Brinkley Unfinished Nation 8 ed Chapter 17

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17: Industrial Supremacy
Alan Brinkley, The Unfinished Nation, 8th Edition

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Sources of Industrial Growth
• Industrial Technologies
– Trans-Atlantic telegraph cable
– Alexander Graham Bell
– Thomas Edison
– Impact of electric power

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Sources of Industrial Growth (Continued)
• The Technology of Iron and Steel Production
– Bessemer process
– Steel and railroads
– Rise of the petroleum industry

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Pioneer Oil Run, 1865
The American oil industry emerged first in western Pennsylvania, where speculators built
makeshift facilities almost overnight. An oil field on the other side of the hill depicted here had
been producing 600 barrels a day, and the wells quickly spilled over the hill and down the slope
shown in the photograph.
The Library of Congress

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Sources of Industrial Growth (Continued, 2)
• The Automobile and the Airplane
– Henry Ford
– The Wright brothers
• Research and Development
– Corporate research and development
• The Science of Production
– “Taylorism”
– Assembly line

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Women on the Assembly Line
This photograph, from 1902, shows women at work on the lock and drill
department assembly line at the National Cash Register Company in
Dayton, Ohio.
© Everett Collection Historical/Alamy

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Sources of Industrial Growth (Continued, 3)
• Railroad Expansion and the Corporation
– Importance of government subsidies
– “Limited liability”
– Carnegie, Frick, and Morgan
– Horizontal integration and vertical integration
– Rockefeller’s Standard Oil
– Trusts
– Holding companies
– Concentration of power

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Railroads, 1870–1890
This map illustrates the rapid expansion of railroads in the late
nineteenth century.

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Capitalist Conservatism and Its Critics
• Survival of the Fittest
– Ideology of individualism
– Social Darwinism
– Corporate wealth legitimized

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Capitalist Conservatism and Its Critics
(Continued)
• The Gospel of Wealth
– Private wealth as a public blessing
– Horatio Alger
– Louisa May Alcott

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“Modern Colossus of (Rail)Roads”
Cornelius Vanderbilt, known as the “Commodore,” accumulated one of America's great
fortunes by consolidating several large railroad companies in the 1860s. His name became a
synonym not only for enormous wealth but also (in the eyes of many Americans) for excessive
corporate power.
© Niday Picture Library/Alamy

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Capitalist Conservatism and Its Critics
(Continued, 2)
• Alternative Visions
– Dynamic Sociology
– American Socialist Party
– Henry George
– Edward Bellamy

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Capitalist Conservatism and Its Critics
(Continued, 3)
• The Problems of Monopoly
– Economic concentration challenged
– Severe recessions

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The Ordeal of the Worker
• The Immigrant Workforce
– Rapidly expanding working class
– Labor Contract Law
– Job competition
– Ethnic tensions

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The Ordeal of the Worker (Continued)
• Wages and Working Conditions
– Harsh work conditions
– Child labor
• Emerging Unionization
– Molly Maguires
– Railroad strike of 1877

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Spindle Boys
Young boys, some of them barefoot, clamber among the great textile machines in a Georgia
cotton mill, mending broken threads and replacing empty bobbins. Many of them were the
children or siblings of women who worked in the plant. The photograph is by Lewis Hine, who
traveled around the country documenting abuses for the National Child Labor Committee.
© Bettmann/Corbis

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The Ordeal of the Worker (Continued, 2)
• The Knights of Labor
– Founded in 1869
– Membership open to all who “toiled”
– Hoped to replace the “wage system”

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The Ordeal of the Worker (Continued, 3)
• The American Federation of Labor
– Association of craft unions
– Samuel Gompers
– Haymarket bombing
– Accusations of anarchism

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The Ordeal of the Worker (Continued, 4)
• The Homestead Strike
– Henry Clay Frick
– Pinkertons
– Government intervention

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The Ordeal of the Worker (Continued, 5)
• The Pullman Strike
– Eugene V. Debs and the Railway Union
– Federal troops mobilized
• Sources of Labor Weakness
– Few gains for labor
– Workers failed for many reasons
– Capital had all the advantages

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Consider the Source
• Andrew Carnegie Explains “The Gospel of Wealth,”
1889

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Patterns of Popular Culture
• The Novels of Horatio Alger
© Granger, NYC—All Rights Reserved.

23. ©McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. Authorized only for instructor use in the classroom. No reproduction or further distribution permitted without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
The Unfinished Nation, 8th Edition
Next: Chapter 18
The Age of the City