Chapter 19: The Incorporation of America

Mr. Logan GreeneAP United States History

West Blocton High School

Chapter Objectives

• What changes did the American workforce experience in the late nineteenth century?

• What impact did new immigration have on cities in the North?

• Who made up the new Middle Class?

The Gilded Age• The Gilded Age was a term for late

nineteenth century American society, specifically urban society

• Gilding refers to something worthless surrounded by a thin layer of gold to supposedly increase its value, coined originally by Mark Twain

• The Gilded Age referenced the idea that this period in American history saw the upper levels of society grow incredibly wealthy and powerful but much of society was still suffering

New Industry

• From 1870 to 1900 America changed from the foremost agrarian nation in the world to the foremost industrial power

• By 1900 less than one third of workers were in the agrarian sector and one fourth worked specifically in factories

• Over one third of the worlds manufactured goods were made in America

The Electric Age• For most of its history America had to rely on Europe for

new inventions• By 1900 America had become one of the leading

innovators for new technologies• (Best example is by 1910 one million patents had been

issued, 900,000 had been issued after 1870)• Thomas Edison was by far the best example of this new

enlightened thinking• Working from Menlo Park, New Jersey Edison invented

numerous new devices but none as important as his practical light bulb in 1879

• By 1885 New York was a lighted city and industries could now have production around the clock as they no longer needed to stop at sunset

The Corporation

• Corporations were created during the Gilded Age as a new model for business

• A corporation is a business entity owned by individuals who invest in the corporation known as stockholders

• Corporations have the same legal rights as a person and this way the shareholders cannot be held responsible for the corporation, management and owners are separate

• Corporations can outlive their owners

The Corporation and Monopolies

• Corporations became huge entities and cornered the market with monopolies

• Corporations practiced two types of monopolies through integration

• Vertical Integration: Owning at least one of every segment of producing one item, thereby cutting costs in production and lowering the price

• Horizontal Integration: Owning most or all of one step in production, thereby controlling a vital part of producing the item

• Horizontal Integration

• Vertical Integration

What is the problem?

• Giant corporations posed a significant issue

• Giant corporations like Standard Oil of JD Rockefeller and Carnegie Steel of Andrew Carnegie could alter the free market of the United States with their ability to corner markets

• As well, they could destroy competition therefore allowing them to charge whatever they wanted for their products

Work

• Despite an abundance of jobs the lack of true competition made it easy for owners to abuse workers with dangerous and difficult conditions

• Skilled artisans became obsolete as factories needed low educated, low skilled, low paying labor

• Immigrants made up the majority of the workers putting in upwards of 60 hours a week in dangerous conditions and lived close to the factories to reduce travel time

Child Labor

• Child labor was a sad reality of the industrialization age

• Children worked long hours in some of the worst conditions for pitiful pay

• Children were commonly maimed or even killed as their small extremities were used in the large machines

Women

• Virtually all working women were unmarried with no children and were under 25

• Most women worked in the textile industry

• Sadly women made on average 25% of what men were paid

• In desperation many women began turning to prostitution to make ends meet

• As more paperwork was added many women found work in clerical jobs

Responses to Poverty

• As poverty in cities increased housing became the most visible sign

• Tenement apartments became the norm for working class families as they lived in tiny apartments with no running water and disgusting conditions

• The settlement house movement began to help this overcrowding, the most famous settlement house (designed to offer neighborhood reconstruction) was Hull House in Chicago started by Jane Addams

Gospel of Wealth/Social Darwinism

• A new idea circulated amongst the wealthy industrialists known as the Gospel of Wealth

• This basically preached against direct intervention for the poor as it said hard work is what led to riches

• Carnegie softened this view by saying the wealthy should try and help the poor with their riches

• Social Darwinism fit with the Gospel of Wealth by saying the best most able humans made the money and were most successful

Workers Organize

• As economic troubles occurred in the late 19th century workers slowly began to organize to demand better pay, safer working conditions, and more job security

• The Railroad Strike of 1877 began this move to organize as railroad workers on the Baltimore and Ohio Railway stopped work to protest pay cuts

• Violence erupted as federal troops were dispatched to disperse the strikers

Workers Organize

• The Knights of Labor, originally for craft workers, grew dramatically after the “Great Uprising”

• The KoL pushed for an 8 hour workday and encouraged strikes to get results

• At first the courts sided with business leaders and strikes were broken up by authorities

• The KoL suffered a set back in public opinion when their strike at Haymarket Square was mauled by an anarchist bomb

Workers Organize

• With the downfall of the Knights of Labor the newly formed American Federation of Labor became the main organization

• The AFL, led by Samuel Gompers, believed in collective bargaining or negotiations between workers as a group and management

• The AFL was very successful as the specialized their demands with specific job areas

Workers Organize

• The Pullman Strike proved to be one of the most important instances of the workers’ rights movement

• In 1894 the Pullman Car Company (train cars) cut wages for its workers

• The workers began to strike with help from Eugene Debs American Railway Union

• President Cleveland stepped in and broke the strike

Immigrants• From 1870 to 1910 an unprecedented amount of

immigrants poured into the United States• Land was not abundant in Europe and higher birth

rates and lower mortality rates equaled exploding populations

• Most immigrants were from Ireland and Eastern Europe

• Chain migration became a common occurrence as entire towns migrated after one member was successful

• Most immigrants only planned to stay a few years, make money, and then return to Europe and about half of the immigrants that came followed this plan

Neighborhoods

• Normally ethnic groups did not simply settle in the area of a city

• Churches and Synagogues became the focal points for the ethnic communities of a city

• Ethnic schools, theatres, newspapers, and stores supplemented the church to bring the communities a sense of identity

Work

• Jobs for immigrants depended widely on their skills, location, and ethnic background

• Jews generally stuck with other Jews in the retail and garment business

• Many other immigrants found work on farms or in the newly growing factories

Nativism

• All immigrants faced the new ideas of nativism, or a hatred for immigrants

• The government stepped in by codifing nativist feelings with the Naturalization Act of 1870 which made citizenship only for “white persons or of African descent”

• Groups like the Immigrant Resistance League pushed for immigration limits

• Despite nativism white immigrants were still treated better than Africans

The Great Migration

• As industrialism surged a phenomenon occurred when masses of African-Americans left the rural South for the North, this was known as the Great Migration

• Blacks were commonly restricted to ghettos and faced difficulty finding meaningful work

• Societal issues contributed as stereotypes of racism were rampant in the North as well as the South

New Cities• In the United States during the Gilded Age no

one city experienced an unprecedented amount of growth; instead, multiple cities grew

• New cities featured mass transit and residential neighborhoods where the city residents lived

• Many of the new cities were around railroad centers and featured the new means of production

• The influx of immigrants led to cities expanding outward and upward with skyscrapers

The New Middle Class

• The middle class had traditionally consisted of lawyers, ministers, doctors, educators and merchants

• With the new industrialism this expanded to salespeople, factory supervisors, managers, civil servants, and technicians

• Middle classes of the age were consumers, buying goods and services and beginning the retail age and lived in houses with electricity and telephones

Chapter Objectives

• What changes did the American workforce experience in the late nineteenth century?

• What impact did new immigration have on cities in the North?

• Who made up the new Middle Class?