The Age of Industry and Invention Honors History Class

Railroads Lead the Way  National rail system created economic and physical links throughout the country.  Railroads shifted industry westward bringing industry to the locations that required them.

Communications Follow  Telegraph: Samuel Morse had introduced it in 1844 and by 1866 thousands of miles of telegraph had been laid. Even a transatlantic line had been laid.  Telephone: Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. By the 1890’s the Bell Telephone Company had sold nearly 500,000 phones. Soon it would be common in homes.

Invention Explodes  Typewriter (1868)  Adding Machine (1888)  Smaller Cameras (1888)  Vacuum (1899)

Notable Inventors  Thomas Alva Edison Received 1000 patents in his lifetime.  Phonograph  Motion Picture Projector  Telephone transmitter  Battery  Dictating Machine  Electric Lightbulb

Notable Inventors  Jan E. Matzeliger African American Inventor  Developed a shoemaking machine that revolutionized the shoe making industry in the US.

Notable Inventors  Henry Ford Created a manufacturing technique called the assembly line.  Ford used the assembly line to make the Model T automobile.  Ford sold 15 million Model T’s.

Notable Inventors  Orville and Wilbur Wright Bicycle Mechanics who build the first airplane.

Big Business  Corporations formed to include shared ownerships. (Stocks)  Oil industry grew rapidly in the late 1800’s John D. Rockefeller made a fortune from oil. Eventually he owned all or most of the oil companies in America. This is referred to as a monopoly.

Big Business  Steel Invention and expansion drove the need for steel. Andrew Carnegie was the leading figure in the American steel industry.  In 1901 Carnegie sold his company to J. Pierpont Morgan for $450 million.  With that purchase J. Pierpont Morgan formed the world’s first billion dollar corporation.

Labor Unions - Background  In many factories, mines and businesses workers would work 6 days a week 10 to 12 hours a day.  Conditions in many workplaces were dangerous and unsafe.  Many places would employ women and children and pay them much less than adults doing the same work.

Labor Unions Form  Workers secretly organized groups to demand better working conditions.  The American Federation of Labor (AFL) Often the only weapon a union could use against the owners was a strike or work stoppage.

Strikes and Violence  Railroad Strike of 1877 Railroads cut pay to workers  Haymarket Riot of striking factory workers and 7 police are killed  Homestead Strike of 1892 Steel plant cut wages and then brought in non union workers who were attacked by the workers 13 dead.  Pullman Strike of 1894 Railroad company cut wages and workers striked, the government forced them back to work.

The Lesson???  Industry and Invention led the way to expansion in our country.  Unions who influenced the process in both positive and negative ways have pushed to establish the current labor laws in our country. Minimum wage laws, Overtime, Benefits, Child Labor Laws, Equal Opportunity Laws, Wage Equity Laws, etc.