corrupt organizations or organizations of corrupt individuals?
A New Industrial Age Technical innovations and the growth of the railroad industry help fuel an...
49
A New Industrial Age Technical innovations and the growth of the railroad industry help fuel an industrial boom. Some business leaders follow corrupt practices, and workers, suffering harsh working conditions, try to organize.
-
Upload
francine-fowler -
Category
Documents
-
view
214 -
download
0
Transcript of A New Industrial Age Technical innovations and the growth of the railroad industry help fuel an...
A New Industrial Age
Technical innovations and the growth of the railroad industry help fuel an industrial boom. Some business leaders follow corrupt practices,
and workers, suffering harsh working conditions, try to organize.
The Expansion of Industry
At the end of the 19th Century, natural resources, creative ideas, and
growing markets fueled an industrial boom.
Natural Resources fuel Industrialization
After the Civil War, the United States was still largely an agricultural nation, but by the 1920s-only 60 years later- it had become the leading industrial power in the world.
This immense industrial boom was due to three major factors:
• A wealth of Natural Resources
• Government Support for Business
• A growing urban Population that provided both cheap labor and markets for new products
Natural ResourcesOil
In the 1840s Americans began to use Kerosene to light lamps after it was discovered how to distill the fuel from oil.Obtaining oil remained unpractical until in 1859 Edwin L. Drake successfully used the steam engine to drill for oil.
• This started an oil boom as entrepreneurs rushed to transform the oil into kerosene and oil-refining industries arose.
• Gasoline-a byproduct of the refining process was originally thrown away.
CoalCoal production skyrocketed from 33 million tons in 1870 to more than 250 million tons in 1900.
Natural Resources ContinuedIron/Steel
There were abundant supplies of iron ore but iron was soft and tended to break and rust because it contained carbon- removing the carbon would create steel, a lighter, more flexible, and rust-resistant metal.In 1850 the Bessemer process was developed which allowed workers to efficiently turn iron ore into steel.In 1886 the Open-Hearth method made it so scrap metal could also be made into steel.
Uses of steelRailroads, farm equipment, and canning.The Brooklyn Bridge- a wonder of the world at the time.The first Skyscrapers
Inventions Promote ChangeThomas Alva Edison invented the incandescent light bulb and began to organize an entire system for producing and distributing electrical power.
This changed American businesses as cities built electric railways, and businesses built factories powered by electricity.Also changed the home as it spurred the invention of time-saving appliances.
Christopher Sholes invented the typewriter in 1867 which changed the world of work.
In 1870 women had made up less than 5% of clerical workers but by 1910 they were nearly 40%.
Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson invented the telephone in 1876, opening the way for a world wide communications network.
The Age of the RailroadsThe growth and consolidation of
railroads benefited the nation but also led to corruption and required
government regulation.
Railroads Span SpaceOn May 10, 1869 crowds across the United States cheered as the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads met at Promontory, Utah.
A Golden Spike marked the spanning of the nation by the first transcontinental railroad.
• Others would soon follow and by 1890, rail lines totaled more than 200,000 miles.
Building the railroads was difficult and dangerous work for thousands of workers.
The Central Pacific Railroad employed thousands of Chinese Immigrants.The Union Pacific Railroad employed thousands of Irish immigrants and desperate, out of work Civil War veterans.By 1888, more than 2,000 railroad workers had died from accidents and disease and another 20,000 had been injured in accidents.
Railroads span TimeRailroads helped to link the nation but schedules were difficult to maintain.
Each community set its own time standard, with noon when the sun was directly overhead.
• This meant that people riding from Maine to California might reset their watches twenty times.
To remedy this problem Professor Dowd proposed in 1869 that the earth’s surface be divided into 24 time zones, one for each hour of the day.
Finally, in 1883, the United States railroads and a majority of towns and cities began using four standard time zones: The Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific.
Opportunities and OpportunistsRailroads stimulated growth of iron, steel, coal, lumber and glass and helped towns and cities grow, established new specialized markets, and offered rich opportunities for both visionaries and profiteers.George Pullman built a factory in 1880 to make railroad sleeping cars and other railroad cars.
He built a large town near his factory to house the workers he needed but he tried to control his worker’s lives.
• They were not allowed to loiter on their front steps or to drink alcohol.
In the Credit Mobilier scandal of 1868, stockholders of the Union Pacific formed a construction company and gave it a contract to lay track at two to three times the actual cost-pocketing the profits.
They also gave stock to some 20 congressional representatives to buy silence.
The Grange fights BackThese scandals, as well as railroad abuses, helped fuel the anger of the Grangers who began demanding government control over the railroad industry.
With political action, they persuaded some states to pass laws, called Granger laws, regulating railroad rates and prohibiting discrimination.In 1877, in Munn v. Illinois, the Supreme Court said that state governments could regulate the railroad industry for the public good.Due to later Supreme Court rulings saying that states could not regulate rates on interstate commerce, Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887.
• This reestablished the right of the federal government to supervise railroad activities.
• The five-member commission it created was not strong enough though to control the railroads, especially when the Supreme Court ruled that it could not set maximum railroad rates.
Big Business and LaborThe Expansion of Industry resulted in
the growth of big businesses and prompted laborers to form unions to
better their lives.
Story from the PastBorn in Scotland to penniless parents, Andrew Carnegie came to this country in 1848 at the age of 12.
Two years later, he worked his way up to become private secretary to the local superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad.One Morning, Carnegie single-handedly relayed messages that unsnarled a tangle of freight and passenger trains.
• His boss, Thomas A. Scott rewarded Carnegie by giving him a chance to buy stock.
Carnegie’s mother mortgaged the family home to make the purchase possible.
• Soon Carnegie received his first dividend.“One morning a white envelope was lying upon my desk, addressed in a big John Hancock hand, to ‘Andrew Carnegie, Esquire.’…all it contained was a check for ten dollars upon the Gold Exchange Bank of New York. I shall remember that check as long as I live….It gave me the first penny of revenue from capital- somethng that I had not worked for with the sweat of my brow. ‘Eureka!’ I cried. ‘Here’s the goose that lays the golden eggs’.”
Carnegie’s InnovationsAndrew Carnegie began building a giant steel-producing firm in 1873 and by 1899 the Carnegie Steel Company produced more steel than all the factories in Great Britain.
Carnegie used cost-saving technology, strict accounting techniques, offered stock in the company to attract talented people and encourage competition among his assistants.He also attempted to control as much of the steel industry as he could.
• By Vertical Integration he bought out his suppliers in order to control the raw materials and transportation systems.
• By Horizontal Integration he bought out competing steel producers.
Social DarwinismStudying the success of business leaders like Carnegie helped spur an intellectual movement called Social Darwinism.
Drawing on Charles Darwin’s ideas of natural selection, Social Darwinists said that government should allow free competition in business to allow the best individuals to succeed.
• Many ordinary citizens could support this idea because it appealed to their work ethic and sense of personal responsibility.
According to Social Darwinism the poor must be lazy or inferior people who deserved their lot in life.
Fewer Control MoreBusiness leaders increasingly tried to gain control over an industry, thereby preventing competition, in order to ensure rising profits.
If a firm controlled all the competition in an industry, it held a monopoly and so had complete control over its industry’s production, wages and prices.
J.P. Morgan’s United States Steel, became the largest steel producer by setting up a holding company.
This kind of company bought out the stock of other companies.
John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company completely controlled the oil refining industry by using trusts, in which different companies agree to work together as one business in return for dividends on profits earned by the trust.
Rockefeller reaped huge profits from his trust by paying his employees extremely low wages and driving his competitors out of business.
Sherman Antitrust ActCritics called the Mergers, Holding Companies and Trusts unfair to consumers and labeled business leaders as “robber barons”The Government was concerned that expanding corporations would stifle free competition so in 1890 Congress decided to pass the Sherman Antitrust Act.
It outlawed trusts that interfered with free trade between states or with other countries.Was difficult to enforce because it did not define a trust and businesses would simply reorganize themselves into single corporations if threatened.
• The Supreme Court also did not support it, throwing out 7 of the 8 cases the government brought against trust.
Industry in the South
While industry boomed in the North, the South stayed agriculturally and economically depressed as people were unwilling to invest in risky ventures.
The devastation of the Civil War, lack of Capital, and lack of urban Centers were other contributing factors.Only Industries such as mining, tobacco, and textiles began to grow.
The Life of the laborerWorkers in growing industries, including the first sweatshops, worked 12 hours a day, in dangerous conditions, for low wages.Seven-day workweeks were often required and employees were not entitled to vacation, sick leave, unemployment compensation, or reimbursement for injuries suffered on the job.Wages were so low that all family members, including women and children as young as five, had to work.Injuries were common- in 1882 an average of 675 workers were killed in work-related accidents every week.
Labor Unions EmergeTo improve their status, many workers began to organize into unions.
The National Labor Union, formed in 1866, and open to only skilled white workers, persuaded the government to adopt an eight-hour day for government positions.The Knights of Labor, formed in 1869, and open to all workers, pushed for an eight-hour day and equal pay for women, as well as advocating arbitration rather than strikes.The American Federation of Labor, led by Samuel Gompers, was a Craft Union, which included skilled workers from one or more trades and won higher wages and shorter weeks for its members.The American Railway Union, led by Eugene v. Debs, was open to unskilled workers and won a strike for higher wages.The Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies) were a group of radical unionists and socialists in Chicago advocating better working conditions.
Socialism
In an attempt to solve the problems faced by workers, Eugene Debs and other labor activists eventually turned to socialism.
Socialism is an economic and political system based on government control of business and property and equal distribution of wealth.Most socialist during this time worked within the labor movement to achieve better conditions for workers.
Strikes turn ViolentIndustry and Government fought the unions, seeing them as a threat to the entire capitalist system and interstate commerce.
The Great Strike of 1877 stalled the nation’s railroads for over a week and federal troops were sent in to end the strike.During a mass meeting of 3,000 people, protesting police brutality, in Haymarket Square 7 police and several workers were killed when a riot broke out.
• Eight people were charged and convicted for the riot, despite a lack of evidence against them.
Steelworkers in Homestead, Penn. Violently shut down a Carnegie Steel Plant until state troops allowed management to reopen with strikebreakers.A 1894 strike at Pullman’s railcar factory resulted after the company had laid off more than half it’s workers and cut the wages of the rest by 25-50%, without lowering the cost of the employee housing.
• Federal troops were brought in to break up the strike and all the workers lost their jobs and were blacklisted so that they could never again get railroad jobs.
Women and the UnionsMany women were barred from unions, but they still united behind powerful leaders to demand better working conditions, equal pay for equal work, and an end to child labor.
One of the most famous female organizers was Mary Harris Jones, otherwise known as “Mother Jones”.
• She organized for the United Mine Workers of America and endured death threats and jail with the coal miners.
• She also led 80 mill children-many with hideous injuries- on a march to the home of President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903 to expose the cruelties of child labor.
Her Crusade influenced the passage of child labor laws.
Another female organizer was Pauline Newman, who at 16 years of age, organized the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union and won labor agreements and improved working conditions for some strikers.
The Triangle Shirtwaist FactoryIn 1911 the public could no longer ignore the conditions in garment factories when fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.
The fire spread swiftly through the oil-soaked machines and piles of cloth, engulfing the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors.
• The fire department’s ladders reached only to the 6th floor.
As workers attempted to flee they discovered that the company had locked all but one of the exit doors and the unlocked door was blocked by fire.
• The factory had no sprinkler system and the single fire escape collapsed almost immediately.
In all 146 women died; some were found huddled with their faces raised to a small window, others were killed jumping from the windows.The public was outraged after a jury acquitted the factory owners of manslaughter.
Businesses try to block unionsBusiness leaders used many tactics to prevent workers from organizing.
They banned union meetingsThey fired union workersThey forced new employees to sign contracts (yellow-dog contracts- saying that they would not join unions.When strikes did occur they used the Sherman Antitrust Act against workers by saying they violated the Act by harming interstate commerce.
By 1910, union membership was down to 5% of workers.
