Chapter 17 pt. 2

2. Electricity, Classes, and Responses to Labor
• Today we will:
• Continue from last time (beginning with Electricity)
• Talk about the Middle and Working classes
• Examine the responses to corporate growth and working conditions
• Look forward to next week: Urbanization

3. What do we think? Robber Barons or
Captains of Industry?
• Captains of Industry - 2
• Both - 5
• Both (more Captains) - 2

4. Mail Order Catalogs
• Who (or which company) started the mail order
catalog business?
• Why?
• What is (probably) the most famous company to run
mail order catalogs?
• By 1900, what was the only book read by more
people than this catalog?
• How did mail order catalogs change life in the
Midwest and West?

5. Thomas Edison
• Born in Ohio grew up in Michigan
• During his childhood he developed a love for electricity and the telegraph
• Dreamed of growing up to be a telegraph operator for the railroad
• Did he achieve this goal?
• In 1869 (age 21) he moved to NYC to become an inventor
• Creates a number of machines that streamline office work and uses the
money to create an industrial research lab in Menlo Park, NJ
• 1877 creates the phonograph
• 1879 creates a long lasting and viable light bulb
• Created or perfected many other devices
• Became world famous, “The Wizard of Menlo Park”
• Held 1093 patents in the US alone by the time of his death

6. • Mimeograph
• Storage battery
• Dictaphone
• Electric motor
• Motion picture camera
• Had the first movie studio room
• Projector
• Carbon microphone

7. Nikola Tesla
• Ethnically Serbian, from present day Croatia, was a citizen of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire before immigrating to the US
• Held 112 US patents, and almost another 200 in other countries
• Worked for Edison briefly when he came to the US
• Left after a falling out and after many of his individual ideas were brushed
aside in favor of using his talents improve projects Edison deemed valuable
• Found financial investors in his AC Induction Motor
• His ideas on the use of AC (alternating current) put him at odds
with Edison, who was heavily invested in DC (direct current)

8. George Westinghouse
• Born in Central Bridge in upstate NY
• Served in the Civil War for the Union Army then Navy
• Dropped out of college and began inventing at 19
• Rotary Steam Engine
• Created his own version of the Farm Engine
• Created numerous devices related to railroads
• Created the Air Brake (for use on trains) (age 22)
• Simultaneously apply brakes to cars at the same time, reducing stopping distance
• Developed more efficient signaling systems
• Began marketing AC systems but needed someone more versed in
AC, began working with Tesla’s company.

9. The Current War
• Edison’s company was trying to market their DC system to bring
electricity to cities and towns
• Westinghouse was marketing the competing AC system
• This competition gets quite heated and ugly
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcrwTN5OEZY

10. The End of the Current War
• What do we use extensively in the US now?
• So who won?
• As with everything, it is complicated.
The Impact of Electricity
• How did electricity change the way people lived?
• What did it mean for big business?
• What did it mean for building projects?
• How does that change cities?

11. The Growing Division in Classes
• Who constituted the upper socio-economic class?
• Who made up the growing middle class?
• Where did they work?
• What are their jobs often referred to as?
• What was the role of women in the middle class?
• How was this different than before the civil war?
• Why did the working class grow so much during this period?
• What was a work day like? How long was the average work week?
• What jobs did women usually fill?
• What about children?

12. Organized Labor
• What does the term “blacklisted” mean, and where
does it come from?
• What is a “scab?”
• Who were the Molly Maguires?
• What was the Pinkerton Detective Agency?
• What happened during the Great Railroad Strike of
1877?
• Where did it start? How was it ended?
• Who were often blamed for the poor working conditions?
• National Labor Union (Founded 1866)
• What did they want?
• What did they achieve?

13. Further Labor Developments
• Knights of Labor (1869)
• Included all laborers, did not divide by industry
• Admitted women, African-Americans, but did not allow Chinese
• Mother Jones – Crusader for Labor
• Irish immigrant whose husband and children died in Memphis (yellow fever)
• Moved to Chicago and worked in clothing factories, loses everything in the Great
Fire of 1871
• Turns efforts to the Labor Movement, joins Knights of Labor
• Crisscrosses the country supporting strikes and organizing marches into her 80s
• Haymarket Riot (1886)
• At a KOL labor rally, anarchists threw a bomb into a police force sent to watch the
gathered workers
• The individuals responsible were tried and hanged, became martyrs of the working
class
• Governments pass more regulation of labor groups, KOL never recovers from the
perceived connection to anarchism and declines in popularity

14. Trade Unions and More Strikes
• American Federation of Labor (AFL)(1886)
• Collection of smaller unions, focused on tangible gains more than just
better working conditions
• Mostly focused on trade workers, rather than industrial labor
• Samuel Gompers, an English immigrant, served as their leader till 1924
• Other major strikes
• Homestead Steel Strike (1892)
• The Pullman Strike (1894) (Pullman, IL – Near Chicago)
• What is a company town? What happened with this strike?
• American Railway Union and Eugene V. Debs
• Lattimer Massacre (1897)
• Miners, almost all immigrants were violently put down by local sheriff’s deputies
paid by the company, 19 were killed, 39 more wounded

15. Wrapping Up
• Please take out a piece of paper
• Put your name on it
• Federal workers were granted an 8 hour workday in 1868. When did a 40
hour week become full-time universally under the law?
• For next time:
• Read Chapter 19
• Feel free to let me know if you have any questions
• Please turn in your sheet for participation
• See you next week!