Gilded Age Handout

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Gilded Age Handout The Gilded Age is defined as the time between the Civil War and World War I (1870- 1900) during which the U.S. population and economy grew quickly, there was a lot of political corruption and corporate financial misdealing’s and many wealthy people lived very fancy lives. The Process: Need….Industrial Revolution…Innovation….Positive Benefits….Negative Benefits….Laws We have covered this so far in class Now we are to the Laws part of the Process. Pendleton Act inaugurates U.S. civil service system, Jan. 16, 1883. On this day in 1883, President Chester Arthur signed into law the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which established the principle that federal jobs should be awarded based on merit rather than through political connections. Prior to this many government jobs were given to friends, family or supporters after they won election even though they had no qualifications or competence to do the job, they only wanted the power, prestige or money that came with the position. Passed in 1890, the Sherman Antitrust Act was the first major legislation passed to address oppressive business practices associated with cartels and oppressive monopolies. The Sherman Antitrust Act is a federal law prohibiting any contract, trust, or conspiracy in restraint of interstate or foreign trade. The law applies not only to formal cartels but also to any agreement to fix prices, limit industrial output, share markets, or exclude competition. The first vigorous enforcement of the Sherman Antitrust Act occurred during the administration of U.S. Pres. Theodore Roosevelt (1901–09) against the Northern Securities Company in 1904. President Taft used the law in 1911 against John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company. 2 other Theories came out during this time: Social Darwinism: The theory that individuals, groups, and peoples are subject to the same Darwinian (Charles Darwin) laws of natural selection as plants and animals. Social Darwinism was advocated by Herbert Spencer (Idea of Survival of the Fittest) and others in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was used to justify political conservatism, imperialism, and racism and to discourage intervention and reform. An example of Social Darwinian theory is that we should let people in poverty die of starvation and not help them because they are the weaker human beings. If they were strong enough then they would not be poor. This “natural selection” makes the human race and the gene pool better. Gospel of Wealth: The idea was proposed in an article written by Andrew Carnegie in June of 1889 that describes the responsibility of philanthropy by the new upper class of self-made rich. Carnegie proposed that the best way of dealing with the new phenomenon of wealth inequality was for the wealthy to utilize their surplus means in a responsible and thoughtful manner. As a result, the wealthy should administer their riches responsibly and not in a way that encourages "the slothful, the drunken, the unworthy". An example would be give money to build a school or a hospital instead of giving money directly to the poor. .

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Survival of the Fittest Theory Darwinism's Limits
Survival of the ﬁttest theory: Darwinism's limits - opinion - 03 ... http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527466.100-survival-... SUBSCRIBE TO NEW SCIENTIST Select a country Subscribe Opinion search New Scientist Go Login Home News In-Depth Articles Blogs Opinion Video Galleries Topic Guides Last Word E-Newsletter Subscribe Look for Science Jobs SPACE TECH ENVIRONMENT HEALTH LIFE PHYSICS&MATH SCIENCE IN SOCIETY Home | Opinion | Life | Opinion Survival of the fittest theory: Darwinism's limits 03 February 2010 by Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini Magazine issue 2746. Subscribe and get 4 free issues. For similar stories, visit the The Big Idea and Evolution Topic Guides PRINT SEND This week's issue READERS in search of literature about Darwin or Darwinism will have no trouble finding it. Recent milestone anniversaries of Darwin's birth and of the Subscribe publication of On the Origin of Species have prompted a plethora of material, so authors thinking of adding another volume had better have a good excuse for it. We have written another book about Darwinism, and we urge you to take it to heart. Our excuse is in the title: What Darwin Got Wrong. Much of the vast neo-Darwinian literature is distressingly uncritical. The possibility that anything is seriously amiss with Darwin's account of evolution is hardly considered. Such dissent as there is often relies on theistic premises which Darwinists rightly say have no place in the evaluation of scientific theories. So onlookers are left with the impression that there is little or nothing about Darwin's theory to which a scientific naturalist could reasonably object.
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