Democracy is the foundation of the American government, and its application creates the opportunity of social class intermingling. Albeit in the form of social interaction or working one’s way up the chain of command. The labor standoff between the Homestead workers and management became the tipping point for manners in American democracy. This tipping point resulted in violent altercations, assassination attempts, and ultimately broken spirits. The Homestead strike in the 19th century not only exemplifies how democracy instigated class blending, but also diminished morality. The Homestead strike lacked morality because Americans character is made from choice and opportunity. The freedom of choice and opportunity gives Americans the sense of equality. In the book Democracy in America, De Tocqueville notes that the social classes will intersect and the definitive lines of social hierarchy will blur (Tocqueville, 1840, 99). In the distortion, …show more content…
The workers did not believe that their jobs were privileges, but were entitlements. This perception of prosperity is highlighted in Tocqueville’s analysis, “When all the privileges of birth and fortune are abolished, when all professions are accessible to all, and man’s own energies may place him at the top of any one of them, an easy and unbounded career seems open to his ambition and he will readily persuade himself that he is born to no common destinies (Tocqueville, 1840, 137-138).” Homestead’s management enlisted the assistance of the governor, who sent the militia in order to ensure safety for the community. Frances Trollope observed that “authority which is exercised, furnishes the most disgusting moral spectacle I ever witnessed (Trollope, 1832, 12).” The government’s intervention made it extremely difficult for the workers to exercise their equality, thus the start of the union worker’s broken