**Industrialization** Flashcards
Bessemer Process (benefits)
- Allowed factories to make steel cheaper than ever (steel is lighter and stronger than iron)
- Building built much higher – skyscrapers
- Led to inventions such as elevator – new jobs
Transcontinental RR
-Railroad connecting the west and east coasts of the continental US
Promontory Point Utah (x)
-Place where the Transcontinental railroad met -One started in San Fransisco, one started in St. Louis
Alexander Graham Bell
-Invented the first telephone
Thomas Edison
-Improved on older designs and creates the first practical light bulb.
Andrew Carnegie
- Bessemer process — allowed him to make steel more cheaply and efficiently
- Kept costs low, sell product at low price
- Competitors can’t make enough money to make their company work
- Abused his workers
- Philanthropist — someone who donates money to help some cause
- Believed rich people should share their wealth
- Vertical integration – controlled materials, production, and distribution of steel (mines, factories, train system)
John D. Rockefeller
- Sold oil so cheap he wasn’t making money
- Controlled 90% of oil industry
- More variety = cost more money, get less per toy but sell so many more
- Bought out competitors
- Philanthropist for education and medicine
- Horizontal integration - controlled manufacturing
Vertical Integration
- Control all 3 industries
- Raw materials, transportation, manufacturing
Horizontal Integration
-Control one entire industry
Laissez-Faire
- Business owners make all decisions independently of the gov, gov. can’t interfere with economy
- Invisible hand = market
- Don’t trust government - doesn’t work for business
- (+) Benefits consumer - competition, low price, high quality
- (+) Happy employees / customer
- Government can help those left out in free market
- (-) Monopolies of industry - companies have too much power
Social Darwinism
- Unscientific, unproven
- The idea that those who “have” must work harder, be smarter, and thus are inherently better and will/should be the most successful
- (+) Work hard = be rewarded
- (-) People can get things that they don’t really work hard to earn
- (-) Who decided who gets to decide which genes are good?
What event helped to start the Industrial Revolution in the U.S.? Why did it help start the revolution?
- The Civil War created a need to clothe, arm, and supply soldiers during war — helped create faster + more efficient ways to make things and grow more crops
- Needed a railroad system
How did the Industrial Revolution affect farming in the US?
- Farming made much more efficient (61 hours before CW → 3 hours after CW)
- Manufacturing of ice enabled people to transport food over long distances
In what ways was the Bessemer Process so important to industrial growth?
- The Bessemer Process allowed factories to make steel cheaper than ever (steel is lighter and stronger than iron) - Invention of I beams —> big buildings —> invention of elevators
What new inventions, and invented by who, helped to bring about a change in how people lived? (How did the Industrial Age change life for women?)
- Steel (Henry Bessemer)
- The telegraph (Samuel Morse)
- Allowed for communication between regions
- Led to first phone (Alexander Graham Bell)
- The sewing machine (Elias Howe and Isaac Singer)
- Created a new industry for women
- Textile mill (Samuel Slater)
- Women got jobs (textile mill, phone industry, sewing machine)
How was the construction of the Transcontinental RR possible because of the Industrial Revolution?
-More need for industry to spread
How did the government help to encourage railroad construction? (and process)
- Starting in 1992 — local + state governments promoted RR construction with land grants, tax breaks, and money
- Gave railroad companies land surrounding the railroad path at little or no cost
Socialism
- Economic system where there is private business/industry but the government plays a major role in or controls big industry
- Ex: energy, transportation, education, and health
- Government control by high taxes (50%-70%) — like car insurance, people rarely need to use it, so the government makes a lot of money
- Their main goal is to narrow, not totally eliminate, the gap between the rich and the poor
Communism
- Created by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
- A utopian view of society
- Pure version — no government, no army, everyone has a job, no need for money, no religion
- Don’t need money — everyone repays each other to help themselves and others, everything is interconnected, people do not ask for more than what is needed
- Religion becomes the form of governmental control
- Reality — almost total gov. control of economy, politics, and social norms
Monopoly
When only one company controls an entire industry
Capitalism
- An economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
- Types:
- Laissez-Faire
- Social Darwinism
- Gospel of Wealth
What made America such a great place, geographically speaking, for an industrial revolution?
- Wealth of natural resources
- Government support for business
- Growing urban population that provided both cheap labor and markets for new products
What new inventions helped to bring about a change in how people lived?
- Lightbulb – factories could be ope 24 hours – longer hours for workers
How did the Industrial Age change life for women?
- New inventions like the phone and sewing machine opened up new industries
- Allowed women to work outside of home for a real wage
Importance of T-C Railroad
- It linked economies of the East and West
- It helped to spur other industries like mining and agriculture
- It helped to build and sustain cities in regions that normally couldn’t due to lack of materials
Describe the different ways that big business owners “abused” their workers. How did the workers fight back and how does that tactic work?
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Why are monopolies illegal?
Too much power
Generally speaking does it seem as though the U.S. Government protected the rights of the workers or the rights of the business owners? What makes you think this?
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What are the basic differences between Capitalism, Socialism and Communism? Which one(s) is our country suspicious of or frightened by? Why is that?
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