he derisive response to Secretary of State William Seward's acquisition on behalf of the United States - attacks from all sides of the political spectrum - indicates the self-confident nature of the times: conventional thinking had it that Americans did not need the luxury of an "icebox," we had everything we needed and would just go on making those things bigger and better.
As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the 19th Century was marked by the transformation of American economic activity from that of a freewheeling, improvised mercantilist approach - one marked by minimal government participation - to the more philosophically-grounded, government-regulated emergence of capitalism in its full industrialist, corporate, monetarist flower. The capitalist ideal was also a reaction to a growing European politico-economic philosophy: communism.
I won't call employers despots, I won't call them tyrants, but the term capitalist is sort of synonymous and will do as well.
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