Chapter 18: Industrializing America

The Industrial Networking of America

Railroads and the Birth of Big Business
- Between 1865 and 1890, around 128K of railroad track was laid
- Companies were owned by industrialists and bankers who helped finance the Union during the Civil War
- Railroad companies built railway stations, thousands of freight, stock, passenger cars
- Railroad working became a profitable industry
- Fuel suppliers stepped up production and brought in more laborers
- Tramping: looking for unskilled jobs via transportation on trains without a ticket. Commonplace after Civil War and railroad companies turned a blind eye
- Largest companies were first large-scale businesses, complex and labor intensive
Completing The Information Network
- Railroads helped extend the mail and telegraph networks
- 1872: Chicago’s Montgomery Ward dry goods store used railroads for the first mass-circulated mail catalog
- Telegraph network was extremely popular and was a commodity
- Systematic weather forecast started in 1869 with the Cincinnati Astronomical Observatory
- Changed the way Americans experienced national and international events
The Construction Boom
- Era of rapid urban expansion
- Older cities quadrupled their population
- New cities sprang near rail lines
- Massive public works financed by bonds
- Private-public partnerships helped conceive construction booms and decreasing unemployment
- New York Democratic Party leader William Tweed commissioned the building of sewers, and water and gas pipelines
- Banks, insurance companies, and exchangers establish their headquarters on or near Wall Street
Mass Production Comes of Age
- Before the Civil War, industrialization was mostly in the textile industry
- After the war, transportation improved and more industries progressed to industrialization
- Ex: manufacturers, mining companies, food growers, and service providers
- “the American System” → system of mass production
- Production, processing, and distribution of food were industrialized
- Steady supply and lower price of meat overcame consumer initial resistance to large companies (they preferred supporting local companies)
The Energy Revolution
- Nation begins dependency on fossil oil for petroleum
- Industrialization increases the country’s dependence on the horse, with usages similar to a vehicles like cars and vans
Corporate Monopolies:
- Modern corporation: developed first in the energy and railway sectors
- Railroads and other big businesses wanted to extend the scope
- Monopolies: companies that control the market in a certain sector
- Stores had to stock monopolies’ products
- Companies tried to corner markets to be able to control prices
Speed and Time in Industrial Culture
- Industrial network changed speed, time, and distance
- Transcontinental railroad made it possible to travel across the country in seven days
- Traditional practice of local timekeeping is now impractical: they need a new system
- One idea was to telegraph time to stations and conductors would set pocket watches according to each station clock. This was too confusing to travelers
- Adopted four regional time zones: Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific. US and Europe next year agreed on international time zones

Years of Unrest

New Classes, New Aspiration
- Attraction of 300K laborers per year due to industry growth
- Most from Europe, but Southeast China and Mexico also supply immigrants
- Lower classes of society, low-skilled employment, bad pay, dangerous jobs
- Most wanted to save and then open their own businesses
- Few workers had enough savings to start their own business
- important changes within wealthy classes too: owners see gain in wealth
- White-collar workers have a different, unique middle-class identity
- Viewed skilled labor as most honorable
Riot, Fire, and Flu
- Visible poverty brings anxiety
- Violent revolutionary movement?
- March 1871: telegraph brings news of worker uprising in Paris as a means of protest against the government
- Sparked panic in Britain, Europe, and the US.
- Large scale riots in NY increased fears when the NYC government denied Irish Protestant requests for a parade permit. Pressure from elite Protestant reversed this decision. The parade planned a route that went through Irish Catholic neighborhoods. The governor placed the National Guard to head and back the parade route, but there were riots in the streets. The National Guard opened fire, most casualties were Irish Catholics.
- The Great Chicago Fire sparks fear and anxiety.
- The Great Epizootic of 1872 was one of the worst horse influenza cases worldwide. Industrialization relied on horses for power, so industries were crippled. Most horses recovered, but it destroyed the economy for a short period of time.
- Mass transit slowed, city fires were out of control, etc…
The Depression Years
- Ability to export goods outgrows demand. Goods are stocked, prices fall, profits shrink
- Railroad and city building capital caused banks to issue to much stock and grant risky but huge loans
- Jay Cooke and Company bank failure causes a financial panic
- NYSE closed its doors because of massive sell orders and caused other businesses to fail. Known as the Long Depression
- Pre-depression idealism for big corporations that were efficient grows
- The Long Depression put four million people out of work. Those that were employed suffered 50% pay cuts. Small businesses and even some big ones declared bankruptcy or collapsed
- Strikes became more common yet police and state militias violently resolved them.
- Employment was hard to find and wages barely covered the cost of daily necessities
- Middle-class thought of migrant workers as refusal to work, using the word tramp as a derogatory term.
- Vagrancy laws: laws that resembled the southern black codes, requiring adults to carry proof of employment or a permanent household
- Racial divides for migrants widened as competition became more extreme
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877
- Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company announced wage cuts by 10% (the second time in the year). Employees refused to let trains pass until wages were restored, so the governor sent militiamen to stop the protest. Militiamen were also suffering from the depression and refused to use force. The president of the company requested federal troops but more people joined the strikes, derailing the train and overwhelming the troops.
- Strike spread through railway lines until two thirds of the country's railroads were closed. It only ended when President Rutherford B. Hayes ordered federal troops to free railroads and putting them back to work
- Conspiracy statues were aimed at unions and strikes by federal and states legislatures
- Pinkerton detectives were also hired to spy on workers and break up unions

Society and Culture in the Gilded Age City

Mass consumption: a culture where middle-class Americans associated happiness with purchasing goods that weren’t necessarily needed
Cathedrals of Consumption: The Rise of the Department Store
- Merchants began to mask wealth and stock few luxury items
- Goal was to introduce middle-class consumers to the culture of consumption
- Color posters and large billboards begin advertising department stores
- American dream: idea that with hard work, every AMerican could achieve their certain goal
- To be an American meant having money and the freedom to consume
Inhabiting the City
- Urban communities changed in thief vision of the city
- The old rich imagined the city to have palatial homes, elegant fashions, and lavish balls. The new rich began dressing modestly and living in plain homes. (The famous piece of literature The Great Gatsby illustrates this)
- Second Empire: a type of architecture loved by wealthy Parisians
- New healthy built reputations in art public generosity
- Middle class urban people established their own distinctive neighborhoods with new architectural styles
- These houses were poorly made. Lawmakers ordered the city to spray with disinfectant, construct fire escapes, install sewer pipes, and build flushable toilets.
- Still, the homes were unhealthy and unbearable
Cheap Amusements
- People have more disposable income
- Working-class spend more time at resorts
- Coney island offered tones of attractions, like the world's first roller coaster
- Shopkeepers offered shooting clay ducks and fortune telling
- Boundaries between gender broke (men and women rode and swam together)
- Cheap amusements did not reduce racial segregation
- Middle class recreation included city parks, pianos in parlors, and outdoor band concerts
- Highly organized sex industry was available for males of all social classes
Women, Gender, and Culture Wars
- Large numbers of women entered the workforce during the Civil War and after
- Social reform becomes more popular, especially around alcoholism
- Freer sexual culture and thriving prostitution further the concept of free love, although it is still unpopular
- The Comstock Act of 1873 law banned obscene, indecent, or immoral material. This included information about birth control and drawings of the human body.
- Conservative impulse creates literature trying to teach women to be domestic
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The Industrialized Environment

Land, Waterways, and Forests
- Lumber was used as fuel, building materials, railroad sleeping, and fencing
- Redwood, oak, and other timbers were used in booming towns
- After the war, society realized wildlife was threatened with the loss of forests
- Elite sportsmen took the lead in conservation
- States passed conservation based laws that made it difficult for poorer people to get meat by hunting
- Two different axes: one included government regulated scare resource distribution
Urban Ecology
- City dwellers by 1880 flushed most human waste into sewers
- Piping sewage out of cities reduced disease rates and decreasing the smell, but it hurt the countryside
- Horse manure made it back into the soil as fertilizer
Remaking Nature and Inventing “The Country”
- Idea of nature represents natural landscapes untouched by humanity
- Erased memory of native Americans and early settlers who changed the land
- Gave rise to conservation organization and nature clubs
- “The country” was a term for natural settings
- Many middle-class urbanites wanted to return to agrarian society
- Wealthy urbanites built country clubs
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