Chapter 16 The Rise of IndustrialAmerica, 1865-1900

Period 6: 1865 - 1898 Chapter 16: The Rise of Industrial America, 1865-1900 [319 - 332] Due Date: Mon. Jan. 22 - 1900: US leading industrial power in the world - Had raw materials essential to industrialization - coal, iron, ore, copper, lead, timber and oil - Abundant labor supply including immigrants - Growing population and advanced transportation network made US largest market - Capital abundant - Patent system and technology increased productivity - Businesses benefited from gov policies (protected private property, subsidized RR, protective tariffs, limited taxes on corporations) - Entrepreneurs built and managed huge industrial and commercial businesses The Business of Railroads (1830-1860) - - Created national market for goods and encouraged mass production, consumption, and economic specialization Resources in RR building promoted growth of coal and steel industries RR time became standard time for all Americans Creating of stockholder corporation and development of complex structures in finance, business management, and regulation of competition Eastern Trunk Lines - Inefficiencies of railroads reduced after the Civil War by consolidating competing railroads in to integrated trunk lines - Trunk lines connected eastern seaports with Chicago and other midwest cities and set standards for excellence and efficiency for industry Western Railroads - Promoted settlement on Great Plains and linked West with the East to create national market - Federal Land Grants - Federal gov provided RR Co.s with huge subsidies (loans and land grants) - Gov gave 80 RR Co.s more than 170 million acres - RR might increase the value of gov lands and provide good rates for transporting troops and mail - Negative consequences - Land grants and cash loans led to poor construction of RR and led to corruption in gov - Crédit Movilier - Insiders used construction Co.s to bribe gov officials for profit - RR controlled 1/2 land in some western states - Transcontinental Railroads - During Civil War congress authorized land grants and loans for first transcontinental RR to tie CA to rest of Union - Union Pacific (UP) started from Omaha, NE and built westward - Employed thousands of war veterans and Irish immigrants under General Grenville Dodge - Central Pacific started from Sacramento, CA and built eastward - Led by Charles Crocker - Workers (incl. 6,000 Chinese immigrants) laid track and blasted tunnels through the Sierra Nevada mountains - RR joined May 10, 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah - - 1883: three other transcontinental RR completed - Southern Pacific tied New Orleans to Los Angeles - Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe linked Kansas City and Los Angeles - Northern Pacific connected Duluth Minnesota w/ Seattle Washington - 1893: Great Northern completed from St. Paul Minnesota to Seattle - Built by James Hill - Helped settle the west but proved failures as businesses w/ little profit Competition and Consolidation - RR suffered from mismanagement and fraud - Jay Gould entered RR for quick profits and make millions selling assets and watering stock - RR offered rebates and kickbacks to favored shippers while charging high rate to smaller customers and farmers - Companies informally agreed to fix rates and share traffic in secret - Financial Panic of 1893 causes ¼ of RR into bankruptcy - J. Pierpont Morgan and other bankers consolidated RRs - Eliminated competition so could stabilize rates and reduce debts - 1900: 7 giant systems controlled ⅔ of nations RR - Created regional RR monopolies - Public, local communities, states and federal gov invested in development of RRs - Customers and small investors felt victimized by financial schemes and ruthless practices - Granger laws passed by midwestern states in 1870s overturned by the courts - Federal Interstate Commerce Act of 1886 was at first ineffective - Not until Progressive era in early 1900s did congress expand powers of Interstate Commerce Commission to protect public interest Industrial Empires - After Civil War a “second Industrial Revolution” led to growth of large-scale industry and production of steel, petroleum, electric power, and industrial machinery for production - - The Steel Industry - New process for making large quantities of steel launched the rise of heavy industry - 1850s: Henry Bessemer in England and WIlliam Kelly in US discovered that blasting air through molten iron produced high-quality steel - Great Lakes region used coal reserves and access to iron ore to emerge as center of steel production - Andrew Carnegie - From poverty to superintendent of a PA RR - 1870s: started manufacturing steel in Pittsburgh - Business strategy of vertical integration: Co. would control every stage of the industrial process (mining raw materials to transporting final product) - 1900: Carnegie Steel 20,000 workers and produced more steel than all of Britain - U.S. Steel Corporation - Carnegie sold Co. in 1900 for >$400 million to steel combination by J. P. Morgan - New Co. United States Steel was first billion-dollar company; largest enterprise in world; employed 168,000 people, and controlled ⅗ of nation’s steel business Rockefeller and the Oil Industry - First US oil well drilled by Edwin Drake in 1859 PA - 1863: John D. Rockefeller founded CO. that would become monopoly of oil refineries - Rockefeller crew company and extorted rebates from RR Co.s and temporarily cut prices for Standard Oil Kerosene to force rival Co.s to sell out - - Thomas Edison patented his machine for recording votes in 1869 Edison est. research laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ in 1876 - first modern research laboratory - Introduced concept of mechanics and engineers working on project as team; ranked among Edison’s most important contributions to science - Edison’s lab produced more than 1000 patented inventions: phonograph, improvement of incandescent lamp 1879, dynamo for generating electric power, mimeograph machine, and motion picture camera - George Westinghouse developed air brake for RR 1869 and had more than 400 patents - Transformer for proving high-voltage alternating current 1885; made possible lighting of cities and operation of electric streetcars, subways, and electrically powered machinery and appliances Marketing Consumer Goods - R.H. Macy in NY and Marshall Field in Chicago made large dept. Store place to shop in urban centers - Frank Woolworth’s Five and Ten Cent Store bought nationwide chain stores to towns and urban neighborhoods - Sears, Roebuck, and Montgomery Ward used RR to ship to rural customers - “wish book” catalogs - Kellogg and Post packaged foods - Refrigerated RR cars and canning led Gustavus Swift to create mass-produced meat and vegetable products - Ads and new marketing techniques promoted consumer economy and created consumer culture w/ shopping as a pastime Impact of Industrialization - - - Growth of industry raised standard of living but created sharper economic and class divisions The Concentration of Wealth - 1890s: richest 10% of population controlled 90% of wealth - Vanderbilts of Newport, RI had expensive summer homes - Horatio Alger Myth - Many Americans ignored widening gap between rich and poor b/c hopeful of examples of “self-made men” - Opportunities for upward mobility existed but rags-to-riches unusual The Expanding Middle Class - Growth of large Co.s required many white-collar workers - Middle management needed to coordinate operations between chief executives and factories - Industrialization expanded middle class by creating jobs for accountants, clerical workers, and salespersons - Increased demand from professionals (doctors and lawyers), public employees, and storekeepers - Increase in number of good-paying jobs after Civil War increased size of middle class Wage Earners - 1900: ⅔ of workers worked for waged at jobs 10 hrs/day, 6 days a week - Low wages justified by David Ricardo’s “Iron law of wages” arguing that raising wages would increase the working population, and the availability of more workers would cause wages to fall, creating cycle of misery and starvation - Real wages (income adjusted for inflation) rose in late 1800s - Couldn’t support family under one income - Income of women and children - 1890: $380/year in income average for families - - Working Women - 1900:⅕ women in working force - Believed that women’s proper role in the home raising children if could afford it - Factory work for women usually in industries perceived as extension of the home - Ad demand for clerical workers increased women moved to work as secretaries, bookkeepers, typists, and telephone operators - Feminized occupations/professions lost status and received lower wages Labor Discontent - Industrial workers run by the clock - Dangerous working conditions in RR and mining - Workers exposed to chemicals and pollutants that caused illness and early death - Rebelled against bad working conditions by missing work or quitting; averagely changed jobs every 3 years; 20% factory workers dropped out of industrial workplace The Struggle of Organized Labor - - Industrial Warfare - Employer tactics for defeating unions: lockout, blacklist, yellow-dog contracts (contract signed for hire to not join a union), calling in private guards and state militia to put down strikes, and obtaining court injunctions against strikes - Management fostered public fear of unions as anarchistic and un-american - Methods for fighting management advocated for political action or direct confrontation (strikes, picketing, boycotts, and slowdowns) - Great Railroad Strike of 1877 - One of worst outbreaks of labor violence during economic depression when RR Co.s cut wages to reduce costs - Strike on Baltimore and Ohio RR spread across 11 states and shut down ⅔ of RR - RR workers joined by 500,000 workers from other industries in national strike - Rutherford B. Hayes used federal troops to end labor violence (1st time since 1830s) - 100 people killed before violence ended - Some employers addressed grievances by improving wages and working conditions while others busted workers’ organizations Attempts to Organize National Unions - National Labor Union - First attempt to organise all workers in all states was the National Labor Union - Founded in 1866; 640,000 members by 1868 - Goals of higher wages and 8hr work day - Broad social program: equal rights for women and blacks, monetary reform, and worker cooperatives - Won 8 hr work day employed by federal gov - Lost support after depression in 1873 and unsuccessful strikes of 1877 - Knights of Labor - Began in 1869 as secret society to avoid detection by employers - Under Terence V. Powderly went public in 1881 and opened membership to all workers including women and blacks - Reforms: 1) worker cooperatives to make each man his own employer; 2) abolition of child labor; 3) abolition of trusts and monopolies - Settle labor disputes by arbitration over strikes - Loosely organized - 730,000 workers in 1886 in membership - Declined rapidly after violence of the Haymarket riot in Chicago in 1886 turned public - Regions developed more cities, more immigrants and migrants from rural areas, and created more middle-class jobs Historical Perspectives: Statesmen or robber barons? Ch. 16 The ideas expressed in this excerpt most clearly show the influence of which of the following? Charles Darwin's On the Origins of Species Which idea would Sumner most likely support? Laissez-faire Which of the following developments would be most consistent with the beliefs expressed in the excerpt? Consolidation of wealth by an elite Which of the following groups would most likely support the sentiments behind this cartoon? Proponents of anti-monopoly legislation The kind of sentiments in the cartoon above contributed most directly to which of the following? The breakup of Standard Oil into competing oil companies This excerpt was written to most directly support which o the following? Collective bargaining According to the author, what has most contributed to the need for wage earners to organize? The concentration of corporate wealth and power Which of the following was most closely allied to the sentiments in this excerpt? American Federation of Labor Ch. 17 The key idea in the excerpt is that Grady believes? The South needed to industrialize Which of the following best demonstrates Henry Grady's vision for the South? Birmingham, Alabama became one of the nation's leading steel producers Henry Grady's comments best express the viewpoint of which group of people? Advocates of a New South The Ocala Platform resulted from a protest movement that primarily involved? Small farmers The economic reasoning behind the Ocala Platform assumes that? Increasing the money supply would increase prices and incomes The Ocala Platform proved an important link between which of the following groups? Farmer organizations and the Populist movement Harlan's opinion goes against the majority opinion on the Supreme Court that? Facilities could be segregated by race if they were "separate but equal" Harlan's opinion was consistent with the beliefs expressed by the? Writer W.E.B. Du Bois Ch. 18 In the chart above, the "new immigrants" include those who arrived in the United States from? Southern and Eastern Europe Which of the following most likely explains the significant reduction of immigration during the 1870s and 1890s to the United States? Financial panics and depressions Which phrase best summarizes what Riis considers the cause of the problems he sees? "In the tenements all the influences make for evil" During the late 19th century, which of the following groups most benefited from the poverty described by Riis? Political machines Which individual would be most likely to argue that the government should not intervene to improve the tenements? Herbert Spencer Susan B. Anthony was arrested and fined $100 for casting an illegal vote in the presidential election of 1872. She refused to pay the fine. To whom of the following were her actions most similar? Henry David Thoreau Susan B. Anthony's arguments for women's suffrage can best be understood in the context of? The Reconstruction amendments Anthony targeted the states as parts of government discriminating against women primarily for which of the following reasons? Except for the 14th and 15th amendments, the United States Constitution left the power to the states to determine who could vote. Ch. 19 McElroy's letter uses humor to make a point. Which of the following statements reflects McElroy's true criticism?