Zinn's Argument Analysis

Zinn’s argument is that the government and rich corporations were working together to further their interests, at the the expense of the poor. By stratifying different racial, ethnic, and gender groups, and rewarding them differently, revolutions were able to be suppressed. Zinn says, “the black would be put back; the strikes of white workers would not be tolerated; the industrial and political elites of North and South would take hold of the country and organize the greatest march of economic growth...They would do it with the aid of, and at the expense of, black, white, chinese, European immigrant, and female labor, rewarding them differently by race, sex, etc… in such a way as to create separate levels of oppression- a skillful terracing

to stabilize the pyramid of wealthy.” Combining this with a lifestyle of consumerism and modern entertainment made it very difficult for the “proletariat revolution” that Marxist groups predicted would occur.
The welfare state that developed in the years after Reconstruction directly benefitted the corporations. The corporations would use their enormous profits to make campaign contributions to Senators and Congressmen, who would then levy federal power to make favorable legislation for the corporations. Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan are three of the best examples of this process. Because the government was getting a steady paycheck from corporations, it looked the other way in civil affairs relating to worker condition. It wasn’t just a northern elite that did this. It was a national industrial elite who used their money to move the government in their favor. A good example of this is the White Supremacy campaign of 1898 in North Carolina because the architects of the campaign were receiving contributions from corporations that directly benefitted from it. Additionally, the working class of the South was being “divided and conquered” using white fears of “negro domination” or black political empowerment and mobility. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was passed in order to limit the power of the growing number of monopolies, but the Supreme Court, which at the time was composed of mostly elites, interpreted it in a way that preserved the consolidation of power among the elite. An example of this is when the Supreme Court decided that a monopoly on sugar refining did not cover commerce, so the Act could not apply there. It also ruled that the Sherman Anti-Trust Act could be used against interstate strikes because “they were in restraint of trade.”

What are the most meaningful examples and/or most persuasive items of evidence that Zinn uses to illustrate his argument?

The most meaningful examples Zinn uses to illustrate his argument are the stories of J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie. Morgan gained his money by selling defective rifles for a high price, selling gold to the government in exchange for bonds that he sold at a higher price, and buying up and consolidating companies to create monopolies, as well as sitting on the board of 48 companies at his peak. In 1901, Morgan bought Carnegie’s steel company, which was making $40 million per year in profits, for $480 million. Morgan was never punished for selling his defective rifles, even though they blew people’s thumbs off.
Another one of Zinn’s example
s is John D. Rockefeller, who founded Standard Oil. Rockefeller made secret deals with railroad companies to get discounts. He bought most of his competitors and created a monopoly. The companies he didn’t buy out he quietly got rid of via arranged explosions and other such events. In 1891, Standard Oil accounts for 90% of US exports of kerosene and 70% of the world markets. By 1899, his company has a capital investment of $10 million, and his holding company was making profits of $81 million per year. Rockefeller then moved into other industries (coal, shipping, banking, etc) and was making millions in profits every year.
Andrew Carnegie was the steel tycoon.

He was able to sell steel for a large profit because Congress placed a tariff on foreign steel. This allowed Carnegie to raise his prices for steel to allow him to make a huge profit. J.P. Morgan then bought Carnegie’s very successful steel company, along with several other ones, and formed the US Steel Corporation. According to Zinn, Morgan and Carnegie were able to make such absurd profits “By making sure Congress passed tariffs keeping out foreign steel; by closing off competition and maintaining the price at $28 a ton; and by working 200,000 men twelve hours a day for wages that barely kept their families alive.”

The last piece of evidence that Zinn uses is the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. This act was called “An Act to protect trade and commerce against unlawful restraints” and was supposed to protect interstate and foreign commerce and dissolve monopolies. Corporations found loopholes to preserve their monopolies and use the Act instead to combat workers’ strikes and higher income tax rates.

The 14th Amendment was created to help protect the rights of blacks, but instead was twisted to benefit corporations. In 1886, 230 state laws that regulated corporations were abolished. Of all the Supreme Court cases about the Fourteenth Amendment from 1890 to 1910, 19 were about the rights of blacks, and 288 were about

corporations.
President Cleveland refused to give $100,000 in aid to Texan farmers in a drought, but gave $45 million to rich bondholders.

Thought on the “American Dream”-
It has been greatly argued since its introduction in the gilded age, if achievement of the “American Dream” is a direct result of hard work or if the concept itself is a cultural construction put forth by the elite. Zinn’s argument states that the “American Dream” as we know it did not originate from truth and is propagated to the poor to make them work harder to make the elite more wealthy. This argument is well representative of the American Dream. For example, Zinn states that, in a survey taken of railroad, textile and steel executives, 90% of them originated from either middle or upper class families. This distribution of executives does not match the distribution of the general population, in which most people live which is the poor / lower class. This goes to show how there is not equal opportunity to become successful throughout different classes of society.
In addition, the American Dream is beneficial to the elite. If the rich upper class could pound the idea of the “American Dream” into the heads of their workers, then they would be motivated to work hard to achieve such a dream even though the chance of them achieving such dream is next to none. The upper class did this by presenting the workers with example of the small number of people to achieve the “American Dream” and apply these examples to the population as a whole. Like many lies, the American Dream contains a very small kernel of truth in that it has applied to a small amount of people throughout the Gilde
d Age. On this matter, Zinn states, “The Horatio Alger stories of rags to riches were true for a few men but mostly a myth and a useful myth for control.”
While the white working class had political freedom through activist parties such as the populists, they still did not have the ability to politically compete at the same level as the Republicans and thus did not have quite as much influence over the political systems. In addition, all the of the problems that existed were funneled into an existing two-party system which was ineffective due to its focus on irrelevant problems and factors. As Henry Adams, a literary commentator of the time, says, “We are here plunged in politics funnier than words can express… the amusing thing is that no one talks about real interests. By common consent they agree to let these alone.”
One of the most outrageous examples of propagation of the American Dream is Russell Conwell’s “Acres of Diamonds” lecture in which he says, “The men who get rich may be the most honest men you find in the community.” Which is obviously false because the method upon which people became rich, via cooperations and trusts, was not ethical at all.

He also states, “Let us remember there is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings.” This is obvious false propagation of the American Dream, blaming people who are unable to acheive it on their own actions rather than the economic situation in which they exist. Very few people become successful, it is irrational to believe that all of those people fail to succeed for the sole reason that they do not work hard enough. It is basic ignorance of the capitalistic systems upon which both the economy and society is

founded.