Essay on The Role of Capitalists

Words: 1249
Pages: 5

Nick Reynolds
12/4/14
U.S History
G Block
The Role of Capitalists DBQ
Many capitalists worked to shape post Civil War America through building new businesses to employ many people and create new jobs as well as change America through creating new inventions such as a faster and cheaper way of producing steel and discovering the uses and increasing demand for oil. All of these inventions would change America, with the faster and more efficient method of steel production massive skyscrapers rose in the nation's great cities and as oil refining rose so did the popularity of the automobile. With these businesses exploding it created many new jobs and allowed for those who controlled these industries to become some of the richest
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The Capitalists of this time thrived off of the struggle of the poor and depended on them yet

they failed to give back to them and even took more money away from them clearly showing his the capitalists of the time were Robber Barons.
Though the capitalists of the time did create many jobs for those who were very poor they did not care about the conditions that these people had to work in and often put their lives at risk to obtain more profit. In document J and document B we are able to see that they put children to work often times in dangerous conditions. In document B C.D. Warner tells us that, “Every man, woman, and child was actively employed, and in most cases there were fewer idlers than in many Northern towns”. Though one could view this as beneficial that everybody is working Warner fails to tell about the conditions that these people let alone children are put into to make very little money. We are able to see these conditions through the image in document J which depicts a group of young boys dirtied up from working in a coal mine. Coal mines were extremely dangerous and hazardous during this time. Each day the capitalists sent these young men into the coal mines they risked them getting crushed by a mine shaft collapsing as well as endangering them by allowing them to inhale all of the dust and debris that is in the air in the mine shafts. We are also able to see these boys