Learning Target help aka Epic Lecture.
These notes are part of an Advanced Placement US History course; I took part in training for
developing an APUSH course here at BHS earlier this year with the hopes of bringing the rigors of an
AP class to the construct of AMST; as such these notes provide a wealth of material and depth of
inquiry. Additionally, the various sections of the lecture connect back to several of our learning
targets for the unit. Many of you have requested additional direct instruction (lectures) to help bring
all of the disparate components together. While I understand and appreciate this feeling, I also want
you to develop skills, knowledge and comprehension without being spoon-fed the material. Here is, I
hope, a way to meet both of those aims. In class today, and for homework for the rest of the week, you
will work on pulling together all of the resources (readings, presentations, videos, lectures, by Ms.
Coleman, and this handout) to create a cohesive guide to check how well you can address the learning
targets. I will create a template you may want to use, or you can develop one that makes sense for you.
This final product will be one part of your assessment for the unit….
1) What combination of factors resulted in rapid US industrial growth in the late 1800s?
a. In the late 1800s the US overtook Great Britain as the world’s largest source of manufactured
goods
i. Abundant natural resources
ii. The US was its own source of the raw materials necessary for industrialization
iii. Coal, iron ore, copper, lead, timber, and oil
b. Abundant labor supply
i. High immigration between 1865 & 1900
ii. Increased supply of laborers and high demand for industrial jobs made labor cheap
c. Capital (wealth or money) for investing in American businesses
i. Laborsaving technological advances
ii. 440,000 new patents were submitted by the US government from 1860 to 1890
d. Pro-Business government policies
i. Protection of private property
ii. Federal subsidies, loans, and land grants for railroads
iii. Protective tariffs
iv. Very little federal regulation of business
v. Very low taxes on corporate profits
2) How did railroads impact American industrialization in late 1800s?
a. Railroads were the nation’s first “big business”
i. Resources needed to build the nationwide network of railroads led to growth in other
industries (especially coal and steel)
ii. Led to the development of the modern stock-holder corporation
b. Cornelius Vanderbilt
i. Put millions from his steamboat business into the NY Central Railroad in 1867
ii. Merged and “consolidated” local railroads into a trunk line connecting NY to Chicago
iii. Trunk lines major routes between large cities (Baltimore RR, Ohio RR, and
Pennsylvania RR)
c. Promoted settlement on the Great Plains
d. Created one large national market by linking east and west
3) How did the federal government aid railroad expansion?
a. In order to promote western expansion the federal government provided railroad companies
with huge subsidies in the form of loans and land grants
i. 80 companies received over 170 million acres of public land
ii. Railroad companies received more than three times the land given away by the
homestead act
b. The Transcontinental Railroad
i. During the Civil War Congress authorized land grants and loans for a transcontinental
railroad connecting California to the rest of the Union
ii. The Union Pacific company built from east to west across the Great Plains from
Omaha, Nebraska
iii. Used thousands of war veterans and Irish immigrants for labor
iv. Central Pacific company built from west to east over the mountains from Sacramento
v. Used 6,000 Chinese immigrants as labor
vi. The two companies met at Promontory Pont Utah on May 10, 186
1. A golden spike was driven into the ground to mark the linking of the Atlantic
and Pacific states
c. By 1900 four other transcontinental railroads were completed
i. A financial Panic in 1893 forced ¼ of all railroad companies into bankruptcy
ii. Bankers like JP Morgan took control of the bankrupt railroad companies and
consolidated them into larger companies
iii. The same groups of bankers sat on the board of directors for competing railroad
companies
iv. Essentially eliminated competition in the railroad industry
4) What industries made up what is referred to as the “Second Industrial Revolution?”
a. Railroads
b. The Steel Industry
i. The Bessemer System
1. New process for producing high-quality steel, quickly and cheaply
2. Involved blasting air through molten iron
3. Launched the rise of the steel industry
c. The Great Lakes region of the US emerged as the nation’s leading steel producing region due
to abundant coal and iron resources
d. Andrew Carnegie
i. In the 1870s began steel manufacturing in Pittsburgh
ii. Used vertical integration: a company controls every stage of the industrial process,
from mining to transporting the finished product
iii. By 1900 Carnegie Steel was the nation’s top steel producing company
e. US Steel Corporation
i. Andrew Carnegie sold his company in 1900 for over $400 million to a new steel
corporation headed by JP Morgan
ii. US Steel was the first billion dollar company and at that time the largest company in
the world
iii. Controlled over 3/5 of the nation’s steel business
f. The Oil Industry
i. The first oil well in the US was drilled in Pennsylvania 1859
ii. In 1863 John D Rockefeller started the Standard Oil Company
1. Later controlled nearly all of the nation’s oil production by eliminating
competition
2. Horizontal integration: former competitors were brought under a single
corporate umbrella
3. The Standard Oil Trust consisted of separate companies all managed by a
board of trustees that Rockefeller controlled
4. Standard Oil controlled supply and prices of oil products
5. Rockefeller was worth $900 million when he retired
6. Inspired the organization of trusts in other industries: sugar, meat, tobacco,
leather
5) How did the anti-trust movement come about as a reaction to big business?
a. Middle class consumers feared the power of trusts to control supply and prices
b. In 1890 Congress passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act
i. Prohibited any “contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise conspiracy in
restraint of commerce
ii. In reality the law was too vague to have much of an impact
iii. United States vs. E. C. Knight Co. (1895): ruled the Sherman Anti-Trust Act could be
applied only to commerce and not manufacturing
iv. The law was later strengthened in the 1920s
6) How did economic ideas contributed to the rapid industrialization of the late 1800s?
a. Laissez-faire capitalism
i. The Wealth of Nations: 1776 book by Adam Smith
1. Seen as the beginnings of laissez-faire capitalism
2. Argued that business should not be regulated by government
3. Business should be regulated by supply and demand
4. Businesses would offer quality goods at low prices out of their own selfinterest
b. In the 1880s trusts and monopolies undercut the natural regulation of the market proposed by
Adam Smith
c. Social Darwinism
i. Based on Darwin’s theory of natural selection
ii. The English social philosopher Herbert Spencer applied the ideas of natural selection
and survival of the fittest to the business world
iii. Used to justify a small minority of the population controlling a large majority of the
nation’s wealth
iv. Professor William Graham Sumner of Yale University went so far as to argue that help
for the poor was wrong because it interfered with survival of the fittest and would
weaken the evolution of the human species by allowing the unfit to survive
d. The Gospel of Wealth
i. Used religion to justify the wealth of industrialists and bankers
ii. Protestant work ethic: hard work and material success are signs of God’s favor
iii. “Acres of Diamonds”: popular lecture by Reverend Russell Conwell that preached
everyone had a duty to become rich
iv. “Wealth”: essay by Andrew Carnegie
1. Argued the wealthy had a god-given responsibility to carry out civic
philanthropy (charity) for the benefit of society
2. Carnegie put over $350 million into support for libraries, universities, and
other public institutions
7) What type of technological innovations contributed to rapid industrialization in the late 1800s?
a. Railroads: rapid transportation
b. Telegraph: invented by Samuel Morse in 1844
i. Cyrus W. Field’s transatlantic cable improved overseas communication in 1866
c.
d.
e.
f.
ii. By 1900 telegraph lines linked all continents in a global network of cables
Telephone: invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876
Other inventions that improved business: typewriter (1867), cash register (1879), calculating
machine (1887), adding machine (18880
i. Consumer use inventions: George Eastman’s Kodak Camera (1888), Lewis
Waterman’s fountain pen (1884), King Gillette’s safety razor (1895)
Thomas Edison
i. Developed the world’s first modern research laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ
ii. Edison’s lab produced over 1,000 patent inventions
iii. Phonograph, the light bulb, mimeograph machine, motion picture camera
George Westinghouse
i. Inventor who produced 400 patents
ii. Air-brakes for railroads (1869)
iii. Transformer for producing high voltage alternating current (1885) allowing for the
later lighting of cities, electric street cars, subways and household appliances
8) How did industrialization impact the marketing of consumer goods?
a. Increased production created the need for businesses to find new ways of selling their goods
to the public
b. Department stores (Macys, started by RH Macy in NY) became the place to shop in urban
areas
c. Woolworth’s Five & Ten Cent store: started by Frank Woolworth began a nationwide chain of
stores
d. Mail-order companies:
i. Sears & Roebuck
ii. Montgomery Ward
iii. Used railroads to ship goods to rural customers
iv. Consumers ordered everything from hats to houses from catalogs (wish books)
e. Advertising helped create a consumer culture that encouraged spending over saving
9) What impact did industrialization have on American society?
a. Raised the overall standard of living for most people
b. Created sharper economic divisions between the rich, the middle class, and the poor
c. By the 1890s 10% of the US population controlled 9/10ths of the nation’s wealth
d. Horatio Alger:
i. Wrote novels that popularized the myth of the rags-to-riches “self-made man”
ii. Alger novels portrayed young men who became rich through hard work and a little
luck
e. The expanding middle class
i. Large corporations required white-collar workers: salaried employees whose jobs did
not involve manual labor
ii. Middle management, accountants, clerical workers and sales people
iii. Increases in the number of “good-paying” jobs increased the income of the middle
class and consumer consumption
f. Wage earners or working-class families
i. By 1900 2/3 of Americans worked for hourly wages at jobs that required 10 hour days,
six days a week
ii. Wages were determined by the demand for workers and the available supply of
workers
iii. High immigration in the late 1800s helped keep factory wages low
iv. David Ricardo’s “iron law of wages”
1. Used to justify low factory wages
2. Arbitrarily raising wages would attract more workers, increasing the supply of
workers
3. An increased in the supply of workers would cause wages to fall even lower
creating a cycle of misery and starvation
g. Most working-class families could not survive on one income leading to women taking
factory jobs and child labor
h. Women in the workforce
i. Most women who worked in factories were young and unmarried
ii. Only 5% of married women worked outside the home
iii. Women’s factory jobs were usually restricted to industries that were seen as
extensions of the home: textile, garment and food-processing industries
iv. As the demand for clerical work increased women moved into roles as secretaries,
book-keepers, typists, and telephone operators
v. Occupations that became feminized usually lost status and received lower wages
i. Labor discontent
i. Before industrialization artisans (skilled craftsmen) typically worked for themselves
and created a product from start to finish
ii. Factory work used unskilled labor were workers performed just one repetitive step in
the manufacturing of a good
iii. Workers received low pay, worked long hours, and worked in dangerous conditions
iv. High turnover rate: workers generally changed jobs every three years
10) How did labor discontent lead to labor unions?
a. Unions worked to organize laborers to achieve recognition from management and collective
bargaining
b. Goals of unions:
i. Better pay
ii. Shorter hours
iii. More safe working conditions
c. Tactics used by unions to force management to meet their demands
i. Strikes: stopping production by refusing to work
ii. Picketing
iii. Boycotts
iv. Slowdowns
11) Why were early unions unsuccessful?
a. The high supply of potential laborers made early unions unsuccessful
b. Employers could easily fire striking workers and bring in strike breakers, or scabs
c. Other tactics used by management to defeat unions:
i. Lockouts: close the factory to break a union before it became organized
ii. Blacklists: circulating names of union leaders to other employers
iii. Yellow-dog contracts: forcing workers to sign an agreement not to join a union as a
condition of employment
iv. Calling in private guards (Pinkertons) and state militias to put down strikes
v. Obtaining court injunctions against strikes
d. Management promoted the image of unions as anarchistic and un-American
e. Any labor violence was used to support the anarchistic view of labor unions
f. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877
i. During an economic depression in 1877, railroad companies cut wages to reduce costs
ii. Railroad workers went on a strike that shut down 2/3 of the countries railroad tracks
iii. 500,000 workers from other industries joined the strike
iv. President Rutherford B Hayes used federal troops to put down the strike
v. More than 100 people were killed
vi. Management used public fear of mob violence to reduce the power of labor
vii. Public opinion turned against labor unions
12) How did labor unions become national organizations?
a. Unions began as local associations of workers in individual trades before the 1860s
b. After the 1860s national labor unions began to form
c. National Labor Union
i. First attempt at a national labor union
ii. Tried to organize skilled and unskilled workers in all states
iii. Founded in 1866
iv. 640,000 members by 1868
v. Worked for higher wages and the eight-hour day
vi. Achieved eight hour workday for employees of the federal government
d. Also had social objectives:
i. Equal rights for women and African Americans
ii. Monetary reforms
iii. Worker owned cooperatives
e. Began to lose support after 1877 strikes
f. Knights of Labor
i. Second national labor union
ii. Began in 1869 as a secret society in order to avoid detection by employers
iii. Went public in 1881
iv. Opened membership to all workers including African Americans and women
g. Knights of Labor advocated:
i. Worker cooperatives
ii. Abolition of child labor
iii. Abolition of trusts and monopolies
iv. Favored arbitration over strikes
v. Membership peaked at 730,000 members in 1886
h. The Haymarket Square Riot and Bombing
i. In Chicago in 1886 Knights of Labor members participated in the first May Day labor
movement (calling for a general strike to achieve an eight-hour workday)
ii. On May 4, workers held a public meeting in Haymarket Square
iii. When police attempted to break up the meeting, someone threw a bomb, which killed
seven police officers
iv. Eight anarchist leaders were tried and sentenced to death
v. Led Americans to conclude that the union movement was radical and violent
vi. The Knights of Labor lost support and declined after the Haymarket riot
i. The American Federation of Labor (AFL)
i. Most successful of early national labor unions
ii. Founded 1886 and led by Samuel Gompers from 1886 to 1924
iii. Concentrated on realistic goals
1. Did not advocate social reforms (equal rights, ending child labor, etc.)
2. Worked for higher wages and better working conditions
3. Organized only skilled workers
j. By 1901, the AFL was the nation’s largest Union with over 1 million members
k. Labor unions did not achieve major successes until the early decades of the 1900s
13) What two major strikes demonstrated the growing discontent of labor and the power of management
to win in labor disputes?
a. The Homestead Strike
i. Henry Frick, the manager of Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead Steel plant near
Pittsburgh, cut wages by nearly 20%
ii. When workers went on strike Frick used lockouts, Pinkertons, and strikebreakers
(scabs) to defeat the walkout
iii. The defeat of the strike set back the union movement in the steel industry until the
New Deal in the 1930s
b. The Pullman Strike
i. The Pullman Company manufactured railroad sleeping cars in a company town near
Chicago
ii. In 1894 Pullman cut wages and fired leaders of the workers’ delegation that came to
negotiate with him over the cuts
iii. Pullman workers went on strike and appealed to the American Railroad Union for help
iv. Eugene V Debs, the leader of the American Railroad Union, directed union members
not to handle trains with Pullman cars
v. Railroad owners helped Pullman by linking Pullman cars to mail trains and then
appealing to President Cleveland
vi. Railroad owners persuaded Cleveland to use the military to keep trains running
vii. A federal court ordered an injunction forbidding interference with the mail and
ordering workers to stop striking
viii. Debs and other Union leaders were arrested and jailed for refusing to obey the
injunction, effectively ending the strike
ix. In the case of In re Debs (1895) the Supreme Court approved the use of court
injunctions against strikes
x. After serving six months in jail Debs helped to found the American Socialist Party as a
more radical way to deal with the nation’s labor problems