Chapter 6

1. Chapter 6 A New Industrial Age

2. Section 1 The Expansion of Industry

3. Natives used oil for fuel and medicine • Settlers didn’t need it until they began using kerosene lamps • Edwin Drake’s steam drill made extracting oil easier so petroleum refining factories sprung up to make more kerosene, oddly enough they threw away the gasoline which was the byproduct of the process. Black Gold

4. Huge deposits of iron and coal were soon discovered • If you remove carbon from iron you get lighter, more flexible, rust-resistant steel • The Bessemer process injects air into molten iron to remove the carbon and impurities • This was eventually replaced by the open hearth process which could use scrap metal not ore Bessemer Steel Process

5. Railroads • Barbed Wire • Farm Machines • Bridges • Skyscrapers New Uses for Steel

6. Thomas Alva Edison made the world’s first research laboratory (Menlo Park) • He perfected the incandescent light bulb • Also invented an entire system for producing and distributing electrical power • Improved business, transportation, house hold chores, allowed factories to move away from rivers The Power of Electricity

7. Christopher Sholes invented the typewriter which changed office work • Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson invented the telephone which also changed office work • Both these inventions created new jobs for women as secretaries or garment workers • Eased some worker’s physical burden and decreased the number of working hours Inventions Change Lifestyles

8. Section 2 The Age of Railroads

9. By 1856 went to the Mississippi • By 1866 went to the Missouri • By May 10, 1869 it spread across the country with the meeting of the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads at Promontory Point, Utah creating the first transcontinental railroad • At start of Civil War there was 30,000 miles of track by 1890 there was almost 180,000 A National Network

10. Romance, railroads bring the dream of land, adventure and a fresh start to every American • Reality, this comes at the high cost the railroad workers pay. They had to endure, attacks by Natives, accidents, diseases… 2,000 were killed and 20,000 were injured in the first year the railroad kept track of the numbers Romance and Reality

11. Noon used to be whenever the sun was directly overhead in any city, so noon in Boston was 12 minutes later than noon in New York • When riding by horseback this is not a problem, but with railroads a watch might be reset 20 times on the trip • Professor Dowd suggested dividing the earth into 24 times zones and skipping only an hour at a time • Railroads, an international conference and then Congress all eventually agreed Railroad Time

12. Linking towns promoted trade and interdependence • Certain towns could now specialize in just one thing and ship their goods across the country making things cheaper for everyone • Also new towns sprung up along the railroad lines and others died out New Towns and Markets

13. Built a factory for railroad cars on the Illinois prairie, then built a town for his employers around it. • That meant he owned everything in the town including doctors, housing, grocery stores… and could make up any rule he wanted like no loitering or drinking • During a recession he cut wages, but refused to lower rent which led to a violent strike Pullman

14. A construction company formed by stockholders in the Union Pacific Railroad • The construction company bids a job at 2 or 3 times cost, stockholders accept, tax money pays for hole thing and everyone lines their pockets at the taxpayers expense • Shares went to Congressmen to keep quiet, when word got out it tainted the Republican Party’s name Credit Mobilier

15. Railroads sold government land grants to businesses instead of to settlers like they were supposed to • Railroads worked together to fix prices to keep farmers in debt • Charged different customers different rates or charged more for short hauls where there is no alternative Railroad Abuses

16. Politically active farmers protecting their interests • Pushed for things like set maximum rates and anti discrimination • When the railroads fought back the courts stuck with the Grangers Granger Laws

17. Supreme Court ruled against the Grangers because states cannot regulate interstate trade or any traffic that came from somewhere else or was going to somewhere else • So Congress passed the ICA which established the ICC • ICC had little power because of a long legal process and Supreme Court ruled it could not set maximum rates Interstate Commerce Act

18. Corporate abuses, mismanagement, overbuilding and competition bankrupted many railroads • Led to nationwide economic collapse, Panic of 1893 • 600 banks, 15,000 businesses failed, 4 million jobless • Railroads taken over by financial companies and turned into 7 powerful (almost) monopolies Panic and Consolidation

19. Section 3 Big Business and Labor

20. Carnegie’s Ideas: Make better products more cheaply, accounting systems to track precise costs • Attracted the best by offering stock • Vertical Integration: buy out suppliers and distributers • Horizontal Integration: But out direct competition New Business Strategies

21. Way to justify “laissez faire” • The marketplace should not be regulated, all businesses should be allowed to succeed or fail on their own merits • Those that succeed deserve to thrive under natural law and no one has a right to intervene Principals of Social Darwinism

22. Social Darwinism supports the notion of individual responsibility and blame • Appeals to the Protestant work ethic • Riches are a sign of God’s favor, therefore the poor are either lazy or inferior and deserve their lot in life A New Definition of Success

23. Mergers: one company buys out the stock of another • Holding companies: a company specifically set up to buy out the stock of other companies • Trust agreements: Join with competing companies, all turn stock over to trust company which runs all the companies as if one large one Growth and Consolidation

24. Rockefeller controlled 90% of oil refining • Paid employees low wages, undersold all his competition by pricing lower than cost to gain control and then jack up the price • Robber Barons were also philanthropists and donated lots of $ Rockefeller & the “Robber Barons”

25. Government was concerned huge corporations stifled competition • In 1890, passed the Sherman Antitrust Act: it is illegal to form a trust that interferes with free trade between states or other countries • Since trust is not clearly defined in the Act it was difficult to prosecute • 7 out of 8 cases thrown out, government soon gave up prosecution Sherman Antitrust Act

26. North is full of natural and urban resources, South is still recovering from war • South lacks capital needed for investment and willingness to face the risk • Northerners therefore owned 90% of the stock from the South’s most profitable enterprise: the railroad • Mostly agricultural, suffered from transportation costs, high tariffs, lack of skilled workers… Business Boom Bypasses the South

27. 12+ hours per day, 6-7 days a week • No vacation, sick leave, unemployment or worker’s compensation • Worked in dirty, poorly ventilated factories doing repetitive, mind-dulling tasks with dangerous and occasionally faulty equipment • 600-700 killed each week • Wages so low EVERYONE had to work (dad, mom, children…) Long Hours and Danger

28. Used to just be small and local, now start forming on a national level • First is NLU in 1866, most chapters refused to admit blacks, so they formed their own • In 1868 they persuaded Congress to legalize an 8-hour work dayfor government employees • Knights of Labor open to all, want 8-hour day and equal pay, strikes are a last resort Early Labor Organizing

29. Skilled workers from one or more trades • AFL, led by Gompers used collective bargainingand negotiating to reach written agreements about wages, hours and conditions • Wages went from about $17.50 to $24/week and workweek fell from 54.5 hours to 49 hours Craft Unionism

30. All laborers (skilled or unskilled) in a certain industry • Eugene V. Debs helps lead this type of union • In 1894 they won a strike for higher wages Industrial Unionism

31. Most socialists work within the labor party instead of turning to extreme socialism (communism) to better working conditions • Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies) headed by “Big Bill” Haywood accepted African Americans, but never reached more than 100,000 members and only won one significant strike Socialism and the IWW

32. California: 1,000 Japanese and Mexicans form the Sugar Beet and Farm Laborers’ Union of Oxnard • Wyoming: Chinese and Japanese miners combine to request same wages and treatment as other union miners Other Labor Activism in the West

33. July, 1877 workers of the B&O Railroad go on strike to protest 2nd wage cut in 2 months • Strike spread to other lines and impacted freight and passenger traffic covering 50,000 miles for a week • State governors asked the president to intervene as the strike was impeding interstate trade, federal troops ended the strike The Great Strike of 1877

34. 1877, 3000 people gather to protest the police brutality used in a strike the day before where one man had been killed and several wounded • It started to rain, the protesters started to break up, police show up, someone tosses a bomb into the police line and chaos erupts killing several police and workers • 8 people charged with inciting a riot, all found guilty, 4 hanged and on committed suicide The Haymarket Affair

35. June 1892: Strike broke out at the Carnegie Steel Company’s Homestead plant because of a plan to cut wages • The company hired guards from the Pinkerton Detective Agency to protect the plant while scabs were hired • The strikers and Pinkertons fought, several were killed and the strikers took control of the plant and kept it closed for weeks until the National Guard was called out • Because of the violence the strike lost support and the strikers went back to work The Homestead Strike

36. Laid off over half the workers, reduced the wages of the rest (by 25-50%), refused to lower housing costs • Pullman refused to negotiate with strikers so the ARU started boycott Pullman trains • Pullman hired strikebreakers, the strike turned violent, the National Guard breaks it up, Debs goes to jail, Pullman fires most of the workers and the railroad blacklists others The Pullman Company Strike

37. Barred from many unions, they attempt to organize anyway and demand equal pay for equal work, better conditions, and no child labor • Mary Harris Jones, led 80 deformed mill children on a march to Roosevelt and gained the passage of some child labor laws • Garment workers and seamstresses start to unionize Women Organize

38. March 25, 1911: Fire broke out at the factory, it spread quickly across the oil soaked machines and cloth, engulfed floors 8, 9 and 10 • Company had chained all but one exit to prevent theft, that one exit was blocked by the fire so the employees were trapped inside with no sprinkler system and a fire escape that immediately collapsed • 146 women died but the owners were NOT found guilty of manslaughter • A taskforce was set up to investigate factory working conditions Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

39. http://ventilateblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/101-years-on-the-triangle-shirtwaist-factory-fire/http://ventilateblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/101-years-on-the-triangle-shirtwaist-factory-fire/ 101th Anniversary blog

40. As unions gained power employers retaliated by refusing to recognize unions, forbidding union meetings, firing union members, hiring only new employees that would swear not to join unions… • Eventually they turned the Sherman Antitrust Act AGAINST unions by saying they were a monopolizing group that was interfering with free trade • 1-2 million members joined AFL Management and Government Pressure Unions