3.
fiogf49gjkf0d
What do you find interesting or important about this document?
4.
fiogf49gjkf0d
Is there a particular phrase or section that you find particularly meaningful or surprising?
fiogf49gjkf0d

Connection

5.
fiogf49gjkf0d
What does this document tell you about life in this culture at the time it was written?

Submit to Gradebook:

First Name:
 
Last Name:
 
Your Email Address:
 
Your Professor's Email Address:
 
Section: