Dear Student:

I hope that you enjoy the course. You will not agree with all my interpretations, but I am confident that your encounter with the material will sharpen your critical skills. Feel free to take whatever position you want on the first and fourth papers, as long as it has some logical coherence, is clearly and tightly argued, at least briefly critiques opposing points of view, and is supported by a variety of points from readings. Make as strong a case as possible for your points and demolish, as best you can in the brief space allotted, the main criticisms that might be leveled at your point of view.

For the first assignment, I make one change and also a suggestion. Students have trouble imagining alternatives to the Robber Baron view of the world and that makes it is easy to conclude that “everyone was doing it.” But there were alternatives. One involved visions like Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward. That book was enormously popular and its popularity indicated that many people were looking for a different way to organize society and the economy. I would like you to include the Bellamy reading as part of your first paper. (Some of the course guide directions have not been updated yet to include this new requirement.)

And the suggestion: there are other works that discuss an alternative to the Robber Baron view of the world. Herbert G. Gutman's "Protestantism and the American Labor Movement: The Christian Spirit in the Gilded Age" is very useful. It appeared in Gutman's Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America (1977) and it was anthologized elsewhere. A number of intellectual histories of the late nineteenth century also yield insights. The sections of the social gospel in Henry F. May's Protestant Churches and Industrial America (1949, 1967, and probably later editions) are an example. Please note that the citations in this paragraph are not required reading for the first paper.

Before you get too deeply into the final paper, drop me a note about your proposed topic. Above all, define a manageable and exciting topic that forces you take some kind of position or conclude with your judgments.

You are responsible for reading the assignments carefully. If you are having difficulty with finishing the course on time, let me know several weeks before the end of the semester, so that we can discuss it. When the course is over, I’d appreciate your negative and positive comments - the more precise and specific the better.

COURSE AUDIO

The audio selections for this course are now available online and on CDs. They are no longer available on audio cassette tapes as indicated in some course literature. If you are not able to listen to these audio files, you will need to request a CD from the HUX office (310-243-3743).

You may listen to the files below by either 1) right-clicking (control-click on a Macintosh) on the links and choosing Save Selection As or Save Link As, and then saving the file to your computer. This method will allow you to listen to them at any time. Note the file sizes below. If your internet connection is dial-up rather than broadband, the download will take some time. Or 2) left-clicking (normal clicking on a Macintosh) on the file name. If you have any audio program capable of playing an MP3 file, such as iTunes* or Window Media Player (included with the Windows operating system), the file should begin to play within a minute.

HUX 554 audio selections, part 1 (originally side A of the course tape). File size: 35.1 MB.

HUX 554 audio selections, part 2 (originally side B of the course tape). File size: 6.4 MB.

*Download a Free copy of iTunes at: http:www.apple.com/itunes.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

• To understand and evaluate the causes and effects, immediate and long-range, of the rise of big business in the United States in its formative period, through the lives of three key individuals, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Henry Ford, and through the subsequent economic history of the United States;

• To understand the nature of "big business," in particular, what distinguished it from business forms that preceded it;

• To understand the forces that created big business, and to weigh the role of individuals against the power of economic tendencies;

• To understand the manner in which big business altered the practice of economic competition and economic opportunities in America, and to understand that the effects of industrial capitalism on the production of society’s goods were not simply technological, but that they changed the way people worked and related to one another on the job;

• To understand how the world we live in was created by our three individuals and other business leaders of the time and to come to some judgment about their achievements;

• To gain a rudimentary knowledge of such concepts as competition, monopoly, laissez-faire, and depression;

• To analyze and judge the ideas used to justify big business and economic inequality and to examine alternatives to big business philosophy;

• To learn to critically analyze various interpretations of problems in American economic history and to come to some judgment about them;

• To acquire an overview of key events in American labor history from 1870 to 1940.

BOOKS REQUIRED

• Bellamy, Looking Backward (McGraw-Hill), ISBN 0-07-554374-5

• Braverman, Labor & Monopoly Capital (Monthly Review Press), ISBN 0-85345-370-5

• Josephson, Robber Barons (Harcourt Brace Jovanich), ISBN 0-15-676790-2

• Porter, The Rise of Big Business: 1860-1910 2^nd Ed. (Harlan Davidson/Forum Press), ISBN 0-88295-750-3

• Joseph Gibaldi and Walter Achtert, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (New York: 1988), ISBN 0-87352-379-2 (Note: This book is required for all HUX Courses.)

COURSE BACKGROUND and HELPFUL HINTS

by Frank Stricker

This course guide includes lectures, articles, study questions for your reading, assignments, and bibliographies. Before you begin reading the assigned books, you might read the appropriate lectures and study questions. (In fact, it might be a good idea to skim over the whole study guide, at once, since many questions recur.)

My lecture in most sections is meant to supply information, raise questions, and offer my interpretations of individuals and institutions. My lectures make no pretense at "impartiality." Although I naturally believe that my views best fit reality, I have not arrived at them by seeking to equate objectivity and neutrality. As you will see, I do not believe the truth is to be found by straddling the fence.

What this means is that you can use my lectures not only as a source of additional information and as a guide to your readings, but as another reading, another interpretation. And, of course, you are free to differ with my interpretations, just as you will differ with some of those in your assigned materials.

Most sections also include a series of study questions. These are not to be handed in; they are to help guide your reading, and you will probably find it useful to read them before you do your reading. You will undoubtedly think of other important questions for the material, and that is fine.

• Return to HUX 554 Index