Modern Money and Its Discontents Big Business and Labor,
Rise of an Industrial Economy Second Industrial Revolution—integrated transportation and communication; electric power; scientifically-based research and development Laborers were increasingly a proletariat— only their labor to sell in the marketplace.
Railroads First Transcontinental Railroad completed in 1869 Financed by private capital and government land grants (129 million acres of public lands between 1850 and 1870 alone) Much corruption—Credit Mobilier Scandal; “Robber Barons”
Transcontinental Railroad
Robber Barons: Gould and Vanderbilt
Inventions Change Lifeways Alexander Graham Bell—Telephone—1876 Thomas Alva Edison—Light bulb in 1879; the phonograph in 1877 George Westinghouse—airbrake for trains and Alternating Current (beginning of power grid) in J. W. McGaffey—vacuum cleaner 1869 These inventions relied on electricity
Electric Generator
Edison and Westinghouse
New Corporate Models John David Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Trust Corporation: “hasn’t a body to be damned or a soul to be kicked” Vertical Integration: from raw material to market—Andrew Carnegie and Carnegie Steel Horizontal Integration—control the bottlenecks: John David Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Trust (refining monopoly)
Carnegie and Rockefeller
Oil wells in Titusville, Pa.
The Business of Money J. P. Morgan and Investment Banking Interlocking boards of directors Assumed control over 1/6 of all U. S. railroading United States Steel (1901) controlled about 90% of U. S. steel production
James Pierpont Morgan
Richard Sears & Alvah Roebuck Wide range of low priced consumer goods You could even buy a mail order church— just not the pretty girl on page 614 Rural Free Delivery plus the railroad made this mail order business possible 6 million catalogs per year by 1900
New Economy Produced Harm for Many Concentration of wealth Alienation of labor Child labor Low wages Industrial accidents
Workers Try to Organize Contrary to “individualism” Strife between skilled and unskilled labor Race/Ethnicity—Dennis Kearney’s Workingmen’s Party Pinkerton’s as Strikebreakers Government Prosecution (Sherman Anti- Trust Act)
Knights of Labor Growth under Terrence V. Powderly Success in early railroad strikes led membership to swell to 700,000 by 1886 Lost favor as a result of Haymarket Affair in 1886
American Federation of Labor Samuel Gompers and Unionism pure and simple 500,000 members by 1890 and 2 million by 1914
1890s Strikes Illustrate Challenges faced by Unions Homestead Strike—1892 Pullman Strike--1894
Eugene Victor Debs, — “While there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
Mary Harris “Mother Jones” ( )
Socialism and Labor Socialist Party—polled 900,672 votes in 1912 IWW Western Federation of Miners and Big Bill Haywood
William D. Haywood—Leader of WFM