Unit 6 SPICE Chart

S

  • Gilded Age

    • 1870-1900

    • Period when corruption existed in society but was overshadowed by the wealth of the period

    • Abuses in business and government caused problems for immigrants, laborers, and farmers

    • Term comes from a book written about the time period by Mark Twain

  • New Immigrants

    • Between 1870 and 1920, 20 million Europeans, mostly from Southern and Eastern Europe, came to America (Jews and Catholics)

    • Hundreds of thousands more came from Mexico, the Caribbean, and China

    • Looked and sounded different than natives

    • Nativism: movement to ensure that native-born Americans received better treatment than immigrants

    • Ellis Island

      • New York harbor where most European immigrants came to get processed

    • Angel Island

      • San Francisco immigration station where most Asians entered the U.S.

    • 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act

      • Prohibited Chinese laborers from immigrating the country, though merchants, students, teachers, diplomats, and children of American nationals were exempt

      • Was not lifted until 1943

      • The only law ever passed that explicitly excluded a nationality from immigrating to the U.S.

    • 1907 Gentlemen’s Agreement

      • Was reached between the U.S. and Japan in which Japan agreed to restrict immigration to the U.S.

  • Problems in Cities

    • Housing shortages

      • Tenements: crowded apartment buildings with poor standards of sanitation, safety, and comfort

    • Transportation

      • Struggled to keep up with growth

    • Clean water

      • Was difficult to produce and transport

    • Waste & garbage removal

      • A challenge and often neglected

    • Fires

      • Were very common

      • Ex: Great Chicago Fire in 1871

    • Crime

      • Rose with urbanization

      • Concentrated particularly in low-income neighborhoods

  • Early Reforms to Fix Problems of Urbanization

    • Settlement House

      • Community center organized to provide various services to urban poor

    • Hull House

      • Established in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr

      • Most famous settlement house

      • Located in Chicago, IL

    • Social Gospel Movement

      • Social reform movement that sought to fix social problems in the name of Jesus

  • The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

    • Despite being a work of fiction, the book provided true-to-life descriptions of life in Packingtown, one of the worst slum communities in Chicago, and work in the neighborhood’s slaughterhouses by Lithuanian immigrants.

    • The original purpose was to encourage people to become supporters of socialism, but instead, it promoted regulation on health and safety in workplaces and caused public outrage of the disgusting nature and low quality of meat production

    • Writer Jack London described the novel as “the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of wage slavery”

  • Presidents of the Gilded Age

    • Ulysses S. Grant

      • 1869-1877

    • Rutherford B. Hayes

      • 1877-1881

    • James Garfield

      • 1881

      • Assassinated by a disappointed office seeker favoring the Spoils System

    • Chester A. Arthur

      • 1881-1885

      • Signed the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883

    • Grover Cleveland

      • 1885-1889 & 1893-1897

    • Benjamin Harrison

      • 1889-1893

    • William McKinley

      • 1897-1901

  • Socialism

    • An economic and political philosophy that favors public (or social) control of property and income

  • Political Machines

    • An organized group of people that controlled the activities of a political party

    • By giving voters services they needed, the machine won their vote and controlled city government

    • Led by the city boss, who controlled…

      • Jobs in police, fire, and sanitation departments

      • Agencies that granted licenses to businesses

      • Money to fund large construction projects

  • Patronage or Spoils System

    • Giving government jobs to loyal party workers or friends

    • Some people appointed were not qualified

    • Many used their new position to get money from the government (graft)

I

C

E

  • Inventors & Inventions

    • Thomas Edison

      • Perfected the light bulb in 1880, and motion picture

      • Organized power plants

      • Established first research lab

    • Alexander Graham Bell

      • Telephone

    • Henry Ford

      • Assembly Line

    • George Eastman

      • Camera

    • Wright Brothers

      • Airplane

    • Christopher Sholes

      • Typewriter

    • Guglielmo Marconi

      • Radio

  • Steel Industry

    • Bessemer Process

      • Makes steel lighter, more flexible, and rust resistant

    • Steel is used in railroads, farm equipment, and canned goods

    • Engineers use steel to create skyscrapers and longer bridges, such as the Brooklyn Bridge in New York

  • Railroads

    • Benefits

      • Stimulated growth of other industries (steel, iron, coal, lumber, glass)

      • Helped cities grow

      • Helped increase westward expansion of America

      • Standard time zones were created to get everyone on correct time

    • Corruption

      • Charged much higher rates to Western farmers

      • Bribed members of Congress

  • The Rise of Big Business

    • Andrew Carnegie

      • Industrialist who made a fortune in steel in the late 1800s

      • As a philanthropist, he gave away some $350 million

    • John D. Rockefeller

      • Industrialist who made a fortune in the oil refining industry

      • Formed Standard Oil

    • J.P. Morgan

      • Industrialist who started U.S. Steel from Carnegie Steel and other companies

      • Started the 1st billion dollar corporation

      • Bailed out the U.S. economy on more than one occasion

    • Vertical Integration

      • A process in which a company buys out all of the suppliers (e.g., coal and iron mines, ore freighters, railroad lines)

    • Horizontal Consolidation

      • A process in which a company buys out or merges with all competing companies (JP Morgan bought out Carnegie Steel and other companies)

    • Trusts

      • A group of separate companies placed under the control of a single managing board

      • Critics called these practices unfair and the business leaders “Robber Barons”

    • Social Darwinism

      • Used Darwin’s theory to explain business

        • Natural selection: survival of the fittest

    • Laissez-faire: policy that U.S. had followed since inception to not allow government to interfere with business

    • Captains of Industry

      • A positive idea that industrial leaders worked hard and deserved their wealth

    • Gospel of Wealth

      • Belief that the wealthy are “chosen by God” to be successful and were therefore responsible to look out for the well-being of those less fortunate

      • Many industrialists shared wealth although rarely through direct welfare, starting museums, etc.

    • Monopolies

      • Complete control of a product or service

  • Conspicuous Consumption

    • Buying expensive items to display wealth and income rather than to cover the real needs of the consumer

    • Gain higher social status

    • Behavior not only limited to the rich/upper class but also among poorer social classes

  • Poor Working Conditions in the Late 1800s

    • Most factory workers worked 12 hours days, 6 days a week

    • Steel mills often demanded 7 days a week

    • No vacations, sick leave, unemployment, compensation, or workers’ compensation for injuries on the job

    • Children as young as 5 often worked as much as 12 or sometimes 14 hours a day, for as little as $27 dollars a day

  • Rise of Labor Unions

    • The purpose of a labor union was “strength in numbers”

    • Attempted to gain better working conditions and pay

    • The Knights of Labor

      • Was the first union to accept workers of all races and gender

      • Pushed for 8 hour workday, equal pay for women, accepted skilled and unskilled workers

    • The American Federation of Labor (AFL)

      • Accepted only skilled white males, won higher wages and shorter work weeks for its members

      • Head of AFL was Samuel Gompers

    • Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) or Wobblies

      • Created in 1905, was a radical group of mostly unskilled workers who believed in socialism

  • Great Railroad Strike of 1877

    • Railroad workers strike to protest wage cuts

    • Violence erupted in many cities for a week

    • President Hayes sends in federal troops to put down the strike

    • Scab: a worker called in by an employer to replace strikers

    • Courts and federal government often sided with business during Gilded Age

  • Urbanization

    • Growth of cities

    • 3 reasons why cities grew in the late 1800s and early 1900s

      • New immigrants arrived in cities for work

      • As farm machines replaced farmers, farmers moved to cities

      • African Americans left the South after the Civil War and came to Northern cities

    • New cities began to spring up in the West Coast, particularly in California, due to increased immigration and settlement