300 passengers whose names included American industrial barons and their families such as Astor, Guggenheim, Straus and Widener (Geller 13). Second class passengers were the middle class, a growing proportion of the population in Europe and the United States created by the Industrial Revolution with its greater distribution of wealth and diversification of labor (Geller 90). Third class, or steerage, was filled with the lower, working classes many of whom were non-English speaking immigrants going to America in search of a better life (Geller 138).
Many writers have noted that the egomaniacal manner of thinking that gave birth to a ship such as Titanic was also responsible for the death of a majority of her passengers. The Industrial Revolution generated a belief in the power of technology. Titanic was the world's largest man-made moving object and the newest and most luxurious ocean liner. Newspaper and magazines de
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