The Men Who Built America
Episode: 2
This episode starts with Andrew Carnegie mourning over Tom Scott’s death. Scott was Carnegie’s boss and one of the most influential person he knew.. He believes that Rockefeller, his rivalry, is the cause of Scott’s death. Carnegie must build a bridge connecting the Mississippi River to allow trains to transport goods across to the West. Scott tells Carnegie to hire James Eads because he’s “cheap and a genius.” It flashes back to the future and we see Carnegie and Eads working together to find a solution to how to build the bridge. There seem to be many issues but Carnegie believes “nothing impossible.” As he’s walking through the streets he sees a blacksmith making a piece of steel. It then occurs to him that he can build the
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In the next few years their profit double and Frick is made the chairman of Carnegie’s company. This isn't enough for Frick, so to show of his wealth he creates a members only club, The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. Near this is South Fork dam, and it breaks due to the poor structure. It killed a lot of people and they blame the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club because they made them lower the dam. They don't take the responsibility for it or even consider it their fault but Carnegie differs. He helps them by donating millions of dollars to rebuild Johnstown. With Rockefeller oil company growing, Carnegie tries to help a troublesome steel mill and make it the largest. One problem with this is that to make profit they would have to cut wages and labor. Carnegie turns to Frick to help resolve the problem while he goes to Scotland. With Frick in charge, workers are undermined and they start a strike. Frick takes it as a challenge and hires merchants to settle the dispute. This leds in nine dead and several injured. A group called, The Anarchist, inquire righteousness and try to assassinate Frick but fail and that's how the episode ends. Andrew Carnegie was
Seven Events That Made America America: And Proved That the Founding Fathers Were Right All Along is written by Larry Schweikart. Schweikart is an American historian as well as a professor of history at the University of Dayton. As a child he grew up in Arizona where he would later attend Arizona state university. While there, Schweikart completed an M.A. and later earned his Ph.D. in history from University of California, Santa Barbara in 1984.
In Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man, he explains how powerful exile plays an important role in the narrator’s journey to finding out who he really is. According to Edward Said “Exile is… a rift forced between a human being and a native place,…its essential sadness can never be surmounted…a potent, even enriching” .The narrator’s journey to finding who he is, was alienating and enriching. The narrator’s journey to alienation and enrichment began in chapter six of Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man.
As you can tell from the title, something big happened at the Owl Creek Bridge, but you have to wait until the end of the story to find out the truth, or else you could be lost in someone’s daydream. The story had me intrigued by the different directions it could take you, but it all made sense in the end, and I discovered you sometimes have to dig a little deeper to find the whole truth about someone. Peyton Farquhar, a plantation owner in his mid-thirties, is being prepared for execution by hanging from an Alabama railroad bridge during the American Civil War. Farquhar, a supporter of the Confederacy, learns from a soldier that Union troops have seized the Owl Creek railroad bridge and repaired it. The soldier suggests that Farquhar might be able to burn the bridge down if he can slip past its guards.
The chapters of our textbook, America: A Narrative History, written by George Brown Tindall and David Emory Shi, takes us on a historical yet comparative journey of the road to war and what caused the American Revolution, an insight into the war itself, and a perception to what life was like in America after the war was over. The essays of the book, America Compared: American History in International Perspective, collected by Carl J. Guarneri gives us a global context and a comparison between the North and South Americas in the dividing issues of labor, slavery, taxes, politics, economy, liberty, and equality. Part One These chapters in our textbook Tindall describes; the road to the American Revolution, the road to the surrendering of the British, and the road to the American colonists receiving their independence and developing the government which the people of the United States will be governed by. The road to the American Revolution consisted of several events, which escalated to the war that began April 19, 1775, as the tensions between the American colonies and the British Government advanced towards breaking point.
In Document H, when Hamlin Garland, a journalist, visited the Homestead steel mill, the journalist said that everywhere in the mill felt like the mouth of hell. Hamlin saw grimy men with sallow and lean faces everywhere and when Hamlin asked one of the workers how their job is, they replied that they work twelve hours a day and mostly receive between $1.40 and $2.25 a day and rarely $5/$10 a day. There was also a machine known as deathtrap that kills workers occasionally. With Carnegie being so rich, he could’ve paid his workers more. Additionally, in Document O, Andrew Carnegie reduces the worker's pay wage by 20% in order to donate more money for his own selfish needs.
Carnegie is not a hero because he took money, only gave to other wealthy recipients, and contributed largely to his own. Andrew Carnegie took money away from deserving people. Carnegie cut the wages of his workers to donate money elsewhere. In document D, there are two images of Carnegie, one is giving a wage cut notice to the workers and the other is giving a check to Scotland and donating a library to Pittsburg. Carnegie’s employees were working hard and trying to survive in a tough economy, their wages did not deserve a cut.
Carnegie reduced the wages of working employees in his steel company (document D). But as a business man he needed to do the most conventional thing to win more money. The more money he won the more he gave to the poor. If working employees don’t get enough pay they are considered poor so the employees still benefit for pay and donated things from Carnegie. Plus people that were employees to Carnegie’s industry of steel at least had a job so they can survive longer.
(Shmoop.com) This example clearly demonstrates how capitalism during this era was present in the novel, it reveals how the owners took control of their factories without the control of the government. Even more the novel’s tittle symbolizes the ambitious nature of capitalism; Packingtown is a crude image of a Darwinian jungle,
Andrew Carnegie was a “robber baron” as shown in the way he acted towards the people who helped him reach the top and the terrible working environment that he subjected his workers to. He did various things in an attempt at overshadowing the awful things he did and positively alter his public image. His mentor, Thomas Scott, taught him the skills he would use to become the undisputed king of steel. Costs were the most important aspect of any business and reducing those required cutting wages, demanding 13 hour days and utilizing spies as a way to thwart possible strikes. Many years after Carnegie had gone out on his own, Scott met with him thinking that the years they spent together and all he had taught him would unquestionably result in help in his time of trouble.
This is also known as the Homestead Strike. Carnegie then hired Pinkerton thugs to attack the workers. In the same excerpt, the author says, “he hired Pinkerton thugs to intimidate strikers. Many were killed in the conflict, and it was an episode that would forever hurt Carnegie's reputation and haunt the man.” He uses unfair ways to have a successful business through low wages, and using wealth to his
Over time he will gain experience as a telegraph messenger and work at a Pennsylvania railroad this will help him to get a job in the railroad industry and three years later he is the superintendent. The next decade Andrew now owns his own steel business called Carnegie Steel Company. Andrew Carnegie revolutionized steel as we knew it using technology and procedures that made making steel much faster. For this he is a “Captain of the Industry”. Carnegie was a smart business man unlike most industry’s during his time instead of buying the other companies out he would make his prices lower than another producer which would send them out of business.
Multiple small businesses did not control the city, instead, the city was controlled by one large business. This only benefits the large business owners and affects the citizens of the city poorly. They get poor healthcare, poor food quality, and poor air quality. A large portion of the population have suffered from diseases and did not get the health care they needed because the big business owners are not aiding their workers. The main company which controlled everyone had been the Packingtown.
The strikers eventually won causing the company to stay closed. Then five days later the governor in Pennsylvania sent soldiers to restore order and re-open the the plant. Two months later the strike was called off, Carnegie was criticized for Fricks actions. Carnegie did a lot to achieve his large empire, he fought competitors and made good business
American Exceptionalism was coined by Alexis de Tocqueville in his book Democracy in America. To illustrate how the American way of thought is superior to the other ways of the world, Tocqueville expresses that the American way of thought is distinctively unique and special. This distinction is exemplified through liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism, and Laissez-Faire Economics. These qualities prove America’s exceptionality and difference from other countries. Although American Exceptionalism originated in the early 1800s, the idyllic values Tocqueville paints in his book can be seen throughout American history.
In Adam Gopnik 's piece “Caging of America,” he discusses one of the United States biggest moral conflicts: prison. Gopniks central thesis states that prison itself is a cruel and unjust punishment. He states that the life of a prisoner is as bad as it gets- they wake up in a cell and only go outside for an hour to exercise. They live out their sentences in a solid and confined box, where their only interaction is with themselves. Gopnik implies that the general populace is hypocritical to the fact that prison is a cruelty in itself.