Unit 6 Notes

  1. Second Industrial Revolution (1865-1900)

    1. Period after Civil War was marked by rapid industrial growth

    2. Union victory was supported by North’s industrial strength

    3. US abundance of raw materials

      1. Iron ore (to make steel)
      2. Metals (copper, tin, and gold)
      3. Fuel sources (coal and oil)
      4. Lumber (for building)

    4. The first major industry in the US was railroads

The “Wild West” and Frontier

  1. Settling the Great Plains

    1. Homestead Act (1862)

      1. Families could claim federally-owned land in the Great Plains
      2. Promise to “improve the land” - plowing fields, digging wells, building houses, and dams
      3. 500k families moved west as a result - called “Homesteaders”

    2. Pacific Railway Act (1862)

      1. Federal land for transcontinental railroad

      2. Eight new states added between 1867- 1896

        1. NE, CO, ND, SD, MT, WA, ID, WY

  2. Farming Frontier

    1. Harsh and Difficult Life

      1. Sod-brick homes
      2. Limited fertile soil and water resources
      3. Settlers grew hearty varieties of wheat
      4. Farming, housework, and irrigation

  3. Mining Frontier

    1. California Gold Rush (1848-49)

    2. Pikes Peak, CO (1859)

    3. Comstock Lode - $340M in gold and silver in NV (1859)

    4. Major cities in the West - mining supply towns

      1. San Francisco and Sacramento (CA)
      2. Denver (CO)
      3. Virginia City (NV)

    5. Western mining towns hired Chinese immigrants

    6. Native-born white Americans resented job competition

    7. Congress passes Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

      1. Prohibited further immigration to US by Chinese laborers
      2. First major act to restrict immigration based on race/ethnicity

  4. Ranching Frontier

    1. Vast, open grassland ideal for “longhorn” cattle

    2. Ranchers = cattle drives from TX to railroads in KS

    3. Railroads = transport cattle east for slaughter and meat packing

    4. Gustavus Swift - refrigerated railroad cars (1882)

    5. Growth of Midwest meatpacking cities

      1. Chicago, Omaha, Kansas City

    6. The American Cowboy

      1. Often young and single men
      2. Little pay for difficult work
      3. “Cattle Towns” - saloons, gambling, prostitution

  5. Plains Native Americans

    1. Indian Wars (1866-1890)

      1. Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Chief Joseph
      2. General George Custer
      3. Wounded Knee Massacre (1890)

    2. Dawes Severalty Act (1887)

      1. Distributed 47 million acres to Native Americans
      2. Broke up larger plots of tribal land
      3. Intended to “civilize” Native American communities

  6. “The New South”

    1. Advocates for a self-sufficient South

    2. Achieved some economic progress

      1. Growth of cities
      2. Improved manufacturing techniques
      3. Expansion of railroads

    3. Birmingham, AL (steel)

    4. Memphis, TN (lumber and logging)

    5. Richmond, VA (tobacco)

    6. Georgia and Carolinas (textiles)

  7. Agriculture

    1. South remained largely agricultural
    2. System of sharecropping persists
    3. Effect = Remained poorest region

  8. African-Americans in the South

    1. What happened in the South politically after Reconstruction? (Causation)

      1. Southern Democrats took back government positions
      2. Dominate Southern politics starting in 1880’s and 1890’s

    2. What will Democrats do once they are back in power?

      1. Systematically oppresses African-Americans again

        1. Loss of Civil Rights and Voting Restrictions

        2. Literacy tests and poll taxes

        3. Grandfather clauses

        4. Discrimination in Criminal Justice system

        5. Barred from serving on juries

        6. Were often given harsher sentences

        7. Lynching and mob violence

        8. Segregation of “Jim Crow” Laws

        9. Separate public facilities for blacks and whites

        10. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) - SCOTUS upheld “separate but equal” railroad cars in Louisiana

        11. Causation - other Southern states passed “Jim Crow” Laws

Industrial Leaders (1865-1900)

  1. Andrew Carnegie and Steel

    1. Scottish-born immigrant

    2. Establish steel manufacturing company in 1870

    3. Latest technology - Bessemer Process

    4. Business Tactic - Vertical Integration

      1. Controlled every stage of manufacturing process
      2. Owned mines where iron ore was extracted
      3. Owned steel mill where iron was manipulated into steel
      4. Owned railroads to transport raw materials and finished products

    5. By 1900, Carnegie Steel produced more steel than all of Britain

    6. Charitable giving - $350M for libraries and universities

  2. John D. Rockefeller and Oil

    1. Founded Standard Oil Company

    2. Before: Oil industry was disorganized and chaotic

    3. After: Rockefeller bought out weaker competitors

    4. Consolidated them under one corporate umbrella

      1. Known as horizontal integration
      2. One large company buys out smaller competitors in the same industry
      3. Puts them into one large-scale operation, known as a trust
      4. By 1881, Standard Oil controlled 90 percent of US oil refining

    5. Achieved lower prices by extorting rebates from railroad companies

    6. Also philanthropic - universities and Baptist missions and aid societies

  3. Railroad Tycoons

    1. Railroad industry grew too fast and was poorly managed

    2. Many investors bought up failing railroads and consolidated them

      1. Cornelius Vanderbilt - used millions to create New York Central Railroad (NY to CHI)
      2. J. Pierpont Morgan - bought railroads in 1893 and turned them into corporation

    3. By 1900, two-thirds of US railways controlled by seven corporations

    4. By 1890’s, richest ten percent controlled 90 percent wealth

    5. Large mansions with lavish parties

      1. The Breakers - Vanderbilt summer home in Newport, RI
      2. The Biltmore - Vanderbilt mountain estate in Ashville, NC

  4. Technology and Innovations

    1. Mass-produced goods for average Americans

      1. Telegraph - invented by Samuel Morse in 1844
      2. Telephone - invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876
      3. Typewriter (1867)
      4. Cash register (1879)
      5. Fountain pen (1884)
      6. Kodak camera - invented by George Eastman (1888)
      7. Safety razor and blade - invented by King Gillette (1895)

    2. Thomas Edison

      1. Research laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ
      2. Phonograph, electric light bulb, motion picture camera

    3. George Westinghouse - transformer for alternating current (1885)

Labor in America (1865-1900)

  1. Labor Before Industrial Revolution

    1. Before

      1. Smaller workplaces or individual
      2. Artisans or Craftspeople
      3. Highly skilled labor
      4. Created product start to finish

    2. After

      1. Large-scale factories
      2. Semi-skilled labor
      3. One step of manufacturing product

  2. America’s Working Class (1865-1900)

    1. Ten Hours a Day, Six Days a Week

    2. No breaks; no workers compensation; no medical care

    3. Dangerous jobs and materials

      1. Heavy machinery, toxic chemicals, explosive materials

    4. “Company Towns” - Employer controlled housing, utilities, store prices

    5. 11 million families earned less than $380 a week

    6. Nearly two-thirds of all workers were in “low-wage” work

    7. How might some workers try to change or improve working conditions?

      1. Formation of labor unions

      2. Designed around the idea of collective action or collective bargaining

      3. Also used strikes and picketing

      4. Prominent unions included:

        1. National Labor Union
        2. Knights of Labor
        3. American Federation of Labor (AFL) - Samuel Gompers
        4. American Railroad Union - Eugene Debs

  3. Management’s Response

    1. Used a variety of countermeasures to break up labor unions

    2. Lockouts, blacklists, militias and private security forces

    3. Injunctions - state and federal court orders deeming strikes illegal

    4. Violence and Arrests

      1. 1877 - Railroad strike in Baltimore, MD (eleven workers killed)
      2. 1894 - Pullman strike broken up by federal troops
      3. Eugene Debs arrested for Pullman strike

The Paradox of Capitalist Growth

  1. Laissez-Faire

    1. French for “to leave alone”
    2. Proposed by Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations (1776)
    3. Economics were governed by “invisible hand” of supply and demand
    4. Government should leave businesses alone
    5. Businesses should be motivated by self-interest and consumer improvement

  2. Social Darwinism

    1. Based on biological theories of Charles Darwin

    2. Strong businesses and inherent “gifts” or “traits”

    3. Struggling businesses had inherent flaws or weaknesses

    4. Helping poor was misguided and “against the laws of nature”

    5. Advocated by Yale professor William Graham Sumner

    6. What was a consequence of Social Darwinism?

      1. Used to justify racial superiority and intolerance

  3. The Gospel of Wealth

    1. Supported by A. Carnegie in Wealth (1889)

    2. Rich had “God-given responsibility” for charity and philanthropy

    3. “Doing for them better than they could do for themselves”

    4. What are the positives and negatives of Gospel of Wealth?

      1. Positives - Philanthropic leaders (Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt)
      2. Negatives - Patronizing to wage-workers and poor

  4. Horatio Alger and “Rags-to-Riches”

    1. American myth of success

      1. Rise from humble beginnings
      2. “Self-made man”
      3. Became successful businessmen or investors

    2. What was a criticism of the Horatio Alger Myth?

      1. Most industrialists were WASP’s (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants)
      2. Most were also upper- or middle- class
      3. Most had fathers or families in business or banking

  5. Henry George, of Progress and Poverty (1879)

    1. Poverty was a threat to natural rights and democracy
    2. “Equality of political rights will not compensate for the denial of the equal right to the bounty of nature”
    3. “The pillars of the republic that we thought so strong already bend under an increasing strain.”

  6. Is Business Too Big? What About The Workers?

    1. Horatio Alger and “Rags to Riches” - the idea of “self-made” man

    2. Laissez-Faire - “to leave alone” - government should let markets self-correct

    3. Social Darwinism - businesses and business leaders succeed because of inherent traits or gifts; others fail because they lack such gifts

    4. Gospel of Wealth - Rich had “God-given” responsibility to help poor

    5. Henry George - Of Progress and Poverty (1879)

      1. "Equality of political rights will not compensate for the denial of the equal right to the bounty of nature”

  7. “Old” and “New” Immigrants

    1. “Old” Immigrants

      1. 1800-1880

      2. Western/Northern Europe

        1. British Isles
        2. Germany
        3. Scandinavia

      3. Mostly Protestant

      4. Some Catholics (Irish/German)

      5. High levels of literacy

      6. Skilled workers/tradespeople

    2. “New” Immigrants

      1. 1890-1914

      2. Southern/Eastern Europe (Italy/Greece)

      3. Slavic People

        1. Croats, Poles, Russians, Slovaks

      4. Largely Roman Catholic

      5. Greek and Russian Orthodox

      6. Jewish

      7. Poor, illiterate peasants

  8. Push and Pull Factors

    1. Push - Why You Leave Your Country

      1. Political Upheaval in Europe
      2. Economic conditions in Europe
      3. Religious persecution

    2. Pull - What Draws You to a New Country

      1. US reputation for religious and political freedom
      2. Abundance of industrial jobs
      3. Steamships - “steerage”

  9. Challenges of Urbanization

    1. Urbanization - a shift in population from rural areas to urban areas

    2. What are some of the problems that you envision with this influx of immigrants?

      1. Housing - where will all these immigrants live?
      2. Transportation - how will people move throughout the city?
      3. Sanitation and Clean Water? - how will we keep the city clean?
      4. Public Safety - how will we keep everyone safe and prevent crime?
      5. Education - will immigrant children go to school? Will they learn English?

    3. Leads to expansion of municipal (city) government

      1. Subways, sewage, trash collection, utilities (electric and water)

    4. Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)

    5. Passed by Congress in response to antitrust concerns

    6. Prohibited any “contract, combination, or trust”

    7. Also prohibited actions “in conspiracy in restraint of trade”

    8. What was the problem with the Act?

      1. Too vaguely worded to have any effect
      2. Other SCOTUS cases only applied to commerce, NOT manufacturing

    9. Populism - a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups

    10. Farmers and Industrializations

    11. Fewer Americans were farming as their profession

      1. 1860 - 60 percent of American families were farming
      2. 1900- 37 percent of American families were farming

    12. Large/expensive machines (Reaper/thresher)

    13. Population increase = high demand for crops

    14. Grow more crops to pay down debt

    15. More crops = increased supply = lower prices

    16. The Farmers Respond

    17. Labor Issues

      1. Organized Labor and Labor Unions
      2. Cooperatives (National Grange Movement)