11: Robber Barons and Rebels Flashcards
Before the Civil War, it took 61 hrs to produce an acre of wheat, in 1900, it took this many hours
3hrs
Name 5 innovations that became widespread between the Civil War and 1900
Answers include: Steam, electricity, steel, oil to light homes streets and factories, railroads and steam powered trains, telephone, typewriter, adding machine, manufactured ice for meatpacking, pneumatic drills,
What drove some of the population boom of cities in early 20th century?
Farmers who couldn’t afford new machinery or railroad rates moving to cities
How many railroad workers were killed or injured in 1889 according to the Interstate Commerce Commission
22,000
True or False: By 1900, J.P. Morgan controlled 1/3 of the country’s railroad mileage
False, 1/2 (100,000 miles)
Standard Oil Company of Ohio was started by this man
John D. Rockefeller
This early “entrepreneur” made his fortune in steel
Andrew Carnegie
This President’s message to businesses sounds almost exactly like Joe Biden’s: “a transfer of executive control from one party to another does not mean any serious disturbance of existing conditions”
Grover Cleveland
How did the Supreme Court interpret the Sherman Act in its 1895 ruling U.S. v. E. C. Knight Co.?
Said monopoly of sugar refining was a monopoly in manufacturing, and not commerce, so could not be regulated by Congress through the Sherman Act
What did the Supreme Court declare unconstitutional in Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company)
An attempt to tax high incomes at a higher rate
Why did the Supreme Court rule in 1877 that grain elevators could be regulated?
Because they were not simply private property, but invested with “a public interest”
One year after the decision in Munn v. Illinois (grain elevator), this association began organizing to reverse the decision, eventually succeeding
American Bar Association
Despite ostensibly passed to protect negro rights, the Supreme Court saw only 19 14th amendment cases about Negro rights, and this many about corporations (between 1890 and 1910)
288
In 1893, Supreme Court Justice David J. Brewer said that “The long majority of men are unwilling to endure that long self-denial and saving which makes accumulations possible . . . and hence it always will be true, that the wealth of a nation is in the hands of a ___”
Few
The line: “So great is the regard of the law for private property, that it will not authorize the least violation of it; no, not even for the common good of the whole community” was said in this text
Blackstone’s Commentaries
Author Russell Conwell, founder of Temple University, writer of “Acres of Diamonds”, wrote this about the poor
“there is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings”
John D. Rockefeller helped found this University
U of Chicago
Why did mill owners in Lowell want educated workers?
“When the latter (employees) are well-educated and the former (employers) are disposed to deal justly, controversies and strikes can never occur, nor can the minds of the masses be prejudiced by demagogues and controlled by temporary and factious considerations”
