1. Industrialization in America
Railroads unite America

2. A corporate revolution
Trains and mail-order catalogs -> National markets
Middle management -> “new” middle class
Increased productivity and output -> higher standard of living
Living Standards 
Percentage with  
Families in 1900 
Poor families in 1970 
Flush toilets 
15 
99 
Running water 
24 
92 
Central heating  1 
58 
One (or fewer) occupants per room
48  
96 
Electricity  3 
Refrigeration 
18 
Automobiles 
41 

3. Corporate Consolidation
Discriminatory railroad rebates and free rides
Pools, trusts, cartels, oligopolies
1890 Sherman Antitrust Act
 Increase in the Size of Industrial Establishments (Number of workers per average establishment)
1860
1900 
Agricultural implements 
8  
65 
Cotton goods  
112 
287 
Iron and steel 
333
Paper 
15 
Shipbuilding 
42 
Meatpacking 
20 
61 
Tobacco  
30 
67 

5. Corporate Consolidation cont.
Vertical and Horizontal Integration

6. Labor Strife Competing views of “freedom”
Knights of Labor – Terrence Powderly
Diversity and unskilled workers
Killed by Haymarket Square Riot
American Federation of Labor – Samuel Gompers
Moderate
Not politically radical
Industrial Workers of the World
“Wobblies”
Radical socialists

7. Social Theory

8. Social Darwinism Application of survival of the fittest to society
Laissez-faire attitude
“Gospel of Wealth”
William Graham Sumner

9. Jacob Riis How the Other Half Lives (1890)
Reform could help the poor because their condition was the result of their environment not their nature

10. Socialism Henry George Progress and Poverty (1879)
Questions why poverty persists as society progresses
Redistribution of wealth

11. Social Gospel Movement
Protestant reform movement
“What has the Christian moralist to say about this state of things? He is bound to say that it is a bad state of things, and must somehow be reformed....Christianity...ought with all its emphasis to say to society: "Your present industrial system, which fosters enormous inequalities, which permits a few to heap up most of the gains of this advancing civilization, and leaves the many without any substantial share in them, is an inadequate and inequitable system, and needs important changes to make it the instrument of righteousness."  This is not saying that Christians should ask the state to take the property of the rich and distribute it among the poor....There are, however, one or two things, that he will insist upon as the immediate duty of the state. Certain outrageous monopolies exist that the state is bound to crush....Another gigantic public evil that the state must exterminate is that of gambling in stocks and produce.”
Washington Gladden