HIST 2112 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Social Darwinism, Agrarian Society, Thorstein Veblen
Document Summary
The south"s economic infrastructure was destroyed from war damages. The north had the money and student leadership from colleges helped lead to a healthier economy than the south. Freed men: the newly freed slaves were no longer tied to their old masters, though many still worked for them because they had nowhere else to go and no resources to break out on their own. The us went from an agrarian society to a rapidly developing industrial one. Factors to industrialization: resources were abundant, beginning of technological advancement (everything more efficient) Increase in labor supply from high birthrate and immigration. Herbert spencer applied darwin"s theory of evolution to society and economics. It offered a rationalization to the accumulation of wealth, slave labor, and why the wealthy were untouchable to the poor. Ideology: life = series of conflicts, 1 winner and loser 1, the conflicts get harder as life goes on, to win they reached perfection.
