Chapter 14 The Second Industrial Revolution. Click on the window to start video.

Chapter 14

The Second Industrial

Revolution

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The Main Idea

During the late 1800s, new technology led to rapid

industrial growth and the expansion of railroads.

New technologies In the Second Industrial revolution, 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

Period sometimes called the Second Industrial Revolution

One of the strong values of the Second Industrial Revolution was self-reliance and individualism.

Horatio Alger wrote about America’s workers as being honest and having a strong work ethic. Horatio Alger’s novels taught young boys to strive for success, to be self-reliant, and work hard.

Making steelThe 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.

Using the Bessemer process, American steel mills were able to produce steel faster and more cheaply than ever before.

Oil industry beginsIn the mid-1800s, Oil was a key

commodity as a fuel source and for lubrication.

The first successful oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania.

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 industry.

Oil production zoomed upward after the Texas oil boom at the turn of the 20th century.

Many of the world’s leading oil companies got their start in the Texas oil boom.

• Laid tracks westward from Omaha, Nebraska

• In laying track for the transcontinental railroad, the Union Pacific Railroad proceeded more quickly because it benefited from the smoother terrain of the prairie lands and gently rolling hills.

More tracks

• Between 1865 and 1890, the number of miles of railroad track increased nearly five fold. 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.

Central Pacific

Creation of the transcontinental railroad promoted trade and provided jobs for many Americans. 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 zones. 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 standard time was adopted for the nation as a whole.

The Main Idea

Corporations run by powerful business leaders became a

dominant force in the American economy.

Free markets With capitalism, competition

determines prices and wages. In capitalism, most industries are run by private businesses.

In the 1800s, business leaders believed in laissez-faire capitalism. An economic system in which private businesses run their industries without the threat of government intervention.

They believed government regulation would destroy self-reliance, reduce profits, and harm the economy.

Social DarwinismMany 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.

Social Darwinists believed that the survival of the fittest was also true for human ventures. Stronger people, businesses, and nations would survive. Weaker ones would fail. This strengthened society as a whole.

William Graham Sumner taught social Darwinism.

The American ideal was one of self-reliant individualism. A strong work ethic made one successful, and entrepreneurs risked their money and talents in new ventures.

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. Among the advantages of a corporation are the ability to raise money and the limited liability of stockholders. In both partnerships and corporations ownership is held by two or more people. The owners of a corporation are its stockholders.

The three main characteristics of a corporation are: It has legal status as an individual. It is owned by the stockholders. It is run by a board of directors.

• Trusts and Monopolies

• Some companies merged and turned their stocks over to a board of trustees who ran the group of companies as a single entity. Sometimes a trust is completely successful holding a monopoly, having complete control of an industry. With no competition, prices could be raised or lowered at will.

Rockefeller and OilStarting 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. In vertical integration he bought barrel factories, oil fields, pipelines, and railroad cars.

Rockefeller gave away over half of his fortune to charity. He donated millions to education and good works through his Rockefeller Foundation.

In Gospel of Wealth, Andrew Carnegie explained his belief that great wealth was a resource to be used to benefit others.

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. He then sold Carnegie Steel to banker J.P. Morgan.

After retiring, Carnegie gave away most of his money to charity, supporting education, the arts, building public libraries, and peace efforts.

Carnegie and Steel

Rockefeller also took over other refining companies using horizontal integration, and made special deals with shipping companies to get the lowest price for transportation.

• George Pullman made his fortune designing and building sleeper cars that made long-distance travel more comfortable.

• The Pullman Company built and controlled a town south of Chicago to house workers in relative comfort, believing happy workers were more productive.

Cornelius Vanderbil

t

• 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.

George Pullman

Critics Business tycoons were “robber barons” who profited

unfairly by squeezing out competitors, and lived like nobility.

Proponents Business tycoons were “captains of industry” who used

their business skills to make the American economy more productive. That in turn made the American economy stronger.

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 identify and remember the products. Shopping became easier with the emergence of department stores. Providing a variety of goods, the stores bought in bulk, passing the savings on to the customers.

Rural people accessed the vast variety of goods available in the city department stores through mail-order copies such as Sears, Roebuck and Company. Mail-order companies benefited rural Americans because it gave them access to a huge variety of goods. The Sears, Roebuck and Company catalog was 507 pages. Customers made their selections, sent in the payments, and waited for the merchandise to arrive.

The Main Idea

Labor unions formed to combat long work hours, sweatshop conditions, child labor, dangerous work conditions, low wages,

wage cuts, and pay inequalities.

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 Sherman Antitrust Act promoted competition and free trade.

The law was vague and not very effective because the government brought very few lawsuits against businesses in this period.

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 year.

The workforce was made up primarily of three major groups…

1.Rural Americans coming to the cities looking for work,

2.Immigrants from other countries, and

3.Children.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.

Employers felt no responsibility for injured workers so new workers were hired to placed injured workers and the injured workers were replaced.

Sweatshops were common. These cramped workshops set up in shabby tenement buildings were common in the garment industry.

After the Civil War, things changed. The Knights of Labor formed in 1869. Under the leadership of Terence V. Powderly in the 1880s, the Knights of Labor 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 Strike

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 in the Haymarket Riot.

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.

Using strikes and other tactics, the AFL did win wage increases and shorter workweeks.

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 to end the Pullman Strike because it was interfering with the delivery of the U.S. mail, and the strike collapsed. The late 1800s would remain an era of big business. Most workers who participated in the Pullman strike were fired or blacklisted.

The Pullman Strike

The Main Idea

Important innovations in transportation and

communication occurred during the Second

Industrial Revolution.

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 competing for space. Boston built the first subway line in 1897, with New York City following in 1904.

Public transportation systems that carry large numbers of people and make fixed stops along established routes are called mass transit systems. Mass transit systems enabled people to live away from the city center.

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—The first true flight in an airplane took place on December 17, 1903, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Ohio bicycle makers Wilbur and Orville Wright were the first to successfully fly an airplane–for 12 seconds in 1903. They followed this success with even longer flights.

The TelegraphSamuel 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.

By 1900, more than a million telephones had been installed across the nation.

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. The typewriter could produce legible documents very quickly. Businesses began to hire women as typists to manage company correspondence, opening up new job opportunities for women.Communications advances in the 1800s included the telegraph, telephone, and typewriter.

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.” Edison also viewed failures as valuable to him as successes. 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. Edison believed in self-reliance and individualism.

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.

Over his lifetime, Edison earned over 1,000 U.S. patents.