Period 6 (1865 - 1898) Flashcards
Why was the US #1 in 1900?
- Raw Materials & Resources
- Labor & Growing population
- Capital
- Technology
- Laissez-faire gov.
- Successful Entrepreneur system
Effects of Railroad Building
- Created ntl market for goods
- Mass production and consumption
- promotes growth in other industries
- Ghost towns & New cities
- Creates time zones
- Profited off cheap immigrant labor (very dangerous)
- took more native land
- Connects seaports
- Encourages Western settlement
- 1st “big” buisness
Union Pacific RR (1862)
East in Omaha, NE, to CA
Central Pacific RR
- CA to Ogden, UT
Promontory Point
- Where the first transcontinental RR was completed
- 1869 in UT
Minorities working on RR
- Chinese
- Irish
- African Americans
What materials were railroads made of?
Steel & coal
4 Major Robber Barons
Andrew Carnagie: Steel
Vanderbilt: RR
Rockefeller: Standard Oil
JP Morgan: US Steel
Stock watering (1870s - 80s)
inflating stock value
business pools
business deals to manipulate prices
Interstate Commerce Acts (1886)
publish rates, no pools, equal pricing. Stabilized business practices. 1st large-scale gov. policy to regulate business in the interest of society.
Bessemer Process of Steel (1856)
- Stronger, lighter, less expensive steel
- Brought on “Age of Steel”
Vertical integration
- Carnegie
- bought out & controlled all aspects of an industry
- Ex: Mined iron, transported it, refined it, processed it to steel, sold it
Horizontal Integration
- Rockefeller
- bought out / allied competitors to monopolize market
- Standard Oil (1870): forced weaker competitors out of business
- Trusts
interlocking directorates
- JP Morgan
- break up vulnerable business & consolidate
Methods of defeating Unionists
Yellow-dog contracts, surplus of labor, lockouts, blacklists, private guards, court injunctions
How were Unions depicted?
Anti-american, socialist, communists
National Labor Union (1866)
- 1st try, skilled & unskilled, agricultural & urban. Lost support during depression in 1873 & failures in 1877
Knights of Labor (1881)
- Terrance Powerdly
- leader, open to all incl. blacks & women
- wanted to become own boss, end child labor & trusts
- declined after Haymarket violence in Chicago 1886
American Federation of Labor (1886)
- strict economic goals
- Samuel Gompers
- higher wages & working conditions
- largest by 1901
Methods used by workers to protest
strikes, picketing, boycotting, slowdowns
Homestead Strike (1892)
- Carnegie Steel Plant in PA
- workers were protesting, got into conflict with guards and gunfire ensued, killing 16
Pullman Strike (1894)
- Widespread RR boycott/strike
- severely disrupted Midwest RR
- Fed. Gov. ordered court injunction to stop them
In re Debs (1895)
- SCOTUS rules fed. gov. is allowed to file court orders to stop strikes
