APUSH Period 6 - Princeton

The Age of Invention and Economic Growth

  • Thomas A. Edison produced the light bulb

    • His work led to the development of power plants

  • Other inventors began to create new uses for electricity

  • The last quarter of the 19th century is often called the Age of Invention

  • These advances in technology generated opportunities for mass production

  • Captains of Industry/Robber Barons are the people who owned and controlled the new manufacturing enterprises and became extremely rich and powerful during this period

Industrialization, Corporate Consolidation, and the Gospel of Wealth

  • Economies of sales

    • More raw product they bought → cheaper the supplier’s asking price

    • More faster machines running → less cost of labor and electricity

    • The lower their costs → cheaper they could sell

    • Cheaper the product → the more they sold

  • Required workers to work as efficiently and repetively as the machines

  • Assembly line production begun when Eli Whitney developed interchangeable parts

    • Required workers to perform a single task over and over for 12 - 14 hrs

  • Factories were dangerous

    • Machine malfunction and human error resulted in >500,000 injuries

  • Government made some efforts to regulate this rapid growth

  • Remained uncertain as to how to enforce these regulations

  • Courts of the era were pro-business

  • Corporate consolidation was when there were larger and larger businesses from these regulations

  • Holding company owned enough stock in various companies to have a controlling interest in the production of raw materials, the means of transporting the materials to a factory, the factory itself, and the distribution for selling the product

    • A monopoly or the complete control of an entire industry

  • Most common forms of business consolidation was horizontal and vertical integration

    • Standard Oil - Rockefeller: created horizontal integration

      • Several small companies within the same industry are combined into a large company

    • Carnegie Steel: created vertical

      • One company buys out all the factors of production from raw materials to finished product

  • Rapid growth required lots of money → businessmen borrowed huge sms, and when their businesses occasionally failed, bank failures could result

  • During this time the United States endured one major financial panic per decade

    • Lower classes suffered the most as jobs and money became scarce

  • Monopolies created a class of extremely powerful men who interests clashed with those of the rest of society

  • As businessmen grew more powerful → public resentment increased

    • Government responded with laws to restrict monopolies

  • An example is the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890

    • forbidding any combination or conspiracy in the restraint of trade

    • Labor unions were often found to be in restraint of free trade and declared illegal

  • Another response Social Darwinism by Andrew Carnegie argued that in business unrestricted competition allowed only the fittest to survive

  • Carnegie argued against government regulation he supported all types of government assistance to business

    • Tax abatement, grants, tariffs,

  • He also advocated philanthropy by building libraries and museums or funding medical research

Factories and City Life

  • Manufacturers cut costs and maximized profits

  • Reduced costs by hiring women and children

  • Many hired newly arrived immigrants who were anxious for work

  • B/c manufacturers paid as little as possible → cities in which their employees lived in suffered many problems with poverty, crime, disease, lack of livable housing

  • Poverty levels rose

  • As factories rose → cities became dirtier and generally less healthy environments

  • Mass transportation allowed the middle class to live in nicer neighborhoods → immigrants made up the majority of city population

  • Prejudice around new arrivals was widespread → many immigrants settled in ethnic neighborhoods usually in tenements

  • Americans expected churches, private charities, and ethnic communities to provide service for the poor

  • Instead a group of corrupt men called political bosses came to help

    • Build parks, funded police and fire departments, constructed roads and sewage lines, helped to get jobs

    • In return they expected communities to cote as they were instructed

    • Their organizations were called political machines

  • Most notable is Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall

    • Gained influence by gaining a seat on New York’s Bp\oard of Supervisors which allowed him to embezzle millions of dollars through coprruption in city construction projects

    • Prominent leader of Tammany Hall

    • Tweed gave out jobs, homes, and protection

    • Embezzled millions of dollars through extortion and fradulent construction projects

    • Tweed was eventually found guilty and died in prison in 1878

  • Labor unions formed to counter the poor treatment of workers

  • First national labor union was the Knights of Labor

    • Skilled and unskilled workers

    • Goals:

      • 1. 8 hr work day

      • 2. Equal pay for equal work for men and women

      • 3. Child labor laws

      • 4. Safety and sanitary codes

      • 5. Federal income tax

      • 6. Government ownership of railroad and telegraph lines

  • Haymarket Square Riot: bomb went off killing police at Chicago Haymarket Square, people believed it was because of radicals within the union → Labor unions decreased in popularity

  • Charitable middle class organizations ran by women made efforts at urban reform

    • Founded settlement houses in poor neighborhoods

    • Jane Addams founded Hull house to provide services as English lessons for immigrants, day care, childcare classes, and playgrounds

  • Increased production and wealth = greater access to luxuries and more leisure time

  • Large segments of public began to read popular novels and newspapers

  • Growth of newspaper industry by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearest

  • Led to yellow journalism

Jim Crow Laws and Other Development in the South

  • Landless farmers were forced into sharecropping

    • Rented land called crop lien system designed to keep the poor in constant debt

    • They borrowed what they needed to buy seed and tools promising a portion of their crop as collateral

    • Landlords kept the poor in a state of virtual slavery

  • Advent of Jim Crow Laws made matters worse for Black People

    • Supreme Court ruled that the 14th amendment did not protect black people against discrimination by privately owned businesses and that they would have to seek equal protection from the states

  • In 1883, the Court also reversed the Civil Rights Act of 1875 which said that businesses and public facilities couldn’t be segregated

  • Court ruled Plessy v. Ferguson that the role of the federal government was not to maintain social equality

    • Separate but equal

The Railroads and Development in the West

  • Ranching and mining were growing industries

  • From 1863 to 1869 former farmers, immigrants, freed enslaved people and Civil War veterans worked to make the railroad possible

  • The railroads were built largely at the public’s expense

  • Both feral and local governments were anxious for rails to be completed

  • Railroads would typically overcharge wherever they owned a monopoly and undercharge in competitive and heavily trafficked market

  • Rail companies organized massive hunts for buffalo

  • Bounty hunters hunted the herds to near extinction

  • Rails quickly transformed depot towns into vital cities by connecting them to civilization

  • Faster travel = connect with ideas and technology

  • Homestead Act (1862)

    • 160 acres of low cost land, must live on and improve it for 5 years

    • Not always the best land, fraud by corporations

  • 1869 - completion of the TCR

  • Timberland Culture Act (1873), Desert Land Act (1877)

    • Opportunities for additional land if improvements were made

  • Utah admitted as a state in 1896 - abandoned polygamy

  • West became increasingly connected to east

    • Railroad, cattle, mining, etc.

  • The West was often seen as a place of opportunity for all

    • "safety-value" theory - in tough economic times, one could always move West and start anew

  • Labor in mines was very arduous and dangerous

  • Cattle:

    • Large Business for some

    • Could be unstable - winters of 1885 - 86 and 1886 - 87

  • Women's suffrage was higher in the West than East

    • Wyoming was the first state to guarantee women's suffrage

  • Conflicts with Native American

    • Sand Creek Massacre

      • 133 Natives were killed, 105 were women and children

    • Indian Hunting

      • California, 5,000 Natives were massacred

      • 150,000 Natives in CA prior to Civil War, 30,000 in 1870

    • Battle of Little Bighorn (Custard's Last Stand)

      • George Custard and 264 members of regiment were killed

      • All white soldiers killed

    • Nez Percé

      • Chief Joseph urged members to flee, almost made it to Canada

    • Ghost Dance

      • Ritual that believed buffalo would return and whites would leave Natives alone

      • Government wanted to end the Dance

    • Wounded Knee

      • Fighting between soldiers and Natives in South Dakotas

      • 40 soldiers, 300+ Natives were killed (many children and women)

    • Dawes Act

      • Purpose was to assimilate or Americanize Natives

      • Eliminated tribal lands, provided 160 acres of land for individuals

      • Some children sent to boarding schools

      • Promoted Christianity

National Politics

  • Gilded Age of politics

    • Gilded metals have shiny surface but a cheap base

  • American politics looked like shining examples of democracy but they really had a lot of corruption

  • President during this time was really weak

  • Many states imposed railroad regulations

  • Interstate Commerce Act that set up to supervise activities and regulate unfair and unethical practices

  • Women’s suffrage became important

  • Susan B. Anthony led to fight, convincing Congress to introduce a suffrage amendment

  • American Suffrage Association fought for women’s suffrage to state constitution

The Silver Issue with the Populist Movement

  • Greater supply led to a drop in prices

  • Lower prices for farmers were bad because they were locked into long term payments

  • Increase in money availability would solve this problem

  • It would also led to inflation which would help the farmers as their debts would decrease

  • There was also class strifes as the farmers were going against wealth bankers

  • Silver versus gold debate provided an issue around which farmers would organize

  • Grange Movement:

    • Founded in 1867

    • Started out as cooperatives with the purpose of allowing farmers to buy machinery and sell crops

  • Grange Movement died out and it became the Farmers’ Alliance

    • Allowed women to be politically active

  • Soon grew into the People’s Party of the Populist movement

  • Held a convention on 1892

    • Opposition of immigration to help American workers

  • Along with supporting for the coinage of silver the Populists called for government ownership of railroads and telegraphs, a graduated income tax, direct election of U.S senators, and shorter work days

  • As Cleveland took office in 1893 the country entered a four year financial crisis

  • Hard economic times made the Populist goals more popular

    • Particularly the call for easy money

  • The Populist party backed Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan against Republican William McKinley

  • Bryan ran on a strictly Populist platform and based his campaign on the call for free silver

  • The Republicans became allied with big businesses as they received huge campaign contributions from large companies

  • Bryan lost the campaign