19th and early 20th century Anglo-America

Use readings in 19th and early 20th century Anglo-America to test some of the propositions advanced by either Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations and /or Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in The Communist Manifesto. Don’t attempt to explore all of their many ideas, but chose just one or two. For example, you might take Adam Smith’s conception of the pin making division of labor and then see if that is an accurate template to explain the division of labor in the great textile, steel, and auto factories of the 19th century and after, including that of Amazon. Or you might examine the rise of large corporations and the merger movement of the late 19th century to test Smith’s conception of how unfettered markets a century earlier proved an accurate model for later developments. Do those greyhounds of 1776 have the same kind of market power as Carnegie Steel in the 1890s?