The Incorporation of America, 1865-1900

1
The Incorporation of America, 1865-1900

• Chapter 19

2
A Revolution in Technology

• Inventions
• Alexander Graham Bell
• Thomas Edison
• Railroads got land grants from govt
• Create national market food supplies to urban
  areas
• Organized over large distances
• Industry
• By 1900, the U.S. produced 1/3rd of the worlds
  industrial goods

3
Mechanization Takes Command

• Increased productivity
• Coal cheap reliable fuel
• Machines increase speed of production dangerous
  for workers
• Larger businesses economies of scale
• Reorganization of factory labor and management
• Increased volume of goods
• Assembly line production
• Began with meat-packing

4
The Expanding Market for Goods

• Marketing and Merchandising
• Rural Free Delivery post office mail system
• Sears, Roebuck Montgomery Ward mail order
• Chain stores
• Department stores
• Advertising firms

5
New Immigration

• Southern Eastern Europe
• Darker skin and eye color
• Illiterate Unskilled
• Jewish, Eastern Orthodox, Catholic
• Settled in dirty, crowded cities
• Xenophobia fear of foreigners
• Prejudice against different ethnicities
• Changes in immigration law first efforts at
  restriction

6
The Wage System

• More Americans working for wages
• Immigrants met demands of new industries for
  labor periodic depressions threw millions out
  of jobs
• Dangerous, tedious, 12 hour days
• Changed employer/employee relations
• Women moved into clerical positions retail
  sales
• Racism kept Blacks and Chinese out of most
  skilled positions

7
Social Darwinism What Social Classes Owe to
Each Other

• Herbert Spencer Social Darwinism
• Poor are less fit
• Helping them hurts society
• William Graham Sumner
• Only a few are capable of putting aside selfish
  pleasures to produce capital
• Members of the working class deserve to be poor
  they are lazy

8
Gospel of Wealth

• Andrew Carnegie Gospel of Wealth
• Philanthropy careful redistribution of wealth
  back into society for the betterment of others
• Poor are mentally and emotionally unfit to cope
  with direct aid

9
Mill Towns

• Company owns all property
• Rent houses from company
• Shop at company store
• Company has much control over town government
• Teachers and clergy reinforce companys work ethic

10
Populating the City

• Immigrants accounted for most of the urban growth
• Groups tended to live near their countrymen and
  work in similar trades
• People moved around in search of better
  opportunities
• Chinese Exclusion Act 10 yr. ban on immigration
  and limited civil rights

11
The Urban Landscape

• Poor - dumbbell tenements overcrowding,
  pollution, lack of sanitation, diseases
• Wealthy townhouses mansions
• Fires in late 1800s, there is a movement to
  beautify the city
• Louis Sullivan architect skyscrapers
• Subways and streetcars allow people to live
  farther from city center

12
Integration, Combination Merger

• Vertical integration control every step in
  production
• Andrew Carnegie - Iron ore mines, railroads to
  ship to factory, steel factories
• Horizontal integration control all one product
• John D. Rockefeller Standard Oil owned 90 of
  U.S. refineries

13
Sherman Anti-Trust Act 1890

• Became ineffective due to court interpretations
• Actually speeded up consolidation

14
The Knights of Labor

• Terence Powderly Largest union of the late
  1800s
• One union for all skilled unskilled, women
  minorities included
• 8 hr. work day
• Restriction on child labor
• Equal pay for men women
• Graduated income tax
• Decline Haymarket Square incident
• Associated with violence radicalism/anarchy

15
The American Federation of Labor

• Samuel Gompers
• More respectability
• Only skilled workers no minorities
• Pure and simple unionism not radical
• Higher wages family wage earned by men
• Womens role in home, working lowers wages
• Shorter hours
• Collective bargaining

16
The New South An Internal Colony

• Vision of using resources to be a manufacturing
  center DID NOT HAPPEN
• Northern investors bought up much of what the
  South did have for resources manufacturing

17
Southern Labor

• Southern factories rigidly segregated
• Wages were lower than in North
• Widespread use of child and convict labor
• African-Americans men were allowed low-paying
  jobs with railroads
• African-American women typically worked as maids
  or cooks

18
Transformation of the Piedmont Communities

• Southern Virginia to Northern Alabama
• Textiles dozens of small industrial towns
• Tobacco cotton prices fell more children sent
  to work in factories to pay family debt
• Transition into mill towns

19
The City and the Environment

• Attempts to clean up city led to
• Pollution of rivers
• Garbage dumps on rural lands
• Eventual development of sewage treatment plants

20
Conspicuous Consumption

• Gilded Age Mark Twain
• Horatio Alger Rags to Riches
• Newport Mansions

21
Gentility among the Middle Class

• White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant (WASP)
• Live in areas away from inner city
• Managers, technicians, engineers

22
Culture in Conflict, Culture in Common - Education

• School system grew rapidly at all levels
• Small minority attended high school or college
• State universities and colleges evolve
• Morrill Land Grant Act - 1862
• Development of liberal arts and professional
  schools
• Women gained more access to colleges
• Vocational education
• Booker T. Washington Tuskeegee Institute

23
Culture in Conflict, Culture in Common Leisure
Public Space

• Park systems
• Working class middle class had different ideas
• Working class athletic contests
• Middle class cultural activities
• Disputes over alcohol
• Temperance prohibition movements grow

24
Culture in Conflict, Culture in Common National
Pastimes

• Ragtime, vaudeville, sports
• Middle class golf, tennis, croquet
• Working class boxing
• Baseball professional teams and league play
• 1880s segregated
• 1920s - creation of the Negro Leagues