1. Industrialization and Big Business Emerges

2. What new ideas did Big Business incorporate?
Carnegie’s Innovation
Management Technique
Better products and lower prices
Encouraged competition to increase production & cut costs
Hired only the best and vested them in the company’s performance
Quote: “To try to make the world in some way better than you found it is to have a noble motive in life.”
Andrew Carnegie
The Empire of Business

3. What new ideas did Big Business incorporate?
Business strategy
*Vertical integration = control every single aspect of a company from the resource production through sales
*Horizontal consolidation = buy all the competing companies in a single industry

4. What new ideas did Big Business incorporate?
Societal Issues
*Social Darwinism
Herbert Spencer coins the term in 1862…its basically means SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
Money = Success
The few control the masses
The wealthy are seen as blessed by god
“PULLING YOURSELF UP BY THE BOOTSTRAPS”

5. How did Big Business expand?
Continued growth and consolidation
*Oligopoly = market with only a few sellers for each product (petroleum)
*Monopoly = situation where 1 company control all the market (Comcast)
*Holding Company = corporation that only buys stocks of other companies to control them
*Trust = people who run separate companies as one larger corporation

6. Who were the leaders of Big Business?
*Robber Barons = ruthless industrialists who made money off the little guy and were named for feudal (Medieval Times) lords
John D. Rockefeller…Rockefeller Center/Plaza
Andrew Carnegie…Carnegie Hall
J.P. Morgan…Chase Morgan Bank
All the robber barons and Big Business bypassed the south due to its limited resources & capital

7. The Expansion of American Industry

8. What forced the U.S’s transformation?
3 major factors push the U.S. from an agricultural society to an industrial nation
Wealth of natural resources
Explosion of inventions
Growing urban population that provided new markets

9. How did natural resources impact the U.S.?
Black Gold
Abraham Gesner creates kerosene which is distilled from crude oil
Edwin Drake creates the steam engine for oil drilling
Gasoline is extracted from petroleum and used for the newly created automobile
Bessemer Steel
Coal and iron are abundant enough to produce steel cheaply
Air injected into molten iron created stronger steel

10. How did inventions impact the U.S.?
The Power of Electricity
1876 = Thomas Alva Edison establishes the Menlo Park research laboratory
The incandescent light bulb is created and mass produced
Cities, shops, and homes receive electricity
Electric streetcars are invented
Inspired Inventions
1867 = Christopher Sholes invents the typewriter
1876 = Alexander Graham Bell (and Thomas Watson) invent the telephone
Seen as inventions to assist women in joining the workforce
New Products/Lifestyles
New inventions lead to longer hours for laborers
Consumerism and advertising becoming important
Recreational inventions increase
Camera, bicycle, and phonograph

11. How did growing populations impact the U.S.?
City populations rapidly expand
Chicago, New York, and Boston all reach a million inhabitants
Workforces double, triple, and even quintuple in major urban centers…including women workers
1870 = 5% of the workforce is female
1920 = 40% of the workforce is female

12. The Age of the American Railroad

13. When did the railroad become a national phenomenon?
May 10, 1869
The Transcontinental Railroad
Completed at Promontory Point, Utah

14. What was the reality of the railroad?
Cheap labor
Chinese, Irish, and Confederate veterans are hired to work on the railroads
Casualties
2,000 men die and 20,000 men are injured in railroad construction ANNUALLY
Racism
Average wages and hours
Minorities…$35/month & 80 hours/week
Whites…$45/month & 50 hours/week

15. What did railroads do to time?
Railroad Time
1883 the U.S. adopts 4 time zones
24 times zones are then created for the world
Each time zone is 15 degrees longitude wide
Standard Time
1919 adopted world wide…still in use today

16. How did railroads change the U.S.?
New towns
Businesses pop up alongside the tracks and soon become towns, then cities, then megalopolises
Examples: Minneapolis, Seattle, and Denver
Opportunity
Track side stands grow into massive businesses and create some of America’s massively wealthy citizens

17. What types of problems did railroads encounter?
Corruption
Overcharging
Farmers are overcharged (it cost more to ship good from Chicago to Detroit that from London to New York)
Credit Mobilier
Company that raises railroad ticket prices and profits off hikes
Crédit Mobilier Scandal, in U.S. history, illegal manipulation of contracts by a construction and finance company associated with the building of the Union Pacific Railroad (1865–69); the incident established Crédit Mobilier of America as a symbol of post-Civil War corruption.
Granger Laws
Attempt to end railroad discrimination and abuse
Munn vs. Illinois uphold these laws and help to bring railroads down
Interstate Commerce Act
1887
Limited and regulated railroad business practices
Panic of 1893
Economic depression that also demonstrates the power and influence
of the railroad big business

18. Workers of the Nation Unite

19. How are the workers exploited by big business?
Average laborer works 12 hrs./day and 6 days/week
Men often work 7 days/week
No benefits
No vacation, sick leave, unemployment compensation, or injury benefits
1882 = 675 factory workers are killed each week

20. How are women and children treated in industry?
Wages are so low that most women and children must work to survive
20% of children under 12 work full time
Youngest full time employee is only 4
Children earn an average of $0.02/hr.
Women earn ½ as much as their male counterparts

21. What is the worker’s response to labor exploitation?
Labor Unions Emerge
Unions represent the 1st multi-gender, multi-racial, mutli-class organizations in the U.S.
NLU…National Labor Union
CNLU…Colored National Labor Union
Combine to have Congress pass an 8 hour work day for government employees
Knights of Labor
Open to all people…no exceptions
“An injury to one is a concern for all”

22. What movement branches off of the labor unions?
Socialism
The exploitation of the workers and the accumulation of the wealth by the rich causes tension
Eugene Debs and the IWW (International Workers of the World) push for national socialism

23. What occurred due to the new socialist outlook?
Strikes…when workers voluntarily refuse to work
Strikes become violent
Great strike of 1877
President Hayes steps in to resolve it
Haymarket Square of 1886
1,200 protest in Chicago in 1886
Over 400 strikers and 4 police are killed during riots
A labor protest rally near Chicago's Haymarket Square turned into a riot after someone threw a bomb at police. At least eight people died as a result of the violence that day. Despite a lack of evidence against them, eight radical labor activists were convicted in connection with the bombing.
Homestead Strike of 1892
Scabs (replacement workers) are used for the first time
Also called Homestead riot, violent labour dispute between the Carnegie Steel Company and many of its workers that occurred on July 6, 1892, in Homestead, Pennsylvania. The strikepitted the company’s management (which included owner American industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and American industrialist Henry Clay Frick), the strikebreakers (replacement workers) who had been hired, and the Pinkerton National Detective Agency against members of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, who worked for the company. A gun battle resulted in which a number of Pinkerton agents and strikers were killed and many were injured
Pullman Strike of 1894
President Cleveland ends the strike, jails Debs, & has all strikers fired

24. What was America’s reaction to the strikes?
Public opinion turns against the laborers after violence erupts
Companies begin to subvert union activities
Employees are forced to sign “Yellow Dog Contracts”
(a contract between a worker and an employer in which the worker agrees not to remain in or join a union.)
Organizing becomes increasingly difficult
Laws are passed limiting union activity
Fear of socialism leads to loss of favor