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Unit 9: The gilded Age

Unit 9: The gilded Age. Gilded:. To cover with or as if with a thin gold layer. To give an often deceptively attractive or approved appearance to. Term originally coined By Mark Twain. The New Industrial Age:. 3 ingredients that turned the nation into the world’s leading economy:

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Unit 9: The gilded Age

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  1. Unit 9: The gilded Age

  2. Gilded: • To cover with or as if with a thin gold layer. • To give an often deceptively attractive or approved appearance to. Term originally coined By Mark Twain.

  3. The New Industrial Age: • 3 ingredients that turned the nation into the world’s leading economy: Ingredient #1: Abundant and Available resources: • Coal fields of the Appalachians (PA, WV, KY) • Iron ore in The Great Lakes region • Petroleum (PA, TX, WY, OK, etc.)

  4. Huge Labor Pool: Ingredient #2: Huge labor pool (Two Sources): A) Immigration: a. 1840-90, most from northern Europe (GB, Germany, Scand.) b. 1890-1920, most from southern eastern Europe (Italy, Poland, Russia). Called “New immigrants.

  5. Huge Labor Pool, cont.: • Please note: Asians were not a part of these two huge waves of immigration. • Why? • Chinese Exclusion Act (1882): Congress made it illegal for Chinese to enter US. • Gentlemen’s Agreement (1907): Japan agrees not to issue passports to their citizens and US agrees to accept immigrants already here.

  6. Huge Labor Pool, cont.: • Migration from the deep south (poor southern whites and former slaves left the rural south and went to large cities in the north). Many found work as unskilled laborers in mines, factories, and mills.

  7. Ingredient #3: Strong Business Leadership: • Most talented young men went into business, not politics or professional careers (doctor, lawyer, etc.). • Many built large corporations that controlled entire industries. • Some became very wealthy at the same time the avg. worker struggled to survive.

  8. The Robber Barons: • John D. Rockefeller: Started Standard Oil (now Exxon-Mobil). • Andrew Carnegie: Built United States Steel Corp. • Charles Pillsbury: You know, the doughboy! • Andrew Mellon & JP Morgan: Banking • Cornelius Vanderbilt: Railroads and Shipping • John Jacob Astor & James B. Duke: Tobacco

  9. How They Lived:

  10. Justifying their wealth • Social Darwinism • Belief that, as in the animal kingdom, in the world of business, only the strong survive. • The rich justified their wealth by arguing that it was the “natural order” of life… • Any effort by gov’t to regulate business was argued to go against nature

  11. How Did They Become So Wealthy? • Vertical and Horizontal Integration. 1.Vertical: Control of an industry from top to bottom (raw materials to finished product). ex. Carnegie: owned mining companies (iron and coal)  owned rail lines and freight ships  owned steel mills (finished products). 2. Horizontal: Buying out all your competitors.

  12. The Labor Movement • The effects of Industrialization: • Workers became machine operators, skilled at one aspect of production, not craftsmen who knew every step (job satisfaction lost). • Factories took away personal freedom • $ gap grew between workers and employers • Economic conditions forced more children to work

  13. Stop Whining About Homework!

  14. Workers joined unions • Unions established in many industries for example: - International Cigar Makers Union - American Railway Union - United Mine Workers

  15. The Labor Movement • Labor’s Main Goals: 1. Higher wages 2. Better/safer working conditions 3. Fewer hours • Labor’s main tactics to achieve goals: 1. Negotiation & bargaining 2. Work slowdown 3. Strikes 4. Violence

  16. The Labor Movement: • Management’s Main Weapons to Break the Unions: 1. “Yellow Dog” contracts 2. Lockouts 3. “Scab” labor 4. Strikebreakers (armed thugs) 5. “blacklisting”

  17. Labor Strikes and Violence: • There had been a # of local strikes before 1870, but in 1877 there was the first nationwide strike… • The Great Strike of 1877: -wages for workers on Baltimore & Ohio RR were cut 2nd time in 2 months  workers go on strike.

  18. The Great Strike of 1877, cont. Result: 1. Work stoppage stalled nation’s RRs as strike spread to other lines. 2. President Rutherford B. Hayes ordered federal troops in to run the RR. (US Constitution gives fed gov’t the right to regulate interstate commerce). -The strike was broken soon thereafter.

  19. More Conflict The Haymarket Riot (1886): • Get a book…use the index at the back • Read first, then make a few notes on what happened that day • Most important: what were the outcomes/results of the riot?

  20. More Strikes and Violence… • Homestead Steel Strike (1892): Homestead, PA. take notes on this as you did for the events at Haymarket Homestead Strike Video - The Men Who Built America - History.com

  21. Gov’t, Business, and Labor • Gov’t sided with big business from 1870-1890 (“laissez faire” capitalism). • Teddy Roosevelt earned national reputation as a “trust buster”... Break up monopolies • Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890):made monopolies illegal.

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