APUSH CH. 16 - Gilded Age and Second Industrial Revolution

Transcontinental Railroad

• Crucial part of the Industrial Revolution / Gilded Age

  • Caused by federal land grants, money

• Cause easier shipment of products, marketing of goods

• Brough tens of thousands more people to the West

• Was what pushed Native Americans off their land to build it 

• Immigrants mainly built it

• Omaha, Nebraska -> Sacramento, California

• Est. in 1869, meet in Utah

Economy and the Gilded Age

• The economy change with the Gilded Age, becoming less focused on small farmers and focused on big businesses

• Economic “explosion”

  • Resources, bigger supply of labor, capital for investments, federal land grants

• Shift to Industrial Economy

  • Agrarian to Industry 

  • Factory Production 

  • Railroads center piece to distribution and more 

Second Industrial Revolution

• What is it?

• A period of factory production 

  • Mining, oil, railroads

  • Innovations

  • Eventually, cause a depression 

• Role of the Railroad?

• Help to ship goods nationwide

  • Quaker Oats, Ivory Soap

• Spurr on mass production

• Create time zones

• Open new areas to commercial farming

• Marketing, distribution of goods, 

Name brands and the economy

• Quaker Oats and Ivory Soap 

  • Sold and shipped nationwide because of the railroad

  • Cause of the growing need with a bigger population

Thomas Edison

• “Spirit of Innovation”

  • Transform industries, production, factories

  • System of generating electricity 

  • Invention of the lightbulb

Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller

• Carnegie

  • 1870 found steel company ( vertical integration)

    • Vertical integration - control every phase of the business

  • 1890s dominate the steel industry

  • Believe in philanthropy (giving back to the public)

    • Manage company strictly

• Rockefeller

  • Oil Industry

  • Horizontal Integration

    • Buying out competing companies

  • Control 90 percent of the oil industry

  • Believe in Philanthropy as well

  • Fought against unions

  • Captains of industry or robber barons?

Vertical integration and horizontal integration

• Vertical Integration

  • Control every phase of your business 

  • Avoiding “middle-men”

  • Produce its supplies and distribute its own products

• Horizontal Integration

  • Buying out competitors

    • Or merging 

Skilled workers in the Gilded Age

• In some places, they would have high wages, or exercise command over the workplace

• Economic independence relies on skills

• Often knew more about the process than the employers

Jacob Riis

• Show account of living conditions of urban poor, 

  • Photographs included

    • Dark tenant houses, apartments

Native American experience comparison worldwide

• Similar to “Settler Societies”

  • Where the immigrants quickly outnumber the original inhabitants and displace them

  • Similar to countries such as Australia, Argentina, Canada, and New Zealand

    • Natives also faced cultural reconstruction as they did in the United States 

Bonanza Farm

• Spanned thousands of acres

• Rare

• Employed large numbers of wage earners

• West

Battle of Little Bighorn

• Sioux and Cheyenne warriors defend their land 

• Union Army sent to push them out to the reservation

• Native Americans won 

  • Victory short-lived, Union army would pursue the remaining Native Americans

    • Force them onto reservation

Federal Indian policies

• Land

  • Push them out of their land, forced onto reservations 

  • Dawes Act

    • Broke up land to be distributed to Indian families - have to accept the “American” life-style to live there 

    • Lead to the loss of tribal land and culture 

  • Loss of million of acres of their land 

• Buffalo

• Hunted to mass extinction for the RR 

• Ghost Dance - hope that the buffalo would come back 

• Reservations

  • Native Americans were often forced to leave their tribal land to go onto reservations 

  • Govt owned land 

  • Native Americnas in modern times mostly live on reservations 

Sand creek Massacre

• Colorado 

• Union soldiers kill innocent women or children 

Homestead Act 1862

• Land of future farmers 

• Authorized congress to grant 160 acres of public land to a western settler

• Had to live on land for five years to gain title to it 

• Increased migration to the West 

Women in the West

• Very hard in general for them 

• Looking for freedom 

• Go with their families

• Look for husbands 

Cattle boom and its ending

• Longhorn breed of cows: sturdy 

• The East needed food, so they took cattle on a cattle drive to transport them to railroads

• Go from the West to states like Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska

• Cowboys 

• End:

  • Barbed wire, drought 

  • Ranch Wars 

Sherman Antitrust Act

• Ban all combinations / practices that limited free trade 

• Vague language, hard to enforce 

• Helped to start the government regulating the economy 

• Passed in 1890

Gilded Age term

• Covered in a thin layer of gold on the outside to hide the ugly inside 

• Deceptive 

Republican Party and high tariffs

• Protect high American wages

• Protect American industry 

• Democrats opposed the high tariff

Civil Service Act of 1883

• Merit system for federal employees

• Caused by assassination of President Garfield 

• Competitive competitions vs. political authority 

Interstate Commerce Commission

• 1877

• ICC for short 

• Ensure that railroads charged fair prices to farmers and merchants to transport their goods

• Regulate economic activity 

Social Problems

Economy inequality

• Upper and lower classes vast differences 

  • Poor lived in slums, small tenant houses 

  • Social Darwinism 

What determined wages for workers?

• How hard they worked, how skilled they were 

Protestant and Moral reform and laws

• Labor strife and urbanization 

• Against alcohol consumption 

• Against prostitution, gambling, birth control, and polygamy 

• Mann Act of 1910 - stop the transportation of women across state lines 

Social Gospel movement

• Effort to reform Protestant church 

• Establish missions and relief programs 

• Encourage construction of better housing for people in lower classes 

Labor uprisings

• Haymarket Affair 

• Fair wages not based on skill

Haymarket Affair

• Violent protest turned violent 

• 350,000 protestors

• Seen as violent and radical 

• Bomb killed a policeman when someone threw it into the crowd 

Knights of Labor

• First group to try to organize both skilled, unskilled, women with men, blacks and whites - but not Asians