Age of Growth and Disorder, 1877-1910s

Naming

Robber Barons, Gilded Age

Industrialism Triumphant

Examine from several POV: G & D

What

2nd Industrial Revolution

Increase in production

2nd Wave of Immigration

Increase in SE European / Catholics, Jews

Increase in poverty, crime, violence

Historical significance / change

Anglo-Am. ask “Who is White? American?”

Can democracy co-exist with unregulated capitalism?

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Harmony of Labor & Capital

Agrarian Republic (Thomas Jefferson)

No permanent wage/working class

Go West!

Homestead Act 1862

2nd Industrial Revolution

Growth of capital goods

Growth of mergers

Solidified permanent working class

Open immigration

Low wages

How will labor and capital respond?

Production of capital goods doubles every decade, 1870-1910

Numbers in the thousands: 1870 12,925 = 12,925,000 workers.

1870 to 1910 U.S. changed from primarily an agricultural nation to non-agricultural

Workforce (laborers) more than doubled: 12,925,000 to 37,480,000.

Immigration

Second Wave of Immigration: 1870-1914

First Wave: 1840s Irish potato famine

Second Wave of Immigrants

SE Europe

Dark skin

Catholic

Jewish

What does increased immigration with low wages and monopolized wealth look like?

Options to viewing the following slides in class:

Slide show before class begins

Or view these websites for homework

“Summer Cottages” and homes: photos and building details

http://www.newportmansions.org/page7016.cfm

http://discover-net.net/~dchs/history/exwp.html

Conditions in the cities:

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/Davis/photography/slideshows/slideshows.html , click on “Jacob Riis photographs” and view the slide show. Note the photo titles.

Workplace Conditions:Disorder

Sweatshops ca.1900

Immigrant women

Homework / Evening Work

Pennsylvania

Coal sorters

Child labor

No Health Care

Black Lung

Meat packing / Dangerous, Unsanitary

Lower Manhattan

Privatized city services

Not part of urban machine, ward politics

Jane Addams:dug out several feet of compacted garbage

Note open-air food vendors on the sidewalks

Women’s Lodging Room

Jacob Riis, Police photographer, Tenement

Reformer

5 cent lodging / Housing Shortage

American

Aristocracy

?

Big Themes to Think About Can industrial capitalism fairly distribute

wealth among workers?

Can industrial capitalism co-exist with democracy?

Why did some American-born workers take up ideas of socialism?

Why did English iron workers have a longer life-expectancy than American iron workers?

Workers’ Solutions to G & D 1877, The Great Strike

National / use of police, militia, federal troops Private property vs. democracy in workplace

1886, Haymarket Bombing Knights of Labor / Christian community / 8 hr day Free speech vs. death for political beliefs (anarchists)

1892, Homestead Strike Union contract / private property Self-defense vs. private army (Pinkertons)

1894, Pullman Strike (RR unions/military) Company town / Long Depression / Wage cuts Federal power vs. workers’ rights (socialism)

1909 Uprising of 20,000 (ILGWU) Working women & middle-class suffragettes vs. men 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

Describe what you see.

The Great Strike, 1877:Feed them a diet of lead

Is this America?

Document#1 1878 Wendell Phillips

Document#2 1877 Letter to Scott

Document#3 1877 News Editorial

Blame foreigners, especially Germans & Bohemians

What would you do as a business owner?

Take a look at what Scott did!

What’s a “Gatling gun”? Describe.

Gatling Gun

Reread

Document

#2

Haymarket Bombing, 1886Knights of Labor, AFL, Anarchists

Who’s to blame for the bomb? Those shot?

Following days, 8 anarchists arrested

Only 1 had been at Haymarket

All found guilty

4 killed, 1 suicide

3 pardoned (but got life in prison)

No evidence to convict them

Convicted for their political beliefs

Test of democracy

Homestead, 1892Unionized

Pinkertons: Private Armies

Homestead Strike, 1892

Andrew Carnegie, steel & AAISW

1889 contract: wages relative to price of steel

1892 depression

“Business” is no business of the workers

To Frick: I approve of whatever you do

Henry Clay Frick, manager

Cut wages (Carnegie vacated to castle)

“Fort Frick” 3 mile fence, rifle holes, barbed wire

Barge of Pinkertons / private army

Battle – 3 Pinkertons and 9 workers dead

Gov calls in state militia

Alexander BerkmanWhat do you see? Do you know her?

Pullman, 1894“Model Town”: Democracy?

Pullman Strike, 1894Pullman Co. sole profitable RR

Workers’ POV? Middle-class POV?

1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act

Stop Rockefeller’s secret monopoly

“Acquired” 90% of oil production

Horizontal and vertical integration

1905 Lochner v. NY

State 10 hour work day unconstitutional

Interferes with workers’ freedom

How do workers and middle-class view government & big business?

Who gets blamed?

Leon Czolchoz

Assassinated President McKinley, 1901

Who is he?

Document #4 1903 Immigration Act

On whose side will middle-class fall?

1909 “Uprising of 20,000”

ILGWU

Women’s Trade Union

Suffragists join workers

52 hr/week

No bathroom break

Jewish and Italian women

Ok to beat them until they understand

March 25, 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Company

Note policemen

looking up at falling bodies.

“Men and women, boys and girls were of the dead that

littered the street; that is actually the condition -- the streets

were littered."

30minutes for fires to consume 8th,9th,10th floors146 women and girls dead

Doors locked

Keep women and girls at their machines

Keep them from stealing

Fire escapes too few and blocked with material

30 minutes, 8-10th floors consumed

146 dead, many littering the sidewalks

Company agrees to ILGWU; laws

Next: The Progressive Era Scientific Management

or the Age of Corporate Reform

Time study, collect statistics, create a uniform model, hire a manger to enforce it Standardize!

Regulate mergers, RR, workplace

Regulate elections, civil service, gov’t

Regulate housing, public services, education, immigrants

But don’t forget ....

Land of Opportunity

Birds of Passage

40% leave U.S.

10% worker mortality rate

Underestimated

U.S. Iron workers life expectancy: 37

In England: 51

We are descendants of survivors

More died or returned to Europe than survived in the U.S.

Relevance to present day?

Global economy

Average wage for managers in China: 50¢/hr

Child labor

Illegal sweatshops in U.S.

Modern day slavery