APUSH Unit 6 Heasman DBQ/Assignments
Documents for Gilded Age DBQ
Prompt: "America in the Gilded Age stands out as a place of opportunity for anyone who worked
hard enough". Support, refute, or modify this statement by synthesizing analysis of the documents with your knowledge of US history.
Document A: American Progress, by John Gast (1872)
Document B: "An Address to the workingmen of San Francisco", Workingmen's Party of
California, August, 1888
We have met here in San Francisco tonight to raise our voice to you in warning of a great danger that seems to us imminent, and threatens our almost utter destruction as a prosperous community . . . To-day every avenue to labor, of every sort, is crowded with Chinese slave labor worse than it was eight years ago. The boot, shoe, and cigar industries are almost entirely in their hands. In the manufacture of men’s overalls and women’s and children’s underwear they run over three thousand sewing machines night and day. They monopolize nearly all the farming done to supply the market with all sorts of vegetables. This state of things brings about a terrible competition between our own people, who must live, if they live at all, in accord with American civilization, and the labor of a people, who live like what in fact they are, degraded serfs under masters who hold them in slavery. We should all understand that this state of things cannot be much longer endured.
1

APUSH Unit 6 Heasman DBQ/Assignments
Document C: The Biography of a Chinaman, by Lee Chew, 1903.
“In six months I had learned how to do the work of our house quite well, and I was getting $5 a week and board, and putting away about $4.25 a week. I had also learned some English. . . I worked for two years as a servant, getting at the last $35 a month. I sent money home to comfort my parents, but tho (sic) I dressed well and lived well and had pleasure, going quite often to the Chinese theater and to dinner parties in Chinatown, I saved $50 in the first six months, $90 in the second,
$120 in the third and $150 in the fourth So I had $410 at the end of two years, and I was now ready to start in business.
When I first opened a laundry it was in company with a partner, who had been in the business for some years. We went to a town about 500 miles inland, where a railroad was building.
We got a board shanty and worked for the men employed by the railroads. . . We were three years with the railroad, and then went to the mines, where we made plenty of money in gold dust, but had a hard time, for many of the miners were wild men who carried revolvers and after drinking would come into our place to shoot and steal shirts, for which we had to pay. One of these men hit his head hard against a flat iron and all the miners came and broke up our laundry, chasing us out of town.
They were going to hang us. We lost all our property and $365 in money . . ."
Document D: William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883).
"A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be...The law of survival of the fittest was not made by man, and it cannot be abrogated by man. We can only, by interfering with it, produce the survival of the unfittest."
Document E: Knights of Labor Constitution, 1878
The alarming development and aggressiveness of the power of great capitalists and corporations under the present industrial system will inevitably lead to the pauperization and hopeless degradation of the toiling masses. It is imperative, if we desire to enjoy the full blessings of life, the unjust accumulation and this power for evil of aggregated wealth shall be prevented. This mush-desired object can be accomplished only by the united efforts of those who obey the divine injunction: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." Therefore we have formed the Order of the Knights of Labor for the purpose of organizing, educating and directing the power of the industrial masses.
2

APUSH Unit 6 Heasman DBQ/Assignments
Document F: Andrew Carnegie, “The Gospel of Wealth”. June 1889.
“. . . One of the serious obstacles to the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity. It were better for mankind that the millions of the rich were thrown in to the sea than so spent as to encourage the slothful, the drunken, the unworthy. . . Thus is the problem of rich and poor to be solved. The millionaire will be but a trustee [caretaker] of the poor, entrusted for a while with a great part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far better than it would have done for itself. The day is not far distant when the man who dies leaving behind him millions of available wealth, which was free to him to administer during life, will pass away "unwept, unhonored, and unsung," no matter to what uses he leaves the money which he cannot take with him. Of such as these the public verdict will then be: "The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.”
Document G
3

APUSH Unit 6 Heasman DBQ/Assignments
Document H: Contract between landowner Isham G. Bailey or Marshall County, Mississippi, and freedmen Cooper Hughs and Charles Roberts, January 1, 1867
. . . the said Cooper Hughs. . . with his wife and one other woman, and the said Charles Roberts with his wife Hannah and one boy are to work on said farm and to cultivate forty acres in corn and twenty acres in cotton, to assist in putting the fences on said farm in good order and to keep them so and to do all other work on said farm necessary to be done to keep the same in good order and to raise a good crop and to be under the control and directions of said IG Bailey and to receive for their said services one half of the cotton and one third of the corn and fodder raised by them on said farm in said year 1867."
Document I: Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, to R. L. Sanderson, a young correspondent who had requested career advice (1871). Greeley was an ardent believer in manifest destiny.
Dear Sir:
So many people ask me what they shall do; so few tell me what they can do. Yet this is the pivot wherein all must turn. I believe that each of us who has his place to make should go where men are wanted, and where employment is not bestowed as alms. Of course, I say to all who are in want of work, Go West!
But what can you do? and how can your family help you? Your mother, I infer, is to be counted out as an effective worker. But what of the rest? And you – can you chop? Can you plow? Can you mow? Can you cut up Indian corn? I reckon not. And in the west it is hard to find such work as you have been accustomed to. The conditions of living are very rude there.
On the whole I say, stay where you are; do as well as you can; and devote every spare hour to making yourself familiar with the conditions and dexterity required for the efficient conservation of out-door industry in a new country. Having mastered these, gather up your family and Go West!
4

APUSH Unit 6 Heasman DBQ/Assignments
Document J: "The Protectors of Our Industries", Puck magazine, New York, 1883
Document K: Nelson Manfred Blake, A History of American Life & Thought, 1963
"One of the most profitable opportunities open to authors was to write for juveniles. . . The most spectacular exploit was that of Horatio Alger Jr., who between 1867 and 1899 wrote
135 books for boys. His favorite formula of the poor but honest lad who rises by pluck and industry from rags to riches had universal appeal. According to one estimate the total sale of Alger books was about 17 million, but this can be little better than a guess. Even harder to estimate would be Alger's influence in sharpening the acquisitive instincts of several generations of American boys."
5

APUSH Unit 6 Heasman DBQ/Assignments
Document L: George Rice, “How I Was Ruined by Rockefeller,” New York World, October 16, 1898.
“I am but one of many victims of Rockefeller’s colossal combination,” said Mr. [George] Rice, “and my story is not essentially different from the rest. . . . I established what was known as the Ohio Oil
Works. . . . I found to my surprise at first, though I afterward understood it perfectly, that the
Standard Oil Company was offering the same quality of oil at much lower prices than I could do— from one to three cents a gallon less than I could possibly sell it for.”
“I sought for the reason and found that the railroads were in league with the Standard Oil concern at every point, giving it discriminating rates and privileges of all kinds as against myself and all outside competitors.”
6