THESIS STATEMENT AND OUTLINE FOR A PAPER ON AMERICAN INDUSTRIALIZATION AFTER THE US CIVIL WAR (1865-1920)

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THESIS STATEMENT

It is a truism that large-scale warfare tends to increase industrial production and innovation, and that societies benefit from this industrialization after the war is over. In America, the Civil War was followed by the economic prosperity of the Gilded Age -- I would like to argue that the chief effect of this prosperity was to cause new conflicts in American society, which had to be settled by reform rather than Civil War.

OUTLINE

This paper will focus on three separate aspects of industrialization: (A) Child labor and other exploitative economic practices / (B) Economic instability / (C) Economic inequality. Aspect (A) will include discussions of child labor in the time period covered, and also discussions of the role played by economics in post-war racial issues (Jim Crow), the radicalization of various populations oppressed by the new economic climate, and the calls for reform. Aspect (B) will cover the financial panics of the Gilded Age, and how they caused such things as the Populist and Free Silver movements. And Aspect (C) will look at the politics…[continue]
Sample of sources used:

Hofstadter, Richard. The American Political Tradition. New York: Vintage, 1989. Print. Oshinsky, David. Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice. New York: Free Press, 1997. Print. White, William Allan. “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” Emporia Gazette, 15 August 1896. Web. Accessed 2 February 2014 at: