Transcript Chapter 24

Chapter 24
 RR
building exploded after the Civil War.
 US government subsidized the first two
transcontinental RR
 How land-grants worked
 In all RR got over 200 Mill acres from Feds
and states—area larger than the state of
Texas.
 US
benefited from giving land
to RR. How?
• RRs promoted immigration
• promoted of westward migration.
• RR gave the government a break
on mail and military transport.
 After
secession, Congress Commissioned
a transcontinental RR.
 Union Pacific and Central Pacific.
 Building began in earnest in 1865 after
the Civil War.
 Credit Mobiler scandal
 On
both lines mostly
poor immigrants did the
work.
• Irish were predominant on
the UP line
• Chinese on the Central
Pacific line. Often beset
by Indians.
 Moving
tent cities
 Hundreds of labors died.
 Significance of
transcontinental RR
 Four
other Transcontinental lines were
built. None received cash grants, but
three received land grants.
 Many other RR went bankrupt and
fleeced investors.
 Towns competed with bribes to RR
promoters to get the RR to come to their
town. Many of these RR took the money
and ran.
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Cornelius Vanderbilt welded
together and expanding older
eastern Network.
Had made a huge fortune in
steamboats and used this wealth
to fund RRs.
He was coarse, ill educated,
ungrammatical and ruthless, but
knew how to make money.
 Significant
Improvements to RR
facilitated growth of railroads:
• Steel rail
• Standard gauge track:
• Westinghouse brake
• Pullman sleeping cars: made travel more
comfortable for passengers—1860s.
 Trains
still dangerous.
 Transcontinental
RR caused many changes:
• Stimulated American economy
• Stimulated manufacturing and industrialization
• Westward expansion of agriculture
• Stimulated immigration
• Bigger cities
• Settlement of the unsettled areas
• Time zones
• Created Millionaires
• Changed Western ecology
 The
railroads were
rife with corruption
 Jay Gould
 Stock Watering
 Bribery
 Trusts and Pooling
Agreements
 Rebates
 Farmers
resented the RR
• Why?
 Generally, the
abuses of RR.
country was slow to respond to
• Laissez faire
 Depression
of 1870 spurred the government
into action.
 Grange put pressure on many Midwestern
legislatures to regulate the RR monopoly.
 Interstate
Commerce Act in 1887.
Prohibited rebates and pools
Required RR to publish their rates openly
Outlawed discrimination against shippers
outlawed charging more for short hauls than for long
ones
• Set up the Interstate Commerce Commission to
administer and enforce
•
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 Was
not a revolutionary victory; simply modest
regulation
 Did provide an orderly forum.
 water-shed in establishing the power of
government to regulate business
 1865-1895
 Reasons:
saw a huge industrial boom.
• Much more liquid capital
• natural resources started to be exploited
• Massive immigration provided cheap unskilled
labor
• American inventions made businesses and factories
more efficient.
 telegraph, mass production, cash register, stock ticker .
• Telephone (1876) and expanded telegraph;
communications revolution.
• Edison and Electric Light
“Wizard of Menlo Park”
 Businesses, left
alone, hate competition.
 Ways to avoid competition.
• Vertical Integration--Andrew Carnegie’s Steel
operations.
• Horizontal Integration—Rockefeller and
Standard Oil
• Trusts—Rockefeller
• Interlocking Directorates—J.P. Morgan
 Steel
became King after the Civil War.
 Foundation for much of the industrial
expansion
 Bessemer process.
 America biggest Steel producer by 1900.
Produced 1/3 of the world’s steel.
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Andrew Carnegie—US
Steel
King of American Steel
• Produced ¼
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Carnegie cleared 25 Mil.
a year. Huge fortune
Sold out to J.P. Morgan for
400 Million.
Spent the rest of his life
giving money away
 Oil
industry emerges after
the Civil War.
 Rockefeller and Standard Oil.
 ruthless.
 Big believer in commercial
Darwinism.
 By 1877 controlled 95% of all
the old refineries in the
country.
 Social
obligations of new
super-rich?
 Charles Graham Sumner
• Get richer; none to poor
 Social
Darwinism
• Rich deserve to be rich; poor
deserve to be poor
• Contempt for poor who had
“earned” their own poverty
Charles
Graham Sumner
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Inequality is inevitable and
good.
Wealthy should act as
“trustees” for their “poorer
brethren.”
Wealthy had to prove they
deserved their wealth.
Give back to the community
as a whole, not to
individuals
Carnegie gave away
millions
 Sherman
Anti Trust Act of 1890.
 Forbids combinations in restraint of trade.
• Did not prove very effective because went after
bigness and not badness.
• Not very effective because penalties weak and
loopholes
 Importance
of the law was not its immediate
effect but the shift in thinking that it
represented.
 South
did not benefit much
 Produced smaller % of Manufacturing
goods than pre-Civil War
 James Duke—Cigarettes
 Barriers to Southern development
• Railroad rate discrimination
 Textile
Mills
• Pros and Cons
Increased wealth of nation
Standard of living rose sharply
Workers enjoyed many more physical comforts
Urban centers mushroomed
Jeffersonian Ideal of nation of small farmers
died
 Concept of time changed.
 Many more women in the workforce
 Delayed marriages and smaller families
 New class system
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 Surplus
of unskilled labor.
 Individual workers were powerless to bargain
 Early Unions had little power, as well.
• strike-breakers, lawyers and thugs (“Oh my!”)
 Courts
issued injunctions against strikes based
on Anti-Trust laws.
 Yellow-dog contracts
 Company stores
 Middle-class was largely unsympathetic.
 Unions
strengthened after the Civil War.
 National Labor Union organized in 1866
and did well,
• 600,000 members, both skilled and unskilled
• Did not recruit women or blacks
• Goals: arbitration of industrial disputes, 8-hour
day
• damaged by the depression in the 1870s.
Knights of Labor

Knights of Labor took over
where the National Labor Union
had left off.
• Sought to include all labor in one
Terence V.
Powderly
big Union.
• They stayed out of politics, but
campaigned hard for economic
and social reform.
• Their biggest issue was the 8-hour
work day.
• Won that fight from a number of
industries and their ranks swelled.
An injury to one is the concern of all!
 Knights
of Labor riding for a fall
 Problems:
• The Haymarket Square incident in Chicago in
1886
• Fusion of both skilled and unskilled labor.
 Skilled
workers abandoned the Knights
for the American Federation of Labor.
 This dealt the Knights a death blow, and
the union slowly withered.
Haymarket Riot (1886)
McCormick Harvesting Machine Co.
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AF of L --1886
Brain child of Samuel Gompers.
President of the union every
year for 38 years but one.
Confederation of self-governing
independent unions for skilled
laborers.
Gompers political strategy.
Major goal was closed shop.
Weapons were walk-outs and
boycotts.
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Let unskilled workers,
blacks and woman fend
for themselves.
500,000 members by
1900.
1881-1900 over 23,000
strikes
By 1900, increased but
fragile support
1894—Labor Day holiday.
Most employers still
fought labor aggressively.
Management vs. Labor
“Tools” of
Management
“Tools” of
Labor
 “scabs”
 boycotts
 P. R. campaign
 sympathy
demonstrations
 Pinkertons
 lockout
 blacklisting
 yellow-dog contracts
 informational
picketing
 closed shops
 court injunctions
 organized
strikes
 open shop
 “wildcat” strikes