2. By1880, U.S. is world’s leading producer
of goods
• Reasons why?
Unlimited labor force
Abundant coal supply
Iron mining
Discovery of oil
Railroad development
3. Laissez-faire government policies
• Government was hands off in the market place
Unlimited immigration supplied labor
• Nativist fears
• No competition for labor – decrease pay
High tariff protected American business
• But farmers suffered
Public financing of railroads
• Regulating prices
4. Late 1800s saw and explosion of innovation
Telephone – Graham Bell
Light Bulb – Edison
Electric Power – Edison (made it work long
distances)
Bessemer Process – made possible the mass
production of steel
Typewriter –Sholes
Modern Media made possible because of
electricity, telephone and the typewriter
6. Rockefeller – Oil
Carnegie – Steel
Morgan – Financial
Vanderbuilt – Railroads and Shipping
Dupont – corporation
Duke – Tobacco
Westinghouse – air brake and switch
tracks for Railroads
7. ―ironhorse‖ – slow initially but with new
technological advances became more
efficient
Leading consumer or goods
• The main transit choice for all farmers and
producers
Trancontinental, 1869
• Promotory Point
Standardization of time
• 1884 created 24 time zones to standardize train
schedules
8. Growth of urban areas
Development of Company Towns
• people worked and lived in the same town/factory
(make money and spent money from same person)
• Pullman Illinois makes Railroad cars
• Cut salary and wouldn’t cut rates
• Clean towns
Railroad scandals
• Credit Moblier – Pacific Railroad
• Gov’t land grants
9. Railroad Abuses
• Long haul vs. short haul
• Rebates and Drawbacks
Granger Laws
• Enacted to set maximum rates for shipping and
storage
Supreme Court Rulings
• Wabash and Munn
Interstate Commerce Act, 1887
• Attempt to regulate business
• Created the Interstate Commerce Commission
10. Types of Businesses:
• Monopolies: company wipes out its competitors
and controls the industry.
John D. Rockefeller: OIL
Created trusts to eliminate competition (trust is a legal body
created to hold stock in many companies, often the same
industry)
Andrew Carnegie: STEEL
• Corporations: business owned by investors who
buy part of the company through shares of stock
e.g. Walmart, Best Buy
Very few laws to regulate corporations
Oil and steel industries dominated as corporations.
11. Workers faced many hardships
• Business owners wanted to keep their profits
high
• Workers had to buy their own tools or bring coal
to heat the factories
• Workers (both adults & children) labored long
hours under poor conditions for low wages.
Workers discontent with their job formed
labor unions
12. Knights of Labor American Federation of Labor
(AFL)
Federation of Workers from all Focused on improving working
different trades. conditions. By using strikes,
Allowed women and African boycotts, and negotiation, the AFL
Americans members. won shorter working hours and
better pay for workers.
13. Event What happen? Results
Railroad Strike of 1877 Wages were cut Nothing the companies still cut the
Two-week strike workers wages
Dozens of people killed
McCormick Harvester Company Locked out striking union members Nothing positive for the workers.
and hired strikebreakers to replace
them. Police scheduled a meeting with the
workers.
A person through a bomb in the
crowd. Killed several police and
wounded about 60—called the
Haymarket Affair
Homestead & Pullman Strike 1892 Carnegie reduced wages at his Nothing—the workers lost another
steel mills. Union refused to accept battle.
the cuts.
The company locked out the The Federal government stepped in
workers and hired nonunion to end the strike.
member workers.
A battle broke out between the
former workers and the company.
After 4 months the strike collapse.
Pullman Strike:
Strike on the rail industry in 1894.
