Transcript ch 17 ppt

James A. Henretta
Rebecca Edwards
Robert O. Self
America’s History
Seventh Edition
CHAPTER 17
The Busy Hive: Industrial America
at Work, 1877-1911
Copyright © 2011 by Bedford/St. Martin’s
CHAPTER LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After you have read this chapter, you should be able to answer the
following questions:
1. What factors led to the economic success of industrial capitalism in
America after 1877? 6.1.1A, B, D
2. How were business practices organized and new technologies
harnessed in order to maximize profits in American industry? 6.1.1.B, D
3. What were the working conditions of American industrial laborers?
6.1.2.C
4. How and why did American workers seek to improve their working
conditions in the late nineteenth century? 6.1.1.C, 6.1.2.C)
I. Business Gets Bigger
A. Rise of the
Corporation
1. Vertical
Integration
• corporation controls
everything needed to
take raw materials and
create a packaged
product (ex: Swift in
Chicago)
I. Business Gets Bigger
A. Rise of the
Corporation
1. Vertical
Integration
• “predatory pricing”:
large firms undercut
smaller businesses’
prices until the smaller
businesses fail.
I. Business Gets Bigger
A. Rise of the Corporation
•
•
•
•
•
2. Standard Oil and the Rise of
the Trusts 6.1.1.D
John D. Rockefeller (oil) created
leading refiner, Standard Oil
used vertical integration to
control production and sales
alliances with railroad executives
“horizontal integration”: invited
rivals to merge (they had no
alternative financially)
“trust”: business owners charge
a small group of trustees to hold
stock from several firms and
manage them as one.
Bessemer Converter, Bethlehem Works,
Steelton, Pennsylvania, 1885
Workers for Bethlehem Steel in Steelton,
Pennsylvania, posed for this 1885
photograph with a Bessemer converter. The
late nineteenth century came to be known
as America’s Age of Steel, thanks to the
increased steel production that the
Bessemer converter helped generate.
(6.1.1.B)
The Dressed Meat
Industry, 1900
A map of the meatpacking
industry clearly shows
how transportation,
supply, and demand
combined to foster the
growth of the American
industrial economy. The
main centers of beef
production in 1900–
Chicago, Omaha, Kansas
City, and St. Louis—were
rail hubs with connections
westward to the cattle
regions and eastward to
cities hungry for cheap
supplies of meat. Vertically
integrated enterprises
sprang from these
elements, linked by an
efficient and
comprehensive railroad
network.
1. What made
Chicago an ideal city
for meatpacking?
1. What made
Chicago an ideal city
for meatpacking?
Answer: location in
the middle of the
country, with
proximity to
agriculture and
livestock in the
Midwest, trains to
eastern and western
states.
2. Consider the work
the men in this image
are undertaking in 1882.
What aspects of the
meatpacking process
depicted here might
have drawn fire from
progressives in the
early twentieth century?
2. Consider the work
the men in this image
are undertaking in 1882.
What aspects of the
meatpacking process
depicted here might
have drawn fire from
progressives in the
early twentieth century?
Answer: evidence of
unsanitary conditions,
blood all over the floor
3. What other industries
were critical to the
success of a
meatpacking company
in this era?
3. What other industries
were critical to the
success of a
meatpacking company
in this era?
Answer: students could
consider the transport
process [railroads,
refrigerator cars for
trains], the need for
materials/tools used in
the packing plant
[chains, buckets, iron
hangers], livestock
industry
I. Business Gets Bigger
B.
•
•
•
•
•
•
Consumer Culture (6.1.1.C)
1. The Department Store
The Department Store – sold
many different products in
“departments”
begun by John Wanamaker in
Philadelphia (1875)
window displays, Christmas
decorations, advertisements
all became part of urban
culture
at fairs and expositions stores
sought to connect with rural
customers
used catalogs to market goods
to those outside proximity to
stores
by 1900 there were 1,200
mail-order companies.
I. Business Gets Bigger
B. Consumer Culture (6.1.1.C)
2. Modern Advertising
• by 1900 magazine ads used artwork
to attract consumers’ interest
• at turn of the century companies
were spending more than
$90m/year on ads in newspapers
and magazines
• 1903 Ladies’ Home Journal had
more than one million subscribers
• prices were declining making goods
more accessible to consumers.
Kellogg’s Toasted Corn Flakes
Like crackers, sugar, and other
nonperishable foods, cereal was
traditionally sold in bulk from barrels. In the
1880s, the Quaker Oats Company hit on
the idea of selling oatmeal in boxes of
standard size and weight. A further
innovation by manufacturers was to
process cereal so that it could be
consumed right from the box (with milk) for
breakfast. Lo and behold: Kellogg’s Corn
Flakes! This is one of Kellogg’s earliest
advertisements.
I. Business Gets Bigger
C. The Corporate Workplace
1. The Managerial
Revolution 6.1.1.B
• “white collar” professionals
• 1850s-1880s emergence of
managers on railway lines,
each with different functions
and a line of communication
between them
• “middle managers” supervised
departments such as
accounting, purchasing,
auditing.
I. Business Gets Bigger
C.
•
•
•
•
•
The Corporate Workplace
2. Women in the Corporate
Workplace
female office workers were beneath
managers
by turn of the century 77% of
stenographers and typists were
women
saleswomen worked with customers in
department stores
prior to availability of daycare, women
worked at home doing “piecework”
(sewing projects paid by item), taking
in laundry, or caring for boarders
in 1900 4 million women were working
for wages: one-third in domestic
service, one-third in industry, the rest
in office work, teaching, nursing.
Telephone Operators, 1888
Like other women office workers, these switchboard
operators enjoyed relatively high pay and
comfortable working conditions–especially in the
early years of the telephone industry, before
operators’ work routines speeded up. These young
women worked for the Central Union Telephone
Company in Canton, Ohio.
I. Business Gets Bigger
C.
The Corporate
Workplace
3. Company
Salesmen
• 1870s “the
drummer” or
traveling salesmen
emerged
• created opportunity
for nationwide
distribution of
products
• managers began to
set quotas, reward
salesmen for their
productivity.
1. Describe this man. What is his
occupation?
1. Describe this man. What is his
occupation?
Answer: white; professionally-dressed
in a suit, jacket, tie and hat; a traveling
salesman.
2. Who is the
audience for
this
advertisement?
2. Who is the
audience for this
advertisement?
Answer: men in
sales; “Commercial
Travelers, City
Salesmen or
Merchandise
Brokers.”
3. What is this
advertisement
asking its
audience to do?
Why?
3. What is this
advertisement asking its
audience to do? Why?
Answer: inviting men in
sales to join a “secret order”
for “mutual interest and
protection”; enables men to
contribute to a Widows’ and
Orphans’ Fund; enables
men to participate in social
events when they are away
from home; organizing men
for the benefit of
themselves and their
families; not collectively
arguing for benefits from
employers, but seeking to
create safety nets for their
families and social
organizations for these men
who generally worked
independently.
Business Activity and Wholesale
Prices, 1869–1900
This graph shows the key feature of
the performance of the late-nineteenthcentury economy: While output was
booming, wholesale prices were, on
the whole, falling. Thus, while workers
often struggled with falling wages–
especially during decades of severe
economic crisis–consumer products
also became cheaper to buy.
I. Business Gets Bigger
D. On the Shop
Floor
1. Skilled Workers
• male skilled craft
workers still
provided their own
tools, worked at
their own pace in
many industries (ex:
coal mining)
• the “stint”: selfimposed limit on
how much they
would produce daily.
I. Business Gets Bigger
D. On the Shop Floor
•
•
•
•
2. Mass Production 6.1.1.B
increases in technology led to a
loss of independence among
workers as less skilled was
required to complete tasks (“deskilling of labor”)
Ford called mechanized
manufacturing “mass
production”
machines operated the tools
once operated by human hands
allowed corporations to cut labor
costs and required fewer skilled
workers.
I. Business Gets Bigger
D.
On the Shop Floor
3. Scientific Management 6.1.1.B
• Frederick W. Taylor argued for
maximum output by
1) eliminating the need for brain
power in manual labor and
2) remove workers’ authority,
decisions made by managers alone
• implementation was expensive as
workers resisted
• increasingly women and children
were part of the unskilled labor
force
• by 1900 one in five children under
age 16 worked outside of the home
• African American workers at the
bottom of the pay scale.
1. Describe these
workers
photographed by
Lewis Hine.
1. Describe these
workers
photographed by
Lewis Hine.
Answer: at front: two
boys, likely under 15
years old dressed in
tattered shirts, pants
and hats, dirty faces
and hands; behind
them at least three
other boys work
2. Based on this
image, what kind of
conditions are
present in this glass
factory?
.
2. Based on this
image, what kind of
conditions are
present in this glass
factory?
Answer: dark,
crowded, cluttered,
dirty.
.
3. Who is Hine’s
audience for this
photograph?
.
3. Who is Hine’s
audience for this
photograph?
Answer: wanted to
show Americans
what child labor
looked like through
images of working
children; directed
especially at those
who could do
something to
alleviate the poor
conditions in which
these children
worked (6.1.2.B)
.
4. In your opinion,
does this image
support or contradict
a political cause
from the late
nineteenth/early
twentieth centuries?
.
4. In your opinion,
does this image
support or contradict
a political cause
from the late
nineteenth/early
twentieth centuries?
Answer: supports
progressivism;
supports the
arguments in favor
of reform of child
labor practices.
.
The New South, 1900
The economy of the Old
South focused on raising
staple crops, especially
cotton and tobacco. In the
New South, staple
agriculture continued to
dominate, but there was
marked industrial
development as well.
Industrial regions evolved,
producing textiles, coal, and
iron. By 1900 the South’s
industrial pattern was well
defined, though the region
still served–like the West–as
a major producer of raw
materials for the industrial
core region that stretched
from New England to
Chicago. (6.1.2.D)
Business Gets Bigger
1. What factors led to the rise of the corporation after 1865? What means did corporate
leaders use to expand their control of markets?
Business Gets Bigger
1. What factors led to the rise of the corporation after 1865? What means did corporate
leaders use to expand their control of markets?
• Vertical Integration, horizontal integration, predatory pricing, mass advertising, the creation of
trusts, and use of the department store helped corporate leaders expand their market after
1865.
Business Gets Bigger
2. What new patterns of work developed in the corporate and industrial workplaces?
What were the consequences of these patterns for men and women?
Business Gets Bigger
2. What new patterns of work developed in the corporate and industrial workplaces?
What were the consequences of these patterns for men and women?
• As labor became more segmented, a managerial revolution took place, in which a managerial
class emerged from the shop floor that left behind the working class, or blue collar, sector who
worked with their hands in favor of a white collar job with higher status and pay. Deskilling
through mass production reduced craft independence among skilled workers while those
working on the shop floor experienced a speed-up through Taylor’s scientific management
system.
• Female office workers emerged as a new class of employees, in this case assisting managers
but paid lower wages than men. In a large corporation, secretarial work became a dead-end
job, and employers began to assign it to women. White working class women often took in
piece-work while black worked either in agriculture and textile mills in the South or as domestic
workers in northern cities. Women in general increasingly entered factory work due its unskilled
and lower paying qualities.
Business Gets Bigger
3. Did the benefits of industrialization, as Andrew Carnegie suggested, outweigh its
costs? How might a corporate manager, a factory worker, and a shopper at a
department store have answered that question?
Business Gets Bigger
3. Did the benefits of industrialization, as Andrew Carnegie suggested, outweigh its
costs? How might a corporate manager, a factory worker, and a shopper at a
department store have answered that question?
• The access to new luxury goods increased for the middle class, although most working class
families could not afford the high priced goods in the late nineteenth century. The overall
standard of living for the American people increased in comparison to other nations. Child
labor decreased after 1900. More resources were harnessed for national economic output,
making the United States by 1890 the largest steel producer in the world, for example. A
department store shopper may have benefitted from a wider availability of lower priced,
previously unavailable products. A corporate manager may have owed his middlemanagement position (a stable, well-paying job that may not have been available earlier) to
industrialization. A factory worker, however, may have had to endure harsher working
conditions and longer hours, for less pay, and may not have been as quick to praise the
benefits of industrialization as the corporate manager or shopper.
II. Immigrants, East and West
A. Newcomers from
Europe
1. West
• mass migration from
Europe began in 1840s
during famine in Ireland
• voyage to U.S. lasted 1020 days with people
jammed below ship decks
in steerage
• 1892 onward European
immigrants arrived
through Ellis Island (NY)
II. Immigrants, East and West
A. Newcomers from
Europe
1. West
• some workers had skills,
many more did not
• “sojourners” planned to
work, save, and return to
Europe
• approximately one in
three immigrants to the
U.S. in late 19th/early
20th centuries returned
to their homeland.
Coal Breaker Boys
II. Immigrants, East and West
A. Newcomers from
Europe
2. East 6.2.1.A
• Eastern European Jews
mostly of German
descent
• 1880-1920 more than 3
million Jews came from
Russia, Ukraine,
Poland, and elsewhere
in Eastern Europe for
work and to escape
religious persecution.
Illustration of Jews Being Assaulted During a Russian Pogrom in the 1880s
Sources of European
Immigration to the
United States, 1871–
1910
Around 1900, Americans
began to speak of the
“new” immigration. They
meant the large numbers
of immigrants arriving
from Eastern and
Southern Europe–Poles,
Slovaks and other Slavic
peoples, Yiddishspeaking Jews, Italians–
and overwhelming the
still substantial number
of immigrants from the
British Isles and Northern
Europe.
II. Immigrants, East and West
B. Asian Americans and
Exclusion 6.2.1.A
1. Immigrants
• first Chinese came to U.S.
in 1840s to participate in
Gold Rush
• initially worked in
restaurants and laundries
• discrimination against
“Asiatics” intensified
during economic
depression of 1870s
• calls for deportation.
II. Immigrants, East and West
B. Asian Americans and Exclusion
2. Chinese Excluded
• Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) barred
workers from entering country
• not repealed until 1943
• Korean and Japanese immigrants
began arriving at turn of the
century
• 1906 ruling stated that these new
immigrants were not eligible for
citizenship
• Chinese were nation’s first “illegal
immigrants.”
1. Describe this cartoon.
1. Describe this cartoon.
Answer: two men hammering
a Republican Plank and
Democratic Plank together,
squeezing a non-white man
in the middle; visible plank
reads “Anti-Chinese.”
2. Who are these two men?
2. Who are these two men?
Answer: Students might
speculate that these two
men are representative of
their political parties;
Republican James Garfield
and Democrat Winfield
Scott Hancock.
3. What does this illustration tell
us about 19th-century America?
Answer: both political parties
supported excluding Chinese
from the country; important in
19th century as immigration
was on the rise
Immigrants, East and West
1. How did patterns of immigration to the United States change between 1840 and
1900?
Immigrants, East and West
1. How did patterns of immigration to the United States change between 1840 and
1900?
• The Irish, Chinese, and Germans arrived in large numbers in the 1840s and through the Civil
War era. After the 1880s, southern and eastern Europeans, particularly Russian Jews, Italians,
and Poles, began to enter the United States. Between 1865 and 1919, over 25 million
immigrants entered the United States. The United States opened an immigrant processing
station at Ellis Island, New York, in 1892.
Immigrants, East and West
2. What factors typically shaped the experience of immigrants in the United States?
How did these differ among different ethnic and racial groups?
Immigrants, East and West
2. What factors typically shaped the experience of immigrants in the United States?
How did these differ among different ethnic and racial groups?
• Legal factors, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, impacted certain ethnic groups by
restricting their access to the United States. Violence, again in the case of the Chinese, made
their experience particularly difficult in California in the 1870s and 1880s. Work in the industrial
sector, the practice of Old World customs, and ethnic neighborhoods in large cities shaped
immigrant life.
• Poor farmers became low-paid day laborers or industrial workers. Many Jews arrived as
skilled tailors. Thousands of French-Canadians worked in
New England textile mills. The Chinese worked as rural and urban day laborers and
experienced virulent anti-immigrant sentiment above and beyond all other immigrant groups.
Immigrants, East and West
3. What impact did Americans’ response to Asian newcomers have on immigration
policies?
Immigrants, East and West
3. What impact did Americans’ response to Asian newcomers have on immigration
policies?
• Chinese Exclusion created the legal foundations on which modern, exclusionary immigration
policies would be built after the 1920s. To enforce the law, Congress and the courts gave
sweeping new powers to immigration officials, transforming the Chinese into America’s first
illegal immigrants. Many Chinese disguised themselves as Mexicans and walked across the
border, only to perish in the hot desert sands of the U.S. Southwest.
III. Labor Gets Organized
A. The Emergence of a
Labor Movement
1. Trade Unions
• workers organizations that
sought to negotiate
directly with employers
for the benefit of the
workers
• an alternative to seeking
assistance from politicians
in worker-labor disputes
• striking workers faced
being “blacklisted” (not
hired) because of action
against employers.
III. Labor Gets Organized
A. The Emergence of a
Labor Movement
2. Agrarians
• farmers’ advocates
• argued against high tariffs
because of their negative
impact on rural families
• farmers criticized the
railroads, large corporations,
and eastern banks
• National Grange of the
Patrons of Husbandry (1867)
focused on cooperation and
mutual aid among farmers
(anti-corporate). 6.1.3.B
III. Labor Gets Organized
A.
•
•
•
•
•
The Emergence of a Labor
Movement
3. Greenback-Labor Party
1870s political organization of
Grangers, labor advocates, and
workingmen’s parties
protested convict labor and the end
of Reconstruction, advocated the
protection of the individual man’s
vote
wanted an eight-hour workday and
an increase of the amount of money
in circulation to stimulate the
economy
advocates of “producerism”: critical
of middle management and
advanced the cause of those who
labored with their hands
radicalized thousands of farmers.
ANTI-GREENBACK CARTOON. Peter
Cooper, Greenback party presidential
candidate in 1876, is the tail of the paper
jackass in this American anti-Greenback
cartoon, 1878.
III. Labor Gets Organized
B.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The Knights of Labor 6.1.2.C
1. A Cooperative
Commonwealth
founded in 1869 as a secret
society in Philadelphia
led by Terrence Powderly
participated in Greenback Party
movement
wanted factories run by
employees
open membership
Temperance
included skilled craftsmen,
domestic workers, textile workers
Leonora Barry, full-time organizer
of working women.
Haymarket Square
6.1.2.C
• Knights were
successful with
grassroots,
spontaneous strikes
• 1886 protest at
McCormick reaper in
Chicago led to
violence
• “anarchism”:
revolutionary
advocacy of a
stateless society
III. Labor Gets Organized
B. The Knights of Labor
Haymarket Square
• Knights were
successful with
grassroots,
spontaneous strikes
• 1886 protest at
McCormick reaper in
Chicago led to violence
• “anarchism”:
revolutionary advocacy
of a stateless society
III. Labor Gets Organized
B. The Knights of
Labor
Haymarket Square
• May 4, 1886, strike
at Haymarket
Square became
violent and
damaged the public
image of the labor
movement
• “yellow-dog
contracts”: pledge
by workers not to
join a union.
III. Labor Gets Organized
C. Farmers and Workers: The Cooperative Alliance
•
•
•
•
•
1. Farmers’ Alliance 6.1.3.B
rural movement founded in Texas in 1870s
largest farm-based political movement in U.S. history
advocated cooperative stores and exchanges to remove
middlemen from sales
“subtreasury system”: federal government would hold
crops in public warehouse, issue loans on their value until
they could be sold
cooperated with the Knights of Labor.
III. Labor Gets Organized
C. Farmers and Workers:
The Cooperative
Alliance
2. Interstate Commerce
Commission (ICC) 6.1.3.C
• investigated interstate
shipping, forced railroads to
make their rates public, could
sue over unreasonable rates
• compromise between farmerlabor advocates and those
sympathetic to big business
• ICC’s power was eroded over
time by Supreme Court
rulings
A Puck magazine cartoon from 1907 depicting two large bears named
"Interstate Commerce Commission" and "Federal Courts" attacking Wall
Street.
1. In Viktor, Colorado, angry miners exploded the shaft house and boiler at the Strong Mine during a labor
dispute in 1894. How might Americans living in industrial and agricultural communities have responded to
this image in their newspapers?
1. In Viktor, Colorado, angry miners exploded the shaft house and boiler at the Strong Mine during a labor
dispute in 1894. How might Americans living in industrial and agricultural communities have responded to
this image in their newspapers?
Answer: middle and
upper-class
Americans generally
disliked the social
unrest and violence
that resulted from
labor disputes
because they were
the owners and
managers of the
factories, the land,
and the mines;
extended disputes
could result in price
increases and
service
interruptions.
2. In the late 19th century workers found themselves embroiled in conflicts with employers that often
resulted in strikes. As in this case in Colorado, why did workers sometimes resort to violence?
2. In the late 19th century workers found themselves embroiled in conflicts with employers that often
resulted in strikes. As in this case in Colorado, why did workers sometimes resort to violence?
Answer: workers’
frustrations led to
destruction of
property, a symbol
of corporate
wealth, a way to
hurt the
owners/managers
directly.
III. Labor Gets Organized
D. Another Path: The
American
Federation of Labor
1. Samuel Gompers
• after Haymarket some K
of L workers joined
together to form
American Federation of
Labor (AFL)
• Gompers (Dutch-Jewish
cigar maker) led until
1924
• demanded that workers
earn greater share of
corporate profit.
"Work conquers all"
III. Labor Gets Organized
D. Another Path: The American
Federation of Labor
•
•
•
•
•
2. “Pure and Simple Unionism”
Gompers’s doctrine: membership
strictly limited to workers, organized
by craft and occupation, no reliance
on outside advisers
only those goals that immediately
benefited workers: better wages,
work hours, conditions
advocated collective bargaining
membership grew to more than 2
million by 1904
not inclusive of women or blacks.
Labor Gets Organized
1. What factors prompted the emergence of the labor movement? In what ways did farmers and
industrial workers cooperate?
Labor Gets Organized
1. What factors prompted the emergence of the labor movement? In what ways did farmers and
industrial workers cooperate?
• As industrialization widened the economic gap between the upper elite and the working class, a labor
movement coalesced to improve the working conditions of Americans. Farmers and industrial workers
cooperated through a shared public criticism of the railroads and other corporations. During the 1870s
depression, Grangers allied with local workingmen’s parties to forge a national political movement: The
Greenback-Labor Party. Greenbackers advocated laws to regulate corporations and enforce an eighthour limit on the workday. The Farmer’s Alliance also cooperated with the Knights of Labor to shape
state politics in the South and West.
Labor Gets Organized
2. How did the goals and practices of the AFL resemble and differ from those of the Knights of
Labor?
Labor Gets Organized
2. How did the goals and practices of the AFL resemble and differ from those of the Knights of
Labor?
• The AFL advocated for skilled workers to create trade unions based on the concept of mandatory
membership or the closed shop. Low-wage workers were kept out to preserve higher wages for skilled
workers. Union rules specified the terms of work and emphasized mutual aid. The AFL avoided reliance
on electoral politics and did not share the sweeping critique of capitalism offered by the Knights. They
were less interested in challenging the corporate order, and wanted a larger share of the profits from
capitalism in the form of better hours, wages, and working conditions.
• The Knights of Labor worked towards a cooperate commonwealth based on a policy of open union
membership despite race or gender (though they excluded Chinese). They believed in political action
and advocated temperance. They became a decentralized organization of both skilled craftsmen and
unskilled workers. They advocated labor strikes to improve working conditions.
Labor Gets Organized
3. Which of the national labor organizations that formed after 1865 do you think was most successful? In
what ways, and why?
Labor Gets Organized
3. Which of the national labor organizations that formed after 1865 do you think was most successful? In
what ways, and why?
• The AFL based on the concept of “simple unionism” expanded its membership from 447,000 in 1897 to
over two million by 1904. In the early twentieth century it became the nation’s leading voice for workers,
lasting far longer than movements like the Knights of Labor. The AFL’s strategy of avoiding a full critique
of capitalism, using the closed shop, and narrowing its appeal to skilled workers helped it expand over
time. Its expansion was also linked to its exclusion of Chinese but the inclusion of women and blacks.
Chapter Review Questions
1. What factors led to the rise of big business in the United States? For working people, what were
the results of that economic transformation?
Chapter Review Questions
1. What factors led to the rise of big business in the United States? For working people, what were
the results of that economic transformation?
• The United States became an industrial power largely by tapping the vast natural resources of North
America, including minerals, lumber, and other raw materials in the West. As steam and electricity became
the chief energy workhorses, industries that had once depended on waterpower began to use prodigious
amounts of coal. Technological and business efficiencies, including vertical and horizontal integration,
predatory pricing, the department store, and the mass assembly line, allowed American firms to grow,
invest in new equipment, and earn profits, even as prices for their products fell. Growth depended, in turn,
on America's large and rapidly growing population, its expansion into the West, and its integrated national
marketplace. Republican economic policies, such as high protective tariffs and subsidies for
transcontinental railroads, played a key role in fostering economic growth after the Civil War. But while
they created jobs, such policies also bolstered the rise of giant corporations, which in many industries
either crowded out or swallowed up small competitors.
• For workers, the prices of goods became cheaper because of industrialization, but cyclical downturns in
the economy accentuated by industrialization led to frequent busts that produced recessions and massive
unemployment. Although more jobs were created by the increase of factories, these jobs were assemblyline in nature, which degraded the skills of workers over time. Environmental pollution increased as a
result of the rise of the corporation, as did heath problems for workers and their families. In response,
workers increased unionization; union membership reached a high point at the turn-of-the-century.
Chapter Review Questions
2. What roles did newly arrived immigrants play in the economy during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries?
Chapter Review Questions
2. What roles did newly arrived immigrants play in the economy during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries?
• Newly arrived immigrants became the factory operatives and day laborers who built, ran, and maintained industrial
and urban growth over time. Some immigrants were skilled, seasoned workers. Many Welshmen, for example, arrived
in the United States as experienced tin-plate makers; Germans came as machinists and carpenters, and
Scandinavians as sailors. But industrialization required, most of all, increasing amounts of unskilled labor. As poor
farmers from Italy, Greece, and Eastern Europe arrived in the United States, heavy, low paid labor became their
domain. In an era of cheap, convenient travel by railroad and steamship, many immigrants came as “sojourners”: they
expected to work and save for a few years and then head home. Over 800,000 French Canadians moved to New
England to find jobs in the textile mills. Thousands of men came alone, especially from Ireland, Italy, and Greece.
Many single Irishwomen also immigrated. Circumstances often changed their plans. Some sojourners ended up
staying for a lifetime, while others who had expected to settle permanently found themselves forced out of work, and
out of the country, by a workplace accident or a sudden depression. One historian has estimated that one-third of
immigrants to the United States in this era returned home. Eastern European Jews were among the most numerous
arrivals. Those who were especially likely to emigrate included young men and women and those in skilled
occupations, including tailors and others in the “needle trades.” Wherever they came from, immigrants took a
considerable gamble when they traveled to the United States. Some prospered; by toiling for many years in harsh
conditions, others succeeded in securing a better life for their children and grandchildren. Others met with economic
catastrophe, injury, or early death.
Chapter Review Questions
3. What were the long-term consequences of the Chinese Exclusion Act for the U.S. immigration
policy?
Chapter Review Questions
3. What were the long-term consequences of the Chinese Exclusion Act for the U.S. immigration
policy?
• Facing intense political pressure, lawmakers shut out Chinese immigrants. In 1882 Congress passed the
Chinese Exclusion Act, which specifically barred Chinese laborers from entering the United States. Each
decade thereafter, Congress renewed the law and tightened its provisions; it was not repealed until 1943.
Exclusion laws barred entry of almost all Chinese women, forcing husbands and wives to spend many
years apart when men worked in the United States. Chinese officials in the United States worked hard to
protect immigrants, while some immigrants made vigorous use of the courts to protect their rights. In a
series of cases brought by Chinese and later Japanese immigrants, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all
persons born in the United States had citizenship rights that could not be revoked, even if their parents
had been born abroad. Chinese Exclusion created the legal foundations on which modern, exclusionary
immigration policies would be built after the 1920s. To enforce the law, Congress and the courts gave
sweeping new powers to immigration officials, transforming the Chinese into America’s first illegal
immigrants.
Chapter Review Questions
4. Compare the accomplishments and limitations of American farmer-labor movements of the 1870s and
1880s, such as the Greenback-Labor Party and the Knights of Labor, with those of the American Federation of
Labor. Why did the latter choose a different strategy?
Chapter Review Questions
4. Compare the accomplishments and limitations of American farmer-labor movements of the 1870s and
1880s, such as the Greenback-Labor Party and the Knights of Labor, with those of the American Federation of
Labor. Why did the latter choose a different strategy?
• Greenback-Labor Party: In the South, Greenbackers protested the fading of Reconstruction, opposed convict labor, and
urged that every man’s vote be protected. Across the country, Greenbackers advocated laws to regulate corporations and
enforce an eight-hour limit on the workday. The Greenback movement radicalized thousands of farmers, miners, and
industrial workers. In Alabama’s coal-mining regions, black and white miners worked together in the party. Texas boasted 70
African-American Greenback clubs. In 1878, Greenback-Labor
candidates won over a million votes and the party elected 15 Congressmen: seven from the Northeast, five from the
Midwest, and three from the South.
• In the short run, Greenback pressure helped to trigger a wave of state-level economic regulation, known in the Midwest,
especially, as Granger laws. By the early 1880s, 29 states had created railroad commissions to supervise railroad rates and
policies; others formed commissions to regulate insurance and utility companies. By 1890, 21 states had antitrust laws to
prevent monopolies. These early regulatory efforts were not always effective, but they were important starting points for
reform. While short-lived, the Greenback movement created the foundation for subsequent farmer-labor movements and
more sustained, vigorous efforts to regulate big business.
• Knights of Labor: Growing rapidly in the 1880s, the Knights became a sprawling, decentralized organization. Urban Knights
organized workingmen’s parties to advocate a host of reforms, ranging from an eight-hour workday to cheaper streetcar fares
and better garbage collection. One of the Knights’ key innovations was hiring a full-time women’s organizer, Leonora Barry.
An Irish American widow who was forced into factory work after her husband’s death, Barry became a labor advocate out of
horror at the conditions she found on the job.
• The pattern of the Knights’ growth showed how labor activism in the 1880s was often prompted by “wildcat strikes”—those
that workers started spontaneously, at the grassroots, without consulting union leaders. Powderly urged local Knights to avoid
strikes, which he saw as costly and risky. But the Knights’ greatest successes resulted from grassroots strikes. In 1885,
thousands of workers on the Southwest Railroad walked off the job in spontaneous protest; afterward, they …
4. Continued
telegraphed the Knights and asked to be admitted as members. The strike enhanced the Knights’ reputation among workers
and built membership to 750,000. By the following year, local assemblies had sprung up in every state and almost every
single county in the United States. Urban Knights began to take leadership of the rising national movement to demand an
eight-hour workday.
• The Haymarket bombing of 1886 in Chicago caused profound damage to the American labor movement. Seizing on antiunion hysteria set off by the Haymarket violence, employers went on the offensive against the Knights. They broke strikes
violently and forced workers to sign yellow-dog contracts pledging not to join labor organizations. The Knights of Labor
never recovered from Haymarket. In the view of the press and many prosperous Americans, after 1886, the Knights were
tainted by their supposed links with anarchism.
• American Federation of Labor: Samuel Gompers hammered out a doctrine that he called “pure-and-simple unionism.”
“Pure” referred to membership: strictly limited to workers, organized by craft and occupation, with no reliance on outside
advisers or allies. “Simple” referred to goals: only those that immediately benefited workers—better wages, hours, and
working conditions—would be pursued. Pure-and-simple unionists distrusted politics. Their aim was collective bargaining
with employers.
• On one level, pure-and-simple unionism worked. The AFL was small at first, but between 1897 and 1904, its membership
rose from 447,000 to over two million. In the early twentieth century it became the nation’s leading voice for workers, lasting
far longer than movements like the Knights of Labor. The AFL’s strategy was especially well suited to an era when Congress
and the courts were hostile to labor. By the 1910s the political climate would become more responsive; at that later moment,
Gompers would soften his anti-political stance and AFL leaders joined the battle for progressive labor legislation.
• What Gompers gave up, most crucially, was the inclusiveness of the Knights of Labor. The AFL was far less welcoming to
women and blacks, and it was limited mostly to skilled craftsmen. There was little room in the AFL for department-store
clerks and other service workers, much less the farm workers and domestic servants whom the Knights of Labor had
organized. Despite the AFL’s great success among skilled craftsmen, the narrowness of its base was a flaw that would come
back to haunt the labor movement later on. In the meantime, the impact of industrialization reached far beyond the
workplace and the political sphere, transforming American society and culture.