Chapter+18+Reading+Objectives+and+Notes

= Learning Objectives = After mastering this chapter, you should be able to: = = = Chapter Summary = By their centennial of 1876, Americans were rapidly developing their society. Most important in this development was an increase in industrialism and the effects of that industrialism on American culture and society. Several factors contributed to the rapid economic transformation of the era: an abundance of natural resources for materials, an increasing supply of laborers, an expanded consumer marketplace, increases in railroads for transportation, a plethora of confident investors for capital, and new technology and innovations. Federal, state and local government also fostered economic growth by providing monetary and resource grants to companies, stability, and freedom from regulation. Revolutionary changes in transportation and communication, including especially the growth of railroads, transformed American life. By ending rural isolation, encouraging economic specialization, creating a national market, and capturing the nation’s imagination, the railroads transformed production, distribution, and business practices. By the end of the century, Americans, with substantial assistance from federal and state governments, had built almost 200,000 miles of track. Despite much waste and corruption, the railroads probably did more good than harm. For example, they saved the federal government $1 billion from 1850-1945. Before the Civil War, railroad construction served local markets. After 1865, however, the railroads tied much of the nation together through a system of trunk lines over which passengers and freight traveled with relative speed, comfort, and safety. In the South, railroads were not consolidated and integrated into the national railroad system until after Reconstruction. Congress voted to allow two companies, the Union Pacific, working westward, and the Central Pacific, working eastward, to compete in the construction of the first transcontinental railroad. Having begun in 1863, but lagging somewhat during the war, they completed the tracks in May 1869. By 1893, four more railroad lines reached the West Coast. Overbuilding generated vigorous rate wars and intense competition for passengers and freight. At first, railroad managers tried and failed to reduce conflict through cooperation. After 1893, financiers like J. P. Morgan refinanced the railroads and took over the industry, constructing regional monopolies that effectively eliminated competition. The Bessemer process made possible an industrial empire based on steel. The process for manufacturing steel required great deal of capital, access to abundant resources, and sophisticated production techniques. These requirements limited the number of companies able to participate in the industry to the few that could afford it, including most notably Carnegie Steel Company. Steel companies like Carnegie’s grew very large and competition among them was fierce until Carnegie led the industry in a movement toward vertical integration as a means of eliminating competition. In 1901, J.P. Morgan acquired Carnegie Steel Company and several others, combining them into the country’s first billion-dollar corporation, U.S. Steel. The oil industry also boomed during this era with John D. Rockefeller as its undisputed king. He ordered the chaotic oil industry through consolidation, pioneering a new kind of business organization—the trust. By the 1890s, Rockefeller had recognized the cumbersome nature of the trust and reorganized Standard Oil into a holding company. The business of invention also boomed—from fewer than 2,000 patents per year during the 1850s to over 20,000 per year by the 1880s and 1890s. These inventions transformed the communication, clothing, food, lighting, and power industries. The advent of brand names, print advertising, chain stores, and mail-order houses in what is known as the “science of marketing” brought the new goods to households far and wide and initiated a new and seemingly unified community of consumers. The labor of millions of men and women made the U.S. emerging economic empire possible. Their lives improved in many respects because of new goods, expanded health and educational opportunities, better wages and working conditions, and increased influence in national affairs. At the same time, life for workers was hard, especially unskilled laborers. They suffered grueling, often dangerous jobs, for relatively low pay. There were few holidays or vacations and no life or health insurance system. Men, women, and children were often forced to work in order to make ends meet. Women and children along with African Americans, Catholics, Jews, and immigrants carried an additional burden of discrimination. All workers found that the new factory system required difficult and often demeaning adaptations in age-old patterns of work. Most noteworthy of these changes was factory discipline. Workers worked indoors according to a clock with a strict hierarchy of supervisors and harsh rules. As industries grew, work became more and more impersonal. Even so, most workers accepted the system because it offered substantial social mobility. National unions gradually took shape during the era and approached the problems of labor in different ways. The Knights of Labor, for example, organized like a fraternal order and sought broad social reforms, while the American Federation of Labor organized craft unions of skilled workers and sought practical, immediate, and tangible improvements for its members. Few labor unions allowed women or African Americans to join. Though workers joined unions for better wages, etc., they also found in them and other social and fraternal organizations companionship, insurance, job listings, and even food for the sick. Employees tried to humanize the factory while employers tried to determine wages and conditions on the basis of supply and demand rather than the welfare of the workers. This conflict of purposes often led to violent strikes. The injunction was the most useful tool employers had to end workers’ strikes. To be sure, industrial growth meant progress and power but it also meant rapid change, social instability, exploitation of labor, and a growing gap between rich and poor.
 * 1) **Discuss each of the major factors that contributed to the rapid industrialization of 1870 to 1900.**
 * 2) Describe the principal economic and social effects of the railroad from1865 to 1900 and trace the building of the American railroad network from 1865 to 1900.
 * 3) Detail the rise and consolidation of the steel industry.
 * 4) Detail the rise and consolidation of the oil industry.
 * 5) List and describe the most important inventions of the last third of the nineteenth century, including their major effects.
 * 6) Identify and explain each of the major factors in the development of a national consumer market.
 * 7) **Compare and contrast the effects of industrialization on the working lives of native-born White Anglo-Saxon Protestant males and, on the other hand, women, children, Catholics, Jews, and immigrants.**
 * 8) Identify the adaptations in the "culture of work" required by the new factory system, and the response to those changes by working people.
 * 9) **Compare and contrast the policies and methods of the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor.**
 * 10) Discuss the violence that emerged from employer/employee conflict and assess the role of the U.S. government in restoring order.
 * INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT**
 * //An Empire on Rails//**
 * “Emblem of Motion and Power”**
 * Building the Empire**
 * Linking the Nation via Trunk Lines**
 * Rails Across the Continent**
 * Problems of Growth**
 * AN INDUSTRIAL EMPIRE**
 * Carnegie and Steel**
 * Rockefeller and Oil**
 * The Business of Invention**
 * THE SELLERS**
 * //The Wage Earners//**
 * Working Men, Working Women, Working Children**
 * Culture of Work**
 * Labor Unions**
 * Labor Unrest**
 * //Conclusion: Industrialization’s Benefits and Costs//**

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