Labor Unions

What is vertical integration?

• Owning every step in a selling process

• Example: Carnegie with steel

• Makes owner VERY wealthy

What is horizontal integration?

• Owning every aspect of one part of the selling process

• Creates a monopoly

• Example: Rockefeller with oil

What is a captain of industry?

Positive public opinion on the few wealthy

• Raise productivity

• Expand markets

• Increase availability of goods

What is a robber baron?

Negative public opinion on the wealthy few

• Drain the country of their natural resources

• Corrupts public officials

• Pays poor wages

• Drives competitors to ruins

Describe Rockefeller

• Brought up oil refineries

• Formed the Standard Oil Company

• Horizontally integrated

What is the Sherman Anti-Trust Act?

• Act that prevents monopolies

• No one listens

Describe Teddy Roosevelt

• President during the industrial revolution

• Enforces the Sherman Anti-Trust Act

• Called the “first progressive president”

• Busted Rockefellers oil company in 1911

Describe J.P. Morgan

• THE American Financier

• Dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation

Describe Andrew Carnegie

• Vertically integrated

• Able to price his steel below others

• Brought the Bessemer Steel Process to the U.S.

Describe Henry Ford

• Revolutionized auto-making by using standardized machine parts

• Introduced the assembly line

• Did it faster → made it cheaper

Describe Cornelius Vanderbilt

• Built wealth in railroads

• Owned giant home while poor people starved

What was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire?

Massive fire in a garment factory which led to widespread public outrage protest for better working conditions

• Over 30 new laws were passed for workplace safety in New York as a result

What is collective bargaining?

The right of unions to negotiate with the management of workers as a group

What is a scab?

Person who works despite an ongoing strike (usually someone hired after the fact)

What are the Knights of Labor?

• Secret society/labor union

• Led by Terrence Powderly

• ANY worker can be a member

• Wanted- abolition of trusts, monopolies, and child labor, and equal pay for equal work (very idealistic)

• Tactics- meetings and rallies, educating members on bringing change, no strikes (at first)

• One of the largest groups in America

What is the American Federation of Labor?

• Founded by Samuel Gompers

• Only white, male, skilled workers

• Wanted- higher wages, shorter working hours, and improved conditions

• Tactics- boycotts, collective bargaining, and strikes/walkouts

What is the American Railway Union?

• Founded by Eugene V. Debs

• Only white railway workers

• Wanted- better wages, shorter working hours, improved treatment and insurance

• Tactics- strike

What is the International Ladies Garment Workers Union?

• Founded by 7 local New York unions

• Primarily women in the garment or textile industry

• Rose even more after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire

• Wanted- safer working conditions and higher pay

• Tactics- Strikes/walk outs

What was the Panic of 1893?

Companies are failing due to labor unions and there is a vast increase in unemployment.

What is the Pullman Strike?

• Company town in Pullman Illinois

• Depression hits causing lay offs and wage cuts, but rent and food does not lower in price

• The American Railway Union comes to help

• Workers go on strike, but Pullman refuses to negotiate

• Strike spreads, and federal troops come to put down the strike

  • This sets a precedent for the government taking the side of businesses and not unions

• Led directly to the creation of Labor Day

What is the Haymarket Strike?

• Workers at a harvesting machine company in Chicago wanted an 8 hour work day and improved working conditions

• The Knights of Labor hold a rally

• Police kill one of the protestors, and a protest begins over police brutality

• A bomb is thrown a few are killed

• Strike was a failure, and the reputation of the Knights of Labor is ruined and never recovers

What is the Homestead strike?

• Carnegie cuts pay by 20% for iron and steel workers

• Iron and steel worker union decides to go on strike

• The Pinkertons, a private army, are hired to break the strike

• The plant reopened with state militia to keep the peace

• Union is defeated and the union movement is set back decades

What is the Social Gospel Movement?

• Emerged as a religious movement

• Criticized Social Darwinism, promoting collective social responsibility, and aiding those in need

• Heavily influences the progressive movement as well as settlement houses

What are progressives?

People who care about white people in cities and want the government to help poor people (mostly educated people)

Who is Jane Adams?

The first true “social worker” who created Hull House- a home that treated poor people as real people

What are the causes of the progressive movement?

• Excesses of the Gilded Age

• Poor working conditions

• Low standard of living

What are the goals of the progressive movement?

• Government controlled by the people

• Guaranteed social economic opportunities

• Eliminate social injustice

Describe the hurricane in Galveston.

• Hit Texas in 1900

• Deadliest in history

• Little warning and no real tracking

• Due to the devastation, Galveston pioneers a new government focused on community

What is a city manager?

• New local form of government

• Direct result of the Galveston hurricane

• Voters elect a city council who hire a professional manager to serve as the city’s administration

• Person who is contacted in case of an emergency

What is referendum?

Congress writes a possible law and people vote on it

What is initiative?

People can write their own suggested law when they vote

What is recall?

People decide that an elected official is not doing their job

What is a primary election?

Preliminary elections where voters choose a political party’s candidate for an upcoming general election

What is the 17th amendment?

Allows citizens to vote directly for their senators

What are muckrakers?

Journalists and photographers who exposed the abuse of wealth and power

Who is Jacob Riis?

Muckraker who took pictures of tenement life to convince people they were unsafe

• Pioneered flash photography

• Wrote “How the Other Half Lives”

Who is Upton Sinclair?

Muckraker who originally focused on bad conditions of the meatpacking industry, but diverted his focus to the unsanitary nature of the industry

• Socialist

• Wrote “The Jungle”

• Exposed terrible practices and unsanitary conditions in the food industry

What is the Meat Inspection Act?

Requires federal inspection of meat and meat packing plants

What is the Pure Food and Drug Act?

Prohibits manufacture, sale, or shipment of impure or falsely labeled food and drugs

Who is Ida Tarbell?

Journalist who exposed the tactics of the Standard oil Company in her articles

• Wrote “History of the Standard Oil Company” in McClure’s Magazine

• In Standard Oil vs. the U.S., the company was declared a monopoly and was broken up

Who is Lincoln Steffens?

Journalist who exposed corruption of political machines and revealed the shortcomings of Social Darwinism

• Increased demands for a city manager system

What is the Keating-Owen Act?

Says child labor is not allowed in interstate business (supreme court does not pass it)

What did the tax on employment of child labor attempt to do?

Tax 10% on businesses that employed kids under 14 (supreme court does not pass it)

What is the Smith-Hughes Act?

Provides states $1 million to improve education

What is the Fair Labor Standards Act?

Child Labor Law that is upheld by the supreme court

How was Teddy Roosevelt a contrasting president?

• Came from money → fought for the common man

• Hunter → fought for American conservation

• White man → invites Booker T. Washington to the white house

What was the square deal?

3 part deal Roosevelt thought was important for the average American

1. Consumer protection

   • Food safety laws

   • Pure Food and Drug Act

2. Corporations and Anti-Trust Legislation

   • Trust buster

   • Anthracite coal strike

3. Conservation

   • Created National Parks

What is the Department of Labor?

• Created by Teddy Roosevelt

• Bureau of corporation

• Designed to investigate corporations

• The Northern Securities Railroads are the first to be dismantled, but the Standard Oil Company is the most famous

What is the Anthracite coal strike?

• Union wanted shorter days and higher pay and the owners would not negotiate

• The nation needs to coal to heat homes, so Roosevelt forces owners of the coal site to comply with the unions requests

  • Roosevelt becomes a hero of the common man

  • Marks the first time the government sides with a union and not the corporation

What is the Clayton Anti-Trust Act

Act put in place by Roosevelt to support the Sherman Anti-trust Act.

• Closed loopholes

• Defined anti-competitive behavior

• Easier to enforce