Chapter 19: The Incorporation of
America
Mr. Logan Greene
AP United States History
West Blocton High School
Chapter Objectives
• What changes did the American workforce
experience in the late nineteenth century?
• What impact did new immigration have on cities
in the North?
• Who made up the new Middle Class?
The Gilded Age
• The Gilded Age was a term for late nineteenth
century American society, specifically urban society
• Gilding refers to something worthless surrounded
by a thin layer of gold to supposedly increase its
value, coined originally by Mark Twain
• The Gilded Age referenced the idea that this period
in American history saw the upper levels of society
grow incredibly wealthy and powerful but much of
society was still suffering
New Industry
• From 1870 to 1900 America changed from the
foremost agrarian nation in the world to the
foremost industrial power
• By 1900 less than one third of workers were in the
agrarian sector and one fourth worked specifically
in factories
• Over one third of the worlds manufactured goods
were made in America
The Electric Age
• For most of its history America had to rely on Europe for new
inventions
• By 1900 America had become one of the leading innovators for new
technologies
• (Best example is by 1910 one million patents had been issued,
900,000 had been issued after 1870)
• Thomas Edison was by far the best example of this new enlightened
thinking
• Working from Menlo Park, New Jersey Edison invented numerous
new devices but none as important as his practical light bulb in 1879
• By 1885 New York was a lighted city and industries could now have
production around the clock as they no longer needed to stop at
sunset
The Corporation
• Corporations were created during the Gilded Age
as a new model for business
• A corporation is a business entity owned by
individuals who invest in the corporation known as
stockholders
• Corporations have the same legal rights as a
person and this way the shareholders cannot be
held responsible for the corporation, management
and owners are separate
• Corporations can outlive their owners
The Corporation and Monopolies
• Corporations became huge entities and cornered
the market with monopolies
• Corporations practiced two types of monopolies
through integration
• Vertical Integration: Owning at least one of every
segment of producing one item, thereby cutting
costs in production and lowering the price
• Horizontal Integration: Owning most or all of one
step in production, thereby controlling a vital part
of producing the item
• Horizontal Integration
• Vertical Integration
What is the problem?
• Giant corporations posed a significant issue
• Giant corporations like Standard Oil of JD
Rockefeller and Carnegie Steel of Andrew Carnegie
could alter the free market of the United States
with their ability to corner markets
• As well, they could destroy competition therefore
allowing them to charge whatever they wanted for
their products
Work
• Despite an abundance of jobs the lack of true
competition made it easy for owners to abuse
workers with dangerous and difficult conditions
• Skilled artisans became obsolete as factories
needed low educated, low skilled, low paying labor
• Immigrants made up the majority of the workers
putting in upwards of 60 hours a week in
dangerous conditions and lived close to the
factories to reduce travel time
Child Labor
• Child labor was a sad reality of the
industrialization age
• Children worked long hours in some of the worst
conditions for pitiful pay
• Children were commonly maimed or even killed as
their small extremities were used in the large
machines
Women
• Virtually all working women were unmarried with
no children and were under 25
• Most women worked in the textile industry
• Sadly women made on average 25% of what men
were paid
• In desperation many women began turning to
prostitution to make ends meet
• As more paperwork was added many women
found work in clerical jobs
Responses to Poverty
• As poverty in cities increased housing became the
most visible sign
• Tenement apartments became the norm for
working class families as they lived in tiny
apartments with no running water and disgusting
conditions
• The settlement house movement began to help this
overcrowding, the most famous settlement house
(designed to offer neighborhood reconstruction)
was Hull House in Chicago started by Jane Addams
Gospel of Wealth/Social Darwinism
• A new idea circulated amongst the wealthy
industrialists known as the Gospel of Wealth
• This basically preached against direct intervention
for the poor as it said hard work is what led to
riches
• Carnegie softened this view by saying the wealthy
should try and help the poor with their riches
• Social Darwinism fit with the Gospel of Wealth by
saying the best most able humans made the
money and were most successful
Workers Organize
• As economic troubles occurred in the late 19th
century workers slowly began to organize to
demand better pay, safer working conditions, and
more job security
• The Railroad Strike of 1877 began this move to
organize as railroad workers on the Baltimore and
Ohio Railway stopped work to protest pay cuts
• Violence erupted as federal troops were dispatched
to disperse the strikers
Workers Organize
• The Knights of Labor, originally for craft workers,
grew dramatically after the “Great Uprising”
• The KoL pushed for an 8 hour workday and
encouraged strikes to get results
• At first the courts sided with business leaders and
strikes were broken up by authorities
• The KoL suffered a set back in public opinion when
their strike at Haymarket Square was mauled by
an anarchist bomb
Workers Organize
• With the downfall of the Knights of Labor the
newly formed American Federation of Labor
became the main organization
• The AFL, led by Samuel Gompers, believed in
collective bargaining or negotiations between
workers as a group and management
• The AFL was very successful as the specialized their
demands with specific job areas
Workers Organize
• The Pullman Strike proved to be one of the most
important instances of the workers’ rights
movement
• In 1894 the Pullman Car Company (train cars) cut
wages for its workers
• The workers began to strike with help from Eugene
Debs American Railway Union
• President Cleveland stepped in and broke the
strike
Immigrants
• From 1870 to 1910 an unprecedented amount of
immigrants poured into the United States
• Land was not abundant in Europe and higher birth rates
and lower mortality rates equaled exploding populations
• Most immigrants were from Ireland and Eastern Europe
• Chain migration became a common occurrence as entire
towns migrated after one member was successful
• Most immigrants only planned to stay a few years, make
money, and then return to Europe and about half of the
immigrants that came followed this plan
Neighborhoods
• Normally ethnic groups did not simply settle in the
area of a city
• Churches and Synagogues became the focal points
for the ethnic communities of a city
• Ethnic schools, theatres, newspapers, and stores
supplemented the church to bring the communities
a sense of identity
Work
• Jobs for immigrants depended widely on their skills,
location, and ethnic background
• Jews generally stuck with other Jews in the retail
and garment business
• Many other immigrants found work on farms or in
the newly growing factories
Nativism
• All immigrants faced the new ideas of nativism, or
a hatred for immigrants
• The government stepped in by codifing nativist
feelings with the Naturalization Act of 1870 which
made citizenship only for “white persons or of
African descent”
• Groups like the Immigrant Resistance League
pushed for immigration limits
• Despite nativism white immigrants were still
treated better than Africans
The Great Migration
• As industrialism surged a phenomenon occurred
when masses of African-Americans left the rural
South for the North, this was known as the Great
Migration
• Blacks were commonly restricted to ghettos and
faced difficulty finding meaningful work
• Societal issues contributed as stereotypes of racism
were rampant in the North as well as the South
New Cities
• In the United States during the Gilded Age no one
city experienced an unprecedented amount of
growth; instead, multiple cities grew
• New cities featured mass transit and residential
neighborhoods where the city residents lived
• Many of the new cities were around railroad
centers and featured the new means of production
• The influx of immigrants led to cities expanding
outward and upward with skyscrapers
The New Middle Class
• The middle class had traditionally consisted of
lawyers, ministers, doctors, educators and
merchants
• With the new industrialism this expanded to
salespeople, factory supervisors, managers, civil
servants, and technicians
• Middle classes of the age were consumers, buying
goods and services and beginning the retail age
and lived in houses with electricity and telephones
Chapter Objectives
• What changes did the American workforce
experience in the late nineteenth century?
• What impact did new immigration have on cities
in the North?
• Who made up the new Middle Class?