Chapter 17 Business and Labor in the Industrial

Robber Barons © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

The Rise of Big Business • The Second Industrial Revolution • This era was known as the Second Industrial Revolution; the first had occurred in Great Britain in the late eighteenth century. The era was marked by the introduction of the coal steam engine, the textile machine, and the blast furnace for producing iron. • Railroads • Building the Transcontinentals • Central Pacific Railroad, working east from Sacramento, California , and the Union Pacific, working west from Omaha, Nebraska, built the first transcontinental railroad, meeting in 1865 at Promontory, Utah. © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

The Union Pacific Meets the Central Pacific © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company,

The Rise of Big Business • Financing the Railroads • Railroads were constructed by private companies, which raised the necessary funds by selling bonds. Originally, concerns about the constitutionality of federal involvement in financing railroads precluded the government from becoming involved in their construction, but beginning in the 1850 s, schemes that provided federal land to the builders were approved. • Inventions Spur Manufacturing • inventions such as barbed wire, refrigerated box cars, airbrakes for trains, and the telephone. © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

The Transcontinental Railroad Lines, 1880 s © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Entrepreneurs • Rockefeller and the Oil Trust • 1870, John Rockefeller began refining oil from the nearby fields in Pennsylvania, creating the Standard Oil Company. • He eventually bought out his competitors and controlled more than 90 percent of the nation’s oil supply. To control his businesses more efficiently, he reorganized his company into a “trust. ” • Carnegie and the Steel Industry • made his name in the steel industry. Using a new process that inexpensively made steel stronger, Carnegie flooded the market with his product and became wealthy. • Used Bessemer process to start plant in Pittsburgh. • Demanded long hours, low wages © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

John D. Rockefeller © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Andrew Carnegie © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Entrepreneurs • J. P. Morgan, Financier • an investment banker, bought large amounts of stock in corporations, and then in turn sold them for a profit. He also bought rival firms that were in trouble, fixed them, and resold them. In 1890, he controlled one-sixth of the nation’s railroads. • Reorganized GE and US Steel. • Buys Carnegie Steel for $480 million, becomes 1 st billionaire. • Richard Sears and Alvah Roebuck opened a mail-order company in the 1890 s. By eliminating the middleman, they could ship goods from a catalog to people throughout the United States. © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

J. Pierpont Morgan © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

The Middle Class • A Growing Middle Class • Most middle-class Americans working outside of the home were salaried employees of large businesses. They made up a new class of “white-collar” professionals. • Middle-class Women • Unmarried, educated women were also a growing component of the middle class. Educated, middleclass women took on an increased role in public life and raised the “woman question” regarding woman’s role in American society. © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

The Working Class • Social Trends • By modern standards, the working conditions during the Industrial Revolution were often dangerous. The average work week was fiftynine hours, and the average wage equivalent to today’s currency was $3. 50 an hour. • Child Labor • After the Civil War, millions of children took jobs outside the home. By 1880, one-sixth of the population of children worked a full-time job. Boys worked deep in coal mines, and girls worked in textile mills. By 1881, only seven states had anti–child-labor laws requiring children to be at least twelve before being hired. © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

The Working Class • Disorganized Protest • The first forms of protest against labor conditions were disorganized, as many of the workers in these conditions were recent immigrants or farmers not familiar with the idea of civilized protests. • The Molly Maguires • A group of Irish-American coal miners, the Molly Maguires, used violence to achieve better working conditions in Pennsylvania coal mines. Eventually, twenty-four members of this group were convicted of murder and kidnapping, and ten were hanged. © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

The Working Class • The Railroad Strike of 1877, the first interstate strike in American history, resulted from the financial panic of 1873, during which railroad companies drastically cut wages. The strike eventually erupted in violence, and order was restored when federal troops intervened. • The Sand-Lot Incident • At a sand-lot in San Francisco, a meeting to show support for the striking railroad workers became an attack on Chinese immigrants. The Chinese were easy scapegoats, as they tended to work for less and were perceived to steal American jobs. • Anti-Chinese Agitation © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

The Working Class • Toward Permanent Unions • 1866, the National Labor Union was founded, comprising labor and reform groups more interested in political and social reforms than in collective bargaining. Before disbanding in 1873, the NLU secured the Contract Labor Act, which encouraged employers to import workers by paying passage. • The Knights of Labor • Led by Uriah Smith Stephens, the Knights of Labor was a secret organization designed to protect its members from retaliation from employers. Its members, which numbered in the hundreds of thousands at its peak, allowed skilled and unskilled laborers to join. © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Members of the Knights of Labor © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

The Working Class • Mother Jones • 1837– 1930), the self-declared mother of the labor movement, promoted higher wages, shorter hours, safer workplaces, and childlabor restrictions. • Anarchism • believe that any form of government is abusive, controlled by the rich to exploit the poor. • The Haymarket Affair • 1886 Knights of Labor rally in Chicago’s Haymarket Square to promote the eight-hour workday, a bomb was thrown into a crowd of police officers. One officer was killed and several others were wounded. Although no one involved with the Knights was found guilty in this affair, they were guilty by association, and soon thereafter its. Inc. membership dwindled. © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company,

The Working Class • Gompers and the AFL • 1886, twenty-five skilled workers’ organizations joined to create the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Led by Samuel Gompers, the AFL allowed only skilled workers as their members, and very gradually emerged as the preeminent union in the United States. • The Homestead Strike • 1892, the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers went on strike at Carnegie’s Homestead Works near Pittsburgh. An attempt to break the strike ended in bloodshed when members of the Pinkerton Detective Agency were brought in to confront the strikers. Eventually, state militias were sent in to protect workers not involved in the strike. © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

The Working Class • The Pullman Strike • Pullman Strike paralyzed the economies of twenty-seven states in 1894. • Members of the American Railway Union (ARU) working at the Pullman Palace Car Company went on strike. • No member of the ARU would handle Pullman railcars, sleeper cars that were very popular. • By mid-July, midwest railway lines were stuck with cars on tracks that no one would touch. Eventually, President Cleveland ordered federal troops to remove the cars from the tracks, citing federal authority to deliver the mail, which at that time was done by train. © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

The Pullman Strike © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Eugene V. Debs © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

The Working Class • The Stresses of Success • created a system in which owners were vastly separated from their workers, in both wealth and working conditions. This set the stage for government entities to intervene to find an equilibrium. © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

This concludes the Lecture Power. Point presentation for Chapter 17 Business and Labor in the Industrial Era 1860 -1900 Please visit the Student Site for more resources: http: //wwnorton. com/college/history/america 10/ © 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.