Source Sets / U.S. History
Source set · 9 sources ✓ Lesson ready
How do free markets create prosperity?
Adam Smith, Hamilton, Lincoln, Douglass, Coolidge, Hayek, Marshall, and Reagan explain how work, trade, prices, and freedom to keep what you earn generate wealth, and a NASA photo of the two Koreas at night lets students test those claims against the evidence.
Timeline of key events →Unit: Industrial Age & Progressive Era →
Teach it
✓ Lesson readyA ready-to-run lesson for this set: Historian’s Lab: Where Does Prosperity Come From?. Slides include a hook, one slide per source, directions, a take-a-stand vote, an exit ticket, and a teacher script in the speaker notes.
1. Hook: a striking quote 3-5 min
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776)
Ask: Think about the last meal you ate. How many strangers helped get it to you? Why did they do it?
2. Main activity: Historian’s Lab: Where Does Prosperity Come From?
Grouping: Four stations, groups of 4 to 6, rotating every 7 minutes
Materials (printables are in the Lesson Plan Doc)
- Four station cards (printable pages in the Lesson Plan Doc), one per table
- Station recording sheet (in the Lesson Plan Doc)
- A three-column chart on the board: Work and skill, Prices and trade, Government’s role
- Launch 3 min
Explain the lab: at each station students record what the source says creates wealth and what conditions it needs. - Rotate 28 min
Four stations, 7 minutes each. Give a one-minute warning before each move. At Station 4, give students silent looking time with the Korea photo before they read the NASA figures. - Fill the chart 7 min
Groups add evidence to the Work and skill, Prices and trade, and Government’s role columns. Ask: which ideas show up in more than one century? - Take a stand 7 min
Use the vote slide. - Exit ticket 5 min
Students answer on a slip before leaving.
Take a stand: What matters most for creating prosperity?
- Freedom to work, trade, and keep what you earn: Smith, Lincoln, and Douglass tie wealth to people working and trading for their own benefit, and Hayek says prices guide millions of choices no planner could make.
- Government policy that sets the conditions: Hamilton urged policies to build manufacturing, Marshall sent aid to rebuild Europe, and Reagan argued that changing tax rates would expand prosperity.
3. Pacing options
15-minute bell-ringer
- 3 min Hook: the butcher, the brewer, and the baker
- 8 min Run Station 4 only as a whole class: the Koreas at night photo and NASA’s power figures
- 4 min Exit ticket question 1
Full 50-minute lesson
- 4 min Hook: Adam Smith
- 3 min Launch the lab
- 28 min Four stations, 7 minutes each
- 7 min Fill the chart
- 5 min Vote and exit ticket
- 3 min Buffer
4. Exit ticket
- Name one cause of prosperity from today’s sources. Which source shows it, and how?
- The Koreas were one country until 1945. Using at least one source, explain one reason South Korea is lit up and North Korea is dark.
5. Differentiation
Support
- This set has no Adapted Docs yet; read key passages aloud or chunk them for struggling readers.
- Start struggling readers at Station 4, which has a photo and short texts.
- Give the recording sheet with the author and date already filled in for each station.
- Word bank: division of labor, free labor, wages, capital, prices, incentive, central planning, tax rates.
Extension
- Find GDP per person for West and East Germany in 1989 or South and North Korea today from a government source such as the CIA World Factbook. What does the data add to the night photo?
- Compare Lincoln’s “penniless beginner” with Douglass’s “Self-Made Men.” Where do they agree, and what does Douglass add about fair play?
Suggested sequence
- The Wealth of Nations by Adam SmithDocument · Project Gutenberg · World: Revolutions (1750-1900) · Grades 9-12 · ⏱ 30+ minAdam Smith's 1776 foundational work on economics.Ask: How does the division of labor increase productivity?Open with this source to frame the question.
- Alexander Hamilton: Report on Manufactures (1791)Document · Wikisource · Revolution & New Nation (1754-1820) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 30+ minHamilton's report to Congress as Secretary of the Treasury arguing that the government should encourage American manufacturing through measures such as tariffs and bounties.Ask: Why did Hamilton believe the new nation needed manufacturing, and what role did he give the government?
- Abraham Lincoln: Address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society (1859)Speech · Abraham Lincoln Online · Antebellum (1820-1860) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 12 minLincoln's 1859 Wisconsin State Fair speech contrasts the "mud-sill" theory, which held that hired laborers were fixed in their condition for life, with the "free labor" system, in which a penniless beginner works for wages, saves, and becomes independent.Ask: According to Lincoln, how does the free labor system let a worker rise, and why did he think it was better than the "mud-sill" theory?
- Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Men (1872)Speech · Teaching American History (Frederick Douglass Papers, Library of Congress) · Reconstruction (1865-1877) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 12 minIn a lecture he gave many times after the Civil War, Frederick Douglass argues that honest, well-directed work is the main cause of success, and that fair play for formerly enslaved Americans means opening the doors of opportunity to them.Ask: What does Douglass say is the chief cause of success, and what does he think a fair society owes people who are starting out?
- Calvin Coolidge: Address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors (1925)Speech · American Presidency Project (UCSB) · Progressive Era (1890-1920) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 12 minCoolidge discusses the press and American values, including his often-quoted (and often shortened) line that "the chief business of the American people is business," followed by a defense of idealism.Ask: How does reading Coolidge's full passage change the meaning of his famous line about business?
- F. A. Hayek: The Use of Knowledge in Society (1945)Essay · Library of Economics and Liberty (Econlib) · Great Depression & WWII (1929-1945) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 30+ minEconomist F. A. Hayek argues that the knowledge needed to run an economy is scattered among millions of people, and that market prices pass that knowledge along in a way no central planner can match. First published in the American Economic Review in 1945.Ask: Why does Hayek think prices can coordinate an economy better than a central planning board?
- The Marshall Plan Speech (1947)Speech · Fordham University · Cold War (1945-1991) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 10 minGeorge Marshall's Harvard speech proposing aid to rebuild Europe.Ask: Was the Marshall Plan generosity or strategy?
- Ronald Reagan: Address to Congress on the Program for Economic Recovery (1981)Speech · Reagan Presidential Library · Cold War (1945-1991) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 22 minReagan presents his plan of tax cuts, spending cuts, regulatory relief, and steady monetary policy to a joint session of Congress during high inflation and unemployment.Ask: What problems does Reagan say the economy faces, and how does he argue his plan will solve them?
- The Koreas at Night (2014)Photograph · NASA Earth Observatory · Modern America (1970-present) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 5 minAstronaut photograph taken from the International Space Station on January 30, 2014. NASA notes that North Korea is almost completely dark compared to neighboring South Korea and China, and reports per capita power use of 10,162 kilowatt hours in South Korea versus 739 in North Korea.Ask: What might the difference in night lights tell you about the economies of North and South Korea?Close with this source before writing.
Watch
Free videos to pair with this set. Preview before showing in class.
- ▶ Presidential Economic Address: Reagan to Congress (February 18, 1981)C-SPAN · free, no login
- ▶ Economics 101: The Principles of Free Market Economics (online course)Hillsdale College · free signup
- ▶ Understanding Capitalism (online course)Hillsdale College · free signup
Quick check
Five questions built only from this set’s sources: four multiple choice and one short answer. Print it or assign it in Google Classroom. The answer key gives the source line for every answer.
Preview the questions
- Which source in this set contains this passage? “Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.”
- According to Adam Smith, what leads a person who 'intends only his own gain' to promote an end he did not intend?
- Which source in this set contains this passage? “The separation of occupations causes each to be carried to a much greater perfection than it could possibly acquire if they were blended.”
- In 'Self-Made Men' (1872), what did Frederick Douglass say explains success?
- Short answer: Choose two sources from this set. Using a specific detail from each, explain how they help answer the set’s question: “How do free markets create prosperity?” Write 3 to 5 sentences.
Culminating writing prompt
Using evidence from at least three sources in this set, write an argument that answers the question: “How do free markets create prosperity?” Cite each source by title, explain how its author, audience, and purpose affect its reliability, and respond to at least one counterargument.
Printable writing sheet (make a copy)
Build a DBQDBQ packet (make a copy)
Students can plan with the Claim-Evidence-Reasoning organizer.