Chapter 17- Industrial Supremacy and Chapter 18- The Age of the City

Patent

a government authority or license giving a right or title for a set period, especially the sole right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention

Cyrus W. Field

• first trans-atlantic cable

• created American Telegraph Company

• merchant/investor

Alexander Graham Bell

• inventor of telephone

• founder of Bell Company

• american telephone and telegraph company

• budgeted thousands a year for research

Thomas Edison

• invented incandescent light bulb, motion picture, phonograph, etc

• Wizard of Menlo Park

• created research labs

• bad with money

• workaholic

• bad husband/father

Bessemer Process

• Created by: Henry Bessemer and William Kelly

• blowing air through molten iron to take out impurities and make steel

George Bissell

• Father of American Oil industry

• Pennsylvania Rock Company: first Petroleum company in US

• made: oil lamps, paraffin, naphtha, lubricating oil, drill

Standard Oil

• oil refinery created by John D. Rockefeller

• Cleveland, OH

• tried to eliminate competition by buying it out

• had 20/25 refineries in Cleveland

• plants in Pittsburgh, Philly, NYC, Baltimore

• trust

Internal Combustion Engine

• used burning gas to drive pistons

• created by French, German, Austrian

• used in Wright Brothers plane

Henry Ford

• Ford car company

• Paid workers well so they could buy his cars

• Assembly line

• T-model

• Mass produced cars → cheap

Taylorism

• scientific management (improving efficiency through data)

• After Frederick Winslow Taylor

• Subdividing tasks: 

  • Speed

  • Make workers interchangeable

  • No highly trained workers necessary

Cornelius Vanderbilt

• railroad tycoon

•  “What do I care about the law? H’aint I got the power?” (corrupt)

• lavish: many country estates, 7 mansions on 7 blocks of 5th avenue

• “Commodore”

• wealth on railroads and shipping

Corporation

a company or group of people authorized to act as a single entity (legally a person) and recognized as such in law.

Stock

• shares of a company that can be bought and sold for profit

• investors

Limited Liability

 risked only amount of investments, not personal assets

Andrew Carnegie

• Cut prices by making deals w/ railroads and bought out competition

• Associate: Henry Clay Frick

• Bought coal mines and leased Mesabi iron ore range in Minnesota

• Fleet of ore ships on Great Lakes

• Acquired railroads

• Controlled steel profits

• Bought for $450 mill by J. Pierpont Morgan

• vertical integration: took over all businesses steel relied on

• rags to riches

• Gospel of Wealth: billionaires extra $$ should be social trusts and used for philanthropy/charity

J. Pierpont Morgan

• Bought Carnegie’s steel company for $450 mill

  • United States Steel Corporation

  • 1.4 bill enterprise

  • Almost ⅔ US steel production

• trust

Consolidation

horizontal integration: combining of number of firms in same business into 1 corporation

Black Gold

Oil

Horizontal Integration

combining of number of firms in same business into 1 corporation

• monopoly

Vertical Integration

taking over of all different businesses on which a company relied

• carnegie steel

John D. Rockefeller

• billionaire

• standard oil

• tricked by father/scammed to learn money

Monopoly

• single company rules field

• no competition —> high prices

Pool Arrangements

Informal agreements to stabilize rates and divide markets

• cartels

Trusts

1. Stockholders in individual corps transferred stocks to small group of trustees in exchange for shares in trust

2. Owner of trust certificates had no control over decisions of trustees

   1. Only got share of profits

   2. Trustees could control many companies, even if only own some

3. unnecessary when mergers allowed

Holding Company

central corporate body that would buy up stock of various members of company trust and establish formal ownership of corps in trust

Corporate Mergers

• buying out competition —> monopoly

• small businesses combining to be bigger

• usually large companies getting others

Capitalism

an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.

Herbert Spencer

believed society benefits from elimination of unfit and survival of strong/talented

Adam Smith

• economist

• Supply and demand

• Economic system: delicate machine functioning by “invisible hand” of market forces

• laissez-faire

Gospel of Wealth

1. written by Carnegie

2. Wealthy should consider all money after needs as social trust

3. Ere trustee and agent for his poorer brethren

Horation Alger

• Started as Mass minister but fired bc sexual scandal

• Wrote 100+ rags to riches novels

• Folk hero

• closeted gay

Laissez-faire

• hands off style of econ

• govt plays little part in market except safety nets (bankruptcy, programs, welfare, unemployment, etc)

Socialist Labor Party

• daniel deleon

• became american socialist party

• never got too large

Edward Bellamy

1. Looking Backward: bestselling utopian novel

   1. Young Bostonian who goes into hypnotic sleep in 1887 and wakes up in 2000 to find new social order with no want, politics, or vice

      1. Society came abt through peaceful evolution

      2. 1 trust controlled by govt with distributed wealth among ppl

         1. Socialism 

      3. Fraternal cooperation

Henry George

1. Progress and Poverty: one of best-selling nonfiction in US publishing history

   1. More wealth increases class gaps

2. Social problems bc monopolists grow wealthier bc land is more expensive

   1. Bc of society around land

      1. Unearned increment

3. Single tax: return increment to ppl

   1. Destroy monopolies

   2. Distribute wealth

   3. Eliminate poverty

Nationalism

Bellamy’s philosophy that ideal society had people working together and equally sharing profits of industrialization (no classes)

• fraternal cooperation

• society great machine

Chinese Exclusion Act

• banned Chinese emigration to US for 10 yrs and forbade Chinese ppl in US from becoming citizens

  • Renewed for another decade in 1892

  • Made permanent in 1902

Child Labor Laws

• passed by 38 states

• minimum working age laws and prohibited children from working more than 10 hours per day

  • factories: minimum 12 yrs and max 10 hrs a day (ignored)

• Enforcement difficult:

  • 60% child workers in agriculture (unaffected by laws)

    • 12 hr days picking/hoeing in fields

  • Cotton Mills: children worked at looms all night and kept awake by having cold water thrown in faces

  • Canneries: girls cut fruit and veggies 16 hrs/day

National Labor Union

• William H. Sylvis

• Polyglot association

• 640k members

• Variety of reform groups (irrelevant to labor)

• Destroyed w/ Panic of 1873

• excluded women (argued they drove down wages)

Molly Maguires

• Labor organization in coal region of PA

• In Ancient Order of Hibernians (irish fraternal society)

• Intimidate coal operators through violence/murder

• Lots performed by agents as excuses to suppress unions

Great Railroad Strike

• 1877 → railroads announced 10% wage cut

• Strikers:

  • Disrupted rail service

  • Destroyed equipment

  • Rioted in city streets

• President Rutherford B. Hayes ordered fed troops to suppress disorders in WV

• Baltimore: 11 died and 40 wounded

• Philly: state militia open-fired on thousands of workers/families

  1. 20 died

• 100+ ppl died in total

Knights of Labor

• Uriah S. Stephens

• First national labor org

• Open to all workers/professionals

  1. Excluded lawyers, bankers, liquor dealers, gamblers

• Welcomed women (including domestic workers)

• Women’s Bureau of the Knights: Leonora Barry (irish immigrant in NY hosiery factory)

  • 50k women

  • 100+ all-female local groups

• Organization: 

  • Local assemblies

• Championed 8hr work day and removal of child labor, but more interested in long-term reform

• Wage system  → cooperative system (workers control part of economy)

• discredited after failed Texas and Pacific strike resulted in broken Gould system

Terence Powderly

• one president of Knights of Labor

• expansion!

  • 1886: 700k+ members

• Some unions striked (against Powderly’s desires)

• 1885 → railway workers forced Missouri Pacific (gould system) to restore wage cuts and recognize unions

• Texas and Pacific (gould) strike failed and Gould system broken

  1. Discredited org

American Federation of Labor

• Association of craft unions and skill workers, not just everybody like Knights

  • Hostile to unskilled

• didn’t want women there (lowered wages) but worked for them to have more money (make unappealing)

• wanted wages/hours changed by employers, not govt

• wanted 8hrs a day

• haymarket strike

• associated w/ Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers

Samuel Gompers

• AFL leader who believed women shouldn’t work

• Goal was to get workers greater share of capitalism’s rewards

• Opposed worker’s party

• Didn’t want govt to improve conditions

Haymarket Riot

• cause: 8hrs/day not achieved by May 1, 1886

• Protests and general strike at McCormick Harvester Company

• Meeting at Haymarket Square

• Police ordered crowd to disperse → someone threw bomb that killed 7 officers and injured 67 ppl

• Police → killed 4 day before and 4 now

• Chicago offs charged 8 supposed anarchists with murder

  • Protests incited bomb thrower

  • Unfair trial

  • 7 sentenced to death and 1 committed suicide

    • freed by John Peter Atgeld

  • 4 actually executed and 2 had life imprisonment

Anarchism

came to mean violence/terrorism instead of peaceful visionaries after Haymarket Riot

Homestead Strike

1. 1890s → Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick wanted to completely remove them

   1. Cut wages often (no backlash at first due to small union size)

2. 1892 → Carnegie system stopped including Amalgamated in decisions (no negotiation)

   1. Strike when had 2 days to accept wage cut

   2. Frick shut down plant and got 300 guards (Pinkerton Detective Agency) to let them hire nonunion workers

      1. PDA: strikebreakers (sight of them incited violence)

3. Strike: 

   1. Pinkertons got to plant by river on barges

      1. Strikers prepared by pouring oil on water/setting it on fire

   2. Strikers met guards with guns/dynamite

   3. 3 guards/10 strikers killed and many injured

   4. Pinkertons surrendered

4. Strike Aftermath: 

   1. Gov of PA sent entire National Guard (8k troops)

   2. Production resumed and pinkertons protected by troops

   3. Strikers lost support when tried to kill Frick

   4. Amalgamated surrendered

Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers

• most powerful trade union

• Skilled workers

  • Demand, so power

• “Little shop floor autocrats”

• Rulebook w/ 56 pages of legislation limiting employer power

• supported by AFL

• Carnegie System: union only had foothold in Homestead plant (Pittsburgh)

• 1900 → Amalgamated had no pull in any major steel plant in NE

Social Darwinism

• laws of evolution/natural selection 

• Attempts to raise wages/regulation would fail

  • Invisible hand/laissez-faire

• Only fittest survived in marketplace

  1. Poor: impoverished due to laziness, stupidity, and carelessness

  2. Rich: wealthy due to hard work and “worthiness”

Pullman Palace Car Company

• made sleeping/parlor cars for railroads

• Located near chicago

• 600 acre town (Pullman) and rented houses to employees: high rent

• Owner: George M. Pullman

Pullman Strike

• 1893-1894 → slashed wages 25% (said bc depression)

  • Didn’t reduce rent (20-25% higher than outside)

• convinced American Railway Union to not use Pullman cars

  • General Managers Association persuaded railways to fire ppl who did above

    • ARU told ppl to resign when this happened

• thousands on strike (27 states/territories)

• Railroad ops asked fed govt to send troops (preventing movement of mail on trains)

  1. President Grover Cleveland and Attorney General Richard Olney (hated unions) obliged

• Pres ordered 2000 troops to Chicago area

• Injunction forbidding union to continue strike

John Peter Atgeld

1. Sympathized w/ workers

2. Criticized trials of Haymarket anarchists

3. Pardoned those men still in prison when elected

4. Didn’t call on militia to protect employers

Eugene V. Debs

• American Railway Union leader

• defied end of strike → arrested/imprisoned

• Pullman Strike

Women’s Trade Union League

• Tried to unionize women (unsuccessful)

• Protective legislation for women workers

New Immigrants

…

Immigrant ghettoes

1. Italian, Polish, Jewish, Slavic, Chinese, French-Canadian, Mexican, etc

2. Some had ppl who came from same town

3. Fraternal organizations, entertainment/news in native languages, native foods, churches/synagogues

4. Communities tended to stick to their country’s values

5. Etnic communities

Assimilation

• some wanted to in order to be “Americans”

• others were forced to through being required to speak English, a lack of stores for cultural clothing/food, and English speaking schools

• women had more freedom in US usually, so there was a strain on their parental relationships

  • parents still expected to arrange marriages

  • women began working

American Protective Association

• Created by Henry Bowers

• Stop immigration

• 500k in 1894

• Chapters in NE and MW

• Xenophobia

Xenophobia

distrust/prejudice of foreigners

Philanthropy

• Public donations

  • libraries, art galleries, natural history museums, theaters, concert halls, opera houses

1893 Columbian Exposition

• 400 yr anniversary of Columbus

• Frederick Jackson Turner thesis

• Great White City: neoclassical buildings in beaux-arts style symmetrically around formal lagoon

  • City beautiful movement: Daniel Burnham

Suburbs

• Linked downton with trains, streetcars, roads

• Chicago: almost 100 suburbs connected to city through railroads

• Boston: streetcar suburbs (Dorchester, Brookline, etc)

• NYC: north Manhattan and commuted through trolley/riverboat

• Nostalgia for country: lawns, trees, manor houses, owning land

Tenement

1. slums

2. cheap lodging for poor

3. Windowless rooms

4. Little to no plumbing/central heating

   1. Row of toilets in basement

5. Required window in bedrooms → sunless air shafts

6. 3,4, + ppl per room

Jacob Riis

•  newspaper reporter/photographer

• Shocking descriptions/pics of tenement life

• How the Other Half Lives

• Tenements sunless, airless, poisoned by summer stenches

• Solution: destroy tenements (no new housing proposed)

Brooklyn Bridge

• created by John A. Roebling 

• Steelcable suspension span bridge

Skyscraper

• common term for tall buildings

• elevators

• made possible with cast iron and steel buildings

Public Cultures

the range of activities in shared public spaces

• urban parks

• libraries

• art galleries

• theaters

• museums

Yellow Journalism

• William Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer

• Sensational reporting

• Bold graphics

• Designed to reach masses

High Culture

• activities/leisure for elite and wealthy

• “highbrow”

Armory Show

• Ashcan school: stark naturalism to portray social realities who experimented with expression/abstraction

  • John Sloan: American urban slums

  • George Bellows: prize fights

  • Edward Hopper: loneliness of modern city

• This was their modern art show in NYC

Charles Darwin

1. Human species evolved from earlier forms through natural selection

2. Criticized biblical story and american religion

3. Dominated by fierceness/luck, not faith

4. Lots of resistance from theologians and even scientists at first

5. Caused rift between urban and rural culture

   1. Liberal Protestantism (support evolution)

   2. Protestant fundamentalism (reject evolution)

Social Darwinism

• William Graham Sumner

• Justify wealth (only best survive market)

Louis Sullivan

• chicago school of architecture

• major role in skyscraper creation

• Auditorium Building (Chi) and Wainwright Building (St Louis)

• “form follows functions”

Great Fires

• Downtown areas destroyed by fires (buildings mainly made of wood)

• 1871 Chi and Boston → fires

• 1906 Baltimore and San Fran → earthquake that led to fires

• Encouraged fireproof buildings and fire departments

• Made cities rebuild

Deserving Poor

• Fault of poor (laziness, alcoholism, irresponsibility)

• no dividing standards between deserving/non-deserving

Salvation Army

• concentrated on religion rather than homelessness

• Tensions between Protestants and Catholic immigrants

Street Arabs

• poor children (orphans/runaways) living on city streets alone or in small groups searching for food

• pity from wealthy/middle class women, but no change occured

Urban Machine

• Existed bc power vacuum of quickly expanding cities/limited growth of govt

• Voting power of immigrants

Political Boss

• foreign-born or parentage men

• Win votes for org by appealing to immigrants

  • Relief such as groceries/coal

  • Free those arrested from petty crimes

  • Gave followers jobs

Patronage

• successful political party giving government jobs to its supporters

Honest Graft

• George Washington Plunkitt (NYC Tammany Hall)

• Politician discovers in advance where transportation should be built, buy land near it, and profit when value rose

William M. Tweed

• most corrupt grafter

• Tammany Hall boss

• covert graft:  kickbacks from contractors in exchange for contracts to build and create projects

  • Pretended to create infrastructure/public utilities but actually used money for more nefarious purposes

White Collar

• higher class/well respected/better paying professional jobs

  • Clerks

  • Accountants

  • Middle managers

  • Doctors

  • Lawyers

Chain Stores

•  sell goods for cheaper bc of product volume

• opposition from community (feared they would destroy town vibes)

• slow to reach rural areas

• stores with multiple locations, usually quite popular

Five and Ten Cent Store

• Natl chain of dry goods stores

• F.W. Woolworth

• 1st one in Utica, NY

Catalogs

• Montgomery Ward (Chicago based traveling salesman) gave them out of consumer goods w/ Grange (farmers’ association)

  • thousands of items cheaply to farmers in Midwest and beyond

• Sears Roebuck: Richard Sears

• made shopping more accessible to ppl in rural areas

Department Stores

• Examples: Marshall Field (Chi), Macy’s (NYC), Abraham and Straus (Brooklyn), Jordan Marsh (Boston), Filene’s (Boston), Wanamaker’s (Philly)

• Brought many products together

• Elaborately decorated with restaurants, tea rooms, and comfy lounges to be elegant/social event

• Well dressed sales clerks (mainly women) to provide attentive service

• Took advantage of economies to sell products cheaper than smaller competitors

National Consumer’s League

• Florence Kelley

• Mobilize women as consumers to make retailers improve their wages and working conditions

• As consumers, could be publicly active

Frederick Jackson Turner

• frontier thesis

  • western expansion reason for democracy

• 1893 Columbian Exposition

Land Grant Institutions

• Morrill Land Grant Act: fed govt donated land to states to create colleges

• 69 (CA, IL, MN, WI)

Coney Island

•  NY amusement park

• Rides

• Shows

• Dance halls

• Vaudeville houses

• Concert halls

• Restaurants

• Leisure