CHAPTER 17 QUIZ

American Socialist Party

A dissident faction of De Leon's party, eager to forge stronger ties with organized labor, broke away and in 1901 formed the more eduribv American Socialist Party. They did this because the other party didn't get a lot of votes.

Concentration Power

A system of economic organization were emerging that lodged enormous power in the hands of very few men—the great bankers of New York, industrial titans, and others.

"Taylorism"

By the turn of the century, many industrialists were embracing the new principles of "scientific management," often known as "Taylorism" after its leading theoretician Fredrick Winslow Taylor. Taylor and his many admirers argued that scientific management made human labor compatible with the demands of the machine age. He persuaded employers to take control of the workplace. This sped up production and made workers more interchangeable. Diminished a managers dependence on any particular employee.

Carnegie, Frick, and Morgan

Carnegie, a Scottish immigrant, worked his way up from modest beginnings and, in 1873, opened his own steelworks in Pittsburgh. Soon he dominated the industry. With his associate Henry Clay Frick, he bought up coal mines and leased part of the Mesabi iron range in Minnesota, operated a flee of ore ships on the Great Lakes and acquired railroads. Then in 1901, he sold out for $450 million to the banker Morgan.

Social Darwinism

Darwin's theories argued that the fittest forms of life survived over thousands of years because of their biological fitness. Social Dawinism argued that individuals rose or fell in society because of their innate "fitness" Darwin himself, along with most scientists, debunked Social Darwinism.

Horatio Alger

He was originally a minister in a small town in Massachusetts but was driven from his pulpit as a result of sexual scandals. He moved to new york, where he wrote over 100 celebrated novels— all of them tributes to social mobility and the ability of americans to rise from "rags to riches"

Railroad Strike of 1877

Excitement over the Molly Maguires paled besufebthe near hysteria that gripped the country during the railroad strike of 1877, which began when the eastern railroads announced a 10% wage cut and soon expanded into something approaching a class war. Strikers were disruptive and the president ordered militiamen to supress them, ending with people dying.

Pinkertons

Frick abruptly shut down the plant and called in 300 gaurs from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. On July 6,1892 They approached the plant by river. The strikers poured gasoline on the water, set it on fire, and then met the Pinkertons at the docks with guns and dynamite. The pinkertons surrendered.

Henry George

Henry George was a California writer and activist. Progress and Poverty published in 1879 became one of the best-selling nonfiction works in American publishing history. George blamed social problems on the ablility of a few monopolists to grow wealthy as a result of rising land values.

Henry Ford

In 1896 Henry Ford produced the first of the famous cars that would bear his name. He did it because the automobile industry developed rapidly in the aftermath of these European breakthroughs.

Assembly Line

In 1914, Henry Ford introduced the assembly line in his automobile plants. The assembly line was in a particular place- a factory thought which automobiles moved as they were assembled by workers who specialized in particular tasks. It was also a concept that stressed the complete interchangeablility of parts.

The Wright Brothers

In Ohio, Wilbur and Orville Wright, began to construct a glider in 1899 that could be propelled through the air by an internal combustion engine. By fall of 1904, the wright brothers had improved the plane to the point where they were able to fly over 23 miles, and in the following year they began to take a few passangers on their flights with them.

Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcotts enormously popular novels helped give voice to the offer unstated ambitions of many women. She became a major literacy figure with the publication of Little Women in 1869.

Molly Maguires

Particularly alarming to middle-class Americans was the emergence of the "Molly Maguires" an Irish secret society, in the anthracite coal region of western Pennsylvania. This militant labor organization sometimes used violence and even murder in its battle with coal operators.

monopoly

Relatively few Americans shared the views of those who questioned capitalisn itself. A growing number of people were becoming deeply concerned about the growth of monopoly. Monopolistic industries could charge whatever prices they wished. 1873

Samuel Gompers

Samuel Gompers, the powerful leader of the AFL, concentrated on labors immediate objectives: wages, hours, and working conditions. AFL demanded a national 8 hour workday and called for a general strike if the goal was not achieved by May 1, 1886. and it happened.

gospel of wealth

Some businessmen attempted to temper the harsh philosophy of Social Darwinism with a gentler, if in some ways equally self-serving. People of great wealth, they argued, had not only great power but also a great responsibility to use their riches to advance social progress. 1901

Haymarket bombing

The Haymarket bombing was an alarming symbol of social chaos and radicalism. On May 1 city police had been harassing the strikers, and labor and radical leaders called a protest meeting at Haymarket square. When the police ordered to dispurse someone threw a bomb and killeen 7 policemen and injured 67 others.

Child labor

The decreasing need for skilled work in factories in 1900. At least 1.7 million children under 16 were employed in factorisvand fields: 10% of all girls aged 10-15. 20% percent of all boys held jobs. 60% of child workers were employed in agriculture which was typically exempt from the laws.

Trusts

The failure of the pools led to new techniques of consolidation. The next effort to stabilize prices was the creation of the "trust"—pioneered by Standard Oil in the early 1880s and the banker J. P. Morgan. Stockholders in individual corporations transferred their stocks to a small group of trustees in exchange for shares in the trustees; they simply recieved a share of the profits of the combination. The trustees themselves, on the other hand, might literally own only a few companies but could exercise effective control over many.

Ideology of Individualism

The new rationale for capitalism was based on the belief of individualism— an ideology that would remain at the heart of american conservatism for many decades. Wealthy capitalists defended their wealth by saying that they had earned their wealth and power through their own hard work and their acquisitiveness and thrift. Those who failed had only themselves to blame.

Rockefeller's Standard Oil

The most celebrate corporate empire of the late 19th century was John D. Rockefeller's standard Oil. This happened shortly after the Civil war in cleveland and immediately began trying to eliminate his competition in 1870.

Job Competition

The new immigrants came to America in part to escape poverty and oprressuib in their homelands. They arrival of these new groups heightened ethnic tensions within the working class. Low paid Poles, Greeks and French Canadians began to displace higher paid British and Irish workers in the textile factories of New England in 1885.

steel and railroads

There was an even closer relationship between the emerging steel companies and the railroads. Steel manufactures provided rails and parts for cars; railroads were both markets for and transporters of manufacturer steel. The relationship became more intimate than that. The Pennsylvania railroad actually created the Pennsylvania Steel Company. In the late 19th century.

Vertical Integration

Through vertical integration, a company took over all the different businesses on which it relied for its primary function. This was to create large consolaidation organizations in the 1850s.

Eugene V. Debs and the Railway Union

Workers went on strike and perusaded the militant American Railway Union, led by Eugene V. Debs to support them by refusing to handle Pullman cars and equipment. Within a few days thousands of railroad workers in 27 different dates and territories were on strike. 1893-1894

Horizontal integration

horizontal integration combined a number of firms engaged in the same enterprise into a single corporation such as the consolidation of many different railroad lines into one company. This was to create large consolidation organizations in the 1850s.

Holding Companies

in 1889, Rockefeller, for example, quickly relocated Atandard Oil in New Jersey and created what became known as a Holding company— a central corporate body that would by up the stock of various members of the Standard Oil trust and establish direct, formal ownership of them.

Importance of Goverment Subsidies

total railroad trackage increased form 30,000 miles in 1869 to 193,000 in 1900. subsidies from federal, state, and local governments (along with foreign loans and investments) were vital to this expansion.