Zinn Chapter 11 Summary

In Chapter 11, Zinn talks about how some of the wealthiest people in America came to be, and what they did to obtain that wealth. He states that in order to get and keep their money, powerful businessmen like J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller had to do shady things like bribe Congressmen, pay workers unfairly and hire special personnel to keep rebellious workers from striking. Lies were often used to give poor workers and immigrants false hopes of becoming wealthy and prosperous in the future: “[Their] ‘rags to riches’ stories were useful for making the masses of poor workers believe that they, too, could be wealthy someday”(Zinn 172). What I mostly took away from this chapter was the fact that in order to become rich, you must be willing