Discrimination, Industrialization & Culture Life During the Gilded Age

Bessemer Process  Bessemer Process- involved injecting air into molten iron to remove carbon & other impurities  Used to produce 90% of nation’s steel  Railroads biggest customers for steel  Steel changed nation; made innovative construction possible

Monopolies  Vertical Integration : buying out supplies in order to control an industry (Carnegie)  i.e. coal fields, iron mines, railroad lines  Horizontal Integration : buying out competitors to control an industry (Rockefeller)

New Technologies  Printing- literacy rate rose, huge quantities of cheap paper, cheap to buy newspapers  Airplanes- advance in transportation  Orville & Wilbur Wright  Photography-made more flexible & portable  Kodak camera

Voting Restrictions  Denied legal equality to African Americans  Literacy Test  Poll tax- annual tax that had to be paid before qualifying to vote  Grandfather clause- man is entitled to vote if he, his father, or grandfather had been eligible to vote

Jim Crow Laws  Racial segregation laws to separate whites and blacks in public and private facilities  Schools, hospitals, parks, transportation systems

Plessy v. Ferguson  Separation of races in public accommodations was legal and did not violate the 14 th amendment  Separate but equal  Legalized racial segregation for 60 years

Race Relations  Between 1882 and 1892, more than 1400 African Americans were shot, burned or hanged without trial  Many blacks migrated north in search of better-paying jobs & social equality  Discrimination also in the North

Discrimination in the West  Mexican workers hired to work on railroads  Worked for less money than other ethnic groups  Chinese immigrants pushed into segregated schools & neighborhoods

Reformers Mobilize  Social Gospel Movement- preached salvation through service to the poor  Settlement Houses- community centers in slum neighborhoods that provided assistance to people in the area (esp. immigrants)  Middle class, college-educated women ran  Jane Addams- founded the Hull House

Social Darwinism  Charles Darwin’s biological theories used to explain evolution of human society  Some individuals of a species flourish while others do not  Less suited individuals are weeded out  Riches are a sign of god’s favor; poor must be lazy or inferior  Used as justification for millionaires

Dawn of Mass Culture  Rise of consumer culture  Whites had leisure time for recreational activities  Amusement parks  Bicycling and tennis  Spectator sports  Baseball

Spread of Mass Culture  Newspapers  Joseph Pulitzer  William Randolph Hearst  Fine Arts  Ashcan School  Popular Fiction

New Ways to Sell Goods  Urban Shopping- first shopping center opens  Department Stores  chain stores  Woolworth’s  Explosion in advertising  Modern consumerism  Catalogs  Montgomery Ward & Sears  Rural Free Delivery- system that brought packages directly to every home  Music spread by NYC’s Tin Pan Alley