2 Industrial Revolution

nd
 The Age of Oil and Steel
Oil
 In the mid-1800s people began to refine oil found on
coastal waters and lakes for kerosene lamps.
 In 1859 Edwin L. Drake drilled for oil in
Pennsylvania, starting the first commercial oil well.
 Wildcatters, or oil prospectors, struck oil near
Beaumont, Texas, which began the Texas oil boom.
 It lasted less than 20 years, but oil remains big
business in Texas to this day.
 The Age of Oil and Steel
Steel
 In the 1850s a new method made steel-making
faster and cheaper and by 1910 the U.S. was the
world’s top steel producer- Bessemer Process
 Steel helped transform the U.S. into a modern
industrial economy.
 It was used to make bridges, locomotives, and taller
buildings.
 Factories used steel machinery to make goods
faster.
 Railroads Expand
 Between 1865 and 1890 the number of track miles increased by five times.
 The federal government helped by giving land to railroad companies, and
cheap steel enabled the railroad to expand.

Congress authorized two companies to build railroads to the West
Coast: the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific.

Workers raced for six and a half years to complete the first
transcontinental railroad, or a track that crossed the country.

In May 1869 the two rail lines met in the Utah Territory, linking east and
west. Throughout the country railroads expanded into a vast network.
 The railroads promoted trade, created jobs, and helped western settlement.
 Railroads also led to the adoption of standard time, because rail schedules
could not accurately depend on the sun’s position, as most people did.
 The Rise of Big Business
 Big business grew in the late 1800s when entrepreneurs, or business risk-
takers, started businesses within an economic system called capitalism, in
which most businesses are privately owned.
 Under laissez-faire capitalism, which is French for “leave alone,”
companies operated without government interference.
 There were inequalities under capitalism, but many believed that Charles
Darwin’s theory of social Darwinism, or survival of the fittest, explained
how business was like nature: only the strongest survived.
 A new type of business organization developed called the corporation,
which was owned by people who bought stock, or shares, in a company,
was led by a board of directors and run by corporate officers.
 Corporations raised money by selling stock and could exist after their
founders left. Stockholders could lose only what they invested.
 To gain dominance, some competing corporations formed trusts that led
several companies to form as one corporation and dominate an industry.
 Industrial Tycoons Made Huge
Fortunes
John D. Rockefeller
 Started Standard Oil as a refinery
 Used vertical integration, buying companies that
handled other aspects of oil business
 Used horizontal integration by buying other
refineries
 Refined half of the U.S. oil by 1875
 Industrial Tycoons Made Huge
Fortunes
Andrew Carnegie
 Grew up poor in Scotland and, at 12, came to
the U.S. to work on railroads
 Began to invest and started Carnegie Steel
Company, which dominated the steel industry
 In 1901, sold the company to the banker J.P.
Morgan for $480 million and retired as a
philanthropist
 Industrial Tycoons Made Huge
Fortunes
Cornelius Vanderbilt
 Began investing in railroads during the Civil War
 Soon his holdings stretched west to Michigan
and north to Canada.
 Vanderbilt gave money to education for the
public
 Industrial Tycoons Made Huge
Fortunes
George Pullman
 Made his fortune when he designed and built
sleeper cars to make long distance train travel
more comfortable
 Built an entire town near Chicago for his
employees that was comfortable, but controlled
many aspects of their daily lives.
 Workers Organize
 Government did not care about workers. Many workers scraped by on less than
$500 per year while tycoons got very, very rich.
 The government grew worried about the power of corporations, and in 1890
Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act, which made it illegal to form trusts
that interfered with free trade, though they only enforced the law with a few
companies.
 Factory workers were mostly Europeans immigrants, children, and rural
Americans who came to the city for work.
 Workers often worked 12-to-16-hour days, six days a week, in unhealthy
conditions without paid vacation, sick leave or compensation for common
workplace injuries.
 By the late 1800s working conditions were so bad that more workers began to
organize, trying to band together to pressure employers into giving better pay and
safer workplaces.
 The first effective group was the Knights of Labor, which campaigned for eight-
hour work days, the end of child labor, and equal pay for equal work in
Philadelphia.
Strikes and Setbacks for Workers
 At first, the union preferred boycotts to strikes,
but strikes soon became a common tactic.
 Some famous strikes include:

The Great Railroad Strike was the first major rail
strike, which stopped freight trains for almost a week,
caused violence, and was put down by the army.

The Haymarket Riot in Chicago was a result of a
protest against police actions toward strikers. It killed
11 people and injured over 100
Strikes and Setbacks for Workers
 Employers struck back by forcing employees to
sign documents saying they wouldn’t join unions
and blacklisting troublemakers.
 Samuel Gompers founded the American
Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1886, winning
wage increases and shorter workweeks.
 Unions suffered setbacks when Carnegie
employees seized control of a plant and 16
people were killed and when federal troops
crushed the American Railway Union strike
 City Growth Spurs Transportation
Advances
Streetcars
 Horse-drawn passenger vehicles were the
earliest mass transit.
 By the 1830s horsecars, or streetcars, rolled
along street rails.
 Cable cars were built in cities with steep hills
such as San Francisco.
 By 1900 most cities had electric streetcars, or
trolleys.
 City Growth Spurs Transportation
Advances
Subways

 As cities grew, traffic became a serious problem,

especially in urban centers such as Boston and
New York.
 The city of Boston opened the first U.S. subway
line in 1897.
 The New York subway line opened in 1904.
 City Growth Spurs Transportation
Advances
Automobiles
 A German engineer invented the internal
combustion engine, and soon inventors tried to
use it for a new “horseless carriage.”
 In 1893 Charles and Frank Duryea built the first
practical American motorcar.
 City Growth Spurs Transportation
Advances
Airplanes
 Human beings had dreamt of flying for centuries.
 Two American brothers were the first to build a
successful airplane.
 On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur
Wright flew their tiny airplane at Kitty Hawk,
North Carolina.
 Inventors Revolutionize
Communication
 Telegraph

Samuel F. B. Morse invented the telegraph in
1837, which sent messages instantly over
wires using electricity.

Operators tapped out patterns of long and
short signals that stood for letters of the
alphabet, called Morse Code.

The telegraph grew with the railroads,
because train stations had telegraph offices
 Inventors Revolutionize
Communication
 Telephone

Two inventors devised ways to transmit
voices by using electricity.

Alexander Graham Bell patented his design
first, in 1876.

By 1900 there were more than a million
telephones in offices and households across
the country.
 Inventors Revolutionize
Communication
 Typewriter

Many inventors tried to create a writing
machine.

Chistopher Latham Sholes, a Milwaukee
printer, developed the first practical typewriter
in 1867.

He later improved it by designing the
keyboard that is still standard for computers
today.

Businesses began to hire woman as typists.
 Thomas Edison
 Thomas Alva Edison was one of America’s most famous inventors.

In 1876 Edison opened his own research laboratory in Menlo Park, New
Jersey

invented the first phonograph and a telephone transmitter.

First to come up with a safe electric light bulb that could light homes and
street lamps.

He then undertook a venture to bring an electricity network to New York
City, and in 1882 he installed a lighting system powered by his own
electric power plants similar to ones that were later built all over the U.S.

Later invented a motion picture camera and projector. In all, he held
over 1,000 U.S. patents.
Immigration
 The New Immigrants
 Old immigrants came from northern and
western Europe and China.
 New immigrants from southern and
eastern Europe and Asia- Greece, Italy,
Poland, and Russia
 Smaller numbers came from East Asia
 Reasons for Coming to the US
 All came for a better life

Jews- to escape religious persecution.

Southern and eastern Europeans fled from severe
poverty.
 In 1892 the government opened an immigration station
at Ellis Island in New York Harbor.
 After 1910, Asians passed through Angel Island in San
Francisco Bay, but many were held like prisoners for
weeks.
 Realities of Coming to the US
 Immigrants faced crowding and low pay, settled near
others from their country, started communities and
organizations
 Native-born Americans, nativists, saw immigrants as a
threat to their jobs and safe communities.
 On the West Coast, prejudice was directed against
Asians; Chinese immigrants were restricted from jobs
and neighborhoods, and immigration was halted by
Congress through the Chinese Exclusion Act.
 Nativists wanted immigrants to pass a literacy test, and
Congress approved
 Urban Life in America
 Architects used steel frames and elevators
to build tall buildings in cities. New urban
planning specialists redesigned cities and
built parks.
 Settlement houses helped immigrants
overcome poverty. Reformers who
believed in social gospel, or expressing
faith through good works, volunteered in
the settlement houses.
 Social Status
 Lifestylesvaried dramatically for those of
varied social status

Wealthy
• Made their money in industry and business
• Showed off their wealth
• Built castle-like homes in places such as New
York’s stylish Fifth Avenue
 Social Status

Middle Class
• Made up of corporate employees and
professionals
• 1870s and 1880s: professional organizations begin
to set standards for some occupations
 Social Status

Working Class
• Poor, paid low wages, faced housing shortages,
lived in filthy, crowded tenements.
• Many women held jobs outside the home.
 Local Political Corruption
 Urban problems such as crime and poor
sanitation led people to give control of local
governments to political machines, or
organizations of professional politicians.
• Machine bosses were often corrupt, asking for votes
in exchange for jobs and housing, taking bribes, and
using fraud to win elections.
• William Marcy Tweed, or Boss Tweed, led a political
machine called Tammany Hall in New York City and
made himself and his friends very rich.
• Eight years later his corruption was made public,
when he was sent to prison for fraud.
 National Political Corruption
 Attempts at reform split the republican party.

In 1880 the party chose a reformer, James A.
Garfield, who was assassinated shortly after
his inauguration

His successor, Chester A. Arthur, supported
reforms, and helped pass the Pendleton Civil
Service Act, which required that promotions
be based on merit, not politics.
 Farmers Reform Movement
• In the late 1800s crop prices were falling
and farmers began to organize into groups
to protect themselves financially.
 Farmers Reform Movement
 TheOrder of Patrons of Husbandry, or the
National Grange, wanted the state to
regulate railroad rates.

The Supreme Court ruled that only the federal
government could regulate.

Congress then passed the Interstate
Commerce Act in 1887, marking the first time
federal government regulated industry.
 Farmers Reform Movement
 The Farmer’s Alliance wanted government
to print more paper money, thinking they
could charge more for farm goods if more
money were circulating.

In 1873 paper money was placed on the gold
standard, reducing the amount of money in
circulation. Farmers wanted money to be
backed by silver
 Farmers Reform Movement
 TheFarmer’s Alliance started the Populist
Party, calling for bank regulation,
government-owned railroads and free
coinage of silver.

Their stand against powerful interests
influenced later politicians
 The 1896 Election
 After the election of 1892, a major railroad company
failed, triggering the Panic of 1893.

Stock prices fell and millions lost their jobs. President Cleveland
blamed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which required the
government to buy silver with paper money redeemable in either
gold or silver.

Silver was still an issue in the 1896 election, when Republicans
nominated William McKinley, who favored the gold standard and
Democrats chose William Jennings Bryan, who defended silver.

Bryan made a dramatic speech saying using the gold standard
was like crucifying mankind on a “cross of gold.”

This speech won Bryan Populist support, but terrified business
leaders gave money to the Republicans, and McKinley won the
election.
 Segregation and Discrimination
 Some white southerners tried to restrict African Americans’ right to
vote by requiring voters to pay a poll tax and pass a literacy test.
 Southern legislatures passed the Jim Crow Laws to create and
enforce segregation in public places.
 One law requiring separate railway cars for African Americans and
whites was tested by Homer Plessy, an African American. His case
went to the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson. They upheld
segregation, saying “separate but equal” facilities didn’t violate the
Fourteenth Amendment.
 In addition to legalized discrimination, strict rules governed social
and business interactions between black and white Americans.
 The worst outcome of discrimination was lynching, or murder by a
mob. Nearly 900 African Americans were murdered between 1882
and 1892 by lynch mobs.
 Opposing Discrimination
 Two approaches to fighting racism
emerged. Some advocated accepting
segregation and learning skills to rise up,
others believed African American should
strive for full rights immediately
 Two Leaders who were against
Discrimination
Booker T. Washington W.E.B. Du Bois
 Born into slavery  Believed that African

Americans should strive for
Believed African Americans full rights immediately
had to accept segregation for
the moment  Helped found the Niagara

Movement in 1905 to fight for
Believed they could improve equal rights
their condition by learning
farming and vocational skills  Members of the Niagara

Movement later founded the
Founded the Tuskegee National Association for the
Institute to teach African Advancement of Colored
Americans practical skills People (NAACP)
 Other Groups Face Discrimination
 Hispanic Americans

Most Mexican immigrants were farmers, but
there weren’t enough farm jobs to go around.

Spanish-speaking people often had to take
menial jobs for low pay.

Many were trapped by debt peonage, in which
they couldn’t leave jobs until they paid debts
to their employers.
 Other Groups Face Discrimination
 Asian Americans

In some areas, Asian immigrants lived in
segregated neighborhoods.

Many landlords wouldn’t rent to them.

A law passed in 1900 prohibited marriages
between whites and Asian Americans.

Some laws limited Chinese immigration.
 Other Groups Face Discrimination
 Native Americans

Native Americans had to endure the
government’s Americanization policy, which
tried to stamp out their culture.

Living on reservations gave Native Americans
few opportunities.

Many Native Americans did not have
citizenship until the Indian Citizenship Act of
1924.