Although there is now a much greater appreciation of the contributions of some of the business leaders of the last century, the robber-baron accusation is not to be lightly dismissed. Ruthlessness and the price paid by competitors and employees must still be considered. Ask students to respond to this question: Do the achievements of business leaders in the last third of the nineteenth century justify what they did to attain those results? Ask students to identify in writing five different results and prepare a statement of a page or so in response to the question. See Gail Kennedy, editor, Democracy and the Gospel of Wealth (1949), and Earl Latham, editor, John D. Rockefeller: Robber Baron or Industrial Statesman (1949). Both are in the Problems of American Civilization Series. See also H. Wayne Morgan, editor, The Gilded Age: A Reappraisal (1963), especially the essay by John Tipple, "The Robber Baron in the Gilded Age."

Students who condemn some activities of Carnegie or Rockefeller or Gould may still admire the men. Students who condemn the men may still have some measure of admiration for their accomplishments. The same is true for other business, political, and labor leaders. Help students prepare a list of leading figures of the day such as those named, as well as Henry J. Field, Henry C. Frick, Eugene Debs, John Peter Altgeld, and others. For each name, associate a specific event of importance. Then ask each student to write a letter of praise or criticism to a figure on the list concerning the event in question. Have a few students read the letters in class and open discussion of them.

The rags-to-riches myth can be viewed as an example of American optimism. Ask one part of the class to look at the possibility of economic advancement in late-nineteenth-century America. Ask another part of the class to read one of the Horatio Alger stories about Mark the Match Boy or Ragged Dick or Tom the Bootblack. The question for class discussion: Why do you think that Americans have so vigorously persisted in believing in the possibility of rags to riches? See Irvin G. Wyllie, The Self-Made Man in America: The Myth of Rags to Riches (1954); Frances W. Gregory and Irene D. Neu, "The American Industrial Elite in the 1870s: Their Social Origins," in Men in Business: Essays on the Historical Role of the Entrepreneur, edited by William Miller (1952); John G. Cawelti, Apostles of the Self-Made Man: Changing Concepts of Success in America (1965); Richard Weiss, The American Myth of Success: From Horatio Alger to Norman Vincent Peale (1988); and Carol Hackenoff, The Fictional Republic: Horatio Alger and American Political Discourse (1994).