Industrial America

  • Railroads

    • First big business in the US

    • molded the path that US Businesses would take

    • Made time zones relevant

    • Corporate structure

    • Huge impact on America, life, economy

    • Problems

      • Early railroads ran on different width tracks, gauges, which made them not unviersal.

    • TO the West

      • These railraods help promote western growth due to faster travel

      • GOvernment gave over 170 million acres in grants to build railroads

      • Transcontinental railroads

    • Competition and Consolidation

      • Numerous railroads were unstructured and unprofitable

      • Railroads were overbuilt and suffered from fraud

      • there was a lot of competition and consolidation

  • Robber Barrons

    • Practices

      • Large scale corporate enterprises

      • Seliance on stock

      • Seperation of management and ownership

      • Cost cutting

        • very low wages and no benefits

      • Increased investment in technology and automation to enhance productivity and efficiency.

      • Horitontal integration(Rockefeller)

        • Rockefeller did it

        • independent oil refineries all sent oil to a U.S. oil company

      • Vertical integration(carnegie)

        • Carnegie did it

        • Its more of a ladder

        • Each step is a part of the company

    • They were mostly native, protestant, upper-middle class upbringing, attended college.

  • Railroads

    • Jay Gould

      • Highly competitive

      • He was an attorney general and a newspaper guy, he wrote bad stories and broguht lawsuits making the price drop a lot, then he bought a lot because he had money, then dropped the lawsuits and started writing good things

    • Vanderbilt

      • Cornelius Vanderbilt: A major figure in the railroad industry, known for consolidating several smaller lines into a formidable system, which greatly enhanced transportation efficiency in the late 19th century.

  • Oil

    • John Rockefeller

    • John D. Rockefeller: Founder of the Standard Oil Company, he revolutionized the petroleum industry and defined the structure of modern philanthropy by establishing a near monopoly in the oil business.

    • Held over 90% of the oil refinery business

    • He was worth over 900 million when he retired

    • he had one company that owned a bunch of trusties

    • Has a meeting with Vanderbilt, he asks him to deliver a bunch of stuff, he agrees, but he can’t deliver, so he develops a whole new way to do it and makes a whole bunch of money

    • When railroads try to upcharge him, he creates an oil pipeline.

  • Finance

    • JP Morgan

    • Would buy up industries and consolidate

    • Did the same with railroads

    • Combined a bunch of steel things to make US Steel

      • First billion dollar industry

  • Sherman Anti-trust act

    • prohibits monopolies

    • has a problem

      • Enforcement and effectiveness of the Act have been challenged, leading to ongoing debates about its impact on competition and regulation.

      • basically wasnt enforced at all

    • Supreme court said it only applied to shipping businesses instead of like everything US vs EC Knight

  • Innovations

    • Communications

      • Morse code: a method of encoding text characters into a series of dots and dashes, enabling long-distance communication through telegraphy.

      • Transatlantic cable: A groundbreaking technology that allowed for instantaneous communication between North America and Europe, revolutionizing international trade and diplomacy.

      • Telephone: Invented by Alexander Graham Bell, revolutionizing personal and business communication.

    • Other

      • Cash register, calculating machine, kodak camera, gillette’s safety razor, running water, etc

    • Thomas Edison

      • Electric light bulb

      • phonograph: an invention that revolutionized the music industry by allowing sound reproduction and recording.

      • Dynamo-electric generator: a device that converts mechanical energy into electrical energy, fundamentally transforming the way electricity was produced and distributed across the industrial landscape.

      • Motion pictures: An innovation that changed the entertainment industry, enabling the recording and projection of moving images for audiences worldwide.

    • George Westinghouse

      • Help more than 400 patents

      • Air brakes for Railroads

      • Electric transformer: a device that increases or decreases voltage levels, significantly advancing the efficiency of electrical power distribution.

  • Marketing

    • Marketing to consumers

    • Increased output and new products, needed to market to more consumers to sell more

    • Department stores

  • Impact

    • By 1890s, 10% controlled 90% of the money

    • 1/5 women were in the work force by 1900

  • Urbanization

    • Mass Transit

      • Trains, subways, etc

    • Skyscrapers

      • Flat Iron Building NYC(Triangle looking thing)

      • Otis Elevator company

        • Makes these really tall buildings feasible

    • Suburbia

      • Upper middle-class americans began to move out of the city to escape pollution crime, and poor people

    • Ethnic Neighborhoods

      • Little Italy NYC

      • Small apartments

      • Problems

        • Overcrowding and flith leading to lots of disease

  • Working Conditions

    • Imigrant class

      • Underpriveleged

      • Unskilled and uneducated

      • Dangerous work environment

    • Child Labor

      • Low wages and long hours often led to exploitation of workers, fostering a cycle of poverty and limited opportunities for advancement.

  • Worker Unions

    • Get benefits, fair pay, hours, etc

    • some people don’t like them because it can cause strikes

    • “Industrial Warfare”

      • Companies kind of fighting against workers

    • Yellow-dog contracts

      • Contracts saying that you cannot join labor unions that companies require people to sign

    • Strike-Busting:

      • ‘encouraged’ people to come back to work

    • Blacklisting: A practice where employers would deny employment to workers who participated in strikes or union activities, effectively punishing them for seeking better working conditions.

    • Court issues

  • Labor Unions

    • National Labor Union

    • First attempt to try to organize all workers across the nation

    • They Let EVERYONE in their labor union, which is bad because many people are racist and such

    • This inclusivity led to challenges in addressing the concerns of specific groups, as internal conflicts often arose over differing priorities and ideologies.

    • They also mix skilled and unskilled laborors which can cause issues

    • IMPORTANT- American Federation of Labor

      • Better working conditions

      • better hours

      • better pay

      • etc

      • run by Samuel Gompers

      • They get rid of unskilled laborors from their union

        • only trained workers who couldn’t be replaced right away were in it

  • Strikes

    • Great Railroad strike of 1877: A pivotal event in labor history, it involved widespread protests and strikes by railroad workers across the United States in response to wage cuts and poor working conditions.

    • Haymarket strike 1886: A pivotal labor protest in Chicago that turned violent, leading to the deaths of several police officers and demonstrators, and resulted in a national outcry against labor movements.

    • Homestead strike 1892: A violent labor dispute at Carnegie Steel Company, where workers protested against wage cuts and harsh working conditions, leading to clashes with private security agents.

    • Pullman strike 1894: A nationwide railroad strike that disrupted rail traffic and mail delivery, leading to federal intervention.

      • Eugene V Deb: An influential labor leader and socialist politician who played a key role in organizing the Pullman strike and advocating for workers' rights.

    • In re Debs case

      • Said courts can issue stuff to make workers go back so the economy doesn’t fail

  • SOME NOTES MISSING

    • still main ideas here mostly i think, but dont just use this

  • Taylorism

    • applying scientific method to workplace to try to make things more efficient

    • Assembly Line Production: Revolutionized manufacturing processes by using conveyor belts and dividing tasks to increase productivity.

    • Mass Production: Enabled large-scale production of goods, leading to lower costs and increased availability for consumers.

  • 17th amendment makes senatrs voted in

  • amendment 16 makes income takes

  • Spanish American war

    • happened