Chapter 14 – The Second Industrial Revolution
Section Notes
Industry and Railroads The Rise of Big Business Workers Organize
The Age of Invention
Video
Images
Vertical and Horizontal Integratio n
Political Cartoon: John D. Rockef eller
Child Labor Menlo Park Lab
Quick Facts
Visual Summary: The Second I ndustrial Revolution
Maps
Railroads Built by 1910
Railroads Transform Chicago
Industry and Railroads
The Main Idea
During the late 1800s, new technology led to rapid industrial
growth and the expansion of railroads.
Reading Focus
• What new industries emerged in the late 1800s, and why were they important?
New Industries Emerge
• New technologies
– Electrical power replaced steam and water
power.
– Larger factories produced more and more
goods.
– Faster transportation moved people and
goods more cheaply.
• Dramatic industrial growth
New Industries Emerge
Making steel
• The
Bessemer process
of purifying steel helped to
make America the world’s
top producer and
transformed the U.S. into
a modern industrial
economy.
• Construction companies
could build bigger bridges
and taller buildings.
• The low cost of steel made
ordinary items affordable.
Oil industry begins
• Oil was a key commodity
as a fuel source and for
lubrication.
•
Edwin L. Drake
drilled
the first commercial oil
well. Oil prospectors, or
Wildcatters
, looked for
oil in other regions.
• Major sources of energy
from oil fueled a revolution
in transportation and
Railroads expand
• Laid tracks westward from Omaha, Nebraska • Prairie lands and gently rolling hills made for
quick progress.
More tracks
• Between 1865 and 1890, the number of miles of railroad track increased nearly fivefold. Aiding the growth, the federal government gave
thousands of acres of land to railroad companies.
Union Pacific
• Tracks were laid eastward from Sacramento, California. Chinese workers laid tracks through tougher terrain, crossing deserts and blasting through mountains.
• Uniting the country physically and economically, the two rail lines met on May 18, 1869.
Important Effects
Creation of rail network promoted trade and provided jobs.
Demand for rails and railcars boosted steel industry and
train manufacturers.
Settlement of the West was easier, and sparsely populated
areas began to fill with residents. With railroads, new towns
were founded and existing ones expanded.
Railroads led to the adoption of standard time. Before, each
area had its own local time based on the position of the
sun. Accurate timekeeping was needed for the trains to
keep to their schedule. C. F. Dowd proposed dividing the
earth into time zones, setting the clocks alike in each zone.
Railroad officials used this idea in 1883, and by 1918
The Rise of Big Business
The Main Idea
Corporations run by powerful business leaders became a
dominant force in the American economy.
Reading Focus
• What conditions created a favorable climate for business during the late 1800s?
• How did business structures change?
• Who were the leading industrial tycoons, and what did they achieve?
A Favorable Climate for Business
Free markets
• With capitalism, competition determines prices and wages, and most industries are run by private businesses.
• In the 1800s, business
leaders believed in laissez-faire capitalism with no government intervention. • They believed government
regulation would destroy self-reliance, reduce profits, and harm the economy.
Social Darwinism
• Many thinkers believed that inequalities were part of the natural order.
• Charles Darwin believed that members of a species
complete for survival in a natural selection process. • Applied to society, stronger
people, businesses, and nations would prosper, and weaker ones would fail in a “survival of the fittest.”
The American ideal was one of self-reliant individualism. A
strong work ethic made one successful, and
entrepreneurs
Business Structures Change
• Proprietorships and partnerships
– Small businesses were run by individual proprietors or had more than one owner in a partnership. In either case, owners are personally
responsible for all business debts and obligations.
• Corporations
– As industries grew, the structure of ownership changed. Businesses were owned by stockholders; decisions made by a board of directors, with day-to-day operations run by corporate officers. Investment
money was raised by selling stock, and investors were bound only by the amount of their investment.
• Trusts and Monopolies
Industrial Tycoons
Andrew Carnegie rose from immigrant child to steel magnate. He used profits from various business
investments to found his own company. By the end of the century the Carnegie Steel Company
dominated the U.S. steel industry.
After retiring, Carnegie devoted his time to charity, supporting education and building public libraries.
Rockefeller and oil
Starting with an oil refinery and superb business sense, John D. Rockefeller used both vertical and
horizontal integration to capture 90 percent of the U.S. oil refinery business by 1879.
Rockefeller gave away over half of his fortune to charity. He donated millions to education and good works through his Rockefeller Foundation.
Industrial Tycoons
George Pullman made his fortune designing and building sleeper cars that made long-distance
travel more comfortable. He built a town south of Chicago to house workers in relative comfort,
believing happy workers were more productive. The Pullman Company controlled aspects of life in the town, and criticism was not tolerated.
Cornelius Vanderbilt
Vanderbilt began investing in railroads during the Civil War. By 1872, he owned the New York Central Railroad. At the height of his career he controlled 4,500 miles of track.
He supported few charities, but gave money to what would come to be Vanderbilt University. He died leaving an estate of $100 million.
A Mixed Legacy
Critics
– Business tycoons were “robber barons” who
profited unfairly by squeezing out competitors.
They lived lavish lifestyles from their ill-gotten
rewards.
Proponents
Mass Marketing
Retailers looked for new ways to maximize their profits.
Household goods were targeted toward women, who made
most of those purchasing decisions. Wholesome images
were used to convey a sense of purity. Brand names helped
customers remember products. The convenient department
store emerged, providing a variety of goods. The stores
bought in bulk, passing the savings on to the customers.
Workers Organize
The Main Idea
Grim working conditions in many industries led workers to
form unions and stage labor strikes.
Reading Focus
• What was the relationship between government and business in the late 1800s?
Government and Business
• Hands-off policy
– Government did not interfere with business in the late 1800s, but as corporations expanded and gained power, that policy began to change.
• Controlling the giants
– The Sherman Antitrust Act was passed in 1890, making it illegal to form trusts that interfered with free trade. It
prohibited monopolies and activities hindering competition. – The law was vague, however, and it was seldom enforced. • Workers
– The government paid less attention to workers, who scraped by on small wages. By 1890, 10 percent of the population
controlled 75 percent of the nation’s wealth. The rich were very rich, and many industrial workers made less than $500 per
Industrial Workers
The workforce
• Many factory workers were
immigrants or rural
Americans moving to the
cities for jobs.
• The best jobs went to
native-born whites or
European immigrants.
• Less well-paying jobs were
open to African Americans,
as household help or
laborers.
• By 1900, one in six
children between the ages
of 10 and 15 held factory
jobs.
Working conditions
• Most unskilled laborers
worked 10-hour days, six
days a week.
• They had no paid vacation
and no sick leave.
• Speed of production led to
terrible accidents. Injured
workers were replaced.
•
Sweatshops
were
common. These cramped
workshops set up in
shabby tenement buildings
were common in the
Workers Seek Change
After the Civil War, things changed. The Knights of Labor formed in 1869. Under the leadership of
Terence V. Powderly in the 1880s, they began to accept unskilled workers, women, and African
Americans as members. They campaigned for
reforms, such as eight-hour workdays and the end of child labor through boycotts and negotiations.
Early organizing
In 1794, Philadelphia shoemakers formed a trade union. Over decades, unions formed for skilled
trade workers, but they remained small and local.
Nation Unions
After wage cuts, the first railroad strike occurred in 1877. Initial strikes quickly spread, and state
militias were called out. Violence ensued, lives
were lost, and costly damage was done. The arrival of U.S. Army troops put an end to the strike.
The Great Railroad
Strikes and Turmoil
The Haymarket Riot
• 1886 was a difficult year for labor. • One of the worst clashes was at
Haymarket Square in Chicago. A bomb was thrown in a crowd
gathered to protest violent police action. Gunshots rang out, and eleven people were killed and hundreds injured before it was over.
• Foreign-born unionists were
blamed for the violence, and the press fanned xenophobia.
• Eight men were charged with conspiracy, but no evidence connected them to the crime. • All eight were convicted and
sentenced to death. After four hangings and one suicide, the last three were pardoned.
The American Federation of Labor
• Employers struck back at organized labor, forcing
employees to sign documents saying they would not join a union.
• Blacklists of people deemed troublemakers were made and shared by employers, who
refused to hire anyone listed. • Striking workers were replaced
with “scabs,” or strikebreakers. • Samuel Gompers led a group of
skilled workers to form the
American Federation of Labor in 1886.
The Homestead Strike
Unions made some gains, but conflicts continued. Carnegie Steel workers in Homestead, Pennsylvania, refused to work faster,
and the manager tried to lock them out. The workers seized the plant. Gunfire erupted when private guards hired by the
company tried to take control. After a 14-hour battle and
fourteen deaths, the governor called out the state militia. The steelworkers’ union withered within months.
After laying off a third of its employees in 1893, the Pullman Company cut the wages of remaining workers by 25 percent without lowering their rents. Workers went on strike with the support of Eugene V. Debs, the leader of the American
Railway Union. The government ordered the strike be called off, but the union refused. President Grover Cleveland called in federal troops, and the strike collapsed. The late 1800s
would remain an era of big business.
The Age of Invention
The Main Idea
Important innovations in transportation and communication
occurred during the Second Industrial Revolution.
Reading Focus
• What advances in transportation were made in the late 1800s? • What inventions led to a communications revolution?
Advances in Transportation
•
Streetcars
were
horse-drawn vehicles placed on
rails on the street to make the ride smoother.
Streetcars needed more power than horses could
provide, and cable cars were invented in San
Francisco to get cars up the steep hills there. The
cars latched on to a moving cable underground.
•
Subways
developed as a result of increased
traffic from horses and electric streetcars
Advances in Transportation
•
Automobiles
—inventors were experimenting with
vehicles for personal use as well. A breakthrough
came with the invention of the internal
combustion engine in 1867. The first practical
motorcar in the U.S. was built in 1893.
Automobiles were only for the wealthy; a new car
cost about $2,500.
•
Airplanes
—Ohio bicycle makers
Wilbur
and
Communications Revolution
The telegraph
• Samuel F. B. Morse patented his method of communicating by sending messages over wires with electricity, calling it the telegraph.
• Operators tapped out
patterns of long and short messages that stood for letters of the alphabet. The system was known as Morse code.
• After the Civil War, the telegraph grew with the railroads. Telegraph wires were strung along the tracks, and train stations had
telegraph offices in them.
The telephone
• Two men were working on devices that could transmit voices using electricity.
• Alexander Graham Bell patented his device hours
before his competitor, and he gets the credit for the
invention of the telephone in 1876.
• Companies found the
telephone to be an essential business tool. People wanted to have them in their homes as well.
The Typewriter
Inventors in many nations made attempts to create a
writing machine.
Christopher Latham Sholes, a Milwaukee printer, developed
the first practical typewriter in 1867. He later improved
upon his machine by designing the QWERTY keyboard, still
the standard on keyboards today. The most frequently used
letters were placed far apart so they would not jam when
they were struck.
Thomas Edison
• Obsessed with progress
– As a child, Thomas Edison was curious about everything. Nearly deaf by twelve, he declared himself an inventor by age twenty-two. In 1886, he opened his own research laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J.
• Hard work
– Edison said, “Genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent
perspiration.” He worked alongside his assistants and spent long hours tinkering with designs. Inventions poured out of the lab, and Edison became known as the Wizard of Menlo Park.
• Electric lighting
– Edison developed the practical electric lighting. With the
incandescent bulb came the need for widely available electricity. Edison would bring electricity to New York City, designing and producing all of the parts necessary for an electricity network. Electric power plants spread across the country.
