Chapter 18: The Machine Age

"Mother" Jones, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and William D. (Big Bill) Haywood

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Eugene V. Debs

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John P. Atgeld

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Muller V. Oregon

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Sameul Gompers

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Terence V. Powderly

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the American Federation of Labor

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the Haymarket riot

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the Homestead Strike

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the Industrial Workers of the World

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the Knights of Labor

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the National Labor Union

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the Pullman strike

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the Southwestern Railroad System Strike of 1886

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the general railway strike of 1877

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southern textile mills

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Lockner v. New York

A 1905 Supreme Court case in which the court decided that baking wasn't a dangerous enough job to justify restricting the right of workers to freely sell their labor and also it invalidated a New York law establishing a longer work day for Baker's. The result of this case was a setback for the progressives and allowed employers to extend working hours for laborers without getting in trouble.

the Edison Electric Light Company

A company founded in 1878 by Edison with the support of investors to promote his research in electricity and incandescent lamps. Through this company, the light bulb and a way for its extended use were found and power was conveniently provided to a large number of customers- including factories, which let working hours to be extended into the night now.

Menlo Park

A research laboratory set up by Edison in NJ during the 1900s. It was the birthplace of electricity, the light bulb, and the birth place of Edison's most famous inventions. Here, a team of experts refined Edison's ideas and translated them into practical inventions.

Thomas A. Edison

American inventor from NJ who was famous for the light bulb and his inventions which use electricity. He also founded the Edison Electric Light Company.

Holden v. Hardy

An 1896 Supreme Court case in which the Supreme Court upheld the law limiting working hours for miners because their work was dangerous and might increase injuries.one of the few court cases where the Supreme Court named a job dangerous and provided workers with protection during this time.

George Westinghouse

An American entrepreneur and engineer who invented the railraod and the air brake; also founded Westinghouse Electric. He solved the problem Edison's system of direct current had- it could only transmit electric power a mile or two. With Westinghouse's ideas, the transmission of electricity became cheaper over long distances.

mass production and the assembly line

Assembly lines assigned each factory worker one task performed repeatedly using the same specialized machine. it created products a lot quicker and made the mass production of goods possible. So, production of goods increased,the prices of goods decreased, and more Americans were able to afford luxuries. This started in the meatpacking and metalworking industries but Henry Ford brought to the automobile industry.

the du Pont family

his family was a family of gunpowder manufacturers who ran EI DuPont de Nemours Company and applied Ford's business strategies to the chemicals and plastic business. The Stanley worked in the nation's first research lab to adapt cellulose to the production of new materials like photographic film ,rubber lacquer ,textile fibers ,and plastics which wrought significant transformation in consumer products.they also pioneered methods of accounting,management and reinvestment of earnings.

the occupational patterns of employed women

n the early 1900s women's occupational patterns changed.the portion of women in domestic service jobs dropped dramatically as a proportion of women in manufacturing jobs increased.the number of women also increased in clerical jobs at machines. by hiring more women than men employers drastically cut labor costs and more job opportunities were made available to women.however their pay was less than men.

producer vs. employee

In the machine age workers could no longer be accurately termed producers.people paid by consumers in accordance with the quality of what they produced now employees were people who worked only one someone needed then receives wages for time not calling.this changing terminology represented multiple things:dramatic shift in the status of labor ,depravation of employees independence, and the transformation of human workers to just parts of machines.

child labor

Mechanization created numerous light tasks, such as running errands and helping machine operators that children could handle for poor wages. this was most common in southern textile mills. mill owners induced white sharecroppers and tenant farm families, who otherwise might not have had any jobs or income, to bind their kids over to factories for low wages. the rough conditions child workers faced prompted the passage of numerous child labor laws.

Samuel Insull

Westinghouse's private secretary and head of the Chicago Edison Company. By attracting investors and opening Edison power plants across the country, Insull amassed an electric-utility empire by the 1920s and made the Chicago Edison company the electricity provider for 39 states.

patent system

Created by the Constitution in the 19th century to promote science and industrial progress. It was a legal system designed to protect the rights of inventors. It allowed Americans to invent useful machines,led to the creation of important machinery that is used frequently today, and gave birth to the marriage of technology and business organization that fed the second industrial revolution.

the "iron law of wages"

David Ricardo formulated this belief that dictated that because the pressure population growth, wages would be just be just high enough to keep workers from starving. in other words, employees pay low wages and if the employee doesn't like the way they are paid they can quit.this system trapped wagers into working hard for little pay because they were easily replaceable. courts denied workers the right to organize and bargain their wages and left them with no choice but to suffer.

Granville T. Woods

He was an engineer and inventor who is known as the black Edison because he patented 35 devices vital to electronics and communications,he invented the steam boiler furnace ,automatic airbrakes,egg incubator ,telegraph device for communication between moving trains and train stations and over 15 electrical devices for trains

economics of scale

The economic principle of mass production to bring down the cost of production in other words the more you produce the less it cost and the cheaper the products cost to the consumer.as a result products are made available to everyone no matter what social class, profits are made for large companies,and large-scale production became more economical.

New York City's Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire

The fire in New York's triangle shirt waist company in 1911 killed 146 people mostly women workers died because the doors were locked and the windows were too high for them to get to the ground .this incident emphasized poor working conditions and led to the creation of federal regulations to protect workers.

Frederick W. Taylor

The original efficiency expert who in the book "the principles of scientific management"from 1911 preached the gospel of efficient management of production time and costs the proper routing and scheduling of work sanitization of tools and equipment etc. His efforts and experimental studies led to the standardization production and increased productivity for large companies .most importantly it started the slow dehumanization of factories for workers by making them work like fast robots to increase productivity.

the Five-Dollar-Day Plan

This is a plan implemented by Ford and his factories that combined wages and profit-sharing to give workers five dollars a day so more of his workers could buy Ford cars. This plan spurred productivity, prevented high labor turnover,and headed off unionization. It also helped Americans afford more products.

The General Electric Company

company founded in the late 1880s-1890s by financers Villard and Morgan after they bought patents in electric lighting and merged small equipment manufacturing companies. Their company is a prime examples of how electricity boosted consumer sales. Along with Westinghouse Electric, this company encouraged the practical application of electricity by establishing research labs that paid scientists to create electrical products for everyday use.

Henry Ford

e was an electrical engineer in Detroit's Edison Company who invented in the Model T, a gasoline burning engine to power vehicles. he also developed the assembly line which quickened production in factories and prompted the automobile industry with his model t.

James B. Duke

e was the owner of an American tobacco Company in the 1900s and responsible for popularizing cigarettes and building the cigarette industry.Duke's American tobacco Company established a virtual monopoly over the processing of raw tobacco into marketable materials.

industrial accidents

repetitive tasks using high speed machinery dulled concentration and the slightest mistake could cause injury. industrialization left numerous casualties from accidents involving machines and workers. since disability insurance and pensions were almost nonexistent, families suffered immensely from these accidents. permanently disabled or even dead workers created hardships for working class families.