– The working class vs. Robber Barons
It is true that wealth has been greatly increased, and that the average of comfort, leisure and refinement has been raised; but these gains are not general. In them the lowest class do not share… This association of poverty with progress is the great enigma of our times…
This quote by Henry George basically epitomizes what capitalism in the 19th Century was all about. The Robber Baron class of the United States sought to all kinds of manipulative yet legal practices to fill their pockets. The government could easily be bought and had basically no control to regulate capitalism in the country. From a broader view, America was a country that was revolutionizing; steam, electricity, coal and iron, were just a few of the technological advances that occurred in this time. Farmers were moving to cities, and America was perceived to be a country full of prosperity. However, the reality was much different. Only a few rich people, like J.P Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie etc., were really benefitting from this era of capitalism. They were the ones who were reaping all the profits and their mantra was to gain more and more wealth by using people whose lives were less ‘valuable’. The construction of the first transcontinental railroad was done by thirteen thousand Irish and Chinese immigrants, who were paid only about two dollars a day. Thousands of immigrants died and got injured during the construction of the railroad, and yet their deaths were merely seen as sacrifices that had to be made for the sake of industrialization. It was the lower class that physically worked to industrialize America and yet it was the class of Robber Barons that enjoyed the benefits. I think Zinn tries to establish that the industrial revolution of the 19th century was really not a golden period for the United States, but was in fact a time that depicted the cruelties of unregulated capitalism.