Chapter Seventeen

The Rise of Industrial America

1865-1900
The Business of Railroads
 Eastern Truck Lines
• Many different kinds of trucks were made
• Cornelius Vanderbilt
– Millionaire from the steamboat industry
– Created the New York Central Railroad
 Western Railroads
• Railroads in the Trans-Mississippi West
– Helped settle the Great Plains
– Put the west and the east together for the first
time
• Federal Land Grants
– Promoted shoddy workmanship
– Led to ridiculous levels of corruption
 Transcontinental Railroads
• Union Pacific
– Built from Omaha to across the Great Plains
• Central Pacific
– Over the Sierra mountains to California
• Charles Crocker
– Used Chinese immigrants to explode tunnels
• Union and Central Pacific met at Promontory Point, Utah
• Southern Pacific
– New Orleans to LA
• Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe
– Kansas City to LA
• Northern Pacific
– Minnesota to Washington State
 Competition and Consolidation
• By the 1900’s, seven people controlled 2/3 of
the railroads
• Ran as monopolies
Industrial Empires
 The Steel Industry
• Bessemer and Kelly discovered how to make
steel
• Carnegie
– CARNEGIE DID STEEL. REMEMBER THAT. IT’S
ALWAYS ON THERE.
• U.S. Steel Corporation
– Carnegie sold to J. P. Morgan
 The Oil Industry
• Edwin Drake drilled the first Oil Well
• Rockefeller
– Took over the Oil business
– His Standard Oil Trust group controlled 90% of the
business
 Antitrust Movement
• General fear of trusts abounded
• Sherman Anti-Trust Act
– ‘Prohibited any contract, combination, in the form
of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy in restraint of
trade or commerce’
• United States vs. E. C. Knight Company
– Ruled that the S.A.T.A. could only be applied to
commerce, not manufacturing
Technology and Innovations
 Inventions
• Samuel Morse • Calculating machine
– Morse code • Adding machine
• Cyrus W. Field • Eastman
– Messages across the sea – Kodak Camera
• Alexander Graham Bell • Waterman
– Telephone – Fountain pen
• Typewriter • Gillette
• Cash register – Safety razor
 Edison and Westinghouse
• Edison
– Phonograph
– Incandescent lamp
– Power generator
– Mimeograph
– Motion Picture camera
• Westinghouse
– Air brakes
– High Voltage alternating current
 Marketing Consumer Goods
• Macy and Marshall Field created department
stores
• Sears, Roebuck, and Montgomery Ward
followed
• Kellogg and Post became popular
Impact of Industrialization
 The Concentration of Wealth
• The richest 10% controlled 90% of the nation’s
wealth
• Horatio Alger Jr
– Wrote books about common, normal people
becoming rich on a whim
 The Expanding Middle Class
• Middle Class Jobs
– Accountants
– Clerics
– Salespersons
– Doctors
– Lawyers
– Storekeepers
 Wage Earners
• David Ricardo
– Said that ‘raising wages would cause the working
population to increase, which in turn would cause
a decrease of wages because of the availability of
workers’
 Working Women
• One out of five women worked
• Generally allowed to work only in the factories
that had something to do with the home
• Could also become secretaries, book keepers,
typists, and telephone operators
 Labor Discontent
• People got new jobs every three years
• Artisans were less valued
• Conditions were horrible
The Struggle of Organized Labor
 Industrial Welfare
• Defeating Unions
– Closing the factory (Lockouts)
– Giving out names of unionists (Blacklisting)
– Putting a clause in a contract not to join a union
– Calling in the army to stop the Union
– Court injunctions against strikes
 Great Railroad Strike of 1877
• Shut down two thirds of the country’s
railroads
• President Hayes used the military to stop the
unions
• 100 people died
 Attempts to Organize National Unions
• National Labor Union
– Started in 1866
– Lost support after 1877
• Knights of labor
– Began as a secret under Terence V. Powderly
– Supported…
• Worker cooperatives
• Abolition of child labor, trusts, and monopolies
• Haymarket Bombing
– Seven cops died
– Seven anarchists tried and executed
– Knights of Labor lost popularity (Their guilt was assumed)
• American Federation of Labor
– Focused on more practical goals
– Samuel Gompers worked for higher wages and better conditions
 Strikebreaking in the 1890’s
• Homestead Strike
– Henry Clay Frick
• Cut wages by 20% (Manager of a Steel plant in PA)
• Used a lockout and military to beat the unionists
• Pullman Strike
– Wage cuts
– Fired negotiators
– Eugene V. Debs began a boycott
– Injunction was issued ordering unionists to work
– Eugene Debs and others were jailed
• Case of In re Debs
– Court ruled that court injunctions against strikes was legal