Things Aren't Always as They Seem

                   Our class took on the lesson this week different from the usual set up. To begin our lesson on Rockefeller and Carnegie, we watched a series of videos as a class while taking notes on a google doc that was shared with everyone. We split the notes into key people, key terms, main ideas, key events as topics and were assigned a topic in groups. We then continued to learn about the lesson through documents that were provided for us on our edline page. After we felt like we knew a lot about the lesson. We gathered as a class to come up with the essential question for this lesson that we thought would fit. We came up with a question that asked how Carnegie and Rockefeller monopolies had affected the common worker.
                 To answer this question, first you have to know what a monopoly is. A monopoly is when someone or one group of people have control of a certain commodity or service. When talking about Rockefeller, this was oil, and when talking about Carnegie, the commodity is steel.

This image shows Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company as a powerful Octopus crushing his competitors.

                Rockefeller and Carnegie can be seen to affect the common worker negatively in some aspects while also be seen as positively impacting the common worker. They each dominated in their individual industries, shutting out most of their competitors. Rockefeller would do this by reducing his costs until the competitor was run out of business, then boosting his prices to gain a profit. Carnegie took the lessons he learned from Sir Henry Bessemer back to America. These lessons helped keep the quality of steel high , while keeping the cost low. In doing so Carnegie took control of the steel industry. As both Carnegie and Rockefeller were dominating their separate industries, many workers were faced with unemployment as their company was shut down. Both individuals gained a sense of hatred from the public.
                   However, despite their public views and individual wealth, they continued to better the nation. They largely contributed to helping the economy in America. Carnegie helped the country become the country with the largest steel production in the world, surpassing Great Britain. Rockefeller started exporting his oil to other countries, also helping the American economy. In addition both men donated extremely large portions of their wealth to universities, charities and much more. Many of Rockefeller's donations went unnoticed by the public. Rockefeller once said in an interview with William Hoster, " I believe the power to make money is a gift of God ... to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind. Having been endowed with the gift I possess, I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man according to the dictates of my conscience." I think it's safe to say Rockefeller stuck to his words when it has been said that he gave away 500 million  of his 900 million dollar fortune. He gave a sum of money to Spelman College in Georgia which educated African- American women, founded the University of Chicago, helped provide relief after World War I, and like Carnegie put his money toward philanthropic institutions one of which helped cure yellow fever. Carnegie put his money toward libraries, church organs, benefits and funds for his former employees, and much more. The Carnegie Corporation of New York was created in 1911 in order to distribute his money for educational and research purposes. "Rags to riches" is a concept proven true by the one and only Carnegie who rose to being one of the wealthiest men in America from living his earlier years in poverty.  The duo demonstrated to others how to become a successful business man and how to distribute one's fortune respectively even though being negatively perceived by the public.
                  In the end, I think that Rockefeller and Carnegie positively impacted the society and common workers, more than they negatively impacted them. I believe that the negative public opinion was out of envy and jealousy of their wealth and successful business tactics. Society should consider both the positive and negative actions of an individual before coming to a conclusion about them. This concept isn't as easy as it sounds, but it is always important to at least give it a try.

Picture and quote document here.