Post on 02-Jan-2016
Industrial GrowthDuring the Gilded Age
1880-1919
Industry expands
Age of Railroads
Big Business and Labor
$$$$ and poverty....
Causes•Nation has wealth of natural resources•Explosion of inventions improve business and manufacturing efficiency•Growing urban populations provide workers and markets•Railroads establish new markets
Industrial Growth
Effects• Big business emerge• Business consolidates under monopolies and trusts• workers endure harsh conditions• labor unions develop
Railroad $$$
Munn v Illinois•Court case that
gave the states rights to regulate railroads and the rates they charged.
•RR had gotten so big they were ripping people off
Credit Mobilier Scandal
•major railroad scandal
•under President Grant
George M Pullman•Designed the Pullman
car for trains. Built whole cities to produce Pullman cars
Transcontinental Railroad
•Nations first railroad that went from east coast to west coast and back. It was a combination of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads. They met at Promontory Point, Utah in 1869
The Inventors
Alexander Graham Bell
•inventor of telephone
Thomas Alva Edison
•inventor of electricity
Richest Americans
Now
Richest Americans
Then
Andrew Carnegie
•Steel businessman
Today, he would be worth $250 Billion dollars
John D Rockefeller•One of the wealthiest and
most powerful industrialists as head of Standard Oil Company
today his wealth would be worth $190 billion
dollars!
Greed, Guile, Corruption
What Does That
Wealth Look Like?
The Gilded Age meant several lavish “summer cottages” or “castles” were built by the wealthy. In one party guests received party favors of precious jewels even as a deep Depression left thousands of children homeless and starving.
How Did They Get
That Rich?
Social Darwinism
•promoted business competition - let the best business win....
Horizontal integration•Merging/combining of similar companies
Vertical integration•Owning all aspects of a business - from raw materials
through production, through packaging, distribution, and selling
Robber Barons running Congress
Is Everyone Rich in America
During This Gilded Age
During the "Gilded Age," every man was a potential Andrew Carnegie, and Americans who achieved wealth celebrated it as never before. In New York, the opera, the theatre, and lavish parties consumed the ruling class' leisure hours. Sherry's Restaurant hosted formal horseback dinners for the New York Riding Club. Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish once threw a dinner party to honor her dog who arrived sporting a $15,000 diamond collar.
Tenement Housinga substandard, multi-family dwelling in
the urban core, usually old and occupied by the poor.
Tenement Housing
Corruption extended to the highest levels of government. During Ulysses S. Grant's presidency, the president and his cabinet were implicated in the Credit Mobilier, and the Whiskey Ring as well as other notorious scandals
What About The Workers?
What Is A Union?
A labor union is an organization of workers dedicated to protecting their interests and improving wages, hours and working conditions
Samuel Gompers
•president of American Federation of Labor (AFL) union of workers
American Federation of Labor
•one of the first American labor unions: craft unions like plumbers, iron workers, etc.
Eugene Debs
•head
head of Industrial Workers of the World Union
Industrial Workers of the World
very large union of industrial workers throughout the world
What Laws Control the Rich Robber
Barons?
What Laws Make Competition Fair?
Sherman Antitrust Act
•Made monopolies illegal
Interstate Commerce Act
•Law that made it illegal to form trusts that interfered with free trade between states
Populism
• The movement to try and protect farmers during the gilded age. It tried to increase farmers political power and to work for legislation in their interest.
Plessy v Ferguson 1896
Plessy v Ferguson 1896
Supreme Court says: Separate but equal is ok