Industrialization

The “Steel Horse”

• Five main lines• Great Northern• Northern Pacific• Central/Union Pacific• Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe• Southern Pacific

Significance and impact.

A double-edged sword??

+++++++’s• Speed and mobility.• Town growers.• Populating the West.• Creation of

corporations.• Employment of

thousands.• Time

------------’s• Led to the

destruction of Native-American culture in the Plains.

• Creation of Trusts etc. (greed)

• Buffalo• Exploitation of

Chinese and Irish

Stanford and Carnegie

Personalities

• Railroads, banking, inventions, oil and steel.

Business practices directed at maintaining a monopoly:

• “stock watering”, bribery, cutthroat tactics, “pool”, “interlocking directorates”, vertical/horizontal integration, trust, interlocking directorates….

Rockefeller and Morgan

“Greed is Good”

• Rags to riches stories. Horatio Algier. Poor Henry.

• Gospel of Wealth• Social Darwinism• Deepening class struggles and the

division of wealth.• Becoming “fertile ground”

for-----????

Government attempts at Regulation.

Interstate Commerce Act of 1887.• Regulate the railroads. Prohibited

rebates and pools. • Publish rates openly. No discrimination.• Created the Interstate Commerce

Commission.Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890• Attempt to curb monopolies.No restraint

of trade. Ineffectual due to loopholes.

Impact of Industrialization

• Industry moves to the South.• Immigrants, the poor, women and

children.

Labor fights back

The Union.Union weapons:• strike, boycott, walkout, “closed-

shop”.Corporate weapons:• “scabs”, strikebreakers, police and the

courts, lockouts, “yellow-dog contracts”, blacklists, company towns.

Early Labor Movement

National Labor Union (1866) Won the 8 hour day for gov’t

workers. Hurt by the depression of the 1870’s.

Knights of Labor“An injury to one is the concern of

all.” Allowed skilled and unskilled labor.

Haymarket Square Bombing--1886

• IWPA strike in Chicago.. 8-hr day

• Protest rally—anarchists.• Bomb explodes killing

several and wounding over 100.

• Eight arrested. 4 hung.• Justice???• "The day will come when

our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today."

Homestead Strike--1892

• Carnegie and steel.

• Reformer in his own eyes….

• Economic downturn.

• Violence…

                                                                                                                          

Pullman Strike -1894

• American Railway Union.

• Federal angle.• Eugene V. Debs

American Federation of Labor

• Samuel Gompers• Self-governing national unions.• Sought better working conditions,

pay and hours.• Very effective.• Only allowed skilled labor.• Labor Day, 1894

Bertrand Russell

• “Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate”

• Assess the validity of this quote using the provided documents and your knowledge of the time period 1870-1900.

Bertrand Russell

• “Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.”

• Assess the validity of this quote using the provided documents and your knowledge of the time period 1870-1900.