Download File - Mr. Dunn`s History Class

Chapter 24 Industry Comes of Age 1865-1900
Railroads
Ogden Utah
Railroad
Effects
Vertical
Integration
Morgan
Grange
Impact of
Industry
Carnegie
Wabash Case
Horizontal
Integration
Bessemer-Kelly Gospel of
Process
Wealth
National Labor Knights of
Union
Labor
Interstate
Commerce Act
Rockefeller
Sherman AntiTrust Act 1890
AFL
Pullman Palace
Cars
US # 1 in
Industry
Interlocking
Directorates
Life in the
South
The Best and the Brightest are no longer entering politics.
Railroads
 Transcontinental railroad building was costly and required government subsidies
 Arguments for – Military needs, and postal needs Congress finally says yes
o 1862 give donations to the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific
o The Union Pacific was Commissioned to move westward from Omaha
o Laying rail at the California end was undertaken by the Central Pacific
 Many Chinese laborers worked
 Govt. provided Land Grants
o Frontier towns touched by railroads flourished into cities those bypassed
turned into ghost towns
 Hells on wheels called the tenting towns that popped up along the way
Ogden Utah
 A “wedding of the rails in 1869
 Driving the Golden spike into Ground (replaced with a silver one)
The success of the western lines was facilitated by welding together and expanding the
older eastern networks
Many changes were made to improve railroads one was to replace the iron tracks with
steel to make it safer and create a standard width
Westinghouse air breaks and Pullman car
 Increased safety and luxury
Railroad Effects
 Nation united in a physical sense/largest market in the world
 Purred industrialization
 Stimulated agriculture
 Increase the urban regions
 Help cause changes in the ecology of the land
 On Nov. 18 1883 the major rail lines decreed four time zones
 Maker of Millionaires
The railroads were also very corrupt. Public affected by the brutal rate wars and
competition wars. They bought and sold people in public lives
Grange (Patrons of Husbandry)
 Farmers sick of the injustice of the railroads
 Wanted government to regulated railroads at the state level
Wabash Case
 In 1886 the Supreme Court decreed that individual states had no power to regulate
interstate commerce
Interstate Commerce Act
 Prohibited rebates and pools and required the railroads to publish their rates
openly
 Most important it set up the Interstate Commerce Commission
 It was the first large scale attempt by Washington to regulate business in the
interest of society at large
 Do you think Cleveland like this? No he practiced Les affair
US # 1 in Industry
 Liquid capital now becoming abundant –more millionaires
 Exploitation of natural resources
 Massive immigration helped make labor cheap and plentiful
 American ingenuity
o Alexander Graham Bell
o Thomas Edison
Business became competitive – leaders needed to find new ways to out wit their
competition
Vertical Integration
 Carnegie pioneered this – combined into one organization all phases of
manufacturing from mining to marketing
Carnegie
 Made is millions in Steel in the area of Pittsburgh
 He was not a monopolist and disliked monopolistic trusts
 JP Morgan bought out Carnegie for 400 million dollars
 Give 350 million of it way to charities, libraries and education
Horizontal Integration
 Allying with competitors to monopolize a given market.
 Rockefeller was the master
John D. Rockefeller
 He organized the Standard Oil Company
 By 1877 Rockefeller controlled 95% of all the oil refineries in the country

On one hand he put his competitors out of business on the other side his
monopoly did turn out a superior product at a relatively cheap price
Interlocking Directorates
 JP Morgan Placing officers of his own banking syndicate on various boards
JP Morgan
 Influential Banker and financer
 After he but Carnegie out he took the holdings and lunched the enlarged United
States Steel Corporation – Capitalized at 1.4 billion dollars the first to do so.
STEEL the mighty metal ultimately held together the new steel civilization, from the
skyscrapers to coal scuttles, while providing it with food shelter, and transportation.
Scarce and expensive before the Bessemer-Kelly Process
Bessemer-Kelly Process
 Named after a British inventor, although an American had stumbled on it a few
years earlier
 Cold air blown on red-hot iron caused the metal to become white-hot igniting the
carbon and thus eliminating impurities.
 America was one of the few places in the world where one could find relatively
close together abundant coal for fuel, rich iron ore for smelting, and other
essential ingredients and a labor supply
Evidence that the Robber Barron’s were created to rule and be financially superior –
Prove themselves morally responsible
Gospel of Wealth
 Survival of the fittest theories of Charles Darwin (Herbert Spenser)
 The pulled themselves out of poverty—those who stay poor must be lazy and
lacking enterprise
Even with the Gospel of Wealth’s arguments – The masses of the people began to
mobilize.
Sherman Anti-Trust Act 1890
 Flatly forbade combinations in restraint of trade, without any distinction between
good trusts and bad trusts. Bigness not badness was sin.
 The law proved ineffective – contained a lot of legal loop-holes
 Used more to curb labor unions in the early stages
As late as 1900 the south still produced a smaller percentage of the nation’s manufactured
goods
Life in the South
 Obstacle – Price Discrimination
o Railroads The north set rates higher for the South
 Textiles fared better
o But mixed blessing
 Brought in cheap labor paid even less then those in the North
Impact of Industry
 The standard of living rose
 Agriculture declined in relation to manufacturing (Jeffersonian yeoman farmer no
longer exists)
 Trust-Busting”
 Time == people now lived by the factory whistle, not the sunlight.
 Women
o Entered industry as Hello Girls
o Careers started to delay marriage and smaller families
o Many women were working because of necessity
 Large class division
o 1/10 of the people owned 9/10s of the nations wealth 1900
As individual originality and creativity were being stifled and less value than ever before
was being placed on manual skills. Workers did not know their bosses anymore.
National Labor Union
 Organized in 1866 and lasted six years
 Included skilled and unskilled farmers but excluded the Chinese and made
nominal efforts to include women and blacks
 Wanted a 8 hour work day (govt. worker got)
 Depression caused a decline in membership
Knights of Labor
 Started as a secret union in 1869 continued until 1881
 Sought to include all workers under one union (not a good idea to big not specific
to members needs)
 They refused to throw themselves at politician, instead they would campaign for
reforms
 Knights involved in many strikes that became violent does not look good for them
in the eyes of the public
AFL




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American Federation of Labor
Leader Samuel Gompers
Only for Skilled labors
It consisted of an association of self governing national unions, each of which
kept its independence, with the AFL unifying an overall strategy
Sought better wages, hours and working conditions