The American Nation A History of the United States, Combined Volume (14th Edition)

474 Chapter 17 An Industrial Giant Emerges

in 1888 by Edward Bellamy. This book, which sold
over a million copies in its first few years, described a
future America that was completely socialized, all eco-
nomic activity carefully planned. Bellamy compared
nineteenth-century society to a lumbering stagecoach
upon which the favored few rode in comfort while the
mass of the people hauled them along life’s route.
Occasionally one of the toilers managed to fight his
way onto the coach; whenever a rider fell from it, he
had to join the multitude dragging it along.
Such, Bellamy wrote, was the working of the
vaunted American competitive system. He suggested
that the ideal socialist state, in which all citizens
shared equally, would arrive without revolution or
violence. The trend toward consolidation would con-
tinue, he predicted, until one monster trust con-
trolled all economic activity. At this point everyone
would realize that nationalization was essential.
A third influential attack on monopoly was that
of Henry Demarest Lloyd, whose Wealth Against
Commonwealthappeared in 1894. Lloyd, a journalist
of independent means, devoted years to preparing a
denunciation of the Standard Oil Company.
Marshaling masses of facts and vivid examples of
Standard’s evildoing, he assaulted the trust at every
point. In his zeal, Lloyd sometimes distorted and
exaggerated the evidence to make his indictment
more effective. “Every important man in the oil, coal
and many other trusts ought today to be in some one
of our penitentiaries,” he wrote in a typical overstate-
ment—as a polemic his book was peerless. His force-
ful but uncomplicated arguments and his copious
references to official documents made Wealth
Against Commonwealthutterly convincing to thou-
sands. The book was more than an attack on
Standard Oil. Lloyd denounced the application of
Darwin’s concept of survival of the fittest to eco-
nomic and social affairs, and he condemned laissez-
faire policies as leading directly to monopoly.
The popularity of these books indicates that the
trend toward monopoly in the United States worried

many. But despite the drastic changes suggested in

their pages, none of these writers questioned the

underlying values of the middle-class majority. They

insisted that reform could be accomplished without

serious inconvenience to any individual or class. In

Looking BackwardBellamy pictured the socialists of

the future gathered around a radio-like gadget in a

well-furnished parlor listening to a minister delivering

an inspiring sermon.

Nor did most of their millions of readers seriously

consider trying to apply the reformers’ ideas. Henry

George ran for mayor of New York City in 1886 and

lost narrowly to Abram S. Hewitt, a wealthy iron

manufacturer, but even if he had won, he would have

been powerless to apply the single tax to metropolitan

property. The national discontent was apparently not

as profound as the popularity of these works might

suggest. If John D. Rockefeller became the bogey-

man of American industry because of Lloyd’s attack,

no one prevented him from also becoming the richest

man in the United States.

Bellamy, from Looking Backwardat

http://www.myhistorylab.com

Reformers: The Marxists

By the 1870s the ideas of European socialists were

beginning to penetrate the United States, and in

1877 a Socialist Labor party was founded. The first

serious attempt to explain the ideas of German politi-

cal philosopher Karl Marx to Americans was Laurence

Gronlund’sThe Cooperative Commonwealth, which

was published in 1884, two years before Marx’sDas

Kapitalwas translated into English.

Capitalism, Gronlund claimed, contained the

seeds of its own destruction. The state ought to own

all the means of production. Competition was

“Established Anarchy,” middlemen were “parasites,”

speculators “vampires.” “Capital and Labor,” he

wrote in one of the rare humorous lines in his book,

ReadtheDocument

Table 17.1 Defenders of Economic Consolidation

Defenders Occupation Argument

J. Pierpont

Morgan

Wall Street

financier

Excessive competition was wasteful and unstable; stable growth and efficiency required

large business combinations

William Graham

Sumner

Yale professor Large corporations were those that were “fittest”—best-suited to prevail in the

Darwinian world of capitalism

Andrew

Carnegie

Steel

manufacturer

Large corporations generated wealth, which could be channeled into charitable and

other worthy causes