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Palaces and Tenements: Sourcing Carnegie and Riis

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Palaces and Tenements: Sourcing Carnegie and Riis

Source two adapted documents to explain big business, labor unrest and immigrant life in New York.

Background: New York, 1865–1890

Read the passage. Then answer the questions.

The Top Half and the Other Half

1After the Civil War, railroads became the first truly big businesses in the United States. Cornelius Vanderbilt, who had made a fortune in steamboats, bought several railroads and combined them into the New York Central. By the 1870s, lines he controlled ran from New York City to Buffalo and on to Chicago. Railroad companies employed tens of thousands of workers and bought huge amounts of iron, steel and coal. They also set the rates that farmers and merchants paid to ship their goods. Their owners grew richer than almost anyone in the country had been before.

2In 1873 a financial panic set off a long depression, and many railroads cut wages, some more than once. In July 1877, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad announced another 10 percent pay cut. Railroad workers at Martinsburg, West Virginia, stopped the trains. Within days, strikes and angry crowds spread along the rail lines to Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Chicago and St. Louis. Governors called out state militia, and President Rutherford B. Hayes sent federal troops. By the time the Great Railroad Strike ended, about 100 people had been killed, and most strikers had not won back their pay.

3The strike showed both sides how much power the railroads held. Many workers decided that only larger, stronger unions could bargain with such huge companies, and in the 1880s the Knights of Labor, a union open to many kinds of workers, grew quickly. Many newspapers and business leaders blamed the strikers for the violence, and several cities built armories to house militia troops.

4Meanwhile, New York's harbor was the main gateway for newcomers. From 1855 to 1890, most immigrants arriving in New York passed through Castle Garden, a station at the southern tip of Manhattan. Many had little money left to travel farther, and many found work nearby on the docks, in building construction and in the clothing trade. They crowded into tenements, narrow buildings of five or six stories with several families on each floor. A state law of 1879 required a window in every room, but many of those windows opened only onto a narrow air shaft.

1.
Underline the sentence from paragraph 1 that best explains why farmers and merchants depended on the railroad companies.

2.
Use paragraph 2. Why did the 1877 strike most likely spread so quickly from Martinsburg to cities hundreds of miles away?
Question 2 options
3.
Use paragraphs 2 and 3. Sort each action by who took it.
4.
In 1885, a tailor from the Russian Empire lands at Castle Garden with very little money. Based on paragraph 4, where would he most likely live and work?
Question 4 options

Source the documents

Read each source note first: who wrote it, when, for whom and why. Then read the adapted excerpt.

Source A: adapted from "Wealth," an essay by Andrew Carnegie in the North American Review, June 1889. The magazine was read mostly by educated, well-off Americans. Carnegie had come to the United States from Scotland as a poor boy of 12 and once worked in a cotton mill for about $1.20 a week. By 1889 he owned steel mills and had one of the largest fortunes in the country.
"The contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the laborer shows how much civilization has changed. This change should not be regretted; it should be welcomed. Competition may sometimes be hard for the individual, but it is best for the nation, because it makes sure the most able rise to the top. The duty of the rich man is to live modestly and to treat his extra wealth as a trust, to be spent on libraries, parks, concert halls and schools that help people help themselves. The man who dies rich dies disgraced."
Source B: adapted and shortened from How the Other Half Lives, a book by Jacob Riis, 1890. Riis came to New York from Denmark in 1870 and was poor for years before he became a police reporter. He took flash photographs inside tenements and wrote the book to push readers and lawmakers to improve housing. Like many writers of his time, he sometimes described immigrant groups with unfair stereotypes.
"Be a little careful, please! The hall is dark, and you might stumble over the children playing on the stairs. Not a window lets in light here; the fresh air never enters. Up four flights, in two small rooms, a family of seven lives, cooks and works. The father, the mother and the oldest girl sew coats for a contractor, paid by the piece, from early morning until late at night. Three-fourths of New York's people live in tenements like this one. The landlord collects his rent each month, and the house earns him a good return."
5.
Use the note for Source A. Who was Carnegie's main audience?
Question 5 options
6.
Underline the sentence from Source A that defends hard conditions for workers as good for the country, the idea a striking railroad worker would most likely reject.

7.
Riis writes that three-fourths of New York's people lived in tenements. How should a historian treat this number?
Question 7 options
8.
Riis wanted readers and lawmakers to improve housing. How did this purpose most likely shape his description?
Question 8 options
9.
Carnegie writes about "the cottage of the laborer." How does Source B challenge this picture of how many workers lived?
Question 9 options

Make a claim

Use the passage and both sources.

10.
Claim: "The growth of big business in the late 1800s helped some Americans far more than others." Do you agree or disagree? Make your own claim, use at least two pieces of evidence from the passage and the sources, and explain your reasoning. Then tell which source is more useful for understanding workers' lives, and why.