Untitled Flashcards Set

The Rise of Big Business — The Gilded Age: 

• Progressive Age 

• Railroads important → first great concentrations of wealth 

  • Creation of uniform time zones 

  • Access to remote markets 

• However, the wealth accumulated in very few individuals 

  • As a result, unions popped up 

• Steel was produced a lot as it was strong → thus no need to constantly main steel & buildings/objects made of steel 

  • Era of Steel 

  • Everything had steel in it 

• Coal and steam → electricity, oil, gasoline 

  • Electricity — a versatile form of energy 

• New technologies from electricity: 

  • Electric cars 

  • Lights 

  • Homes were lit 

    • Middle-class could live farther away from the city — electric cars 

    • They could go out at night — street lights 

      • Lights = safety 

• Alexander Graham Bell — created the telephone in 1886 

  • Telephones sped up communications for businesses 

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The Gold Standard: 

• US joined the Gold Standard in the 1870s 

• Amount of money in circulation was equal to the amount of gold in banks 

  • Therefore, the government can’t just print money all it wants 

• However, it does lower the amount of money circulation 

  • Less money to go around 

  • Hard for small businesses and those in debt to take out a loan 

• In circulation — how much physical cash in the US outside of the Fed reserve 

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Corporate Economy: 

• Trust — any large corporation that seemed to wield excessive power (colloquial) 

• Monopolies and oligopolies stifle innovation

  • There was no need to innovate as they were so powerful and dominated the market → no competition → no innovation 

    • Economy stagnates 

  •  Can take control of the market: 

    • Bought other small businesses 

      • Coercion, predatory pricing — a couple of tactics  

  • Can set a huge price on their goods — no competition 

    • Therefore, consumers have to pay more 

      • Less money in other parts of the economy 

The 4 Titans of Industry & Robber Barons: 

• John D Rockefeller — oil 

• Cornelius Vanderbilt — railroads 

• Andrew Carnegie — steel 

• John Pierpont Morgan — finance & banking 

• The corporate economy was not only run by the 4 men

  • Including all who worked for those companies 

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Assembly Line:  

• Gustavus Swift invented the assembly line 

• Deskilling of labor 

  • One person has one job → knows only how to do that one job → by extension only one skill 

    • Master of one step 

    • Don’t know the steps before and after 

      • Therefore, the workers were worth less 

• Smaller businesses are hurt y efficient large scale operations 

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Vertical Integration: 

• Control all aspects of production from beginning to end 

  • Can cut costs and save money 

    • Predatory pricing was not yet illegal  

Horizontal Integration: 

• Merge with competitor companies to gain a market advantage 

Quest for Efficiency: 

Mechanization of Labor: 

• More machines → fewer humans 

  • The humans needed to fix and oversee the machines 

• Machines were more efficient 

• More efficiency → cheaper goods → more consumers can buy 

• Deskilling of labor comes too 

  • Only need to oversee the machines or know only 1 skill 

    • Increases interchangeability of workers 

• Economy gets better in the late 1800s 

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Scientific Management: 

• Study the best way to make things 

• Frederick Taylor — Taylorism

  • Pioneer of scientific management  

• Used rules to govern worker behavior 

  • Timed the workers → more efficiency 

  • Time card machine 

    • Punched hole and recorded the time when the worker comes in and leaves 

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Working Conditions & Labor: 

• OSHA — occupational safety hazard administration 

  • Made in 1971  

  • Workers protections administration in the US government 

    • Not there in the Gilded Age 

      • So many people had to get injured before something was brought up in Congress for workers protection 

• Dangerous conditions and there was no regulations 

  • 1 in 20 railroad workers died/disabled 

  • 2000 coal miners died per year 

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Child Labor: 

• Child’s income supplemented family’s income 

  • How poorly parents were being paid 

• Child — not much education 

• Louis Han took pictures of children working to show Congress 

  • Educate prosperous Americans about factory life and child labor 

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Immigrants as Laborers: 

• Immigrants were another source for cheap labor 

• Between the Civil War and WWI — 20+ million people immigrated to the US 

• 75+% of NYC and San Francisco residents had 1 foreign born parent 

• Immigrants were far more desperate, so they accepted lower wages 

• Different languages → hard to organize unions 

• If there were an economic downturn → immigrants went back to the home country 

Consequent Economy: 

• Department stores popped up 

  • 1 place where different shops rent part of the space and sell their stuff there 

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Classes of Workers: 

• Blue Collar and White Collar workers 

  • Blue Collar — labor, using your body to work 

  • White Collar — use your brain to work 

• Middle management and sales positions increased 

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Women and the Economy: 

• Women worked in secretarial positions 

• Women also worked in the department stores: 

  • Put makeup on you that type of work 

• End of the 1800s, 77% of women were stenographers 

  • Women were skilled laborers 

• Women got advantage through labor saving devices 

  • Canned food — can use whenever convenient 

    • Cans were good at preserving food 

  • Vacuums 

  • Sewing machines 

  • Therefore, women got extra time 

    • Had a social life, could get a job as a result 

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