You thrive in the recently industrialized and urbanized world. The
environment and immigrants have contributed to your enrichment as a boss,
like Tweed. As a Party Boss, you need the voting support of the masses. To
achieve this you help them financially, support their needs in government,
and do not try to interfere with their culture (since it does not negatively
affect you). You support them and help them survive, but do so for your own
personal gain. Some call you corrupt, but many immigrants rely on you.
Similarly as an industrialist, success is most important. The jobs that you
offer are low-skilled and therefore low-paid. It is not that you want your
workers to suffer, it is just that improving pay and working conditions would
not be efficient. As both the boss and industrialist, you rely on the
immigrants for your success and do not intentionally do them harm.
Important questions to consider as a party boss/industrialist:
1. How do you feel about the urbanization and industrialization?
2. How do you feel about the immigrants?
3. What foundations guide your actions? Laissez faire economics?
Efficiency? Social Darwinism?
4. Are you a positive or negative effect on the immigrants? Is it that
simple?
5. If all were forced to follow the same standards of pay and working
conditions would you? (only for industrialist)
6. Should the government force improvements in tenements and factories?
Internet Links
Gilded Age America:
For the situation of the industrialists
http://www.loyno.edu/~seduffy/gildedage.html
Investigating the Gilded Age:
Read �Amazing Technological Advances� and �Acquiring Unimaginable Prosperity�
http://www.slu.edu/the_arts/cupples/gilded.html
Political Machines and Politics of the Gilded Age:
Powerpoint on party bosses
users/csauter/AP%20US%20History%20Class%20Notes/Political%20Machines.ppt
Investigating the Gilded Age
read �The Plight of Labor�
http://www.slu.edu/the_arts/cupples/gilded.html
Jewish History:
About the Kishinev massacre in 1903
http://www.jewishhistory.org.il/1900.htm
Italian-Americans:
About economic cause for Italian emigration and general description of
immigrant reaction to education system
http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~efhayes/italian.htm
Other Resources
1. Class Text
2. Alan Kraut, The Huddled Masses: The Immigrant in American Society, 1880-
1921.