The Powerful Few vs. The Many Powerless 3

                Working with my group, I deepened my understanding of labor vs. big business in the 19th century.  Even though we had some similar enduring understandings, I found that they also had some different views on the topic.  One person had an enduring understanding that made a connection between the corporations and the government.  It was about how the wealthy men in charge of these large corporations, and politicians often had aligned political interests.  He explained that they not only had aligned political interests but that the government would often align themselves with these wealthy men because they were scared of them and the power they had in society.  For example, even though the Sherman Anti-Trust act was supposed to stop corporations from forming trusts and gaining more power, the government actually ended up aiding the corporations with this act.  Instead of stopping corporations, it was used to help corporations stop labor unions.  This enduring understanding also helped me understand the document Robber Barons and Rebels better.  In this document, it explained that “the government of the United States was behaving almost exactly as Karl Marx described as a capitalist state: pretending to neutrality to maintain order, but serving the interests of the rich” (Robber Barons and Rebels 258).  The government aligned with the wealthy men.  I also learned who robber barons and captains of industry were.  I knew Robber Barons and Rebels was the title of one of our documents, but I did not know exactly what the term “robber baron” meant.  I learned from my group that robber barons were powerful industrialists who were seen as building their fortune by stealing from the public.  Captains of industry were powerful industrialists who were seen as having a positive effect on the nation.  These two terms describe the same people but show the different views people had about them.  Some people thought they were rich and greedy and others saw them as innovative people helping the economy and the nation.   Another enduring understanding that was very different from mine was about the selfishness of the wealthy men in society.  One person pointed out, that not only were the owners of corporations rich, but they did not care about the laborers who worked for them.  Owners were constantly cutting wages.  In Homestead, when Andrew Clay Frick tried to cut wages to increase the corporation's wealth, the workers became angry and went on strike.  I realized after working with my group, that even though laborers would strike and sometimes become violent, the wealthy men in charge of the corporations that employed these men would never agree to do what the laborers wanted to make the striking and violence stop.  The owners and wealthy business men always responded with violence.  The wealthy men in charge would rather have violence than "give in"; that is give the strikers power.  This idea helped me further understand the various documents and pictures about the Homestead Strike.   During the Homestead Strike, “A foreign armed force was to settle the question of one dollar in wages” and violence ensued over a wage cut of a single dollar ("The Incident" of the 6th of July. From the July 16, 1892 issue of Illustrated American.).  The wealthy men in charge refused to "give in" and insisted on this wage cut.  They preferred to call in the Pinkertons and state militia to keep their control rather than give up power to the strikers as seen in the two images below.  One picture is of the strikers attacking the Pinkertons and one is of the state militia. 

The Strikers Killing a Pinkerton

(G.A. Davis, from a sketch by C. Upham. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly. “The Labor Troubles at Homestead, Pennsylvania — Attack of the Strikers and their Sympathizers on the Surrendered Pinkerton Men”. July 14.)

The State Militia

(J.F. Jarvis, Under martial law—State Militia entering Homestead, Pa., U.S.A., July 11, 1892.)

Both these forces helped protect the power the wealthy men possessed.  Working with my group my understanding of these ideas deepened.

         To create our photo essay we first combined all our lists of key terms and then chose the terms we wanted to keep.  If there were multiple definitions of the same term we picked the one we felt was the best.  For our enduring understandings we read them all and tried to pick the best ones that covered many different aspects of the topic.  This part of the process in general went quickly and worked very well.  There were only a few small disagreements on whether or not to include a couple of key terms.  For our intro slides we quickly agreed on the topic for each slide, but had some disagreements about which key terms belonged on each side.  Once we had decided which key terms went on each slide we came to agreement quickly as to which enduring understanding went with each slide.  If we were to do this project again I would insist we not waste time fooling around with the fonts.  It was a little frustrating when people were changing the titles from "Business" to "8u$lne$$".  Everyone always had something to do.  Someone was in charge of the SurveyMonkey, someone else was in charge of the bibliography, and others of us were working on captions for the Videolicious.  This went fairly well.  One problem was trying to compile all the images in multiple locations.  I needed them on my iPad but they were in a Google Doc and there was no way to save the images directly to my iPad from the document.  If we were to do this again, I would try and figure out a better way to compile images.  The making of the video was also a challenge.  I had to shorten our captions and talk very quickly to get everything in under a minute.  After I had created this video it was decided we could make two videos which was very helpful.  The video making process went well after we were allowed to make two videos.  We made one general overview video and one about a particular strike at Homestead.  I feel personally I took on a leadership role making sure everyone had a task and that everything that needed to get done got done.  I also helped coordinate who will be in charge of presenting which slide.  Even though there were initially problems with the video, overall I think the photo essay project went well.