Industrializing a Continent

“The Gilded Age”

• Coined by Mark Twain in 1873• Economic and population growth• Industrialization• Westward expansion• Corruption• “Robber barons”

The Second Industrial Revolution

• First: textiles in England and New England• Second: steel, machinery, chemicals• Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit

New Inventions

• Phonograph, light bulb, movies, telephone• Thomas Edison (1847-1931)

The New Working Class

• 1890: 2/3 work for wages• Vs. farming, craft, owning a business• Immigration• Movement to cities

The Reality

• 60 hours or more a week• No protection• 35,000 die a year in work accidents (1880-

1900)

Go West!

• The idea of the “frontier”• Frederick Jackson Turner’s thesis (1893)– “safety valve”– Freedom, democracy, economic mobility

The Myth of the West

• Empty• Blank slate• Free enterprise• Individualism

The Reality

• Family migration• Dispossession of Indians• Labor– Chinese and Mexican migrants– Large-scale agriculture in Cali

• The Homestead Act (1862)– 160 acres of federal land for free– Lived on land 5 years, make improvement– 1.6 million homesteads given out– 270 million acres

The Western Economy

• Mining• Cattle• Fruits and veggies in Cali• Wheat• Oil• Tourism in SoCal• Manufacturing in San Francisco & other cities

From Civil War to Indian War

• US Army adapts methods to destroy Indian economy

• Buffalo already reduced by overhunting, demand for hides

Fighting Back

Geronimo, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse resist US Army

• Resistance broken• Forced onto reservations• Indian children taken from families to

boarding schools

The End

• Dawes Act (1887)– Broke Indian lands into small farms– Sold off much of it to whites– Offered citizenship to “civilized” Indians

• “Ghost Dance” and Wounded Knee Massacre

Global Process

• “Settler societies”• Newcomers move into new territory– Canada– Australia– Argentina– American West

Big Picture

• Westward expansion and industrialization linked• Civil War settled questions and opened up West

to full exploitation• Creation of truly national market through:– new technologies– railroads– settlement– conquest of Indians