Chapter 17/18 Quizlet

Yellow Journalism

Hearst and rival publisher Joseph Pulitzer helped popularize "yellow journalism"- a deliberately sensational, often lurid style of reporting presented in bold graphics, designed to reach a mass audience.

What was America's first major, national labor conflict?How did it end

It was the Great Railroad Strike. It began when the eastern railroads announced a 10% wage cut and which soon expanded into something approaching a class war. Strikers disrupted rail service from Baltimore to St. Louis, destroyed equipment and rioted in the streets of Pittsburgh and other cities. The state militia was called in West Virginia to stop the commotion. In Baltimore, 11 demonstrators died and 40 were wounded. In Philadelphia, the militia opened fire on 1000s of workers and their families who were attempting to block the railroad crossing and killed 20 people.

Describe the changes in income and purchasing power of the urban middle and working classes. Who made the greater gains?Who lagged behind

The salaries of clerks, accountants, middle managers and other "white-collar" workers rose on average 1/3 between 1890 and 1910. Doctors, lawyers and other professionals experienced a particularly dramatic increase in the prestige and profitability of their professions. Iron and steelworkers saw their hourly wages increase by 1/3 between 1890 and 1910. However, industries with large female, African American or Mexican workforces saw very small increases, as did almost all industries in the South.

Describe the beginnings of the oil industry in the United States. What was the main use of petroleum at first

The steel industry's need for lubrication for its machines helped create the oil industry. In the 1850s, George Bissell showed that the substance (oil) could be burned in lamps and that it could also yield such products as paraffin, naphtha and lubricating oil. After this, oil wells began to appear.

Vertical Integration

The taking over of all the different businesses on which a company relied for its primary function. Vertical integration is what Carnegie did.

Women's Trade Union League

Women responded to their exclusion from unions and created their own organization. But after several frustrating years of attempting to unionize women, the organization turned the bulk of its attention to securing protective legislation from women workers, not general organization and mobilization of labor.

Frederick Winslow Taylor

"Scientific management" or "Taylorism" was principle in the beginning of the 20th century industry. The leading theoretician was Frederick Winslow Taylor. He urged employers to reorganize the production process by subdividing tasks and it would also make workers more interchangeable and this diminish a manger's dependence on any particular employee. It would also reduce the need for skilled workers. Taylor argued that this was a way to make human labor compatible with the demands of the machine age.

What new construction technologies made the "skyscraper" possible

By the 1850s, there had been successful experiments with machine-powered passenger elevators; and by the 1870s, new methods of construction using cast iron and steel beams made it easier to build tall buildings.

J.P. Morgan

Carnegie sold out for $450 million to Morgan who merged the Carnegie interests with others ot create the giant United State Steel Corporation, a $1.4 billion enterprise that controlled almost 2/3 of the nation's steel production. He also perfected the "trust" system. He was one of the great bankers of New York.

Darwinism

Discovered and named by Charles Darwin. Darwinism argued that the human species had evolved from earlier forms of life through a process of "natural selection." It challenged the biblical story of the Creation and almost every other tenet of traditional American religious faith

Stephen Crane

He was best known for his novel of the Civil War, The Red Badge of Courage. However, he was also the author of an earlier, powerful indictment of the plight of the working class. Crane created a sensation in 1893 when he published Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, a grim picture of urban poverty and slum life.

Andrew Carnegie

He was born in Scotland and came to the U.S. in 1848 at the age of 13 and soon found work as a messenger n a Pittsburgh telegraph office. His skill in learning to transcribe telegraphic messages (one of the first telegraphers in the country able to transcribe telegraphic messages by sound) brought him ot the attention of a Pennsylvania Railroad official and before he was 20, he had begun his ascent to the highest ranks of industry. After the Civil War, he shifted his attention to the growing iron industry and then invested all of his money into steel mills. 20 years later he was one of the wealthiest men in the world.

Theodore Dreiser

He was influential in the regard that he encouraged writers to abandon the genteel traditions of earlier times and turn to the social dislocations and injustices of the present. He did so both in Sister Carrie and in other, later novels.

John Peter Altgeld

He was the governor of Illinois and had sympathies for workers and their grievances. He had criticized the trials of the Haymarket anarchists and had pardoned the convicted men who were still in prison when he took office. He refused to call out the militia to protect employers.

Eugene V. Debs

He was the leader of the American Railway Union and was persuaded into helping the workers at Pullman by refusing to handle Pullman cars and equipment. The railroad became paralyzed and the federal government had to send troops to prevent the strike and when the strikers resisted, they were imprisoned.

Jacob Riis

A Danish immigrant and New York newspaper reporter and photographer. He shocked many middle-class Americans with his sensational descriptions and pictures of tenement life in his 1890 book, How the Other Half Lives. He said that slum dwellings were almost universally sunless, practically airless and poisoned by summer stenches.

William James

A Harvard psychologist. He was the most prominent publicist of the new theory of pragmatism, although earlier intellectuals such as Charles S. Peirce and later ones such as John Dewey were also important to its development and dissemination.

National Consumers League

A new movement was formed, the consumer protection movement. The National Consumers League was formed in the 1890s under the leadership of Florence Kelley. It attempted to mobilize the power of women as consumers to force retailers and manufactures to improve wages and working conditions for women workers. By saying they were consumers, middle-class women were finally able to become active participants in public life.

Holding Companies

A new type of consolidation emerged which was changing its laws of incorporation to permit companies to buy up other companies. That made the trust unnecessary and permitted actual corporate merges. By the end of the 19th century, 1% of the corporations in America were able to control more than 33% of the manufacturing.

Kate Chopin

A southern writer who explored the oppressive features of traditional marriage. She encountered wide spread public abuse after publication of her shocking novel The Awakening in 1899. It described a young wife and mother who abandons her family in search of personal fulfillment. It was formally banned in some communities.

Scientific Management

Also known as "Taylorism" (see Frederick Winslow Taylor)

What negative consequences of monopoly did many Americans come to fear

Americans blamed monopoly for creating artificially high prices and for producing a highly unstable economy. In the absence of competition, monopolistic industries could charge whatever prices they wished. The artificially high prices contributed to the economy's instability, as production constantly outpaced demand. Many Americans hated monopoly because the rise of large combinations seemed to threaten the ability of individuals to advance in the world. To men, monopoly threatened the ideal of the wage-earning husband capable for supporting a family and prospering, because combinations seemed to reduce opportunities to succeed. Adding to the resentment of monopoly was the emergence of a new class of enormously and conspicuously wealthy people, whose lifestyles became an affront to those struggling to stay afloat.

Social Darwinism

Lots of great businesses believed in Social Darwinism. They claimed wealth was a reward because of hard work, acquisitiveness and thrift. The English philosopher Herbert Spencer was the first and most important proponent. He argued that society benefited from the elimination of the unfit and the survival of the strong and talented. William Graham Sumner did not agree with everything Spencer wrote, but he did share Spencer's belief that individuals must have absolute freedom to struggle, to compete, to succeed, or to fail.

What factors contributed to the rise of political machines and their bosses?What were the positive as well as the negative aspects of boss rule in large cities

Newly arrived immigrants, many of whom could not speak English, needed help in adjusting to American urban life. For most residents of the inner cities, the principal source of assistance was the political machine. The urban machine owed its existence to the power vacuum that the chaotic growth of cities had created. It was also a product of the potential voting power of large immigrant communities. Any politician who could mobilize that power stood to gain enormous influence, if not public office. And so there emerged a group of urban bosses, "bosses," themselves often of foreign birth or parentage; many of them were Irish and almost all were men. Boss rule helped immigrants and they also modernized city infrastructures, expanded the role of government and created stability in a political and social climate that otherwise would have lacked a center. (For Negative see Tammany Hall)

What social institutions and community actions helped facilitate immigrant assimilation, especially that of European immigrants, to life in America

Public schools taught children in English and employers often insisted that workers speak English on the job. Although there were merchants in immigrant communities who sold ethnically distinctive foods and clothing, most stores by necessity sold mainly American products, forcing immigrants to adapt their diets, wardrobes and lifestyles to American norms. Church leaders were often native-born Americans or assimilated immigrants who encouraged their parishioners to adopt American ways. Some even reformed their theology.

Pullman Strike

The Pullman strike was when the people living in Pullman's town had their wages cut by 25%, but their rent still remained very high. Workers went on strike and persuaded the American Railway Union to support them by refusing to handle Pullman cars and equipment. General Managers' Association opposed this and it persuaded its member companies to discharge switchmen who refused to handed Pullman cars. The governor of Illinois supported the workers and would not send troops to solve the problem, so the national government was asked to fix it and they imprisoned the strikers.

What kept alive the ideology of individualism and the faith in the "self-made man" among the American masses

The defenders of the new industrial economy said that industry was providing every individual with a chance to succeed and attain great wealth. There was only a small amount of truth in these claims. There were around 4,000 millionaires in America after the Civil War and only a few like, Carnegie and Rockefeller had begun as relatively poor and worked their way up. Also there were stories like this, there were also stories of people moving from riches to rags.

National Labor Union

The first attempt to federate separate unions into a single national organization. Created by William H. Sylvis. It was a polyglot association claiming 640,000 members that included a variety of reform groups having little direction relationship with labor. After the Panic of 1873, the union disintegrated and disappeared. This union also excluded women workers.

William M. Tweed

The most famously corrupt city boss. Boss of New York City's Tammany Hall in the 1860s and 1870s, whose excesses finally landed him in jail in 1872.

What were the uncertainties and hazards of industrial labor

The workers were paid very little that they were always considered close to poverty. The most disturbing thing was that managers started to seize all control the workers had, when lead to an abuse of workers. There were many hazards in industrial labor. They worked 10-12 hours; 6 days a week and many worked in severely unsafe or unhealthy factories. This meant that industrial accidents were frequent and severe. Compensation to the victims was often limited until the early 20th century.

Wilbur and Orville Wright

They owned a bicycle shop in which they began to construct a glider that could be propelled through the air by an internal combustion engine. In 1903, Orville made a test flight where the plane took off by itself and traveled 120 feet in 12 seconds under its own power. In 1904, the brothers had improved the plane and it was able to fly 23 miles.

Trusts

Trust became a term for any great economic combination. But the trust was in fact a particular kind of organization. Under a trust agreement, stockholders in individual corporations transferred their stocks to a small group of trustees in exchange for shares in the trust itself. Owners of trust certificates often had no direct control over the decisions of the trustees, but the trustees might own only a few companies, but could exercise effective control over many.

Summarize the Connecting Themes section of the chapter.

Chapter 17 focuses on big business and industrialization. There were many reasons for industrial growth, the development of the corporation and how businesses consolidated into monopolies and trusts. There were also many ways in which the power of big business was increased and how growing inequities in wealth and degenerate working conditions occurred as a reaction from disadvantaged groups and other social groups. Also consider the success various groups had in combating the power of big business. Be aware of the justification of the capitalistic system and the attacks on the excesses of the system. Talk about organized labor. And how the labor force was affected by migration patterns, immigration and the increasing employment of women and children. Also consider the migration patterns that led to the growth of cities and how the urban environment affected people and society.

Molly Maguires

When labor disputes with employers turned bitter and violent, as they occasionally did, much of the public instinctively blamed the workers for the trouble, rarely on the employers. The Molly Maguires were a militant labor organization in the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania. The Mollies operated within the Ancient Order of Hibernians, an Irish fraternal society. They attempted to intimidate the coal operators through violence and occasionally murder and they added to the growing perception that labor activism was motivated by dangerous radicals.

John D. Rockefeller

At the start of his company, Rockefeller allied himself with other wealthy capitalists and proceeded to methodically buy out competing refineries (horizontal expansion). He then expended vertically; he built his own barrel factories, terminal warehouses and pipelines. Standard Oil owned its own freight cars and developed its own marketing organization.

Compare and contrast the vertical and horizontal integration strategies of business combination. Which approaches did Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller utilize?What "curse" of the business world was consolidation designed to attack

Horizontal integration was the combining of a number of firms engaged in the same enterprise into a single corporation (making many railroad lines into one). The other method was vertical integration-the taking over of all the different businesses on which a company relied for its primary function. Vertical integration is what Carnegie did. At the start of his company, Rockefeller allied himself with other wealthy capitalists and proceeded to methodically buy out competing refineries (horizontal expansion). He then expended vertically; he built his own barrel factories, terminal warehouses and pipelines. Standard Oil owned its own freight cars and developed its own marketing organization. The curse of the modern economy: 'cutthroat competition," was what most businessmen claimed to believe in free enterprise and a competitive marketplace, but in fact they feared the existence of too many competing firms, convinced that substantial competition could spell instability and ruin for all. So, most capitalists saw to absorb the competing industry.

America's new urban working-class was drawn primarily from what two groups

Most immigrants to eastern industrial cities came from England, Ireland and northern Europe and later the immigration shifted to large numbers of southern and eastern Europeans. In the West, the Mexicans and until the Chinese Exclusion act, Asians were the main laborers.

Why did most immigrants settle in industrial cities?What were the ethnic neighborhoods like

Most of the new immigrants lacked the capital to buy farmland and lacked the education to establish themselves in professions; so most of them moved into industrial cities to find work. Many immigrants created close-knit communities within cities: Italian, Polish, Jewish, Slavic, Chinese, French-Canadian, Mexican and other neighborhoods attempted to re-create in the New World many of the features of the Old. The immigrant neighborhoods offered newcomers much that was familiar. They could find newspapers and theaters in their native languages, stores selling their native foods, churches or synagogues and fraternal organizations that provided links with their national pasts. Many immigrants still maintained close ties with their native countries-through relatives.

What was the attraction of the city, and what were the main sources of urban growth in this period

Natural reproduction only attributed to a small amount of the growing city population; the main amount of people were immigrants. The city attracted people from the countryside because it offered conveniences, entertainments and cultural experiences unavailable in rural communities. Cities gave women the opportunity to act in ways that were not allowed in smaller communities. Gays were able to establish communities. Cities attracted people because they offered more and better-paying jobs than were available in rural America or in the foreign economies many immigrants were fleeing. Another reason why people moved to cities was because transportation was much easier and efficient; railroads, and large steam-powered ocean liners.

American Federation of Labor

The AFL was an association of autonomous craft unions and represented mainly skilled workers. The AFL male leaders were hostile to the idea of women entering the paid workforce because they believed women were weak and employers could easily take advantage of them by paying them less than men. Samuel Gompers was the powerful leader that supported this idea. The AFL still sought equal pay for those women who did work and even hired some female organizers to encourage unionization in industries dominated by women (equal pay means driving them out of the work force). The AFL concentrated on the relationship between labor and management. It supported the immediate objectives of most workers: better wages and working conditions. It also demanded a national 8-hour day.

Armory Show

The Ashcan School put it together. They showed their interest in new forms of expressionism and abstraction in 1913 when they helped stage the famous and controversial Armory Show in New York City, which displayed the works of French Postimpressionists and of some American moderns.

Explain the new Bessemer and open-hearth technologies developed for the large-scale production of durable steel. What impact did the vast expansion of steel production have on transportation industries in the late nineteenth century

The Bessemer method consisted of blowing air through molten iron to burn out the impurities. The open-hearth process was another process that worked in conjunction with the Bessemer process. These techniques made possible to production of steel in great quantities and large dimensions. In Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, the steel industry erupted because of the already existing iron industry and there was a new demand for coal. Steel production in the Great Lakes was possible only because of the availability of steam freighters that could carry ore on the lakes. Shippers also used new steam engines to speed the unloading of ore, a task that previously had been performed slowly and laboriously. Steel manufacturers and rail companies became close; steel manufacturers provided rails and parts for railroad cars. The Pennsylvania Railroad created its own steel company.

Homestead Strike

The Homestead Strike was where the steel industry started to introduce new production methods and new patterns of organization that were streamlining the steelmaking process and reducing the companies' dependence on skilled labor. Henry Clay Frick and Carnegie had decided that the Amalgamated had to go. Over the next two years, they repeatedly cut wages and at one point, the Amalgamated called for a strike to which Frick abruptly shut down the plant and called in 300 guards from the Pinkerton Detective Agency to enable the company to hire nonunion workers. The strikers and Pinkertons fought a battle and after several hours the workers won. The governor of Pennsylvania then sent the state's entire National Guard to Homestead and production resumed because of the military. The strike was a symbol of the general erosion of union strength in the late 19th century as factory labor became increasingly unskilled and workers thus became easier to replace.

"City Beautiful" Movement

American cities began to clear away older neighborhoods and streets and create grand, monumental avenues lined with new, more impressive buildings. The movement was led by the architect of the Great White City, Daniel Burnham. The movement aimed to impose a similar order and symmetry on the disordered life of cities around the country. However, they rarely overcame obstacles because of private landowners and complicated politics.

What motives led to the movement for great urban parks, libraries, museums, and other public facilities in the late nineteenth century?What park became the standard

Cities were built haphazardly, but they started to be reformed and redone. The parks reflected the desire of a growing number of urban leaders to provide an antidote to the congestion of the city landscape. The most popular park was Central Park which was deliberately created to look as little like the city as possible. Wealthy residents of cities were the principal force behind the creation of the public buildings and sometimes parks. They wanted the public life of the city to provide them with amenities to match their expectations.

Describe how railroads took the lead in new patterns of business organization and management in the late nineteenth century. What legal and financial advantages does the corporation form of enterprise offer to business and investors

Corporations emerged as a major force when industrialists realized that no single person or group of limited partners could finance their great ventures. Selling stocks became a popular practice because of "limited liability" meaning you could not become in debt. This new practice made it possible for entrepreneurs to gather vast sums of capital and undertake great projects. The railroad companies were the first to adopt this new corporate form of organization. As railroads expanded, investments from federal, state and abroad were vital to the new expansion. New railroad combinations emerged that brought most of the nation's rails under the control of a very few men.

Tammany Hall

George Washington Plunkitt called open graft "honest graft." For example, a politician might discover in advance where a new road or streetcar line was to be built, buy an interest in the land near it and profit when the city had to buy the land from him or when property values rose as a result of the construction. But there was also covert graft: kickbacks from contractors in exchange for contracts to build streets, sewers, public buildings and other projects; the sale of franchises for the operation of such public utilities as street railways, waterworks and electric light and power systems.

D.W. Griffith

He carried he motion picture into a new era with his silent epics-The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, and others-which introduced serious plots and elaborate productions to filmmaking.

Edward Bellamy/Nationalism

His novel Looking Backward described the experiences of a young Bostonian who went into a hypnotic sleep in 1887 and awoke in the year 2000 to find a new social order where want politics and vice were unknown, the new society had emerged from a peaceful, evolutionary process. The large trusts of the late 19th century had continued to grow and combine until they formed a single great trust, controlled by the government, which absorbed all the businesses of all the citizens and distributed the abundance of the industrial economy equally among all the people. Class divisions had disappeared. He labeled the philosophy behind this vision "nationalism," and his work inspired the formation of more than 160 nationalist Clubs to propagate his ideas.

Horizontal Integration

Horizontal integration was the combining of a number of firms engaged in the same enterprise into a single corporation (making many railroad lines into one).

What organizations and laws resulted from the resentment that many native-born Americans felt toward the new immigrants?Why didn't Congress pass more such laws

In 1887, Henry Bowers founded the American Protective Association, a new group committed to stopping the immigrant tide. In 1894, the Immigration Restriction League was formed with the belief of screening immigrants, through literacy tests and other standards designed to separate the desirable form the undesirable. In 1882, Congress passed laws to restrict the Chinese immigration and in the same year, Congress denied entry to "undesirables"-convicts, paupers, the mentally incompetent-and placed a tax of 50 cents on each person admitted. Later legislation of the 1890s enlarged the list of those barred from immigrating and increased the tax. Congress later passed literacy requirements for immigrants in 1897, but Grover Cleveland vetoed it. The restrictions had limited success because many native-born Americans welcomed immigration and exerted strong political pressure against the restrictions.

Compare and contrast Social Darwinism and the Gospel of Wealth. Who was the principal proponent of the latter

Lots of great businesses believed in Social Darwinism. They claimed wealth was a reward because of hard work, acquisitiveness and thrift. The English philosopher Herbert Spencer was the first and most important proponent. He argued that society benefited from the elimination of the unfit and the survival of the strong and talented. William Graham Sumner did not agree with everything Spencer wrote, but he did share Spencer's belief that individuals must have absolute freedom to struggle, to compete, to succeed, or to fail. The Gospel of Wealth was that rich people believed that the rich had great power and great responsibilities. It was their duty to use their riches to advance social progress. Andrew Carnegie said that the wealthy should consider all revenues in excess of their own needs as "trust funds" to be used for the good of the community. This idea led to the practice of the rich donating their money to foundations and creating institutions to help those less fortunate. Russel H. Conwell became the most prominent spokesman for the idea. He told stories of many individuals who had found opportunities for extraordinary wealth in their own backyards. He claimed that most of the millionaires in the country had begun on the lowest rung of the economic ladder. Horatio Alger wrote celebrated novels about poor boys who rise from rags to riches.

Assimilation

Many of the new immigrants had come to America with romantic visions of the new World. And however disillusioning they might find their first contact with the United States, they usually retained the dream of becoming true "Americans." The urge to assimilate put a particular strain on relations between men and women in immigrant communities because immigrant nations treated women subordinately as well as having parents completely control their daughters until marriage.

Upton Sinclair

Published The Jungle in 1906, a novel designed to reveal the depravity of capitalism It exposed abuses in the American meatpacking industry; and while it did not inspire the kind of socialist response for which he had hoped, it did help produce legislative action to deal with the problem.

Gospel of Wealth

The Gospel of Wealth was that rich people believed that the rich had great power and great responsibilities. It was their duty to use their riches to advance social progress. Andrew Carnegie said that the wealthy should consider all revenues in excess of their own needs as "trust funds" to be used for the good of the community. This idea led to the practice of the rich donating their money to foundations and creating institutions to help those less fortunate.

Haymarket Bombing

The Haymarket affair was where the city police had been harassing the strikers and labor and radical leaders called a protest meeting at the Square. When the police ordered the crowd to disperse, someone threw a bomb that killed 7 officers and wounded 67 other people. The police killed 8 total strikers and many people demanded retribution for the bombing. To most middle-class Americans, the affair was an alarming symbol of social chaos and radicalism. "Anarchism" now became a code word in the public mind for terrorism and violence. This image became one of the most fighting in the American public's eyes and it became an obstacle for the AFL and Knights.

Which immigrant groups adapted especially well economically?Which groups lagged?Why

The Jews and Germans advanced economically more rapidly than others (like the Irish). One explanation is that, by huddling together in ethnic neighborhoods, immigrant groups tended to reinforce the cultural values of their previous societies. When those values were particularly well suited to economic advancement in an industrial society, ethnic identification may have helped members of a group to improve their lots. When other values predominated-maintaining community solidarity sustaining family ties, preserving order-progress could be less rapid.

What were the main environmental problems of the cities?What improvements were made in the early twentieth century

The improper disposal of human and industrial waste was a common feature of almost all large cities in the late 19th century. Such practices contributed to the pollution of rivers and lakes and also, in many cases, to the compromising of the city's drinking water. The presence of domestic animals contributed to the problems as well. Air quality in many cities was poor as well. Few Americans had he severe problems that London experienced, but air pollution form factories and from stoves and furnaces in offices, homes and other buildings was constant and at time severe. By the early 20th century, reformers were working toward a cleaner America. In 1910, most large American cities had constructed sewage disposal systems to protect the drinking water of their inhabitants and to prevent the great bacterial plagues that impure water had helped create in the past. In 1912, the federal government created the Public Health Service, which was charged with preventing such occupational diseases as tuberculosis anemia and carbon dioxide poising, which were common in the garment industry. It attempted to create common health standards for all factories, but it had a limited impact. It did establish the protection of public health as a responsibility of the federal government and also helped bring to public attention the environmental forces that endangered health. (See Alice Hamilton).

Ashcan School

The members of the school produced work startling in its naturalism and stark in its portrayal of the social realities of the era. John Sloan portrayed the dreariness f American urban slums; George Bellows caught the vigor and violence of his time in paintings and drawings f prize fights. The Ashcan artists were also among the first Americans to appreciate expressionism and abstraction.

Samuel Gompers

The powerful leader of the AFL. He once said, "it is the so-called competition of the unorganized, defenseless women worker, the girl and the wife, that often tends to reduce the wages of the father and husband." He talked often about the importance of women remaining in the home. He believed strongly that a test of a man's worth was his ability to support a family and that women in the workforce would undermine men's positions as heads of their families. He also accepted the basic premises of capitalism and opposed the creation of a worker's party.

How did large cities expand their boundaries and the land available for development in this period

There were landfill projects like the "Back Bay" one in Boston. Chicago expanded and raised the street level for the entire city to help avoid the problems the marshy land created. In D.C. large areas were filled in and slated for development.

Compare and contrast the urban and suburban residential patterns of the wealthy and moderately well-to-do with those of the majority

The richest urban residents lived in palatial mansions in the heart of the city. The moderately well-to-do and an increasing number of wealthy people took advantage of the less expensive land on the edges of the city and settled in new suburbs, linked to the downtowns by trains or streetcars or improved roads. Real estate developers worked to create and promote suburban communities that would appeal to nostalgia for the countryside that many city dwellers felt. Affluent suburbs were notable for lawns, trees and houses designed to look manorial. Everyone else living in the city stayed in the city centers and rented; they were often cramped into tight quarters in poor living conditions. African Americans were obviously treated worse.

Although the age of the automobile and the era of significant American aircraft production would not fully arrive until the 1910s and 1920s, what developments of the 1890s and the first decade of the twentieth century laid the basis for the later boom

There were two things that automobiles needed to be a new working technology; the creation of gasoline and the internal combustion engine. Gasoline was the result of an extraction process developed in the late 19th century by which lubricating oil and fuel oil were separated from crude oil. Nicolaus Otto created an engine that worked, but not without a constant flow of gas, but one of his former employees, Gottfried Daimler, created an engine that could be used in cars. Charles and Frank Duryea built the first gasoline-driven motor vehicle in America in 1893. 3 years later Henry Ford produced the first of the famous cars that would bear his name. There were new tests to try to make air travel possible; the first major breakthrough coming from the Wright brothers. They made a glider that was propelled through the air by an internal combustion engine and the farthest it went was 23 miles. America was the first country to build a plane, even though the infrastructure was slow to start (The National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics was created in 1915).

Although the term "trust" came to be a general term for any big business, there were legal differences between a formal "trust" and a "holding company." Explain the differences. What were the advantages of the latter

Trust became a term for any great economic combination. But the trust was in fact a particular kind of organization. Under a trust agreement, stockholders in individual corporations transferred their stocks to a small group of trustees in exchange for shares in the trust itself. Owners of trust certificates often had no direct control over the decisions of the trustees, but the trustees might own only a few companies, but could exercise effective control over many. A new type of consolidation emerged which was changing its laws of incorporation to permit companies to buy up other companies. That made the trust unnecessary and permitted actual corporate merges. By the end of the 19th century, 1% of the corporations in America were able to control more than 33% of the manufacturing. A system of economic organization was emerging that lodged enormous power in the hands of a very few men.

Limited Liability

Under the laws of incorporation, business organizations could raise money by selling stock to members of the public. At the same time, affluent Americans began to consider the purchase of stock a good investment even if they were not involved in the business whose stock they were purchasing. What made the practice appealing was that investors had only limited liability-that is, they risked only the amount of their investments.

Describe the urban hazards of fire, disease, and sanitation and the public and private responses to them. What was the effect of the several great fires and disasters from 1871 to 1906

Chicago and Boston suffered great fires in 1871. Other cities-among them Baltimore and San Francisco, where a tremendous earthquake produced a catastrophic fire in 1906-experienced similar disasters. The great fires were terrible and deadly experiences, but they also encouraged the construction of fireproof buildings and the development of the professional fire departments. They also forced cities to rebuilt at a time when new technological and architectural innovations were available.

How did expanding research and development activities, "scientific management," and mass production reshape American industrial production?What role did General Electric and the Ford Motor Company play in these early twentieth-century developments

General Electric created one of the first corporate laboratories in 1900. And 13 years later many other companies were also budgeting hundreds of thousands of dollars each year for research by their own engineers and scientists. This new corporate research came with a decline in government support for research; which was helpful because it helped corporations attract skilled researchers who had once worked with the government and it decentralized the source of research funding and made it so research would move in many different directions. Scientific management or Taylorism started to be used. Taylor urged employers to reorganize the production process by subdividing tasks, this would speed up production and it would also make workers more interchangeable and this diminish a manger's dependence on any particular employee. It would also reduce the need for skilled workers. Taylor argued that this was a way to make human labor compatible with the demands of the machine age. Henry Ford created the moving assembly line which greatly increased production time and efficiency.

Henry James

He lived the major part of his adult life in England and Europe and produced a series of coldly realistic novels-The American, Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, and others-that showed his ambivalence about the character of modern, industrial civilization.

Henry George

He published Progress and Poverty. In the book, he tries to explain why poverty existed amid the wealth created by modern industry. He blamed social problems on the ability of a few monopolists to grow wealthy as a result of rising land values. George later proposed a single tax to replace all other taxes, which would destroy monopolies, distribute wealth more equally and eliminate poverty. He later almost became the mayor of New York.

Horatio Alger

He wrote books about poor young adults finding a stroke of luck and through hard work and aggressiveness the person rises in the world and becomes a successful man. Alger started out as a Unitarian minister and later wrote books. His purpose was to exert a salutary influence upon the middle-class by sending them messages of what energy, ambition and an honest purpose may achieve. He also wanted to show his readers the life and experiences of the friendless and vagrant children in the cities. Most Americans liked his stories because it reinforced the myth about rags to riches. Although, he placed great emphasis on the moral qualities of his heroes, many of his readers ignored the messages and clung simply to the image of sudden and dramatic success.

Tenements

It originally referred to a multiple-family renal building, but it later was being used to describe slum dwellings only. The first tenements, built in New York City in 1850, had been hailed as a great improvement in housing for the poor. But, they soon became bad; windowless rooms, little to no plumbing or central heating and often rows of privies in the basement were examples of how bad they got. Tenements were also crowded with 3, 4 and sometimes many more people crammed into each small room.

How did the immigrants, rising in number after the 1880s, differ in ethnic background and economic status from most of the earlier immigrants

Many young rural women were moving to the cities because opportunities in the farm economy were limited. Southern blacks started to move into the cities as well. They started moving because of the poverty, debt, violence and oppression in the rural south. There were not many factory jobs for blacks and there were no professional opportunities; so urban blacks tended to work as cooks, janitors, domestic servants. Most immigrants were from Europe. There were new groups from Eastern Europe: Italians, Greeks, Slavs, Slovaks, Russian Jews, Armenians and others. In earlier stages of immigration most new immigrants from Europe were at least modestly prosperous and educated. Germans and Scandinavians in particular.

Contrast the earlier immigrants to the United States with those who came to dominate by the turn of the century. What attracted immigrants, especially the later groups, to the United States?How did native-born Americans and earlier immigrants react

New immigrants came to escape poverty and oppression in their homelands. They were also lured by expectations of new opportunities. Most of these were false promises though. Railroads tried to lure immigrants into their western landholdings by distributing misleading advertisements overseas. Industrial employers actively recruited immigrant workers under the Contract of Labor Law which permitted them to pay for the passage of workers in advance and deduct the amount later from their wages. The low-paid Poles, Greeks and French Canadians began to displace higher-paid British and Irish workers in the textile factories of New England. Italians, Slavs and Poles emerged as a major source of labor for the mining industry in the East. Chinese and Mexicans competed with Anglo-Americans and African Americans in mining, farmwork and factory labor in California, Colorado and Texas.

Describe the radical and idealistic alternative visions of late-nineteenth-century writers and activists. How realistic were such views

One philosophy by Lester Frank Ward, was that civilization was governed not by natural selection but by human intelligence, which was capable of shaping society as it wished. He thought that an active government engaged in positive planning was society's best hope. The people could then intervene in the economy and adjust it to serve their needs. Other Americans joined the Socialist Labor Party. The party attracted a modest following in the industrial cities, but it failed to become a major political force and later part of it split off and formed the American Socialist Party. Henry George tried to explain why poverty existed amid the wealth created by modern industry. He blamed social problems on the ability of a few monopolists to grow wealthy as a result of rising land values. George later proposed a single tax to replace all other taxes, which would destroy monopolies, distribute wealth more equally and eliminate poverty. Edward Bellamy wrote about a person waling up tin the year 2000 where politics, want and vice were unknown. The large trusts of the late 19th century had continued to grow and combine until they formed a single great trust, controlled by the government, which absorbed all the businesses of all the citizens and distributed the abundance of the industrial economy equally among all he people.

What factors combined to help explain why organized labor remained relatively weak before World War I

Only 4% of all workers belonged to unions in 1900. The AFL excluded unskilled workers as well as women and black and recent immigrants-all people that were the constitution of the labor force. Tensions between different ethnic and racial groups kept laborers divided. Another weakness was that many immigrant workers came to America intending to remain only briefly. Their assumption was that they had no long-range future in the country and this eroded their willingness to organize. Other workers both natives and immigrants were moving from one job to another, not in one place long enough to join a union. The most important reason was that the forces against them were strong. They faced corporate organizations with vast wealth and power, which were generally determined to crush any efforts by workers to challenge their prerogatives-not just through brute force, but also through infiltration of unions, espionage within working-class communities and sabotage of organizational efforts.

In what ways was the huge migration into the United States part of a worldwide phenomenon?What were the "push" and "pull" factors that brought immigrants to the U.S.

Population growth and industrialization affected almost every nation everywhere, not just America. Europe's population almost doubled from 1850 to WWI. From 1800 to the start of WWI, 50 million Europeans migrated to new lands overseas. Italy, Russia and Poland were among the biggest sources of late-19th-century migrants. Almost 2/3 of these immigrants came to the United States. There were also vast numbers of migrants from Asia, Africa and the Pacific islands in search of better lives. Most moved as indentured servants, agreeing to a term of servitude in their new land in exchange for food, shelter and transportation. Industrialists in America wanted immigrants for cheap labor and industrialists and plantation owners outside of America wanted immigrants, that were indentured servants, to work for them.

What bred the increasing crime rate of late-nineteenth-century America?How did the cities respond

Poverty and crowding naturally bred crime and violence. Much of it was relatively minor, the work of pickpockets, con artists, swindlers and petty thieves. But some was more dangerous; the American murder rate rose from 25 people in 1million to 100 people in 1million. The rising crime rates encouraged many cities to develop larger and more professional police forces. In the early 19th century, police forces had often been private and informal organizations. By the end of the century, professionalized public police departments were a part of the life of virtually every city and town. They worked closely with district attorneys and other public prosecutors who were also becoming more numerous and more important in city life. However, the police themselves could also spawn corruption through the treating of whites and blacks and the rich and poor.

How did the rapidly expanding railroads of this era contribute to the expansion of the American economy

Railroads helped determine the path by which agricultural and industrial economies developed. When railroad lines ran through sparsely populated regions, new farms and other economic activity quickly sprang up along the routes. When they reached forests, lumbers came quickly and began cutting down timber to send back to towns and cities for sale. When railroads moved through the great plains of the West, they brought buffalo hunters.

Mass Transit

Streetcars drawn on tracks by horses had been introduced into some cities even before the Civil War, but the horsecars were not fast enough. In 1870, New York opened its first elevated railway. New York, Chicago, San Francisco and other cities also experimented with cable cars. Richmond introduced the first electric trolley line in 1888 and by 1895 such systems were operating in 850 towns and cities. In 1897, Boston opened the first American subway when it put some of its trolley lines underground.

Compare and contrast the Haymarket affair, Homestead strike, and Pullman strike. On balance, what was their effect on the organized labor movement

The Haymarket affair was where the city police had been harassing the strikers and labor and radical leaders called a protest meeting at the Square. When the police ordered the crowd to disperse, someone threw a bomb that killed 7 officers and wounded 67 other people. The police killed 8 total strikers and many people demanded retribution for the bombing. To most middle-class Americans, the affair was an alarming symbol of social chaos and radicalism. "Anarchism" now became a code word in the public mind for terrorism and violence. This image became one of the most fighting in the American public's eyes and it became an obstacle for the AFL and Knights. The Homestead Strike was where the steel industry started to introduce new production methods and new patterns of organization that were streamlining the steelmaking process and reducing the companies' dependence on skilled labor. Henry Clay Frick and Carnegie had decided that the Amalgamated had to go. Over the next two years, they repeatedly cut wages and at one point, the Amalgamated called for a strike to which Frick abruptly shut down the plant and called in 300 guards from the Pinkerton Detective Agency to enable the company to hire nonunion workers. The strikers and Pinkertons fought a battle and after several hours the workers won. The governor of Pennsylvania then sent the state's entire National Guard to Homestead and production resumed because of the military. The strike was a symbol of the general erosion of union strength in the late 19th century as factory labor became increasingly unskilled and workers thus became easier to replace. The Pullman strike was when the people living in Pullman's town had their wages cut by 25%, but their rent still remained very high. Workers went on strike and persuaded the American Railway Union to support them by refusing to handle Pullman cars and equipment. General Managers' Association opposed this and it persuaded its member companies to discharge switchmen who refused to handed Pullman cars. The governor of Illinois supported the workers and would not send troops to solve the problem, so the national government was asked to fix it and they imprisoned the strikers.

Knights of Labor

The Knights were founded by Uriah S. Stephens. Membership was open to all workers and most business and professional people. They welcomed women members (factory and domestic servants and worked in their own homes). Leonora Barry ran the Woman's Bureau of the Knights. Members met in local assemblies which took different forms. They were loosely affiliated with a national general assembly. Their program was similarly vague; they championed an 8-hour day and abolition of child labor and the leaders wanted to replace the wage system with a new cooperative system. Under the leadership of Terence V. Powderly, the organization came out of the shadows and started to go on strike and riot. One strike was successful, but then another was crushed and the power of the union failed and it fell apart.

Compare and contrast the organization, membership, leadership, and programs of the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor. Why did the AFL succeed, while the Knights disappeared

The Knights were founded by Uriah S. Stephens. Membership was open to all workers and most business and professional people. They welcomed women members (factory and domestic servants and worked in their own homes). Leonora Barry ran the Woman's Bureau of the Knights. Members met in local assemblies which took different forms. They were loosely affiliated with a national general assembly. Their program was similarly vague; they championed an 8-hour day and abolition of child labor and the leaders wanted to replace the wage system with a new cooperative system. Under the leadership of Terence V. Powderly, the organization came out of the shadows and started to go on strike and riot. One strike was successful, but then another was crushed and the power of the union failed and it fell apart. The AFL was an association of autonomous craft unions and represented mainly skilled workers. The AFL male leaders were hostile to the idea of women entering the paid workforce because they believed women were weak and employers could easily take advantage of them by paying them less than men. Samuel Gompers was the powerful leader that supported this idea. The AFL still sought equal pay for those women who did work and even hired some female organizers to encourage unionization in industries dominated by women (equal pay means driving them out of the work force). The AFL concentrated on the relationship between labor and management. It supported the immediate objectives of most workers: better wages and working conditions. It also demanded a national 8-hour day.

Why did industry increasingly employ women and children?How were they treated

The decreasing need for skilled work in factories induced many employers to increase the use of unskilled women and children, whom they could hire for lower wages than adult males. Women were particularly vulnerable to exploitation and injury in the rough environment of the factory. Women were usually working in textile factories, but they were paid about half of what a while male earned with the same job. There were some women that went to prostitution more a better income. Children were employed in factories and fields. Sometimes children worked because the parents needed the money and/or the father did not want to send the wife off to work. Laws were passed to regulate child labor, but they were ignored. Children often worked 12 hour days picking or hoeing in the fields; children working at the looms all night were kept awake by having cold water thrown in their faces; in canneries, little girls cut fruits and vegetables 16 hours a day. Exhausted children were particularly susceptible to injury while working at dangerous machines.

How did urban mass transportation technology evolve from horse-drawn streetcars to more modern mass transit

The roads were without a hard paved surface and even when cities started to pave their roads, they just couldn't pave all of them. Streetcars drawn on tracks by horses had been introduced into some cities even before the Civil War, but the horsecars were not fast enough. In 1870, New York opened its first elevated railway. New York, Chicago, San Francisco and other cities also experimented with cable cars. Richmond introduced the first electric trolley line in 1888 and by 1895 such systems were operating in 850 towns and cities. In 1897, Boston opened the first American subway when it put some of its trolley lines underground.

How did the rising respect for scientific inquiry combine with Darwinism to affect a wide range of intellectual inquiry

There was the Social Darwinism of William Graham Sumner and other, which industrialists used so enthusiastically to justify their favored position in American life. "Pragmatism" arose which seemed to be a product of America's changing material civilization. According to the pragmatists, modern society should rely for guidance not on inherited ideals and moral principles but on the test of scientific inquiry. They claimed no idea or institution was valid, unless it worked and unless it stood the test of experience. Economists argued for a more active and pragmatic use of scientific discipline. Sociologists urged applying the scientific method to the solution of social and political problems. Historians argued that economic factors more than spiritual ideals had been the governing force in historical development. Darwinism promoted the growth of anthropology and encouraged some scholars to begin examining other cultures in new ways.

How did Darwinism challenge traditional American religious faith?What were the differing responses

(See previous chapters for Social Darwinism.) Darwinism argued that the human species had evolved from earlier forms of life through a process of "natural selection." It challenged the biblical story of the Creation and almost every other tenet of traditional American religious faith. Darwinism suggested that history was not the working out of a divine plan, as most American had always believed. It was met with widespread resistance at first from educators, theologians and even many scientists. But at the end of the century, the evolutionists had converted most members of the urban professional and educated classes. Even many middle-class Protestant religious leaders had accepted the doctrine. Darwinism also became a subject in schools. There was also the creation of a new Protestant fundamentalism that rejected evolution and joined politics.

Henry Ford

He created the moving assembly line and created many famous and revolutionary cars. The moving assembly line cut the time for assembling a chassis form 12 and a half hours to 1 and a half hours. It enabled him to raise the wages and reduce the hours of his workers while cutting the base price of his Model T.

Henry Frick Clay

He was Carnegie's chief lieutenant. He decided that the Amalgamated had to go, even at Homestead. Over the next two years, he repeatedly cut wages. (See Homestead Strike)

Boss Rule

Newly arrived immigrants, many of whom could not speak English, needed help in adjusting to American urban life. For most residents of the inner cities, the principal source of assistance was the political machine. The urban machine owed its existence to the power vacuum that the chaotic growth of cities had created. It was also a product of the potential voting power of large immigrant communities. Any politician who could mobilize that power stood to gain enormous influence, if not public office. And so there emerged a group of urban bosses, "bosses," themselves often of foreign birth or parentage; many of them were Irish and almost all were men.