1. SSUSH11 Examine connections between the rise of big business, the growth of labor unions, and technological innovations. a. Explain the effects of railroads on other industries, including steel and oil. b. Examine the significance of John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie in the rise of trusts and monopolies. c. Examine the influence of key inventions on U.S. infrastructure, including but not limited to the telegraph, telephone, and electric light bulb. d. Describe Ellis and Angel Islands, the change in immigrants’ origins and their influence on the economy, politics, and culture of the United States. e. Discuss the origins, growth, influence, and tactics of labor unions including the American Federation of Labor.

2. a. Explain the effects of railroads on other industries, including steel and oil.
Following the Civil War, America’s rapid mechanization and industrial growth was renewed with vigor. Railroads played an especially important role in America’s industrial expansion because they provided the crucial transportation links between raw materials and the growing urban and manufacturing centers.
The continued expansion of railroads facilitated the growth of other key industries, notable steel and oil. For example, the raw materials needed to produce steel: iron ore and coal, could be transported by rail to the mills and smelters, and the finished product could then be shipped by the same rail lines to markets all across the country. And the railroads themselves were one of the steel industry’s biggest customers- locomotives, rail cars and the rails were all constructed from iron/steel and its derivatives.

7. b. Examine the significance of John D
b. Examine the significance of John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie in the rise of trusts and monopolies.
The incredible pace of industrial growth and expansion after the Civil War was also attended by substantial consolidation in several key industries. The steel and oil industries again provide the classic examples of this phenomenon.
In the steel industry, Andrew Carnegie and his US Steel Corporation came to dominate the production of steel through the adoption of new technologies and through a vertical integration of the steel manufacturing process. Carnegie was among the first in the US to adopt the “Bessemer process”, an innovation that drastically reduced the costs and increased the quality of his steel. He also vertically integrated his supply chain, meaning he owned not only the manufacturing facilities, but also owned the coal mines and iron ore mines that provided the raw materials for his steel.
Over time, he was able to reduce his costs to a level where other manufacturers could not compete and were forced to either close or sell to Carnegie. For a time in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Carnegie and his company achieved a near monopoly in the steel industry, meaning that they alone had virtual control of the steel industry and in the absence of competition, could set prices.

8. b. Examine the significance of John D
b. Examine the significance of John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie in the rise of trusts and monopolies.
The oil industry witnessed a similar, and even more complete consolidation under John D. Rockefeller and his company, Standard Oil. Rockefeller used ruthless tactics to undercut his competition in the oil business, and achieved an almost complete monopoly of the oil industry.
In both cases, these corporate giants represented a new type of mega-conglomerate company that came to wield extraordinary economic and commercial power.
Anti-monopoly statutes had existed in US corporate law since the 1830s, but these new mega-companies found a way around the letter of the law by establishing what were known as “trusts.” Standard Oil, for example, created numerous corporate subsidiaries, that were technically different companies, owned by their shareholders, but controlled through a “trust” managed by the parent company.
The term “trust” meant that the management (but not the legal ownership) of the stock of a company was assigned to a second party, often called a “holding” company. But the term came to mean, in practical terms of the era, any large and powerful company or group of companies that had monopolistic designs or tendencies.
Through the late 1800s, many of the largest and most powerful industries in the US formed these types of trusts, whereby they could collude to control the markets and prices for their products. In the Progressive era, these types of corporate arrangements would come under intense scrutiny as unfair and detrimental to free and open markets.

9. Andrew Carnegie- Steel

11. John D. Rockefeller- Standard Oil Co.

14. c. Examine the influence of key inventions on U. S
c. Examine the influence of key inventions on U.S. infrastructure, including but not limited to the telegraph, telephone, and electric light bulb.
One of the most important developments that contributed to the industrial revolution in America were technological innovations that harnessed the power of electricity.
One of the first truly revolutionary applications of electricity came with the invention of the telegraph. In the 1840s, Samuel Morse developed a machine that could send and receive electrical pulses through copper wires. A code of dots and dashes corresponded to the alphabet, and as telegraphy spread (often using the same routes as railroads) cities and towns all across America began to be linked with this new system of communication. What had taken days, weeks or even months to communicate across the far flung nation could now be accomplished with relative instantaneousness.
The next major revolution in communications technology came with Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone in Although it would take several decades for telephonic systems to link the entire nation, it offered truly instant communication and had obvious implications for business and commerce.
Lastly, the development of the electric light bulb in 1879 by Thomas Edison was an extremely important innovation of the industrial age. Bringing reliable illumination to the dark of night meant that manufacturing, production, and commerce in general did not have to cease when the sun went down.

15. Telegraph- Samuel Morse

16. Telegraph 1840s

18. Telephone- 1876 Alexander Graham Bell

19. Electric light bulb- Thomas Edison- 1879

21. d. Describe Ellis and Angel Islands, the change in immigrants’ origins and their influence on the economy, politics, and culture of the United States.
Ellis Island was the immigrant intake facility near New York where a huge number of immigrants entered the US from the 1880s-1910s. Angel Island was the equivalent of Ellis on the west coast, near San Francisco.
Immigration of this period was characterized by a major shift in the origins of immigrants. Relative to earlier periods of immigration, the source of the immigrants shifted from northern and western Europe primarily, to eastern and southern Europe. The German and Irish immigrants of the mid-1800s were largely supplanted by Italians, Russians, Poles, Czechs, Greeks, and others. Also of note, many of the immigrants were from religious minorities, including a large number of Catholics and Jews.
The impact on the American economy, political alignments, and culture of America was tremendous.
Most immigrants of this era tended to stay in eastern urban centers and caused the populations of those cities to swell. Many were poor and uneducated, and provided the prime labor source for the rapidly expanding manufacturing and unskilled labor markets.
Most groups also established ethnic enclaves, areas of cities that were dominated by particular ethnicities- consider, “Little Italy” in NYC.

22. d. Describe Ellis and Angel Islands, the change in immigrants’ origins and their influence on the economy, politics, and culture of the United States
The impact of this substantial immigration on the American economy, politics, and culture of was tremendous.
Most immigrants of this era tended to stay in eastern urban centers and caused the populations of those cities to swell. Many were poor and uneducated, and provided the prime labor source for the rapidly expanding manufacturing and unskilled labor markets. A large part of the labor for America’s growing industrial and manufacturing capacity came from immigrants.
Most immigrant groups established ethnic enclaves, areas of cities that were dominated by particular ethnicities- for example, “Little Italy” in NYC. These ethnic enclaves tended to have similar political interests and voted as blocs, and so became integrated into urban political machines. Eventually, the immigrant/ urban working class constituency as a whole would be more or less addressed by various progressive political movements.
These extremely diverse immigrant groups obviously contributed tremendous diversity to the fabric of American life. However, in the late 1800s and early 1900s there was a growing political and cultural backlash to this large influx of immigrants. Anti-immigrant sentiment reached a peak through the late 1910s, inspiring Congress to radically alter national immigration policy, closing the open door with a strict quota system introduced through the early 1920s.

23. Ellis Island

24. Ellis Island

28. e. Discuss the origins, growth, influence, and tactics of labor unions including the American Federation of Labor
The labor and union movement had been active in the US dating to the 1860s. As more and more Americans entered the industrial/manufacturing economy as wage earners, unions were seen as a way to balance the scale, and collectively address wages and working conditions. Some of the early groups involved with the labor movement fizzled for a variety of reasons, including an association with radical socialist ideologies that many saw as patently “un-American.”
The AFL was one of the first labor unions to achieve long term stability and success. Founded in 1886 and led by the cigar chomping Samuel Gompers, the AFL was able to survive and thrive for several reasons. Chief among these was the concept of a “union of unions” that represented skilled trades, rather than attempting to organize workers in specific entire industries as a whole.
Another major reason for the success of the AFL was their complete rejection of socialist/Marxist/Communist/ radical ideology.
Under Gompers’ leadership the AFL focused on improving wages and working conditions for workers in skilled trade, but rejected any notion or ideology of radical social re-ordering or redistribution of wealth. In other words, the goals of Gompers and the AFL were much more economic than social.
The labor movement was instrumental in improving working conditions for American workers- introducing some ideas that became considered norms for workers everywhere- for example- an 8 hour workday, overtime pay, paid vacations, and workers’ compensation programs.

30. Samuel Gompers