The passage written by David Montgomery summarizes several points as to how entrepreneurs develop strong businesses, how were the wages when during passing decades, the strategies used by monopolies and elites, government interfering benefits and consequences, and what factors lead to economic crashes. He starts off the chapter with the advancements made in technological fields of trading, transportation, and most importantly manufacturing. The North and South is still in the midst of recovering from their civil war and geographical conditions are affecting production and manufacturing, although, tensions still seem to be still high if the former Confederate states are being omitted from benefits. On the topic of separation, economic classes became a larger issue, race and religion become subjects of prejudice, and political parties clash during the mid 19th century.
During the mid 19th century, the country has gone through a drastic growth spurt in the field of production. With the focus on production being made more efficient with machinery and factories, America has become the top contender for most efficient country in mechanical manufacturing. This leads to the economy growing, and the elites to further the gap between them and the lower class. They call themselves capitalists, yet they see their employees as human resources and issues, they even go as far as to refer to their status as “middle class”, which begs the question, where does that leave their employees at? (Montgomery, 14) In the passage, the working class were only acknowledged by their superiors when they are working, when they are not, they become strayed from capitalism. If one wishes to earn their keep, they must become earners, but this is taking it too far when the working class works for measly wages and not being treated human. Even less then human is the hysteria of workers coming from abroad, those who have different faith, and those of differing political parties. In modern times, wages and employment are not determined by who one was, but here showed otherwise. An example, Hamilton Manufacturing Company of Massachusetts had different wages for those of Irish and Swedish descent, and also gender. (Montgomery, 41) Montgomery points out that the wages of the masses are very conflicting controversial, nearly the entirety of the 19th century was filled with strife, the civil war, great crash, and even more conflict with the elite and middle classes because of who one was and the lack of much interference to the elites’ growth.
Some confusing word choices make this difficult to understand at times. What do you mean by “the hysteria of workers coming from abroad” or that workers “strayed from capitalism”? If you mean anti-immigrant sentiment or hysteria about immigrants, try to spell that out more clearly. Be wary of substituting words that may seem like synonyms for the author’s original.
You raise an interesting question in paragraph 2. If manufacturers in this period tended to see themselves as both “capitalists” and “workingmen” (Montgomery actually says the term “middle class” was a rarity), what does that tell us about the changing class relationships in this period?