Industrial Revolution Inventions Edwin Drake proved

Industrial Revolution

Inventions • Edwin Drake: proved that oil could be • • extracted from the ground through a well, used steam engine to drill hole Bessemer Steel Process: easier and cheaper way to remove impurities for making steel, made possible mass production of steel Uses for steel: railroads, barbed wire, farm machinery

Inventions • Thomas Edison: light bulb, phonograph • Samuel Morse: telegraph • George Westinghouse: airbrakes, electricity safer and less expensive • Fredrick Taylor: published The Principles of Scientific Management • Henry Ford: assembly line

Inventions • Christopher Soles: typewriter • Alexander Graham Bell: telephone

Benefits of Electricity • Travel cheap- outward expansion of cities • Manufactures could locate businesses where ever they chose

Benefits of Inventions • Women: new jobs • Workers: realized they were easily replaceable • Increased productivity = cheaper goods • Employ fewer people • Improved standards of living

Railroads • Central Pacific • Union Pacific Railroads • Eastward out of • Toward West • Employed Irish Railroads • • Sacramento Employed Chinese immigrants Pd $35 per month; provide own meals • immigrants b/c white paid more ($40$60 per month)

Railroads • Formation of new cities • Began to specialize in one product • George Pullman: built factory for manufacturing sleepers, built a town for employers to live in, under company’s control; hoped it would ensure a positive workplace; refused to lower rent after cutting wages- led to violent strike

Credit Mobilier • Formed by Union Pacific Railroad • Stockholders gave company contract to lay track • • 2 -3 times the actual cost Pocketed the profits Donated shares to representatives Congressional investigation found that investors had taken up $23 million in stocks Tarnished reputation of Republican party

Railroads • Corruption: charging different people different prices • Granger Laws: establish maximum freight and • • • passenger rates, prohibit discrimination Munn v Illinois: states won right to regulate railroads for the benefits of farmers and consumers and fed govt right to regulate private industry to serve the public interest Interstate Commerce Act: reestablished the right of the federal govt to supervise railroad activities and established a five member panel (ICC) Panic of 1893: railroads having financial problems, taken over by banks, Morgan and Vanderbilt began to seize RR

Big Business • Corporations: company that is recognized by law as existing independently from its owners; people buy stock; most they could lose is amount of stock • Capitalism: economic system in which means of production are privately owned rather than being controlled by govt

Andrew Carnegie • Founded 1 st steel plants to use Bessemer process in Pittsburg • Make better products, cheaper • Cut prices to drive competitors out of business • People should be free to make as much money as possible as long as they give it away

Business Strategies • Vertical integration: buying out suppliers; • • controlling each step Horizontal integration: buy out competition; monopolize industry Laissez-faire: (allow to do) market place should not be regulated Social Darwinism: “natural selection” survival of the fittest; govt should not intervene in business Monopoly: dominating a particular industry (Rockefeller’s Standard Oil); complete control over industry’s production, wages paid, quality, prices charged

John D. Rockefeller • Used trusts: set of companies that are managed by a small group known as trustees. A method of consolidating competing companies in which participants turn their stock over to a board of trustees • Owned Standard Oil Co. ; controlled 90% of refining business • Pd employers low wage; sold oil at extremely low rates; once control of market raised prices

Robber Barons & Captains of Industry • Robber Barons: business leaders who built their fortunes by stealing from the public; drained country of natural resources, employees underpaid, poor working conditions • Captains of Industry: served the nation in a positive way; increasing supply of goods

Sherman Anti-trust Act illegal to form a trust that interfered with free trade between states or with other countries Didn’t define what a trust was, hard to prosecute companies

Workers • Hazardous tasks, monotony, no vaca, sick leave, unemployment compensation • Wages so low everyone in family had to work • Child labor: didn’t have to pay as much, most dangerous working conditions • Living conditions: lived in slums, tenements

Labor Unions • Groups of workers joined together to improve • • • conditions (higher wages, shorter hours, better working conditions) Power from threat of strikes National Labor Union: passage of 8 hour workday Noble Order of the Knights of Labor: open to all, used arbitration instead of strikes American Federation of Labor: skilled workers, Samuel Gompers president, collective bargaining, used strikes, won higher wages, shorter weeks American Railway Union: Eugene Debs founder

Socialism • Believed rich getting richer, poor getting poorer turned to socialism • Economic and political system based on govt control of business and property and equal distribution of wealth • Communism: extreme form, classless society • Industrial Workers of the World: formed by unskilled workers

Violent Strikes • Great Strike of 1877: B&O Railroad employees striking after 2 nd wage cut in 1 month, trains didn’t run for a week, Hayes called in federal troops to stop strike • Haymarket Affair: gathered to protest police brutality; rain lead to crowd leaving; police arrived; bomb thrown @ them; 7 police officers & several workers died b/c of chaos

Violent Strikes • Homestead Strike: Pres of co. planned on cutting • wages, led to strike, hired armed guards to protect factory so they could hire scabs (strikebreakers) killed 3 det. 6 workers, Penn National Guard arrived Pullman Strike: during Depression laid off 3000 employees, cut wages of rest, didn’t cut cost of living, strike b/c failed to restore wages, decrease rent; hired scabs, turned violent, Cleveland sent in troops, Pullman fired most of strikers, rest blacklisted