Two books---A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn, and America, by George Brown Tindall and David E. Shi---present different portraits of the impact of industrialization on the United States. Generally, while both books bring out both negative and positive aspects of industrialization, Zinn sees its impact as far more negative than do Tindall and Shi.
Tindall and Shi stand in awe at the accomplishments of the industrial giants, calling United States Steel Corporation "a marvel of the new century." They add:
Accompanying the spread of such industrial combinations was a rising standard of living for most people. If the rich were still getting richer, a lot of other people were at least better off. . . . "Upward mobility both from blue-collar to white-collar callings and from low-ranked to high-ranked manual jobs was quite common" (Tindall & Shi 791).
Tindall and Shi do admit that "disparities in the distribution of wealth" had not "disappeared" as a result of industrialization, and they take note of the dehumanization of the growth of industry. Nevertheless, they spend much more effort showing the advances that labor made during this period, as if such advances somehow negated the dehumanizing effects of the industrial process.
If Tindall and Shi seem reluctant to vigorously condemn industrialization's negative impact on human beings, Zinn shows no such reluctance:
In the year 1877, the signals were given for the rest of the century: the black would be put back; the strikes of white workers would not be tolerated; the industrial and political elites of North and South would take hold of the country and organize the greatest march of economic growth in human history (Zinn 247).
In other words, whereas Tindall and Shi seem to be suggesting that industrialization was simply a faceless socioeconomic/scientific force which evolved inevitably out of the growth and changes of capitalism, Zinn is arguing that ...