Major Historical Issues Critique - Assignment Example

1. The panic of 1893 was a economic depression in the United s. The Panic of 1893 was clearly a depression that prefigured the Great Depressionof the 1930s. If the economic downturn America is experiencing today with unemployment still, though perhaps not for long, below ten percent, then how can the Panic of 1893 not be termed a depression since unemployment rates skyrocketed over twenty percent? As Americans are beginning to experience again, the market conditions engendered by a capitalistic economic theory are wholly reliant upon the stability of a complex mechanism of trade governed by greed and the excess of those in charge of the stewardship of the country’s economy. Today’s economic problems were certainly not caused by the collapse of the banking industry, but the overwhelming power of that sector set up conditions by which that collapse was the engine that drove the seemingly sudden collapse. The Panic of 1893 was not caused by, but was precipitated into a depression, by the disintegration of the railroad industry. What genuinely seems to separate a recession from something much more serious is when a dominant industry sector that is at the top of the heap in terms of being the engine of the entire economy is invested with so much power that its failure spreads outward to devastate the entire economic superstructure. The railroad industry was the igniter of the Panic of 1893, the stock market in 1929 and the banking sector today. Could it be that the true definition of a depression is the revolutionary effect it has on its citizens? If that is the case then the westward movement by great numbers of people in the years following 1893 and 1929 indicate that term depression to describe the Panic of 1893 is entirely appropriate. 2. The Great Chicago fire of 1871, which devastated three square miles, killed more than 250 people and left 18,000 homeless was a wake up call not only in Chicago but other cities. The fire that devastated Chicago in 1871 was one of those events in American history has the effect of shaping both the immediate future and the distant future. Far more than the immediate effects of how rebuilding what was essentially a burgeoning agricultural city into a modern day metropolis is perhaps the effect it had on the growth of the American consciousness. Is it fair to question whether the extraordinary effort that resulted in the charred ruins of Chicago being transformed into one of the most modern cities had more to do with instilling the concept of the American spirit than any other single event to that time? The successful rebuilding, indeed the successful recreation, of Chicago stood as a titanic symbol of what Americans could do with all their technological innovation and the seemingly inexhaustible natural resources at the country’s disposal. Is it too much to suggest that the fire of 1871 in Chicago gave rise to the idea of the indefatigable American spirit that was then cemented the nearly identical effort to rebuild San Francisco following the 1906 earthquake? That spirit of taking on all that Mother Nature or the rest of the world can throw at the country has been tested time and again and though one might well argue that the response to the attacks of 9/11 have been nearly as devastating as the attacks themselves, and though the current economic disaster once again is threatening the very livelihoods of millions, that indomitable spirit that not only rebuilt Chicago but made it even better seems to be alive and well in our unwillingness to simply give up on progress. 3. J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie. Despite the philanthropical pandering of Andrew Carnegie toward the end of his life, both Carnegie and Morgan, along with Cornelius Vanderbilt and John D. Rockefeller and all the other robber barons, or captains of industry depending upon one’s ideological perspective, should be perceived not in heroic terms, but just the opposite. The state of American society in which the reward of monetary compensation pre-empts all other motivations for conduct is at the very heart of the economic gulf that separates the wealthy from the overwhelming bulk of the population. The economic theories propounded by Andrew Carnegie in the most ill-conceived economic tract since Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations is an indicator of the general direction of conservatism in the face of common sense that has engendered into the very fabric of American society the acceptance that paramount above all is the lust for money. In “The Gospel of Wealth” Carnegie actually attempts the argument of convincing readers that the wider the gulf is between the haves and the have-nots is reliable measurement of the success of a society (Kennedy 57). Is this not arguing a case in which all evidence denies the thesis? J.P. Morgan stands more as an iconic villain in the conventional American economic wisdom that competition is a vital element in all aspects of society except the business world. The way in which Morgan and Rockefeller sought to consolidate all the power of the railroad and oil industries into their own hands exists today in the fact that consolidation has managed to transform ATT from a monopoly into a kaleidoscope of several different extant companies and back into a semi-monopoly. Hasn’t the lack of competition and the shrinkage of entire industry sectors greatly contributed to the current economic downturn? 4. The mistreatment of the American Indian 1800. The genocide of the American Indians rises above even the enforced slavery of blacks from Africa as the single greatest cause of guilt over the lack of a correlation between the ideals upon which America is based and the reality. Because slavery was confronted on a political level and because the offenses of Reconstruction, guilt has mainly been averted and, in some cases, even paradoxically reversed to castigate freed slaves in the role of the villain (Ferrell 79). Has the lack of a Civil War that allowed Americans to experience a catharsis been the drive behind the inherent problem associated with the mistreatment of the American Indian in a systemic manner over the course of several centuries? As such, the nation’s psyche has been one that has repressed the anti-Americanism of its treatment of those individuals native to this land. Repressed guilt, of course, foments in the subconscious and seeks always to rise to the surface of the consciousness. Americans have yet to starkly confront the fact that this country has a Holocaust or Khmer Rouge in our archives and instead has only allowed the confrontation with this severe disconnect between the ideals expounded daily by the two Presidential candidates about how much greater America is than the rest of the world through the filter of media. Is it not true that most Americans know about the treatment of the American Indians only through what they have seen on film and TV or novels? The problem is one of conflicting messages; for every serious treatment in a revisionist western film there are twenty John Wayne movies in which the “redskins” are seen has subhuman savages. Works Cited Ferrell, Claudine L. Reconstruction. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003. Kennedy, Gail, ed. Democracy and the Gospel of Wealth. Boston: D. C. Heath, 1949. Read More