Please answer two of the following questions in essays totalling approximately five pages (that is, each essay should total not less than two full pages and not more than three full pages of text, typed and double-spaced in a twelve-point font). Please number your pages. Do not re-type the question onto your paper; use the question numbers to indicate which questions you are answering.
An electronic copy of your exam must be turned in to the dropbox “Exam One” under “Assessments” on D2L by 11:00 A.M. on Tuesday, September 27. Please submit your exam as a Word document—not in Pages or as a PDF. If you have questions about any aspect of the exam, please don’t hesitate to ask. My office hours are Tuesdays, 12:30-3:00, in Hellems 258.
This exam is intended to test your mastery of the assigned course materials, so I do not expect you to do any outside reading or research for your essays. Please do not present the Wikipedia version of Andrew Carnegie, or SparkNotes-derived insights on Out of This Furnace. But if you should have a truly compelling reason for using an external source on some particular point (for example, you’ve found an irresistably great quote that you want to use), then you must fully credit and document that source in a footnote or endnote. If you should quote from one of the assigned sources, you need not include a formal footnote; just note the author and page number in parentheses after the quotation, like this:
The textbook states that although there had been important strikes in the
1870s and 1880s, it was in the 1890s that “workers took a stand” (Roark, p. 368).
If you are using an edition of the textbook other than the one that is assigned (the 6th “Value Edition”), please state in a footnote, or in your first parenthetical reference, what edition you’ve used.
Remember that whenever you use another writer’s language—whether it’s a distinctive phrase, a sentence, a paragraph, or more—you must put that language in quotation marks and give proper credit. All written assignments for this course will be checked for originality by Turnitin.com.
Correct grammar, mechanics, and spelling are expected. Before beginning your paper, read through the “Notes on Writing,” which you’ll find posted on D2L. You will be held accountable for all of the items listed in that document. On other matters of usage, grammar, mechanics, and style, you may refer to any conventional style manual such as Kate Turabian’s Manual for Writers, or to the History Department’s “Paper Guidelines,” which are available on the department’s website at http://history.colorado.edu/undergraduates/paper-guidelines.
There is no single “correct” answer to any of the essay questions below, but you should show that you have read carefully and thought independently about the material, and have also
History 1025 Fall 2016

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considered relevant points that were made in class. Support your generalizations with specific examples drawn from the readings and from class, making sure not to limit yourself to examples I discussed in lecture. You should also feel free to cite songs, visual images, and any other resources that were presented in class; all PowerPoint presentations are available on D2L. Regarding Out of This Furnace, you will not be expected to offer literary analysis or lengthy plot summaries. Rather, you should use the novel as a source of examples and information about social history, such as immigrant experiences, urban life, the impact of industrialization on workers and their families, gender roles, and working-class survival strategies.
After choosing one of the questions that you feel best prepared to write about, start by carefully rereading it. Make sure that you understand its different parts, and plan how you will frame an answer that responds fully to each aspect of the question. Jotting down a brief topic outline can be a good way to keep yourself on track as you begin to write. Remember that an essay is not just a display of information. Historians try to make connections, to show causality, to explain historical actors’ motivations, and to demonstrate change and continuity over time. In an excellent essay, the writer will integrate material from both the lectures and the assigned readings into an argument. Be careful not to over-generalize (“Most Americans were middle- class”), or to rely on general terms (“industrialization,” “laissez-faire”) without demonstrating an understanding of what they mean.
Here is an example of an essay question I have used in the past:
To what extent did Gilded-Age America represent laissez-faire principles of government, economics, and society in action? Discuss at least two groups or individuals who challenged those principles, and the results of their challenges.
You could argue this question either way. If you want to stress your belief that America was a laissez-faire nation, you might discuss the post-Civil War government’s refusal to confiscate and redistribute the former Confederates’ land, the power of the weakly-regulated railroad companies, the careers and ideas of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, the weaknesses of the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the Supreme Court’s pro-business rulings, Grover Cleveland’s responses to the 1893 depression and to the Pullman strike, and the generally unplanned, unregulated nature of urban and industrial development, including their impacts on working-class Americans (especially the new immigrants, as seen in Out of This Furnace).
On the other hand, if you want to argue that laissez-faire doesn’t really describe the kind of economy and society we had, you might emphasize that government’s active support for business (the tariff, land grants and subsidies for railroads, Cleveland’s de facto support for business over labor) didn’t really represent a neutral, “hands-off” approach, and—in a different sense—that the establishment of the principle of regulation in the ICC and the Sherman Act, and in state and local ordinances as well, also undercut a truly laissez-faire order. Challengers to laissez-faire could include the Congressional sponsors of the ICC and the Sherman Act, the Knights of Labor, Henry George, Edward Bellamy, Eugene Debs and the ARU, Jacob Coxey, and the Populists. You could also consider whether the frustrations and even the ultimate fate of Mike Dobrejcak might be relevant in answering this question.
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Please answer one question from Part A, and one from Part B. Each essay is worth fifty points; the entire exam is worth twenty percent of your final grade.
Part A
1. The Gilded Age is often seen as a time when organization, cooperation, and efficiency began to replace disorder, competition, and inefficiency in American society and life. Describe and explain this shift as it affected two of the following: business, labor, farmers, politics. What changed, and what were the limits to change?
2. Imagine a debate on the present state and future prospects of American society among any three of the following: Andrew Carnegie, Eugene V. Debs, a Populist leader such as Mary Lease, and William McKinley. What specific concerns and hopes would each express? On what major points would each agree or disagree with the others?
Part B
1. Compare the lives of two American families. Jacob Brown began life as a slave in Mississippi just before the Civil War, and by the 1890s lived with his wife and children in Chicago, where he had found work; George Kracha and his relatives, whom we know from Out of This Furnace, lived mainly in Pennsylvania steel towns during the same decade. If both families had experiences that were typical for their social groups, how might Brown and Kracha measure their progress toward achieving the “American Dream” by the 1890s? What obstacles did they face, and what resources and opportunities did they have?
2. From the viewpoint of native-born Americans, what seemed “new” about the “new immigrants?” How did some of the specific experiences of the characters in Out of This Furnace reflect the new immigrants’ general dilemmas, opportunities, and survival strategies? How would a nativist explain the troubles encountered by Kracha and his family and friends? How might a reformer such as Jane Addams respond to the nativist’s arguments?