Dual-Credit US History - The Gilded Age

Defining Characteristics of America during the Gilded Age

1. phenomenal economic growth

2. rise of industry and industrial capitalists controlling politics

laissez faire

1. businessmen and their Republican party supporters formed a political-economic policy that sought to keep the government out of business

2. the less government regulation of businesses meant more prosperity for the American economy

Social Darwinism

1. like natural selection in that those who were rich were rich because they were strong, smart, and worked hard

2. those that were poor were poor because they were weak and unintelligent

3. coined by Herbert Spencer

Sherman anti-trust act

1. 1890 congress passed an act that outlawed any combination that restricted competition

2. failed because it could not be enforced

monopoly

1. a single person or corporation controls a certain commodity/or market, thus eliminating competition and allowing them to set whatever price they want

trust

1. owners appointed individuals to run their company in other states, commonly under different names in order to get around laws restricting companies from having property across state lines

consolidation of American industry

1. the combining of several companies to make one huge company

2. business ends up being centralized and controlled by a few wealthy individuals

3. creates an unequal distribution of wealth

Rockefeller Standard Oil

1. Standard Oil eventually became Exxon

2. built a business empire due to lack of regulations

3. sold so much oil that shippers would give him rebates, or discounts so that he would keep the same amount of volume coming

4. would buy out competition or lower prices and take a hit in order to bankrupt competition

5. utilized vertical integration

6. used PRICE to control the market

Business Practices

1. Rebate

2. Vertical Integration

3. Horizontal Integration

4. Economies of scale

vertical integration

1. a process where the middleman is removed

2. in Rockefeller's case, he made his own barrels, refineries, railroads, etc. because if he was to get all his supplies from a middleman, then technically the middleman would have control over production

cartel

1. when a group of companies come together and set prices, almost like a monopoly consisting of multiple corporations

2. OPEC in the Middle East is a cartel and is one of the reasons why the US has to pay such high prices for gas

rebates

1. Developed in the 1880s, a practice by which railroads would give money back to its favored customers, rather than charging them lower prices, so that it could appear to be charging a flat rate for everyone.

horizontal integration

1. a process by which a company just buys up all of the competition, thus eliminating competition

2. used by JP Morgan

economies of scale

1. overproduction in order to keep prices low so that other companies would have to lower their prices

2. consequently these companies couldn't afford these low prices so the competition was eliminated

3. used by Carnegie

Bessemer Process

1. hardens iron, turning it to steel

2. basis of Carnegies dominance in the steel industry; allowed him to mass produce steel

Carnegie, Carnegie Steel

1. used economies of scale, and the Bessemer process to grow his corporation

2. used DEMAND to control the market

inner city conditions

1. immigrants forced to live in poverty and close quarters

2. started fights

3. lead to reform and William Tweed took advantage of the situation

William Tweed and Tammany Hall

1. supported immigrants and tried to improve their living conditions in exchange for votes and vote counters in New York

2. Democratic

3. Tammany Hall - the Democratic political machine of New York

Gospel of Wealth

1. written by Carnegie

2. believed that it was the duty of the wealthy to give back to society in the form of charity

3. believed becoming wealthy was a gift from God

Result of Industrialization on economic equity/inequity

1. the socio-economic gap between the rich and poor grew wider and the middle class grew but was still extremely small

2. middle class allows for class mobility and divides the poor from the rich

3. rich get richer, poor get poorer

American economic transition from agrarian to industry

1. the transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy was facilitated by the emergence of America as a world economic power after the civil war

2. simply put, America had to industrialize to keep up with the other powers of the world

dynamic of relationship of progress to poverty

1. America is becoming wealthy and powerful but at the expense of immigrant health and what is seen as expendable labor, or the immigrants being throwaways

perception of industrialists: robber barons or captains of industry

1. most capital industrialists fully believed in the idea of Social Darwinism

2. all industrialists in the reading achieved their wealth mostly legally, even if unethically, aside from Jay Gould

industry and government

1. close relationship; lassiez faire dines relationship; businessmen involved in government matters but not the other way around; allows for the return of the pyramid

Settlement houses and Jane Addams

1. some Americans tried to offer relief to the immigrants and their horrible living conditions

2. went against the idea of social Darwinism

3. Jane Addams - Hull House - many came to assimilate themselves into American culture and take their minds off of their everyday lives

Karl Marx Theories regarding industrialized society

1. appealed to poor people because they offered hope for socio-economic progression

2. socialism

socialism

1. the people own the means of production, or the government, and the wealth gets distributed evenly

2. appeals to the poor who have nothing

Terrence Powderly and the Knights of Labor

1. one of the first labor unions

2. forgot ideals of a labor union and tried to incite social change on socialist principles

3. Haymarket square - left a bad taste of labor unions in the mouths of American's due to Anarchists getting out of control and starting a riot

Samuel Gompers and the American Federation of Labor (AFL)

1. federation of MULTIPLE craft unions

2. focused on issues like working hours, wages, working conditions; items that could be provided by the company

3. utilized the strike very well - if one member craft union went on strike, the rest of the members went on strike for their respective business

4. strike drawn back to American roots in the colonial boycott of goods

Collective Bargaining

1. basic foundation of the American Labor Union

2. power in numbers

3. realized their labor was vital to the company

the strike

1. workers wouldn't go to work in protest - form of economic black mail

scabs

1. workers hired by employers to replace those on strike, ruled strikers ineffective at times

Homestead Strike

1. workers decided to strike at homestead steel mill after managers replaced some workers with machinery

2. scabs replaced strikers

3. a battle broke out

4. left bad taste in Americans mouth on labor unions

Pullman Strike

1. a company town lowered wages, and rose rent and commodity prices

2. workers went on strike and didn't build the railroad cars, which when they failed the railroads weren't active

3. the US army was sent in because this meant mail couldn't be delivered, set a precedent

Similarities between Haymarket Square, Homestead, and Pullman Strikes

1. left bad taste about labor unions in American mouths

child labor

1. children worked for cheap and parents needed the income to feed themselves

2. started at very young ages

Frederick Jackson Turner and the Frontier Thesis

1. American character was forged in the Frontier experience (westward expansion)

2. both American character and western expansion are aggressive and reliant on each other

3. without expansion, Americans become destructive

commonalities of expansion

1. led by Yeomen; always moved west; economic motives above all else; desire for economic independence

commonalities of Lincoln's expansion acts

1. Lincoln provided land opportunities through the Homestead Acts, Morrill Land Grant, and Pacific Railway Acts - first example of government promoting expansion

Expansion and Xenophobia

1. South had anti freedmen groups (The Klan, White League)

2. North had Anti Irish-Catholic groups (Know-Nothings, Free Soilers) - saw immigrants as competition for labor

3. West had anti Asian groups

Anti-Asian Sentiment

1. Know Nothings hated foreigners but especially Asians as they were seen as either not contributing members of society, or took jobs in the laundry industry

2. 1874 California Miner's Tax - $20 a month for any foreign born miner, Asians couldn't pay and were forced out

3. 18882 Chinese Exclusion Act - bans and deports all Chinese immigrants and further Chinese immigration

4. Asians had a cultural difference from white people, while still hated, the Irish and German were still white

Motivations for Westward Migration

1. Northern Yeomen - Union soldiers, seek land and opportunity in Trans-Mississippi west

2. Southern Yeomen - no future in recon south (sharecropping); will seek future in Trans-Mississippi west

3. Blacks and Freedmen - no future in recon south (sharecropping); Go north- angry freesoilers/white immigrants; will see their migration as biblical and will call themselves the EXODUSTERS

4. Immigrants - overcrowding in urban areas; some attempt to move west in order to seek land

The West - America's Relief Valve

1. The West kept tensions/violence from rising too high in the cities as people could always seek land and economic opportunity in the West

Indian White Relations

1. reasons for conflict - different conceptions of land

2. Indians saw land as holy and sacred; cultural

3. Americans saw it as economic opportunity

4. WT Sherman - "separation is peace"

5. Indians have 3 options - can fight for their land, move further west, or assimilate

The Dakota War (Sioux Uprising)

1. during the Civil War, corruption lead to Indians that were promised food and supplies to not get their needs

2. started to raid settlements and military sites

3. General Pope arrests and sentences 330 Indians to death

4. forgave the Indians who only wanted to feed their families

5. executed 38 Indians who just said they hated the white man - largest mass execution in US history

6. moreover, bodies dug up and sold for research purposes - tensions rise again

7. ends with Indians kicked out of Minnesota

8. before - only Indians east of the Mississippi

Sand Creek 1864

1. Major John Chivington attacks and murders friendly Indian tribe in Colorado in order to avoid getting sent east to the civil war

2. did it in the winter while the warriors were out hunting so that no one could defend

medicine lodge treaty

The Kiowa, Comanche, Kiowa-Apache, Cheyenne, and Arapaho signed this treaty which stated that these Plains Indians would have to live on reservations, learn to farm rather than roam the prairies, and learn and live the white man's way of life. The Indians in return would be protected from white hunters, receive food and clothing, and have its own reservation

piecework

1. a compensation system in which employees are paid a set rate for each item they produce

2. the more items produced - the more they are paid

1864 Contract Labor Law

1. allowed business to go overseas and seek labor

2. since passage to America was expensive, companies would pay workers passage to the US in exchange for their labor - follows Jamestown precedent of bringing indentured servants over