Documenting United States History

314 ChapTEr 13 | a Gilded aGe | period Six 186 5 –1898

wealth, passing through the hands of the few, can be made a much more potent

force for the elevation of our race than if it had been distributed in small sums

to the people themselves. Even the poorest can be made to see this, and to agree

that great sums gathered by some of their fellow-citizens and spent for public

purposes, from which the masses reap the principal benefit, are more valuable to

them than if scattered among them through the course of many years in trifling

amounts.

Andrew Carnegie, The “Gospel of Wealth” Essays and Other Writings, ed. David Nasaw

(New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 8.

praCTICINg historical Thinking

Identify: What does Carnegie mean when he says “public purposes” toward the

end of this excerpt?

Analyze: How does Carnegie argue that wealth that is held by a few can ultimately

benefit the masses?

Evaluate: Evaluate Carnegie’s argument by identifying the potential flaws and

strengths in his logic. Explain your response.

applyINg ap® historical Thinking Skills

sKIll RevIew Contextualization

Consider the following prompt:

Using the documents above and your knowledge of the time period from your text-

book and classroom notes, determine to what extent the period between 1865 and

1898 was, in fact, “gilded.”

steP 1 Organize your evidence

Using a table, a list, or your own graphic organizer, determine the features of each document

that support the notion that this time period was a “gilded age,” where deep social and

political problems were masked by an outward appearance of wealth and prosperity.

For each document, determine which features reveal one or the other side (or both sides)

of the Gilded Age, and note any documents that directly oppose each other.

Clarify the context for each document in terms of the issues that it addresses (for exam-

ple, social, political, economic, or moral issues).

Which of these documents directly oppose each other?

Provide a brief explanation. Which of these documents oppose each other directly?

Determine the contexts that would or would not define this age as “gilded.” Use the

following contexts as a starting point:

TopIC I | the New economy 315

14_STA_2012_ch13_307-326.indd 314 01/04/15 11:25 AM

http://www.ebook777.com