SS Consolidation & Monopoly, Labor, and Immigration

Trust

• A business agreement in which a group of companies coordinate to benefit from control of a market

• Either: Less formal arrangements (sharing stocks, board members as trustees)

• Ownership of "competing" companies in holding companies

• Effect: reduces competition, raises prices

Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)

• Law that made illegal anti-competitive agreements

• Punished attempts to monopolize markets but did not punish "innocent monopolies" that were successful on merit

• Intent: protect consumers from market competition failing, not punish a business for being successful

Standard Oil

• Rockefeller monopolized oil refinery industry (horizontal integration)

• Later controlled industry from oil drilling, to refining, to distribution (sales) (vertical integration)

• Rockefeller used size and power of Standardized Oil to manipulate railroad industry to help him, and hurt competitors

Standard Oil Co. of new Jersey vs. United States (1911)

• Federal court ruled against Rockefeller's monopoly

• Rockefeller appealed to the Supreme Court

• Supreme Court ruled against Rockefeller

  • Standard Oil's influence undercut competition

  • Railroads practiced price discrimination in favor of Standard Oil

• Broken into 48 companies

United States vs EC Knight (sugar refining company) (1895)

• Gov't sued Sugar refining company based in Florida: part of a trust

  • Controlled 98% of sugar refining industry

• Court ruled that Sherman Act applied to interstate commerce (commerce between states)

• States allowed to regulate manufacturing

• E.C. Knight Co. maintained refining monopoly in Florida

Trade Union

• Organization of/representing workers in a field of work

• Negotiates working conditions

• Often sets standards for trained/skilled workers

• Strike: Union tactic, stop working when negotiations fail

Haymarket Affair

• May 4th, 1886

  • Fed. of Organized Trades and Unions set 8 hour work day

• Labor demonstration in Chicago against McCormick Harvesting Machine Co.

  • Working class Germans

• Unknown person threw bomb into crowd, killed 7 police officers, 70 civilians injured

• 8 deaths (4 executions later - German Anarchists)

• Faulty evidence: trial used to suppress anarchists

Homestead Strike

• 1892 Homestead, Pennsylvania

• Amalgamated Association of Iron & Steel workers, knights of Labor

• Refused work until Carnegie approved a union contract

• Factory closed and boarded up from workers

• Violence between workers and {Pinkertons

  • Pinkertons not tried for murder, Carnegie hired non-union workers

  • Black workers mostly excluded from unions

1892 New Orleans General Strike

• Workers across industries refused to work fror increase in salaries

  • Alliance of two unions

  • Black & white workers participated, despite employers trying to divide them

• Workers achieve 10 hour work day + overtime pay

• Supreme Court ruled that union acted as monopoly of labor

  • Sherman Antitrust Act could be applied to unions, not just industry

Immigration (1800-1850) (East Coast)

• "old" Europe: England, Ireland, Scandenavia

• Cultural connections with communities taht colonized North America

• Protestant, white European

• Economic pulls

• Factories

Immigration (1800-1850) (West Coast)

Europe: Latin America

• Economic

• Increase after gold rush, attracting people, especially chinese

• Labor demand for mining, railroads, and factories

Immigration (1850-1900)

East Coast:

• "new" Europe

• Southern & Eastern Europe

• More Catholic + Jewish immigrants

• Economic, Especially social (ex: Jews escaping persecution in the Russian Empire, Austria - Hungary_
  West Coast:

• Moves to limit Asian immigration

Immigration Restriction League

• North East nativists in 1880s

• Saw immigrants from Southern & Eastern Europe to be racially inferior to Northern and Western Europeans

• Protect interests of Protestant AngloSaxon (English) Americans over immigrants

• Economic panics 1870s-1890s

• Preserve industry jobs for native Ammericans

• Proposed limiting immigrants from Southern & Eastern Europe

Chinese Experiences in the U.S.

• U.s. restricted Chinese women from immigrating + allowed men for labor

• Violent mob attacks of Chinese and Chinese Americans in California

• Chinese restricted from citizenship, purchasing land, Chinese Exlusion Acto of 1882

• Upheld by Supreme Court, supported by white labor unions

• Hells Canyon Massacre of 1887

• 34 miners killed, over $4000 of gold stolen