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Published byClarissa Elinor Blair Modified over 8 years ago
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Civilisation des Etats-Unis 9b: Gilded Age Prof. Sämi LUDWIG
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“Robber Barons” or “Captains of Industry”? → eliminate competition: Vertical integration and horizontal integration Quotes: Cornelius Vanderbilt: “Law? What do I care about the law? Hain’t I got power?” Thomas Mellon advises his son to hire a substitute in the Civil War: “... such opportunities for making money had never existed in all my former experience.” - Vanderbilt sells leaky ships - J.P. Morgan, age 24, sells discarded cabins to government for $112’000.--
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Herbert Spencer’s Social Darwinism John D. Rockefeller to his Sunday School class: “The growth of a large business is merely the survival of the fittest …” Andrew Carnegie: “I had found the truth of evolution.” L: The Gospel of Wealth (1889) “… the man who dies rich dies disgraced.” public libraries = philanthropy!
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private universities: Ezra Cornell Johns Hopkins Leland Stanford Cornelius (Commodore) Vanderbilt James B. Duke art collections: Henry Clay Frick Huntington library Guggenheim Museum (Peggy Guggenheim) → Lengnau AG (Meyer Guggenheim)
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Trusts competing companies exchange trustee certificates → ownership original → management consolidated 1879 Standard Oil Company (John D. Rockefeller) “cutthroat competition” 90% refinery business 1892 Supreme Court orders dissolution 1899 Standard Oil Company of New Jersey → business-friendly legislation 1892 Carnegie Steel Company (Andrew Carnegie) rebates from railroad
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Antitrust laws: 1887 Interstate Commerce Act (I.C.A.) against rebates drawbacks long and short hauls pooling 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act “conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce” → ant. WTO? Investment bankers - J.P. Morgan 1901 buys Carnegie steel corporation
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Labor: tariff protects capital but not workers 1866 National Labor Union 8-hour day, better living conditions (slums) 1869 Knights of Labor “Grand Master Workman” Terrence V. Powderly 1886 700’000 members also black and mixed local chapters 1886 Chicago: Haymarket Square bombings anarchist speeches 200 policemen 4 foreigners executed
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1886 AFL: American Federation of Labor Samuel Gompers conservative, skilled workers only white members 1894 Pullman strike Sherman antitrust act invoked, “restraint on trade” American Railway Union president Eugene V. Debs arrested
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International Workers of the World (1905)
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