The Industrial Revolution in the United States

The Rise of Big Business

Effects Transportation and Labor

Oil Steel

Wildcatters went looking for oil –found in Spindletop, TX

Kicked off 20 year oil boom in TX

Learn to refine crude oil for gasoline

Helps with transportation and industry

Allows production of railways

1st transcontinental railroad connects at Promontory Summit, UT

Railways create time zones

Economics and Business

Entrepreneurs- risk takers who started new ventures (businesses)

Capitalism – businesses are privately owned

Economic Philosophies

Laissez-fair – “allow to do” or “leave alone” – no government interference

Social Darwinism – Stronger businesses would prosper, weaker ones would fail

CORPORATIONS

a business with the legal status of an individual

Owned by people who buy stocks in the company

Board of directors make decisions

Advantages: can expand by selling stock; stockholders only lose money they have invested, can exist after founders leave

BIG BUSINESSMEN of INDUSTRIALIZATION

John D. Rockefeller

Standard Oil Company

Used vertical integration – acquiring companies that supplied the oil business

Uses Horizontal integration – bought other oil refineries

Andrew Carnegie

Born a Poor Immigrant

Worked for Penn RR and invested money

Founded Carnegie Steel Company

Devoted time to building public libraries and financing Education

Cornelius Vanderbuilt

Invested in RR

Became very wealthy and his holdings stretched from Michigan and Canada

Gave money to Education

George Pullman

Designed and built sleeper cars that made long distance travel possible

The Government tries to intervene

Sherman Antitrust Act

Put in place to try to lessen the power of corporations

Illegal to form trust that interfere with free trade

Government did not enforce

THIS CREATED MONOPOLIES!

WHAT IS A MONOPOLY??????

Monopolies

Monopoly: A situation in which a single company or individual owns all or nearly all of the market for a given type of product or service

THE FORMATION OF LABOR UNIONS

What is a LABOR UNION and WHY DID THEY FORM?????????

Labor Unions

European immigrants worked industry

African Americans worked as laborers or household help

1900: 1 in 6 children between the ages of 10-15 held a job outside the home

Laborers start to organize to pressure companies for safer workplaces and better pay

KNIGHTS OF LABOR

Leader – Terrence V. Powderly

Accepted unskilled workers, women, African Americans, and employers

Asked for 8 hour work day, end of child labor, and equal pay for equal work

Boycotts and strikes were the main tactics

STRIKES

BOYCOTTS

Great RR Strike Haymarket Riot

1877 – protested for cut wages

2 workers for 2 RR blocked movement of trains

Strikes spreadStopped freight for

over a weekResulted in mobs

and death

1866 – over 1500 strikes over wage cuts

Chicago – Haymarket Square crowds protested police action

Bomb was thrown – panic stricken – 11 dead by end

Blamed foreign unionist

Great RR Strike and Haymarket Riot

HOW DID BIG BUSINESS RESPOND TO UNIONS?????

Employers forced employees to sign documents stating they wouldn’t join unions

Blacklisted trouble makers to keep them from getting hired at new jobs

American Federation of Labor

Led by Samuel Gompers

Won wage increases and shorter workweeks

Setbacks occurred for unions from Homestead strike and Pullman strike

Urban (City) Life Creates a NEED for Transportation

People needed ways to move about locally

Created Streetcars, subways, automobiles

AIRPLANES

Orville and Wilbur Wright make first flight in 1903 at Kitty Hawk, NC

From Dayton, OH

COMMUNICATIONS REVOLUTION and other

Technology

TELEGRAPH

Wires were strung along RR and used Morse Code to communicate

TELEPHONE

Patented by Alexander Graham Bell

By 1900 more than a million telephones in offices and households

Typewriter

Christopher Latham Sholes

Designed the 1st practical typewriter and keyboard (still used today) – opened jobs for women as typists

Thomas Alva Edison

Responsible for over 1000 U. S. Patents

First phonograph and telephone transmitter

1st safe electric light bulb, brought electricity network to NY City

Invented motion picture camera and projector

Known as the Wizard of Menlo Park