1. Changing Relationship Between Gov’t & Business
Unfair business practices, working conditions
Laissez-faire?
Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
1887
Monitored railroad shipping rates
Couldn’t do much BUT, 1st gov’t agency to monitor business practices
Sherman Antitrust Act
1890, outlawed trusts that operated “in restraint of trade or commerce among several states”

2. Organized Labor Movement
Hardships of Factory Work
1880s, 1890s, employed people who would work for little $

3. Hot, dark, dirty, dangerous, sweatshops
12 hours a day
6 days a week

4. Workers’ Difficulties
Low wages = both parents need to work = kids?
Late 1800s, about 1 in 5 kids aged worked instead of going to school

5. Company Towns
Many laborers, especially miners lived in isolated communities
Company store, high interest, arrested if left work with debt
“wage slavery”

6. Growth of Labor Unions
Industrialization & free enterprise lowered prices
But workers were frustrated
…The Growth of Labor Unions

7. Immigration
Poltical Cartoon from 1889

9. “Old” Immigrants Until 1870 Protestant Northern & Western Europe
Germans & Irish, 1840's-1850's
Farms

10. “New” Immigrants Beginning in 1870's Unskilled Catholic & Jewish
Cities

11. “Old” / “New” Immigrants