The material in this unit is designed to introduce students to the origin and role of ideas in history, especially their role in the lives of ordinary people, in the rapidly industrializing United States of the 19th century. These lessons concern Americans in the great age of industrialization, from 1850 to 1900. Unit objectives include: (1) identifying common characteristics of the late 19th century success ethic, using examples from biography and literature; (2) describing the social, economic, and political circumstances that nurtured the success ethic; (3) identifying promoters of the gospel of wealth and explaining why they promoted it; and (4) examining the tension between an ethic of individual success and an ideology that justifies the power of the rich. The first of three lesson plans deals with the virtues of frugality. Objectives of this lesson include discussing characteristics of the success ethic and suggesting reasons why it prevailed in early America, and showing the common values of most Americans and their belief that most people could achieve. The second lesson on virtues of wealth helps students to identify the main components of the competing form of the success ethic that developed in the industrial United States, to identify people such as Horatio Alger, who preached the virtues of wealth, and to examine a rags to riches story and evaluate its realistic and unrealistic characteristics. The third lesson on the gospel of wealth presents primary sources from which students can identify the promoters of the gospel of wealth, examine their methods of appealing to ordinary people, and analyze the values implied in an ideology that exalts wealth and the wealthy. (DK)