This period of time appears to be the most ‘laissez-faire’ in American/World history, but it is often treated as a unregulated period of corruption, class conflict, and poverty. I’ve read a thing or two about it on my own, but nothing substantial, and it is always at ends with the much flimsier, more tear-jerking, less meaty school assignments and publicly-broadcast documentaries. So I was hoping if anyone could point me in the way of works you guys have come across, Austrian or not. Thanks.
theirs “american economic history reader” a text I used in school.
Its okay since it presents the mainstream opinion on things but its also bad because it presents the mainstream opinion on things.
But there are some very valuable (intellectually) essays in it and you really get to step inside the minds of certain unpopular (on mises.org) politicians. For instance Henry Clay was so really, really, really anti-free trade that it is still incredible to me.
I know quite a bit about Henry Clay, but he doesn’t have much of anything to do with the Gilded Age (Carnegie, Rockefeller, and other evil bourgeoisie “monopolists”/“robber barons”).
oh sorry, I was thinking about 19th century in general. Actually you’ll also find a lot of other stuff about the gilded age too mainly ida tarbell stuff, a history of carnegie and his innovations, the percent of price drops in oil, etc.
For the Industrial Revolution, T.S. Ashton.
I am not an expert on this period in history. And from an economic perspective, I still have a lot to read on all periods. But I was recently “challenged” with this bit of rambling. Any help on how to crush this post would be appreciated:
Ahh the age of Carnegie.
The oil kings, the glue kings, the copper kings, the robber barons, 1% of the population holding 35 per cent of the national wealth, Jacob Riis photographing the slums and squalor of New York, the murder of strikers at Standard Oil, the inferno at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, 15,000 boys working 11 hour-days underground in the coal mines of the Pennsylvania coal company, John Pierpont Morgan who held 72 directorships in 47 corporations. “America is good enough for me” he once said. “Whenever he tires of it he can give it back to us” came the reply. William Vanderbilt (“the public be damned”), Hetty Green, the richest businesswoman in the world who gave not a single cent to charity, and Carnegie himself who once used 8000 state militiamen and the private Pinkerton agency to break the union in Homestead,Penn and bring charges of treason (!) against 35 union organisers.
Ahh, yes those were the days. Before the State stepped in to ruin everything.
There are all the history lecture series on the Mises Institute. I’m sure there is a lot of good stuff on the Gilded Age in there.
Reconstruction: http://mises.org/media/1883
Myths About Big Business: http://mises.org/media/1887
Labor History: http://mises.org/media/1430 (part 1)
http://mises.org/media/1432 (part 2)