1. The Birth of American Industrialism,1870-1900Chapter 2

2. The Gilded Age of CitiesCities grew at a rapid pace in the late 1880s and 1890s.In 1860, about one in five Americans lived in citieswhereas by 1900, this number had doubled.Chicago alone shot up from 30,000 residents in 1850 to 500,000 in1880 and 1,700,000 by 1900.Cities rapidly expanded in physical terms, as well.Before 1850, urban Americans lived in walking cities, which theycould transverse on foot.This was no longer doable after the war.Streetcars, made possible by advances in railroadengineering and in electrical power generation, tookcitizens across vast urban distances. 3. The American CityNote the rise of utility poles and wires: the telephone andelectric lighting had become part of American urban life inthe past half-dozen years, radically changing the face ofcity streets. 4. The Gilded Age of CitiesThe expanding cities changed their look, too.Many of the people flocking to the expanding cities wereforeign immigrants or native-born rural laborers.They moved into cramped, stuffy, poorly lit tenement buildings.New wealthy capitalists built ostentatious homes and threwextravagant parties that came to symbolize the Gilded Age.The American middle class became conscious of itself as agroup situated between laborers and wealthy elites in thedecades following the Civil War.As they became more aware of these class interests, middle classAmericans attempted to recreate the nation in their own image. 5. Living in the Gilded AgeThese once single-family dwellings were increasingly divided intomultiple living spaces and were quite cramped, poorly lit, and lackedproper indoor plumbing and proper ventilation.The Biltmore Estate is the largest privately owned house in the UnitedStates at 178,926 square feet and features 250 rooms. 6. The Gilded Age of CitiesThe middle class, however, moved to new suburbancommunities located on the outskirts of large cities beyondthe urban noise and congestion.These suburban homes provided private, single-family homessurrounded by trees, lawns, and gardens.Suburbanites also advocated for communities built aroundtwo new social institutions:the high schoolthe public libraryGrowing suburbs required the development of largesystems for sanitation, power, and communication. 7. The Gilded Age of CitiesMiddle-class Americans changed the ways they obtainedhousehold goods.As cities grew, so did the stores that supplied the city dwellers.Prior to the Civil War, shops usually sold only a single lineof goods.The shoemaker sold shoes while the dressmaker sold dresses.Shoppers went from shop to shop to purchase items from proprietorsthey often knew personally.Then when John Wanamakers in Philadelphia opened itsdoors in 1876, the department store was born.Wanamaker took a series of single-line shops and put them in onehuge space. 8. Wanamakers department storeBefore John Wanamaker invented the price tag, mostbuying was done by haggling. A devout Christian, hebelieved that if everyone was equal before God, theneveryone should be equal before price. 9. The Gilded Age of CitiesDepartment stores sold goods more cheaply because they madetheir profit through high-volume sales and they brought amultitude of items under one roof.To make the department store experience more enticing, storeowners cut huge display windows into street-level walls toexhibit fancy jewelry, clothing, and housewares.The idea was to turn shopping into entertainment.For those who lived in rural areas and could not travel to the bigcity, mail-order companies emerged.Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck and Company used thenations rapidly expanding rail system to speed goods across the country.They published thick catalogues, offering everything from womensunderclothing to entire houses. 10. Mail-Order CatalogsBy 1893, Sears, Roebuck and Company becameMontgomery Wards chief competition; this catalog warbetween the two giant mail-order retailers lasted severaldecades. 11. The Birth of EnterpriseSome of the millionaires made their wealth by methods thatcritics considered predatory, providing another vivid epithetof the period: robber barons.Some of the most obvious figures who bore this moniker,whether deserved or not, were:Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, Jim Fisk, and Collis P.Huntington in railroadingJohn D. Rockefeller in oilAndrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick in steelJames B. Duke in tobaccoJohn Pierpont Morgan in finance and electricity 12. Captains of IndustryDisgust with the power of corporate America led to thegrowth of the Progressive movement and to reform efforts,including antitrust legislation and investigative journalism (ormuckraking). 13. The Birth of EnterpriseCriticism of the robber barons focused more on theimmense power commanded by their wealth than on thewealth itself.Robber barons were known for their bribery, manipulation,exploitation, and cheating methods.However, these activities could be and were defended on grounds ofentrepreneurial innovation and efficiency.The enterprises these men created did enable the UnitedStates to leap ahead of Britain as an industrial power.By 1913, American manufacturing output equaled that of the nextthree industrial nations combined Germany, Britain, and France. 14. The Birth of EnterpriseCarnegie, Rockefeller, and others gave away much of theirwealth to educational and philanthropic institutions,establishing the basis for modern multibillion-dollarfoundations.By the time of his death in 1919, Carnegies foundationshad given away or entrusted ninety percent of his fortune toinstitutions like:New Yorks Carnegie Hall, Pittsburghs Carnegie Institute, and 2,500public libraries throughout the country.Between 1913 and 1919, the Rockefeller Foundation haddispersed an estimated $500 million, establishing:the University of Chicago and the Rockefeller Institute for MedicalResearch. 15. Philanthropic InstitutionsFor over a century, Carnegie Hall has been the place wheredistinctive artists of all stripes have come to make theirnames in New York City thus becoming an essential part ofthe citys cultural fabric and the worlds most famous concerthall. 16. The Antitrust MovementNevertheless, many Americans feared the power wieldedby these tycoons.Their monopoly or near-monopoly share of the market inoil, steel, tobacco, sugar, transportation, and other productsseemed to violate the ideal of fair competition.A monopoly is a situation in which there is a single supplier or sellerof a good or service for which there are no close substitutes.Because the larger corporations operated across state lines,reformers turned to Congress, which responded in 1890 bypassing the Sherman Antitrust Act.The act was named for Senator John Sherman of Ohio, the youngerbrother of the Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman. 17. Sherman Antitrust ActThis political cartoon shows a large, overblown horizontalwho squelches beneath her the various incarnations of theLittle Man: the small dealer, the small manufacturer, theindependent producer, etc. 18. The Antitrust MovementThe act prohibits certain business activities the creation ofany type of monopoly that federal government regulatorsdeem to be anticompetitive.Additionally, it requires the federal government to investigate andpursue trusts, companies, and/or organizations suspected of being inviolation.Of the eight cases against corporations brought beforefederal courts from 1890 to 1893, the government lostseven.In 1895, the Supreme Court dealt the Sherman Act acrippling blow in U.S. v. E.C. Knight Company.In this case, which concerned a sugar-refining monopoly, the Courtlimited the governments power to control monopolies. 19. Labor Strife and Industrial ViolenceThe drive for even greater speed and productivity inindustry gave the United States the unhappy distinction ofhaving the worlds highest rate of industrial accidents.Many families were poor by workplace accidents that killed ormaimed their chief breadwinner.These pressures filtered up to Washington D.C., whereCongress created the Bureau of Labor in 1884 andelevated it to cabinet rank in 1903.In 1894, Congress also made the first Monday in September anofficial holiday Labor Day to honor working people.Nonetheless, labor strife rose dramatically and industrialviolence would escalate to all-time highs. 20. Labor Strife and Industrial ViolenceIn the anthracite coal fields of eastern Pennsylvania, theMolly Maguires carried out guerrilla warfare against themines owners.The Mollies were a secret order of Irish and Irish-American coalminers.The Greenbackers and labor reformers took a differentapproach and formed a coalition that elected several localand state official plus fourteen Congressmen in 1878.The group urged the currency expansion of non-gold backed papertender.In 1880, the Greenback-Labor candidate for president wonthree percent of the popular vote. 21. Labor Strife and Industrial ViolenceFollowing the Panic of 1873, several railroads cut wages byas much as thirty-five percent between 1874 and 1877.When the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad announced its thirdten percent wage cut on July 16, 1877, laborers went onstrike.The Great Railroad Strike spread rapidly and all traffic lines fromSt. Louis to the East Coast came to a halt.Ten states called out their militias strikers and militiafired on each other until federal troops regained controlsome forty-five days later.At least 100 strikers, militiamen, and bystanders had been killed,hundreds more had been injured, and uncounted millions of dollarsof property had gone up in smoke. 22. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877While no complete accounting of the economic lossescaused by this strike exists; Pittsburgh, Chicago, Baltimoreand other cities estimated property damages of about fivemillion dollars. 23. Haymarket SquareAnarchists had infiltrated some of the trade unions inChicago and leaped aboard the bandwagon of a nationalmovement centered in the city.On May 1, 1886, these anarchists launched a general striketo achieve an eight-hour workday.Chicago police were notoriously hostile to labor organizers andstrikers, so the scene was set for a violet confrontation.The May 1 showdown coincided with a strike at theMcCormick farm machinery plant.A fight outside the gates on May 3 brought a police attack on thestrikers in which four people were killed. 24. Haymarket SquareAnarchists then organized a protest meeting at HaymarketSquare on May 4.As soon as the rain-soaked crowd began to disperse, the policesuddenly arrived in force.When someone threw a bomb into their midst, the policeopened fire.When the wild melee was over, fifty people lay wounded and tendead, six of them policemen.The affair set off a wave of hysteria against labor radicals eight anarchists went on trial for conspiracy to commitmurder. 25. The Haymarket Square RiotExhibit 129a from the Haymarket trial chemists testifiedthat the bomb found in Louis Linggs apartment, includingthis one, resembled the chemical signature of shrapnel fromthe Haymarket bomb. 26. Haymarket SquareAll eight were convicted even though no evidence turnedup that any of them had thrown the bomb.Seven were sentenced to hang ; one of the men committedsuicide.The governor commuted the sentences of two to life imprisonment.The remaining four were hanged on November 11, 1887.The case became such a controversy that it bitterly dividedthe country.Many laborers, civil libertarians, and middle-class citizens weretroubled by the events and branded the verdicts as judicial murder.Most Americans, however, applauded the verdicts as a repression ofun-American radicalism. 27. The Homestead StrikeThe 1890s provided plenty of evidence to feed middle-classfears that America was falling apart.The most dramatic confrontation took place in 1892 at theHomestead plant, near Pittsburgh, of the Carnegie SteelCompany.Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, the Homestead plant manager,were determined to break the power of the countrys strongest union.Frick used a dispute over wages and work rules as anopportunity to close the plant before reopening it with non-unionworkers.A lockout is a temporary work stoppage during a labor disputeinitiated by the management of the company. 28. The Homestead StrikeWhen the union called a strike and refused to leave theplant, Frick called in 300 Pinkerton detectives to oustthem.A sit-down is a form of civil disobedience in which an organizedgroup of workers take possession of the workplace by sitting downat their stations.A full-scale gun battle between strikers and Pinkertonserupted on July 6, leaving nine strikers and sevenPinkertons dead and scores wounded.Frick later persuaded the governor to send in 8,000 militiato protect the strikebreakers and the plant reopened.On July 23, Frick survived an assassination attempt by an anarchistat his Pittsburgh office. 29. The PinkertonsAllan Pinkertons detective agency foiled the Baltimore Plot,an alleged conspiracy in late February 1861 to assassinatepresident-elect Abraham Lincoln en route to hisinauguration. 30. Assassination Attempt of Henry Clay FrickInspired by his lover and friend, anarchist AlexanderBerkman, armed with a pistol and sharpened steel file,plotted to assassinate Frick in revenge for the steelworkersmurdered by the Pinkerton detectives. 31. Technological AdvancesTwo of the most important new technologies were theharnessing of electric power and the invention of thegasoline-powered internal combustion engine.Scientists had long been fascinated by electricity, but onlyin the late nineteenth century did they find ways to make itpractically useful.The work of Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and NikolaTesla produced the incandescent bulb that brought electric lightinginto homes and offices.Additionally, their alternating current (AC) made electrictransmission possible over long distances. 32. Technological AdvancesFrom 1890 to 1920, the portion of American industrypowered by electricity rose from virtually nothing to almostone-third.Older industries switched from expensive and cumbersome steampower to more efficient and cleaner electrical power.Between 1900 and 1920, virtually every major city builtelectric-powered transit systems to replace horse-drawntrolleys and carriages.By 1912, some 40,000 miles of electric railway and trolley track hadbeen laid.In New York City, electricity made possible theconstruction of the first subways. 33. Technological AdvancesElectric lighting on city streets, in department storewindows, in brilliantly lit amusement parks such as NewYorks Coney Island gave cities a new allure.The majority of the American public might have beenmissing out on their fair share of the nations prosperity, butfell in love with the new world of commercialentertainment.They were crowding the dance halls, vaudeville theaters, amusementparks, and ballparks, which largely depended upon electricity.Above all, they were embracing a new technologicalmarvel, the movie.Movies were well suited to poor city dwellers with little money, littlefree time, and little command of the English language. 34. Technological AdvancesInitially, the movies cost only a nickel.The nickelodeons where they were shown were usually convertedstorefronts in working-class neighborhoods.Movies required little leisure time because at first theylasted only fifteen minutes on average.Viewers with more time on their hands could stay for a cycle of twoor three films.Even non-English speakers could understand what was happening onthe silent screen.By 1910, at least 20,000 nickelodeons dotted northerncities.These early moving pictures were primitive by todaysstandards but were thrilling just the same. 35. The Four Horsemen of the ApocalypseThe Four Horsemen is 1921 American silent epic wardrama, which had a massive cultural impact on society,becoming the top-grossing film of the year and the sixthhighest grossing silent film of all time. 36. Technological AdvancesThe first gasoline engine was patented in the United Statesin 1878, and the first horseless carriages began appearingon European and American roads in the 1890s, but fewthought of them as serious rivals to trains and horses.Rather, they were seen as playthings for the wealthy, who liked torace them along country roads.In 1900, Henry Ford was just an eccentric 37-year-oldmechanic who built race cars in Michigan.In 1909, Ford unveiled his Model T.This unadorned, even homely vehicle, was reliable enough to travelhundreds of miles without servicing and cheap enough to beaffordable to most working Americans. 37. Henry Fords Model TThe Model T is generally regarded as the first affordableautomobile ($950 in 1909; $295 in 1923) that openedtravel to the common middle-class American, and could beproduced, on average, in 1.5 hours. 38. Technological AdvancesFord dreamed of creating an automobile civilization withhis Model T and Americans began buying into this dreamby the millions.The stimulus this insatiable demand gave to the economycan scarcely be exaggerated:Millions of cars required millions of pounds of steel alloys, glass,rubber, petroleum, and other materials.Millions of jobs in coal and iron-ore mining, oil refining and rubbermanufacturing, steelmaking and machine tooling, road constructionand service stations came to depend on automobile manufacturing. 39. Mass Production and DistributionSuccessful inventions such as the automobile required morethan the mechanical ingenuity and social vision ofinventors such as Henry Ford.They relied on corporations with sophisticatedorganizational and technical know-how to mass-produceand mass-distribute the newly invented products.Manufacturers responded to this flourishing domesticmarket by developing mass-production techniques thatincreased production speed and lowered unit costs.Mass production often meant replacing skilled workers withmachines that were coordinated to permit high-speed, uninterruptedproduction at every stage of the manufacturing process. 40. Ford Motor Company Highland ParkThe basic kernel of an assembly line concept wasintroduced to the Ford Motor Company by William Klannupon his return from visiting Swift & Companysslaughterhouse in Chicago he viewed a disassembly linewhere animals were butchered as they moved along aconveyor. 41. Mass Production and DistributionSuch production techniques were profitable only if largequantities of output could be sold.This was the case with North Carolina smoking tobaccomanufacturer James Buchanan Duke, who almost single-handedlytransformed the cigarette into one of the best-sellingcommodities in American history.In 1885, Duke invested in several Bonsack cigarette machine, eachof which manufactured 120,000 cigarette per day.To create a market for the millions of cigarettes he wasproducing, Duke advertised his product aggressivelythroughout the country. 42. Mass Production and DistributionDuke established regional sales offices so that his salesrepresentatives could keep in touch with local jobbers andretailers.As cigarette sales skyrocketed, more corporations sought to emulateDukes techniques.Over the course of the next twenty years, thosecorporations that integrated mass production and massdistribution, as Duke did in the 1880s, came to defineAmerican big business.