APUSH PRESENTATION Grace Atter Aleighia Hardin Baylee Bridges

CAPITALISM AND ITS CRITICS

Ideology of Individualism • The new ideas of capitalism rested on the older idea of individualism. • Defenders of this system argued that it increased opportunities for individual advancement, and provided people with more chances to succeed and attain great wealth. • There was a small element of truth in this ideology. • There were few millionaires before the Civil War, but after, in 1892, there were more that 4, 000. • Some men, such as Carnegie and Rockefeller were actually selfmade men like many claimed. • Most business tycoons began their careers from positions of privilege and wealth. • Most rises to power were not results of hard work and ingenuity. More commonly, it was products of ruthlessness and corruption.

Social Darwinism • Popular theory used by successful businessmen. • The theory stated that those who were successful argued that they earned it, and those who were less successful earned their failure. • Was a misapplication of Darwin's Theory of Evolution and natural selection. • Social Darwinism argued that only the fittest and most adaptive survived, and used this as a cover-up for their corruption.

Corporate Wealth Legitimated • Herbert Spencer was the most notable supporter of Darwinism. • He argued that society benefitted from the elimination of the unfit and the survival of the strong and talented. • Found strong support in prominent American intellectuals, such as William Graham Sumner of Yale, who promoted ideals through lectures, articles, and a famous book called Folkways-Social. • Darwinism appealed to corporate leaders because it seemed to legitimize the success and confirm their virtues. • While businessmen were celebrating the virtues of competition from the free market, they were making a lot of effort to protect themselves from competition. • They were also replacing the natural workings of the market with control by monopolies. • Competition was the thing that most businessmen at that time fear, and they tried quite hard to eliminate it.

Gospel of Wealth • People of great wealth argued that they not only had great power but a great responsibility to use their wealth in social progress. • Andrew Carnegie wrote in is 1901 book The Gospel of Wealth, that all people of wealth should consider all extra profits “trust funds” to be used for the good of the community. • Another strong idea of the time was the use of private wealth as a public blessing, which went hand in hand with another popular concept, the idea that great wealth was something available to all.

Horatio Alger • Horatio Alger was most famous promoter of the success stories in the business world. • Used to be a priest, but was removed from the pulpit because of his hidden homosexuality. • Wrote novels such as Ragged Rick, Tom the Bootblack, Sink or Swim, and many others. • All stories had basically the same plot: a young boy (sometimes an orphan) makes his way in the world selling newspapers or matches on the street. He catches the attention of someone wealthy, who assists him. Through honesty, charm, hard work, and aggressiveness, he becomes successful. • Most Americans were drawn to his stories because it helped them to believe that people could become successful with willpower and hard work, that anyone can become a “self-made man”.

Louisa May Alcott • Much like Alger, she wrote books along the same principles. • Most famous for Little Women. • Wrote under a pen name that disguised her gender. • The main character struggles to build a life for herself not defined by conventional women’s roles and ambitions. • Very different from the posed, romantic, submissive women in most popular novels aimed at female audiences of the time.

Socialist Labor Party • More radical approach to reformation. • Led by Daniel De Leon, an immigrant from the West Indies. • Despite gaining a following of more about 80, 00, the party never became a political force. • A group from the party broke away to form strong ties with organized labor, formed the American Socialist Party.

Henry George’s “Single Tax” • Henry George wrote a bestselling nonfiction work Progress and Poverty. • Blamed social problems on the ability of a few monopolists to grow wealthy because of rising land values. • He proposed a “Single Tax” to replace all other land taxes, to destroy monopolies, eliminate poverty, and restore money to the people.

Edward Bellamy • Rivaled Henry George in popularity • Published his novel in 1888, Looking Backward • Tells the tale of a young Bostonian who went into a coma in 1887 and woke up in 2000 where want, politics, and evil are gone. The society had made a huge trust fund controlled by the government, which was slowly distributed equally to the people. This system was called “Fraternal cooperation” which replaced competition. Bellamy called his vision “nationalism”

Economic Concentration Challenged • People began challenging the concept of monopolies as wrong. • Monopolies could charge whatever prices they wished, railroads in particular. People had no choice but to pay them • High prices contributed to the economy’s instability, because supply and demand weren’t equal, and demand outpaced supply. • From 1873 and onward, the economy fluctuated erratically, making severe recessions every five or six years, progressively getting worse.

THE ORDEAL OF THE WORKER

Rapidly Expanding Working Class • The industrial work force expanded dramatically in the late 19 th century, as a result of massive migration into industrial cities. There were two types of migration. • First, Americans from the country began moving to cities after suffering poorly on farm profits and going bankrupt. • Second, immigration from other countries (mostly from Europe, but also from Asia, Canada, Mexico, and other areas) • About 25 million immigrants.

Labor Contract Law • Created in 1885, it allowed poor immigrants to pay for their journey later, and for the debt to be taken from their wages later. • Employers actively encouraged unskilled immigrants to continue moving here, even after the Labor Contract Law’s repeal.

Growing Ethnic Tensions • Arrival of new ethnic groups made people anxious. • Low-paid Polish, Greeks, and French Canadians began to displace higher paid British and Irish workers in the textile factories of New England. • Italians, Slavs, and Polish emerged as a major source of labor for the mining industry. • Chinese and Mexicans compete with Anglo-Americans and African Americans in mining, farmwork, and factory labor in California, Colorado, and Texas.

Harsh Work Conditions • Average income of a American worker at the turn of the century was $400 -$500 a year. • Believed that $600 was a figure people could comfortably live off of. • Workers had little job security, making it vulnerable to the boom and bust cycle of the industrial economy. (This meant that new technology could cause certain industrial jobs to fluctuate greatly) • Most factory laborers worked ten-hour days, six days a week. • The steel industry worked twelve hours a day.

Child Labor • A lesser need for skilled work in factories many employers use more women and children, who could be hired for lower wages than men. • By 1900, 20% of all manufacturing workers were women. • Women worked mainly in unskilled and semiskilled machine labor instead of heavy labor. • The largest industrial employer of women was the textile industry. • Women worked well below the wages paid to men working the same job. • At least 1. 7 million children under sixteen were employed in factories and fields • 10% of all girls aged 10 to 15, and 20% of all boys of the same age held jobs. • Under public pressure, 38 states passed child labor laws in the late 19 th century. • 60% of child workers were employed in agriculture, which was generally exempt from laws. Even for factories, the laws merely set a minimum age of 12 yeas and a maximum workday of 10 hours, which employers often ignored.

“Molly Maguires” • Militant labor organization that often used violence/murder to battle with coal operators. • Most of the violence attributed to Molly Maguires was deliberately instigated by informers and agents employed by the mine owners, who wanted to stop ruthless measures to suppress unionization.

Railroad Strike of 1877 • Previous excitement over the Molly Maguires was nothing compared to the railroad strike • Began when the Eastern railroads announced a 10% wage cut. • Soon expanded into something approaching a class war. • Strikers disrupted rail service from Baltimore to St. Louis, destroyed equipment, and rioted in the streets of Pittsburgh and other cities. • Over 100 people died over the course of 7 weeks • The strike was America’s first major national labor conflict.

Terence V. Powederly • The Knights of Labor were founded by Uriah S. Stephens. • Open to all who “toiled” which included everyone except lawyers, bankers, liquor dealers, and professional gamblers. • Wanted an 8 hour workday, and abolition of child labor. • More interested in the long-range reform of the economy. • Hoped to replace the wage system with a new cooperative system, where workers would control their workplaces. • For many years, the Knights remained a secret fraternal organization. • Moved, under the leadership of Terence V. Powderly, out into the open. • Grew to a massive size of 700, 000 in 1886

Samuel Gompers • Founder of the AFL (American Federation of Labor) • Rejected the Knight’s idea of a big union for everyone, and represented skilled workers.

Haymarket Bombing • A bomb was thrown on Haymarket Square on May 1 st that injured 67 and killed 7 policeman • To most Americans, the bombing was an alarming symbol of social chaos and radicalism.

The Homestead Strike • The Almalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers was the most powerful trade union in the country. • Members were skilled workers, in great demand. • Allowed them their power in the workplace. • Demands for skilled workers declined as a new method of steelmaking was developed. • The union was only able to maintain a foothold in only one of the corporation’s three major factories- the Homestead plant near Pittsburgh • Henry Clay Frick decided that the Almagated “had to go” and repeatedly cut wages. • Frick abruptly shut down the plant and called in 300 guards, called strikebreakers, to enable the company to hire nonunion workers. The strikers poured gasoline on the water, set it on fire, and then met the strikebreakers at the docks with guns/dynamite. • After a couple hours of fighting, the strikebreakers were escorted roughly out of town.

The Pullman Strike • Less violent, but still a major strike. • The Pullman Palace Car Company made railroad sleeping and parlor cars at a plant near Chicago. • Made a 600 acre town • Saw it as a model for other towns to follow, as a solution to the problems of industrial workers. • Workers didn’t like the high prices of rent in the town, and went on strike, supported by the militant American Railway Union.

Few Gains For Labor • Despite militant organizing efforts, industrial wages rose very little. • Labor leaders won a few legislative victories, such as the Contract Labor Law, the establishment of an 8 -hour day for government employees, compensation for some workers injured on the job, and others. • Union represented only a small part of the work force.

Source of Labor Weakness • The labor force was always shifting, making it hard to maintain a job for any length of time.