1. THE RISE OF INDUSTRIAL AMERICA, 1865–1900
AP US History
East High School
Mr. Peterson
Spring 2011

2. Focus Questions
What innovations in technology and business drove increases in industrial production after 1865?
How did Carnegie, Rockefeller, and other corporate leaders consolidate control over their industries?
Why did the South’s experience with industrialization differ from that of the North and the Midwest?
How did the changing nature of work affect factory workers’ lives, and how did they respond?
How did corporations undercut labor’s bargaining power in the 1890s?

3. The Rise of Corporate America
FIGURE 18.1 LATE NINETEENTH-CENTURY ECONOMIC GROWTH IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

4. The Character of Industrial Change
Large-scale manufacturing
Large coal deposits
Technological innovation
Demand for workers who could be controlled
Constant pressure to cut costs and prices
Relentless drop in prices
Money supply shortage leads to high interest rates

5. ABUSIVE MONOPOLY POWER This Puck cartoon depicts fi nanciers Jay Gould (left) and Cornelius Vanderbilt (right) and suggests that their manipulation of markets and their ownership of railroads, telegraph companies, and newspapers is powerful enough to strangle Uncle Sam.
p. 538

6. Railroad Problems and Innovations
193,000 miles by 1900
Collis Huntington, Jay Gould and others need capital
Land and loan subsidies from all levels of government
Bonds and stock to public
High levels of debt by 1900
Magnetic telegraph
New organizations and accounting

7. Consolidating the Railroad Industry
Large companies buy up smaller ones
Divide country into 4 time zones
Standard gauge track
Relied on shipping rate cuts
Interstate Commerce Act (1887)
Oversee railroads
Banned monopolistic activity
Banker J. Pierpont Morgan gets control of many railroads

8. Applying the Lessons of Railroads to Steel
Andrew Carnegie
Rags to riches story
Builds own steel mill
Uses Bessemer process
“watch the costs, and the profits will take care of themselves”
Vertical integration
Could see big picture

9. ANDREW CARNEGIE Although his contemporaries called him “the world’s richest man,” Andrew Carnegie was careful to defl ect criticism by focusing on his philanthropic and educational activities.
p. 539

12. p. 539

13. FIGURE 18.2 IRON AND STEEL PRODUCTION, 1875–1915 New technologies, improved plant organization, economies of scale, and the vertical integration of production brought a dramatic spurt in iron and steel production. Note: short ton = 2,000 pounds.
Fig. 18-2, p. 541

14. Table 18-1, p. 541

15. The Trust: Creating New Forms of Corporate Organization
Consolidation in many industries
Oligopolies
Petroleum drilled in 1859
Edwin Drake
Titusville, PA
“crude-oil” distilled
Lubricants, kerosene

18. John D. Rockefeller Took over competition in oil industry
Lower prices
Set up pool of companies, trust
Standard Oil Trust
90% of oil refining capacity
Integrated oil industry vertically and horizontally

20. James B. “Buck” Duke Cigarette industry American Tobacco trust
Targeted young with trading cards and prizes

22. BASEBALL TRADING CARD To encourage boys and young men to smoke cigarettes, the American Tobacco Company included in the cigarette package collectable cards with pictures of baseball heroes such as Ty Cobb.
p. 541

23. Sherman Anti-Trust Act
1890
Outlawed trusts and monopolies
Ineffective
Failed to define trust or restraint of trade
United States v. E.C. Knight (1895)
Manufacturing not interstate commerce

24. Stimulating Economic Growth
COURT OF HONOR, WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION, 1893 The Chicago World’s Fair was seen as “the most signifi cant and grandest spectacle of modern times.” The monumental neoclassical buildings announced that the United States, like Greece and Rome before it, had become one of the world’s most powerful economies.

25. The Triumph of Technology
New inventions
Streamlined manufacturing
Stimulated consumer demand
Singer Sewing Machine Company
Alexander Graham Bell-telephone

26. Thomas A. Edison “invention factory” Menlo Park laboratory
Phonograph- “sound writer”
Incandescent light bulb
Electric power system
Motion picture camera
Menlo Park laboratory
Model for other businesses

27. THOMAS EDISON’S LABORATORIES IN MENLO PARK, NEW JERSEY, CA
THOMAS EDISON’S LABORATORIES IN MENLO PARK, NEW JERSEY, CA Always a self-promoter, Edison used this depiction of his “invention factory” to suggest that his development of a durable light bulb in 1879 would have an impact on life around the globe.
p. 543

28. Electricity Thomas Edison George Westinghouse
Interrelated system of power plants, transmission lines, light fixtures
Direct current-DC
George Westinghouse
Alternating current-AC
Systems combine-110 AC
Private ownership, regulated monopolies

29. CREATION OF THE EDISON SYSTEM, MENLO PARK Frank Leslie’s Weekly in 1880 illustrated Thomas Edison’s process of making electric light bulbs using glass-blowers and vacuum machines in his Menlo Park laboratory.
p. 544

30. THE NIAGARA FALLS POWER COMPANY As this diagram of the power station at Niagara Falls reveals, the early transmission of electric power was closely tied to large manufacturers who had the funds to support large investments in generating equipment and power lines.
p. 545

31. Specialized Production
Manufacturing
Skilled workers
Seamstresses
Shift styles quickly

32. SKILLED WOMEN DRESSMAKERS, 1890 As these dressmakers in Mary Malloy’s shop in St. Paul, Minnesota, indicate, industrialization did not displace all skilled workers. In this case, hand work and machine work continued together. Women’s dressmaking persisted as a skilled occupation into the 1890s and gave women entrepreneurs an opportunity to run their own businesses.
p. 546

33. Advertising and Marketing
Mass-produced consumer goods
Flour, soap, matches, canned goods
Brand names, trademarks, guarantees, slogans, endorsements, unique products
Demand and brand loyalty

34. HEINZ KETCHUP ADVERTISEMENT, CA
HEINZ KETCHUP ADVERTISEMENT, CA To sell its products in a mass market, H J Heinz company in Pittsburgh developed the brand name “57 Varieties” for its ketchup, pickles, and other condiments. The “girl with the white cap” was meant to symbolize the purity of its food processing.
p. 547

35. Social and Environmental Costs and Benefits
Social benefits
Labor-saving products
Lower prices
Advances in transportation and communications
Social costs
Bankrupt companies and dreams
Expendable workers
Environmental devastation

36. INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION Although some Americans celebrated factory smoke as a sign of industrial growth, those who lived downwind, such as the longshoreman in this Thomas Nast cartoon, often suffered from respiratory diseases and other ailments. For him as well as for other Americans, the price of industrial progress often was pollution.
p. 548

37. The New South

38. Obstacles to Economic Development
Lagging industrial development
Lack of capital
Few banks
Growing cash crops such as cotton or tobacco made farmers vulnerable to world markets
Limited funds for education

39. The New South Creed and Southern Industrialization
Henry Grady
Atlanta Constitution
Industrialize South
Attract Northern capital
More opportunities for black workers in industry

40. The Southern Mill Economy
Mill towns supported textile industry
Center of textiles by 1920
Augusta, GA: Lowell of the South
Low wages
Often paid in company scrip
Did little to help farmers/sharecroppers

41. The Southern Industrial Lag
Birmingham (AL) Steel controlled by U.S. Steel
Higher prices, despite lower costs
Segregated work force
Environmental damage

42. PIG IRON SCENE, BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA, BY CHARLES GRAHAM, 1886 Although the proximity of Birmingham’s foundries to iron and coal deposits enabled them to produce inexpensive iron ingots, northern owners forced them to price their products at the same rate as ingots produced in Pittsburgh.
p. 550

43. Factories and the Work Force
TEXTILE WORKERS Young children like this one often were used in the textile mills because their small fingers could tie together broken threads more easily than those of adults.

44. From Workshop to Factory
Restructuring of work habits
Emphasis on workplace discipline
Example of shoemakers
Skilled artisan to unskilled factory worker
Lower-paid women and children

45. SHOEWORKERS Shoeworkers pose near their machines in Haverhill, Massachusetts, ca For them as well as for others, work became increasingly repetitive and routinized.
p. 555

46. The Hardships of Industrial Labor
High demand for unskilled laborers
Workers often drifted
12-hour shifts
Dangerous work
Children as young as 8
Railroads dangerous for adults
Minimal financial aid for disabled and families

47. The Cameron Colliery, later called the Glen Burn, stands out because it was so visible as you entered Shamokin traveling north on route 61. The culm bank created by the waste from the Cameron Colliery mine is still there today. The Burnside Colliery ceased operations during the 1930s. The houses that make up the village of Burnside were originally owned by the coal company. They were sold to the residents in the late 1940s. It was interesting because a 3-story house went for $ and residents had to take a mortgage to buy one!

48. George Grantham Bain took this picture on May 1, 1909 (Labor Day)
George Grantham Bain took this picture on May 1, 1909 (Labor Day). It shows two Jewish girls in New York City protesting against child labor.

49. Immigrant Labor French Canadians in NE Chinese in West
Eastern and Southern European immigrants
Subject to discipline and eviction from company provided homes
Faced discrimination

50. ETHNIC AND RACIAL HATRED Conservative business owners used racist advertising such as this trade card stigmatizing Chinese laundry workers to promote their own products and to associate their company with patriotism.
p. 559

51. Eugene V. Debs, arguably the foremost union activist in American history, described the 1909 McKees Rock, Pa., strike this way: "The greatest labor fight in all my history in the labor movement." Yet today, few remember this struggle when immigrant workers rose up and changed the course of American unionism.
 The strike took place at the huge Pressed Steel Car Co. plant in McKees Rock, a few miles down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh, where between 5,000 and 8,000 mostly immigrant workers from some 16 nationalities created railway cars. Hailing mainly from southern and eastern Europe, they included "Russians who had served in the 1905 Duma [parliament], Italians who had led resistance strikes, Germans who were active in the metal workers' union," according to historian Sidney Lens. "But because of the language barrier they were easily divided, and thoroughly exploited."
At McKees Rock, "exploited" literally meant daily injuries and deaths. Labor historian Charles McCollester quotes from an article in the Pittsburgh Leader, one of the city's daily newspapers, which reported that when a worker is maimed and mangled in his work, "some foreman or other petty 'boss' pushes the bleeding body aside with his foot to make room for another living man, that no time be lost in the turning out of pressed steel cars. The new man often works for some minutes over the dead body until a labor gang takes it away." A former county coroner testified that the death toll averaged one person a day.
The workers also were subjected to a corrupt "pool system" in which their pay was determined not by any established wage rate but by the whim of the foremen. On July 10, 1909—a payday—workers received less pay than normal and 40 riveters told the company they wouldn't work unless they were told the pay rates. When they returned to work three days later, they were fired. That was the breaking point. Within 48 hours, 5,000 workers went on strike.
When management brought strikebreakers to the plant on a steamer along the Ohio River, strikers fired their rifles at the steamer and it fled to the opposite shore. Soon, there were more skirmishes when the company brought in hundreds of deputy sheriffs and state constables. One striker was killed at the plant entrance, and 5,000 mourners marched in his funeral procession.
The Pressed Steel Car workers received welcome support from other workers. Railway trainmen on lines leading into the city and the motormen on the local streetcar lines all refused to haul scabs. This solidarity was critical. In the end, the workers won what Lens called "a victory of towering proportions." As he recounted, management "agreed to end the pool system, raise wages by an immediate 5 percent and 10 percent more in 60 days, fire the remaining scabs and rehire all strikers."
The victory at McKees Rock extended well beyond the plant. This was the moment when immigrant workers who had no power—"persecuted, robbed, and slaughtered," as one local priest described them—found their voice. The turning point may have come at a giant rally on Indian Mound, a hill near the Ohio River, when 8,000 workers joined together and heard fiery speeches in nine languages. After that, they and the union movement itself were never the same.
Eugene Debs correctly interpreted the workers' victory. He predicted the McKees Rock success would be "a harbinger of a new spirit among the unorganized, foreign-born workers in the mass production industries who can see here in McKees Rock the road on which they must travel—the road of industrial unionism."
Sources
McCollester, Charles, The Point of Pittsburgh.Battle of Homestead Foundation, Brody, David, Steelworkers in America: The Nonunion Era. Harper & Row, Lens, Sidney, The Labor Wars: From the Molly Maguires to the Sit-Downs.Haymarket Books, 2008.

52. Women and Work in Industrial America
Working-class women had to contribute to family income
Single women could see opportunity
Typewriter and telephone lead to shift in work for women
Clerical and secretarial
Telephone operators

53. WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE The women in this photograph are testing their typing skills at a civil service exam in Chicago in the 1890s. The expansion of banking, insurance, and a variety of other businesses opened up new career opportunities for women as secretaries, stenographers, and typists.
p. 553

54. Hard Work and the Gospel of Success
Horatio Alger and Ragged Dick (1867)
“rags to riches”
Andrew Carnegie
Most industrial leaders came from middle- and upper-class
Rise in real wages
31% for unskilled
74% for skilled
Income disparity

55. Labor Unions and Industrial Conflict
THE FIRST LABOR DAY PARADE, 1882 Thousands of workers, led by the Knights of Labor, marched in the first Labor Day Parade in New York. As the numerous American flags in this contemporary illustration suggest, the workers believed that labor deserved substantial credit for building the American nation.

56. Organizing Workers National Labor Union (NLU) Knights of Labor
Membership soared by 1886
Political success through existing parties
Wildcat strikes fail, membership declines

57. American Federation of Labor
Group of craft unions
Headed by Samuel Gompers
“trade unionism, pure and simple”
“bread and butter” issues
Wages, reducing hours, safety
1.6 million members by 1906
THE FIRST LABOR DAY PARADE, 1882 Thousands of workers, led by the Knights of Labor, marched in the first Labor Day Parade in New York. As the numerous American flags in this contemporary illustration suggest, the workers believed that labor deserved substantial credit for building the American nation.
p. 558

58. Strikes and Labor Unrest
Panic of 1873
Strikes in coal and railroads
Homestead Strike (PA)
Carnegie Steel
Violence, union crushed
Pullman Strike (Chicago)
Eugene V. Debs leader
Pres. Cleveland gets injunction against strikers
Debs jailed, strike crushed

59. PINKERTONS SURRENDER AT THE HOMESTEAD STEEL STRIKE, 1892 After a gun battle, Pinkerton security forces surrender to strikers at the Homestead, Pennsylvania, steel works. Companies cited worker violence such as this as justification for government suppression of labor unrest.
p. 560

60. Social Thinkers Probe for Alternatives
Social Darwinism
Natural law controlled social order
“Survival of the fittest”
William Graham Sumner
Disapproved of govt. interference
Opposed by Lester Frank Ward
Dynamic Sociology
Laws of nature could be circumvented by human will

61. Utopian Solutions Henry George-socialism Edward Bellamy Marxism
Progress and Poverty
“unearned increment”
Land tax
Edward Bellamy
Looking Backward
Future without poverty or strife-2000
Marxism
Karl Marx and Das Capital
Capitalism would wither away

62. p. 563

63. THE RISE OF INDUSTRIAL AMERICA, 1865–1900
AP US History
East High School
Mr. Peterson
Spring 2011