Chapter 22 - The Industrial Era Dawns (1865-1900) Flashcards
Crédit Mobilier Scandal
Railroad company who overcharged for construction
Charged $73 million for some $50 million worth of strenuous work
Insiders bribed congressmen to look the other way
“Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt
- Facilitated the connection and expansion of the older eastern network railroads for success of western lines
- Popularized the steel rail for improving the old iron tracks of the New York Central
Eastern networks moved to standard gauge track
Westinghouse air brake increased safety
Jay Gould
not very important
Financier who “boomed and busted” the stocks of the Erie, Kansas Pacific, Union Pacific, and the Texas and Pacific
Used speculative trickery
Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railroad Company v. Illinois
1886
Supreme Court decreed that individual states had no power to regulate interstate commerce
Not necessarily a popular victory over a corporate one
Federal government would confine “mechanical monster” if needed
Interstate Commerce Act
1887
- Prohibited rebates and pools
- Required railroads to oublish their rates openly
- Forbade unfair discrimination against shippers and outlawed extra charge for a short haul than a long one over the same line
Set up the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
ICC - “red-letter” law that provided an orderly forum where competing business interests could resolve conflicts in peaceful ways and intended to stabilize, not revolutionize, the existing business system
Richard Olney
not very important
A leading corporation lawyer
Noted that the ICC can be made of great use to the railroads, satisfying the popular clamor for a government supervision of railroads
Alexander Graham Bell
Invented the telephone in 1876
A vast communications network was built on his invention
Thomas Alva Edison
- A versatile inventor best known for created the electric lightbulb in 1879
- Also created the phonograph, mimeograph, dictaphone, and the moving picture
Not a pure scientist
His severe deafness allowed him to concentrate without distraction
Andrew Carnegie
- A business leader, dubbed the “steel king”
- Created the tactic of vertical integration
- Produced 1/4 of nation’s Bessemer steel by 1900
- Sold his company to J. P. Morgan for over $400 million (haggled him until he did so)
- Gave his wealthy to public libraries, pensions for professors, and other philanthropic purposes
J. Pierpont (J. P.) Morgan
- A business leader, dubbed the “bankers’ banker”
- Depression of 1890s drove many businessmen, bled by cutthroat competition, to Morgan
Devised other schemes to eliminate “wasteful” competition
- Financed the reorganization of railroads, insurance companies, and banks
- Bought Carnegie’s company and launched U.S. Steel Corporation (capitalized at $1.4 billion, U.S. first billion dollar company)
John D. Rockefeller
- A business leader, dubbed the “oil baron”
- Created the tactic of horizontal integration
- Created the Standard Oil Company in Cleveland, Ohio
- Controlled 95% of all oil refines in U.S. by 1877
- Drake’s Folly - first oil well in Pennsylvania
Vertical Integration
- Carnegie entrepreneurial tactic
- Combined all phases of manufacturing from mining to marketing in one organization
Ex: Carnegie’s miners scratched the ore from the earth in the Mesabi Range, Carnegie ships then floated it across the Great Lakes, finally Carnegie railroads delivered it to the furnaces at Pittsburgh
Horizontal Integration
Rockefeller’s technique which allied with competitors to monopolize a given market
Trust
- A device perfected by Rockefeller
- Used to describe any large-scale business combination
Controlled bothersome rivals
- Also created in sugar, tobacco, and leather
- Giant trusts sought refuge behind Fourteenth Amendment
Standard Oil Company
1870-1911
- Owned by Rockefeller
- Soon dominated virtually the entire world petroleum market
- Stockholders in smaller oil companies assigned their stock to the board directors
- Combined and arranged the operations of the previously competing enterprises
Interlocking Directorates
- J. P. Morgan’s method to ensure future peace with rival enterprises
- Morgan placed officers of his own banking group on their various boards of dictators
(Henry Bessemer)/Bessemer Process
- Method of making cheap steel by “air-blowing” iron
- Named after a British inventor
William Kelly, a Kentucky manufacturer of iron kettles, actually created it a few years earlier
Carnegie’s “Gospel of Wealth”
- Preached that the wealthy were only the temporary stewards of society’s riches
- The wealthy were obliged to assume moral responsibility for the uplift of the less fortunate
Herbert Spencer
An English philospher who was mislabeled as a Social Darwinist
Coined the phrase “survival of the fittest”
Social Darwinists
- Theorists that argued individuals won their stations in life by competing on the basis of their natural talents
- Believed in the phase “survival of the fittest” and natural selection
Explained why some nations were more powerful than others or had the right to dominate “lesser peoples” often defined by race
Sherman Anti-Trust Act
1890
- Forbade combinations in restraint of trade, without any distinction between “good” trusts and “bad trusts”
Proved to be ineffective largely because it contained legal loopholes
- Effective in curbing labor unions or labor combinations deemed to be restraining trade
- Prosecution of trusts was neither vigorous nor successful because the act did NOT outline a punishment
“Gibson Girl”
A magazine image of an independent and athletic “new woman” created in the 1890s by artist Charles Dana Gibson
Became the romantic ideal of the age
National Labor Union
1866-1872
- Represented a giant bootstride by workers
- One of the earliest national scale unions to organize in the Americas or Europe, aiming to unify workers across locales and trades to challenge their powerful bosses
Attracted 600,000 members including the skilled, unskilled and farmers
Excluded the Chinese and barely made efforts to include women and blacks
National Labor Union
1866-1872
- Represented a giant bootstride by workers
- One of the earliest national scale unions to organize in the Americas or Europe, aiming to unify workers across locales and trades to challenge their powerful bosses
Attracted 600,000 members including the skilled, unskilled and farmers
- Excluded the Chinese and barely made efforts to include women and blacks
- Called for arbitration of industrial disputes, eight-hour workday (won latter for government workers)
- Crippled by depression of 1870s
Knights of Labor
- Officially known as the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor
- Began in 1869 as secret society, with private ritual, passwords, and special handshake
- Sought to include (almost) all workers in “one big union” - skilled and unskilled, whites and blacks, men and women
Secrecy forestalled possible reprisals by employers
Barred Chinese (supported Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882) and “nonproducers
Mary Harris “Mother” Jones
not very important
- An organizer for the first women Knights
- Started by agitating for the Knights in the Illinois coalfields
Terence V. Powderly
- Became the Grand Master Workman of the Knights in 1879
- Urged laborers to save enough from their wages to buy mines
- Dedicated the Knights to achieving the “cooperative commonwealth”
Denounced the multimillionaires for laying the foundation for the fortune of the bodies and souls of living men and “wage-slavery”
Samuel Gompers
not important
- A Jewish cigar maker born in a London tenement
- Removed from school at 10, brought to America at 13, and pressed into overtime service and rose in the labor ranks
- Demanded fairer share of labor and had no quarrel with capitalism
- Promoted better wages, hours, and working conditions
Haymarket Square
1886
- A May Day strike where labor disorders broke out
- Police advanced on meeting called to protest alleged brutalities by authorities
- A dynamite bomb was thrown, killing and injuring several dozen people, including police
Hysteria swept Chicago
John P. Altgeld (governor of Illinois) pardoned 3 surviving anarchists
American Federation of Labor (AF of L)
- Consisted of an elite association of self-governing national unions, each of which kept its independence, unifying overall strategy
- Samuel Gompers was mostly elected president
- No individual laborer could join the central organization
- Fell short of representing all workers
- Composed of skilled craftsmen—carpenters and bricklayers
Closed Shop
- Authorized by Gomper’s “trade agreement” as an all-union labor
- Allowed only unionized employees to work for a certain company
Chief weapons were walkout and boycott
Industrialization: Boon or Blight?
- Boon: historians believed that greater social mobility lessened class tensions (some argued otherwise), most men were self-made and greater opportunity distinguished the New World from the Old
- Blight: Critics believed it took away the traditions, values, and independence of native farmers and immigrant craftspeople; diminshed their spiritual “quality of life” and relatively few went from “rags to riches” whereas others had small improvements
