For topic 6.6 - The Rise of Industrial Capitalism, you will go to The National College Board site. There you will have a short lecture video to watch followed by a few multiple choice questions to answer. If you are unable to access the questions on the College Board website, I have also posted them below. You would then just submit your answers through the Google Classroom.
Use the following passage to answer the questions below:
“Economically speaking, aggregated [accumulated] capital will be more and more essential to the performance of our social tasks. Furthermore, it seems to me certain that all aggregated capital will fall more and more under personal control. Each great company will be known as controlled by one master mind. The reason for this lies in the great superiority of personal management over management by boards and committees. This tendency is in the public interest, for it is in the direction of more satisfactory responsibility. The great hindrance to the development of this continent has lain in the lack of capital. The capital which we have had has been wasted by division and dissipation, and by injudicious applications. The waste of capital, in proportion to the total capital, in this country between 1800 and 1850, in the attempts which were made to establish means of communication and transportation, was enormous. The waste was chiefly due to ignorance and bad management, especially to State control of public works. We are to see the development of the country pushed forward at an unprecedented rate by an aggregation of capital, and a systematic application of it under the direction of competent men. This development will be for the benefit of all, and it will enable each one of us, in his measure and way, to increase his wealth. We may each of us go ahead to do so, and we have every reason to rejoice in each other’s prosperity. . . . Capital inherited by a spendthrift [person who spends money freely] will be squandered and re-accumulated in the hands of men who are fit and competent to hold it. So it should be, and under such a state of things there is no reason to desire to limit the property which any man may acquire.”
William Graham Sumner, university professor, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other, 1883
1) The excerpt best reflects which of the following economic developments in the late 1800s?
A) The rise in demand for immigrant labor in factories
B) The political advocacy for seeking overseas markets
C) The increase in wealth inequality in United States society
D) The reduction in conflict between managers and workers
2) The practices of big-business leaders in the late 1800s best reflect which of the following actions illustrated by the excerpt?
A) Big-business leaders misused most of the money that they inherited on unprofitable ventures.
B) Big-business leaders cared little about the working conditions for laborers in their factories.
C) Big-business leaders supported government efforts to lessen the effects of depressions.
D) Big-business leaders used their influence to facilitate rapid economic growth.
3) The excerpt best reflects which of the following economic developments in the late 1800s?
A) The growth in support for government regulation of the economy
B) The consolidation of power over the economy by business leaders
C) The end of federal support for transportation infrastructure projects
D) The spread of technological innovations in agricultural production