The industrial revolution: opposing viewpoints

The United States should remain an agricultural nation / Thomas Jefferson

The United States should become a manufacturing nation / Alexander Hamilton

The factories in Lowell benefit their workers / Charles Dickens

The factories in Lowell oppress their workers / "Amelia"

Industrial workers are worse off than black slaves / Orestes A. Brownson

Industrial workers are not worse off than black slaves / Clementine Averill

Concentrations of wealth harm America / Henry George

Concentrations of wealth help America / Andrew Carnegie

Industrialization has created the need for radical social reform / Eugene V. Debs

Radical social reform is unworkable and unnecessary / William Graham Sumner

Industrial trusts are harmful / Woodrow Wilson

Antitrust laws are harmful / Walter Lippmann

Labor unions are harmful / Henry Clews

Labor unions are necessary / Samuel Gompers

A defense of the acts of the Carnegie Steel Company management at Homestead / George Ticknor Curtis

A defense of the actions of strikers at Homestead / Terence V. Powderly

The industrial revolution has benefited American society / David A. Wells

The industrial revolution has created inequality and other social ills / W.D. Dabney

The industrial revolution has harmed society by encouraging women to work outside the home / Washington Gladden

Society is not harmed by women's working outside the home / Ida Husted Harper

The growth of cities must be reversed / Anna R. Weeks

The growth of cities is inevitable and beneficial / F.J. Kingsbury

An attack on child labor practices in industry / Edwin Markham

A defense of child labor practices in industry / Thomas L. Livermore and a North Carolina mill worker

Robber barons contributed to social problems / Howard Zinn

Robber barons have been unfairly denigrated / Burton W. Folsom Jr.