Unit Five
Industry to Immigration
The Growth of Big
Business
• SSUSH 11
• The student will describe the economic, social, and
geographic impact of the growth of big business
and technological innovations after Reconstruction.
• Key Terms
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Big Business
Chinese Laborers
Electric Light Bulb
John D. Rockefeller
Monopolies
Motion Pictures
Phonograph
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Railroad Industry
Standard Oil Company
Steel Industry
Thomas Edison
Transcontinental Railroad
Trusts
Railroad Industry
• Huge amounts of capital were needed to create
and maintain a nation-wide business.
o Capital acquired through both public (government) subsidies and private
investments.
• Large professionally trained managerial staffs were
needed to keep up with many passengers, cargo,
and equipment.
• New means of accounting were created
• Internal organization led to the consolidation of
many railroads.
Expansion of Railroads
• 1st Transcontinental Railroad
o Completed in 1869
o Union Pacific – built from east to west
• Irish laborers
o Central Pacific – built from west to east
• Chinese laborers
o Met at Promontory Pt, Utah in 1869
Rise of Big Business
• Development of corporations
o Several people share ownership of a business
• Corporations wanted to increase profits:
o Tried to gain a monopoly
• Complete control over a product or service
o Created trusts – group of separate companies that are put under the
management of a single group
John D. Rockefeller
• Standard Oil Company
o Began buying inefficient companies in 1870
o Controlled 90% of the refining capacity in the U.S. by 1879
o 1882 he combined the companies to form the Standard Oil Trust
• 1890 the trust was broken up by the Ohio Supreme Court
John D. Rockerfeller
• http://www.history.com/topics/john-drockefeller/videos/john-d-rockefeller-oil-money-and-power
• http://www.history.com/topics/john-d-rockefeller/videos/themen-who-built-america-the-americandream?m=528e394da93ae&s=undefined&f=1&free=false
• http://www.history.com/topics/john-d-rockefeller/videos/themen-who-built-america-the-rise-of-corneliusvanderbilt?m=528e394da93ae&s=undefined&f=1&free=false
Thomas Edison
• Electric Light Bulb (1880)
• Motion Pictures (1888)
o Built the machine needed for filming and projecting motion pictures
• Phonograph (1877)
o Early record player
American Industrial
Growth
• SSUSH12
• The student will analyze important consequences of
American industrial growth.
Who came to America?
“Old” Immigrants
“New” Immigrants
• before Civil War (1820-60)
• from Northern & Western
Europe
• mostly skilled workers
• most moved onto small
towns & farms of North and
West
• language, customs,
religion similar to
Americans
• faced hostility, but more
easily assimilated into
American society
• after Civil War (1880-1914)
• from Eastern & Southern
Europe & Asia
• mostly unskilled workers
• most remained in cities of
Northeast – “ethnic islands”
• language, customs,
religion, appearance
different to Americans
• faced hostility and
suspicion; not easily
assimilated
Why did immigrants come to
America?
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Push Factors
famine
lack of opportunity
racial, religious,
political
persecution
required military
service in home
country
Pull Factors
• economic
opportunity –
industrialization
created jobs
• freedom from
persecution
• RR advertisements
• legislation –
Contract Labor Law
What were the major points of entry for
immigrants coming to the United States?
• Established by the Bureau
of Immigration
Ellis Island
• 1892 Ellis Island opened in
New York Harbor as major
immigration station on
East coast
• 1910 Angel Island
opened in San Francisco
& became a major
station on West coast
Angel
Island
Chinese Exclusion Act
• The Act was passed in 1882.
• It prevented Chinese laborers from entering the
country.
• Congress created this law on behalf of the labor
unions and racists along the west coast of the US.
• This act was not repealed until 1943
How did immigration impact
America?
• encouraged industrial
growth - built railroads,
worked in coal mines &
factories
• made traditions part of
American culture
• became active in labor
unions and politics
Angel
Island
Why did immigrants face
hostility?
• Competed for jobs (created a surplus)
– kept wages low and those who did not join a
union made it difficult for unions to organize &
gain advantages
• Competed for housing (caused shortages)
– caused crowding and rents increased
• Religious differences:
“Old Immigrants” – Irish Catholics
“New Immigrants” – Jews and Orthodox religions
• Sometimes affected American politics / elections
(often blamed for political machines’ corruption)
How did immigrants
respond?
• Organizations formed – American Protective
Association – fought for immigration restrictions
• American Federation of Labor
o Samuel Gompers
• President of union from 1886 – 1924
o Accepted only skilled workers
o Organized by craft
o Did not see capitalism as the enemy
o Urged workers to work with owners for higher wages and better working
conditions
o Was not above using work stoppages though when needed
Industrial Unrest
1894 Pullman Strike
o Pullman Palace Car Company laid off workers and reduced wages, later
shut down plant
o Employees were forced to live and pay rent in Pullman (located in Chicago)
o Owner: George Pullman
o A.R.U. called for a nationwide strike
o Halted railroad traffic & mail delivery
o President Grover Cleveland sent federal troops to end strike
o Debs put in prison (he violated Sherman Antitrust Act)
Why did farmers move
West?
• Railroads advertised land
for sale, especially in Europe
• Homestead Act of 1862 –
government offered farm
plots of 160 acres to anyone
willing to live on the land for
five years, dig a well, and
build a road
Sources of Conflict: Views on
Nature
• Indian cultures – saw
themselves as part of
nature; viewed nature as
sacred
• White settlers – saw land as
a resource to produce
wealth
A pile of buffalo
skulls waiting
to be made into
fertilizer.
Courtesy of the
Burton
Historical
Collection.
Sources of Conflict:
Broken Promises
• 1830s – Native
Americans forced to
resettle west of the
Mississippi “Great
American Desert”
• 1850s– gold & silver
discovered in Indian
Territory, Indians are
forced onto smaller
lands
• 1860s – Indians forced
onto reservations
New Settlers & Native
Americans Clash
• Battle of Little Big Horn
o 1875 gold discovered on Sioux hunting
grounds in the Dakotas & Montana
o Chief Sitting Bull & Chief Crazy Horse
assembled Sioux and tried to drive white
settlers out
o U.S. sent troops against Native Americans
o 1876 Colonel George Custer & men
arrived early and all were killed by the
Sioux
Ghost Dance Religion
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religious revival among Indians
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would banish white settlers & restore buffalo
Lakota Song about Ghost Dance:
The whole world is coming,
A nation is coming, a nation is coming,
The eagle has brought the message to the
tribe.
The Father says so, the Father says so.
Over the whole earth they are coming,
The buffalo are coming, the buffalo are
coming,
The crow has brought the message to the
Wovoka a Paiute medicine
man and mystic
New Settlers & Native
Americans Clash
• Wounded Knee (1890)
o U.S. government concerned, ordered
arrest of Sitting Bull – he & others were killed
when followers tried to rescue him
o U.S. troops followed Sioux who escaped –
killed more than 100 at Wounded Knee,
South Dakota
o end of Plains Indian resistance
Dawes General Allotment
Act
• 1887 law that broke up
reservations, divided
reservation land into private
family plots, and sold the
rest to white settlers
• U.S. government refused to
recognize tribes and
treated Indians as
individuals
The Progressive Era
• SSUSH13
• The student will identify major efforts to reform
American society and politics in the Progressive Era
• Key Terms
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Conservation Movement
Direct Election of Senators
Hull House
Ida Tarbell
Initiative
Jim Crow
Muckrakers
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NAACP
Plessy v. Ferguson
President Theodore
Roosevelt
Recall
Referendum
Upton Sinclair
What is the Progressive
Movement
• 1890 – 1920
• Movement that responded to the pressures of
industrialization and urbanization by promoting
reforms
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle
• Published 1906
• Exposed dangerous and unsanitary conditions in
Chicago’s stockyards
• President Roosevelt read it and got Congress to
pass the Meat Inspection Act – it provided federal
agents to inspect meat sold across state lines and
required federal inspection of meat-processing
plants.
The Jungle
• That was 1906…
o Things are better today right!!!!
o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj4sSZIZco0
Women in the Progressive
Era
• Jane Addams
o Opened a settlement house in Chicago
o Community centers organized to provide social services to the urban poor
o Examples of services provided:
• Gave mothers child care classes
• Taught English
• Ran nursery schools and kindergartens
Alice Paul and the NWP
• National Woman’s Party
o Worked to earn women the right to vote used public protest marches
• 1st to picket White House and use hunger strikes
Jim Crow America
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQNQvyuGt0
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Niagara Movement
• Founded in 1905
• Group of African Americans who
pushed for immediate racial reforms,
especially in education and voting
practices.
• Leadership:
o W.E.B. DuBois
• Membership only grew to a few
hundred
NAACP
• National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People
o Formed in 1909
• Interracial organization founded to abolish
segregation & discrimination and to achieve
political & civil rights for African Americans
• Strategy: use courts to challenge unfair laws
Plessy v. Ferguson
• 1890 – Jim Crowe Law in Louisiana
o Required separate seating cars on railroads in the state
• 1892 – NAACP planned an event to bring attention
to the law
o Homer Plessy (1/8th African-American, thus meeting the legal definition,
but not looking African-American)
o Boarded a “White Only” seating car
o He was arrested and his trial went all the way to the Supreme Court of the
United States
• 1896 – Supreme Court Ruling
o “Separate but equal” is constitutional
o Racial discrimination is now legal
The Muckrakers
• Muckraker term originated from a President
Theodore Roosevelt speech in which he praised
journalist for “uncovering that which was hidden
from a corrupted society.”
• The most famous Muckraker was Ida Tarbell
o A History of the Standard Oil Trust
• “They had never played fair, and that ruined their greatness for me.”
• Describes Rockefeller as being “money-mad” and “a hypocrite”
• “Our national life is on every side distinctly poorer, uglier, meaner, for
the kind of influence he exercises,” she concluded.
Political Reforms of the
Progressive Era
• Initiative/referendum:
o Allowed voters to suggest and approve laws directly without going
through state legislatures
• Recall
o Enabled voters to get rid of politicians who were unsatisfactory, without
waiting for a complete election cycle
• Direct Election of Senators
o The 17th Amendment provided for the direct election of U.S. Senators
ending the state legislative cronyism responsible for the appointment of
Senators.
Economic Reforms of the
Progressive Era
• Child labor laws
o Set a minimum age for employment
o Restricted the types of jobs children could hold
• Women in the Workplace
o Set a minimum wage for female labor
o Set a maximum number of hours females could work
• Workplace Safety
o Worksite inspections to insure
• Health
• Safety
• Sanitation
• Worker’s Compensation Laws
Social Reforms in the
Progressive Era
• Designed to improve living conditions for the poor in
cities
• Jacob Riis
o How the Other Half Lives (1890)
The Conservation
Movement
• Three Schools of Conservationist
o 1st – Businesses supported a laissez-faire approach believing that business
should be allowed to do as they wished with public lands.
o 2nd – Environmentalist believed that nature was sacred and humans were
intruders.
o 3rd – Conservationist believed that nature could be used but it should also
be protected.
Theodore Roosevelt
• Life-long naturalist
• Majored in Natural History at Harvard
• As President he increased the number of:
o National forest reserves
o Mineral lands
o And hydropower sites
• He also:
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Created the National Forest Service
5 National Parks
18 National Monuments
51 Bird Reserves
4 Game Preservations
150 National Forest