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Modern Money and Its Discontents Big Business and Labor, 1865-1914
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Rise of an Industrial Economy Second Industrial Revolution—integrated transportation and communication; electric power; scientifically-based research and development Laborers were increasingly a proletariat— only their labor to sell in the marketplace.
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Railroads First Transcontinental Railroad completed in 1869 Financed by private capital and government land grants (129 million acres of public lands between 1850 and 1870 alone) Much corruption—Credit Mobilier Scandal; “Robber Barons”
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Transcontinental Railroad
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Robber Barons: Gould and Vanderbilt
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Inventions Change Lifeways Alexander Graham Bell—Telephone—1876 Thomas Alva Edison—Light bulb in 1879; the phonograph in 1877 George Westinghouse—airbrake for trains and Alternating Current (beginning of power grid) in 1886. J. W. McGaffey—vacuum cleaner 1869 These inventions relied on electricity
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Electric Generator
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Edison and Westinghouse
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New Corporate Models John David Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Trust Corporation: “hasn’t a body to be damned or a soul to be kicked” Vertical Integration: from raw material to market—Andrew Carnegie and Carnegie Steel Horizontal Integration—control the bottlenecks: John David Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Trust (refining monopoly)
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Carnegie and Rockefeller
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Oil wells in Titusville, Pa.
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The Business of Money J. P. Morgan and Investment Banking Interlocking boards of directors Assumed control over 1/6 of all U. S. railroading United States Steel (1901) controlled about 90% of U. S. steel production
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James Pierpont Morgan
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Richard Sears & Alvah Roebuck Wide range of low priced consumer goods You could even buy a mail order church— just not the pretty girl on page 614 Rural Free Delivery plus the railroad made this mail order business possible 6 million catalogs per year by 1900
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New Economy Produced Harm for Many Concentration of wealth Alienation of labor Child labor Low wages Industrial accidents
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Workers Try to Organize Contrary to “individualism” Strife between skilled and unskilled labor Race/Ethnicity—Dennis Kearney’s Workingmen’s Party Pinkerton’s as Strikebreakers Government Prosecution (Sherman Anti- Trust Act)
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Knights of Labor Growth under Terrence V. Powderly Success in early railroad strikes led membership to swell to 700,000 by 1886 Lost favor as a result of Haymarket Affair in 1886
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American Federation of Labor Samuel Gompers and Unionism pure and simple 500,000 members by 1890 and 2 million by 1914
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1890s Strikes Illustrate Challenges faced by Unions Homestead Strike—1892 Pullman Strike--1894
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Eugene Victor Debs, 1855-1926 — “While there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
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Mary Harris “Mother Jones” (1837-1930)
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Socialism and Labor Socialist Party—polled 900,672 votes in 1912 IWW Western Federation of Miners and Big Bill Haywood
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William D. Haywood—Leader of WFM
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