the gilded age (industry) ssush11a- d. industrialization increased the standard of living and the...
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The Gilded Age (Industry)SSUSH11a- d
Essential QuestionsIndustrialization increased the standard of
living and the opportunities of most Americans, but at what cost?
Are “Robber Barons” just a thing of the past?
TIME / GEOGRAPHY
United States (1877- 1900)
THE BUSINESS OF RAILROADS
Total Miles of Railroad Track
1865 19000
50,000
100,000
150,000
200,000
250,000
35,000
193,000
But How Did the Tracks Get Built?
The Transcontinental Railroads
• Promoted Settlement on the Great Plains
• Linked the West and East and thereby creating one great national market
Federal Land Grants
• Federal Government gave lots of money to railroad developers • Thought that more railroads meant faster
settlement of the west
Unforeseen Consequences:1. Hasty and Poor Development2. Widespread Corruption (spoils system)3. Railroads controlled 50% of land in some
western states
Financial Panic of 1893
• 25% of all railroad companies go “belly up”
• J. Piermont Morgan buys ‘em up and consolidates them (makes them one company)
• Result?– By 1900, seven companies controlled 66% of
nation’s railroads
I own a lot of Railroads.
So what? Do somethin’.
Cornelius Vanderbilt
“The public be damned.”
INTELLECTUAL / SOCIAL
INVENTION AND INDUSTRIALIZATION
Causes of Rapid Industrialization
1. Steam Revolution of the 1830s-1850s
2. The Railroad fueled the growing US economy:• First big business in the US• A magnet for financial investment• The key to opening the West• Aided the development of other industries
Causes of Rapid Industrialization
3. Technological innovations• Bessemer and open hearth process• Refrigerated cars• Thomas Edison
Bessemer Converter
Thomas Alva Edison
“The Wizard of Menlo Park”
The Light Bulb
The Phonograph (1877)
The Ediphone (Dictaphone)
The Motion Picture Camera
Alexander Graham Bell
Telephone (1876)
Kitty Hawk, NC – December 7, 1903
The Airplane
I want to pay my workers so that they can afford my product! – Henry Ford
Model T Automobile (1908)
The Reorganization of Work
The Assembly Line
Causes of Rapid Industrialization
4. Unskilled & semi-skilled labor in abundance
5. Abundant capital
6. New, talented group of
businessmen entrepreneurs and advisors
7. Government willing to help at all levels to stimulate economic growth
8. Abundant natural resources
A NEW AMERICAN SOCIETY?
New Business Culture
Laissez Faire
• Individual as moral and economic ideal• Individuals should compete freely in the
marketplace• The market was not man-made or
invented• No room for government in the market!
= “Hands Off” government attitude toward business
• British economist.• Advocate of laissez-
faire.• Adapted Darwin’s ideas
from the “Origin of Species” to humans.
• “Survival of the Fittest.”
Social Darwinism
Herbert Spencer
Social Darwinism in America
• Individuals must have absolute freedom to struggle, succeed or fail
• Therefore, state intervention to reward society and the economy is futile
William Graham Sumner
RELIGIOUS / AESTHETIC
• Wealth no longer viewed as bad
• Wealth = God’s approval• Christian duty to accumulate
wealth• Should not help the poor
Gilded Religion?
Russell H. Conwell
Gilded Religion?
”Money printed your Bible, money builds your churches, money sends your missionaries, and money pays your preachers, and you would not have many of them, either, if you did not pay them.
I say, then, you ought to have money. If you can honestly attain unto riches in Philadelphia, it is your Christian and godly duty to do so. It is an awful mistake of these pious people to think you must be awfully poor in order to be pious.
Some men say, Don't you sympathize with the poor people? Of course I do…but the number of poor who are to be sympathized with is very small. To sympathize with a man whom God has punished for his sins, thus to help him when God would still continue a just punishment, is to do wrong, no doubt about it, and we do that more than we help those who are deserving. While we should sympathize with God's poor—that is, those who cannot help themselves---let us remember there is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings, or by the shortcomings of someone else. It is all wrong to be poor, anyhow.”
- Russell H. Conwell
• Softer version of this view• Wrote Gospel of Wealth
(1901)• Anglo-Saxons are superior• Inequality is Inevitable• Wealthy should act as
“trustees” for their “poorer brethren”
The Gospel of Wealth
Andrew Carnegie
“The American Dream”
• Protestant (Puritan) “Work Ethic”• Horatio Alger [100+ novels]
What do you think about this?
NEW AMERICAN BUSINESS?
ECONOMIC
New Types of Businesses
PoolsInterstate Commerce Act (1887)Interstate Commerce Commission created
TrustsJohn D. RockefellerStandard Oil Company
John D. Rockefeller
Standard Oil Company
Horizontal Integration– Owning all your competitors– John D. Rockefeller
Vertical Integration– Owning all the stages of production– Andrew Carnegie (U.S. Steel)
U.S. Corporate Mergers
Government Responses
• 1877 - Munn. v. IL• Government says you cannot “fix” grain prices
• 1886 - Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railroad Company v. IL
• Federal Government says it’s in charge of interstate regulation
• 1890 - Sherman Antitrust Act• in “restraint of trade”• “rule of reason” loophole
• 1895 - US v. E. C. Knight Co. • Antitrust act applies only to commerce, not manufacturing
Iron and Steel Production
% of Billionaires in 19004%
40%
13%
22%
9%
4%4%
4%
TimberRailroadsInheritedFinanceRetailingReal EstateSteelOther
% of Billionaires in 1918
21%
14%
10%
10%
10%
7%
7%
6%
3%3%
3%3% 3%
FinanceSteelOilInheritanceOtherFood ProcessingMiningAutomobileFarm MachineryTobaccoChemicalsRetailPhotography
POLITICAL
Protectors of Our Industry
The “Bosses” of the Senate
The “Robber Barons” of the Past
THE STRUGGLE OF ORGANIZED LABOR
• “Lockout”• “Blacklists”• “Yellow-Dog Contracts”• Private Guard & Militias to
put down strikes• Obtaining court injunctions
against strikes
Industrial Warfare
• Railroads cut wages
• Workers strike
• 500,000 workers from other industries joined
• Rutherford B. Hayes used Federal Troops to end violence
– 100 people killed in strike
Great Railroad Strike of 1877
National Labor Union
National Unions
Knights of Labor
American Federation of Labor
William Sylvis (1828-1869), American labor leader.
Haymarket Bombing
• Strike at George Pullman’s model company town near Chicago
• 1894: cut of wages & fired negotiators
• Eugine V. Debs (Amer. Railroad Union) said no trains pull Pullman cars
Pullman Strike
Eugene V. Debs in 1897
Pullman Strike
• Pullman attached cars to mail trains• In re Debs (1895)– Supreme Court approved injunctions against
strike
– Debs lost faith in free-market capitalism and founded American Socialist Party 1900
REVIEW
Essential Question
Industrialization increased the standard of living and the opportunities of most
Americans, but at what cost?
Essential Questions
Are “Robber Barons” just a thing of the past?
