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Unit 2: The West and The Gilded Age (Industrial Age) (1870-1901). Part I: The Gilded Age Defined and Major Inventions. Gilded Age Defined. A period marked by: A transformation from an agricultural society to more of an industrial one.
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Unit 2: The West and The Gilded Age (Industrial Age)(1870-1901)
Gilded Age Defined • A period marked by: • A transformation from an agricultural society to more of an industrial one. • Huge growing number of factories and businesses in the Northeast region of the US and eventually will spread to the South and West of the US as well. • State and federal gov’ts siding more with business owners and not workers and/or labor unions. • Workers (including children) being paid low wages, working long hours and having dangerous job conditions. • Rich people using extreme extravagance to flaunt their wealth. • A huge and growing gap between the very few rich and the millions of poor. • The government did not regulate businesses much (if any) and took an approach known as “laissez-faire” which means that our gov’t let business alone and didn’t regulate it or give it rules to follow.
Major Gilded Age Inventions • The typewriter by Christopher Sholes (1867) • The telephone by Alexander Graham Bell (1876) • Two years later there were over 50,000 phones in service. • The Electric light bulb by Thomas Edison (1879) • Allows factories the ability to work better during the night. • Skyscrapers by Louis Sullivan (1891) • Flight by Orville and Wibur Wright (1903)
Wainwright Building in downtown STL. Built in 1891 About 200 ft. tall.
Burj Dubai Building in Dubai. Built in 2009. 2717 ft. tall.Tallest building in the world.
Summarize Here Focus Question What is the Gilded age and what role do “inventions” play?
Business Owners Exploit the System Many business owners became known as robber barons during the Gilded Age because they used unfair business practices, paid their workers very low wages and eliminated all competition to build huge amounts of wealth and power. Many robber barons formed monopolies/trusts which by eliminating or buying competing businesses allowed them to control the production and sale of one product so that they could control the price and supply of that product. The robber barons of the Gilded Age would end up becoming some of the wealthiest people in US History. Robber barons did everything in their power to not allow their workers to form unions or strike and many of them will even hire strikebreakers (paid thugs to go in and physically end a strike which usually led to bloodshed and sometimes even people being killed).
Steel and Carnegie • Steel becomes an important resource for industrialism because it is used in railroads, bridges, buildings and machines. • The Steel Industry becomes a huge money making and job creating part of the US economy and the city of Pittsburgh in the Northeast region of the US becomes the center of steel production. • The man who will produce most of the US’s steel by creating a monopoly and becoming a robber baron is Andrew Carnegie. • In order to build his monopoly Carnegie used two methods: • he purchased companies that supplied his company with materials which is called vertical integration. • He purchased competitor steel companies so his company had no competition which is called horizontal integration.
Railroads and Gould • From 1860 to 1890 railroad tracks grew from 30,000 miles to 180,000 miles. • The Railroad Industry became a huge money making industry (all over the US but especially in the West region) from the creation of railroad tracks to the thousands who worked for railroad companies once complete. • Many of the workers who build the tracks were Chinese immigrants (in the west) and Civil War veterans (in the east). • Cities such as Chicago, Denver, and Seattle owe much of their growth to railroads. • The robber baron who will control much of the nation’s railroads and create a monopoly over the use of railroads will be Jay Gould. • His railroad companies soon began to control everything in the West region and many farmers of the Great Plains (large flat farming region of the US located between the Midwest and the Rocky Mountains) grew in opposition to his company controlling land and charging to high of prices.
Oil and Rockefeller • The Oil Industry became profitable even before the automobile was invented because it was used for fuel source in most lanterns. • Oil is discovered mostly in the South and West of the US and booms occurred in Oklahoma, Texas and California. • Oil was so valuable it became known as, “black gold.” • John D. Rockefeller was the robber baron that would amass the largest fortune in US History by creating a trust/monopoly called Standard Oil Company which would eventually control all US oil production and sales.
Summarize Here Focus Question Which industries became the foundation for the Gilded Age, and who are the robber barons associated with each? What role did these men play in society?
Election of 1876 • Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was elected in 1876, and he: • Ended Reconstruction (remember unit 1?) • Tried to end the spoils system which was when Presidents gave government jobs to all of people in their political party whether they were good for the job or not. • Supported business owners by breaking up the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 when he ordered the army in to end the strike by physically forcing the striking workers back to work. It was the first time the military was used to breakup a strike and 70 strikers were killed.
Other Presidents of the Gilded Age1880-1898 In 1880, a Republican James Garfield was elected but early in his tenure he was assassinated. After Garfield’s death, Chester A. Arthur (also Republican) became President and he did a lot to end the spoils system with the passing of the Pendleton Civil Service Act which based government employee’s promotions to federal positions on what they knew about their job and not on who they knew. In 1884 and again in 1892, a Democrat (the only Democrat elected from 1860-1912) named Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms in which he tried (but failed) to lower tariffs (which are taxes on goods made in a foreign country and sold in the US, aka imports). Republican Presidents kept tariffs high to protect US business owners. In 1888, Republican Benjamin Harrison was elected with support from business owners and he passed even higher tariffs to protect US business owners.
Summarize Here Focus Question How did the politics of the Gilded Age effect society?
Gilded Age Working Conditions • Industrial workers of the Gilded Age: • Were paid very little for their jobs. • Worked extremely long hours sometimes 10-16 hour days and sometimes 6-7 days a week. • Included men, women (paid less than men) and child labor (kids ages 8 and up, paid even less then women and usually didn’t attend school). • Many of were immigrants who had recently come to the US for job opportunities. • Were often injured during their job because of dangerous machines and very few safety precautions. • Lived mostly in urban areas in horrible living conditions, many times in tenement buildings.
Workers Respond • Labor Unions are organizations of workers that meet to discuss what kind of pay and working conditions they think they deserve for the job that they do and how to earn them. • Labor unions try to achieve better pay, shorter working hours and safer working conditions by: • meeting with business owners, • using arbitration (the process of resolving a dispute using a 3rd party that both of the disputing parties agree upon). • and if needed, by going on strike (protesting against a business instead of working). • During the Gilded Age labor unions will form but almost none of them will have success earning what they want because business owners and the government both did not want them to. • When workers went on strike during the Gilded Age it usually resulted in them getting beaten (sometimes killed) and earning none of the benefits they desired.
Homestead Strikebreakers after a violent battle with workers
Gilded Age Labor Leaders Samuel Gompers created the first craft union which are unions that only people who know a certain skill can join. Eugene V. Debs first attempted to form an industrial union which was a union for non skilled workers. Mother Jones become a major spokesperson for the outlawing of child labor in the US.
Summarize Here Focus Question How did workers respond to the problems of the Gilded Age?
Settling the West (The Frontier) During the 1800’s the US believed in a philosophy called Manifest Destiny which was the expansion of US territory out west (called the frontier) and the movement of people from the east to the west, some even believed it to be God’s will that the US expand west. Settlers will move out west from the east because of the Homestead Act which gave free land to people willing to move out west (mostly to the Great Plains region). To attract more people out west the US builds the Transcontinental Railroad (1867) which went all the way across the country and connected the east and west coasts for first time. The Exodusters moved west and were thousands of southern African-Americans who left the Jim Crow South for the Great Plains (mainly Kansas) which they heard was more open-minded.
Native American Policies Out West • At first the entire Great Plains was given to Native Americans to live on as a reservation (land set aside by the gov’t to be managed and run by Native Americans as they wanted). • As settlers moved out west in greater numbers they realized that they wanted some of the land Native Americans were living on so Native Americans were pushed onto smaller and smaller reservations. • Congress then passed the Dawes Act which made Native American reservation lands able to be privately owned as a way in which to try and assimilate Native Americans fully into American culture. • Really, who benefited were whites and railroad companies (who could both buy up any surplus tribal land not used by Native Americans). • The gov’t begins to realize that Native Americans are probably going to have to adopt more of an American culture and forget their old ways which means to assimilate.
Transcontinental Railroad’s Completion Promontory Point, Utah
Summarize Here Focus Question What groups of Americans moved out to the West and for what reasons? How did this movement affect the Native Americans already living there?
The Populist Movement Populism is a political movement that becomes the Populist Party and was started by farmers (mostly of the Great Plains) which fights for farmer’s economic rights especially in response to railroad companies which took advantage of many farmers by controlling land. There were many political battles between the agricultural rural people out West (the Populists) and the industrial urban business owners of the East (like the railroad robber barons). Populists demanded, currency inflation (when the value of money goes down because prices rise) through bimetallism which would occur if the government allowed silver and gold to be the backing for American money, instead of just gold. They would not achieve this. Populists also wanted more of a direct say in the gov’t by the people which is why they proposed the referendum, recall and initativeall of these would allow regular citizens to do what only elected officials could do. They got this. Much of the Populist movement dies when a Democrat named William Jennings Bryan (who also promoted bimetallism) loses to a Republican named William McKinley in the elections of 1896 and 1900.
Populists (green states) vote for their own candidate in 1892
