Warm-Up
Read the article on Google’s takeover of Nest.
1. How would Google benefit from buying Nest?
2. What legal issues does this acquisition raise?
3. Do you think this move by Google is unfair? Why
or why not?
• What do you understand the following terms to
mean:
– “Anti-trust”
– “Conglomerate”
– “Monopoly”
Agenda – Tuesday, 2/11
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Warm-Up
Intro to the Unit 8: The Gilded Age
Gilded Age overview
Robber Barons reading
Exit ticket
HW: Finish DBQ
American Pageant ch 24 – pp533-539;
543-556
Gilded Age
• Industrialization & Labor
• Urbanization & Immigration
• Agriculture & the Western
frontier
Today’s Focus Questions
1. Which economic and social ideals
characterized the Gilded Age?
2. How did transportation and
communications developments
revolutionize American life?
Foundations of the ‘Growth
Spurt’
• Early ideas
– Hamilton’s plans
– Clay’s American system of manufactures
– National market economy
• Civil War legislation:
– 1862 – Morrill Land Grant Act
– 1862 – Homestead Act
– 1863 – National Banking Act
– 1864 - Contract Labor Act
– 1862-1866 - Pacific Railroad Acts
The Captains of Industry
(or)
The Robber Barons
The ‘Gilded Age’
c. 1877-1901
• Industrialization
• U.S. share of global
manufacturing
– Rapid economic growth
output:
– Technology developments
– Greater efficiency
– Corporations, Monopolies,
Trusts.
– “Robber Barons” or
“Captains of Industry”?
• Social effects
– Widening income gap
– Reform movements
– “Social Darwinism” &
“Gospel of Wealth”
– Organized Labor (Unions)
– Government slow/unwilling
to regulate
–
1860:
•
•
•
–
GB = 19.9%
US = 7.2%
Germany = 4.9%
1880:
• GB = 22.9%
• US = 14.7%
• Ger = 8.5%
1900:
• US = 23.6%
• GB = 18.5%
• Ger = 13.2%
The ‘Gilded Age’
Economic growth of the U.S.
Industrial production
– 1865
• US produced 20,000 tons
of steel
– 1890
• US produced 9.3 million
tons,
• GB 8 million tons,
• Germany 4.1 million tons.
– 1910
• US = 26.5 m/t
• Ger = 13.6 m/t
• GB = 6.5 m/t
• Between 1865 & 1898:
• Wheat production up
256%, corn up 222%,
refined sugar up 460%,
• Oil production up from
3m to 55m
• Production of coal up by
800%
• Railroad network
increased in # of track
miles by 567%
The ‘Gilded Age’
Population of the U.S.
• Population
– 1860: 31,443,321
– 1900: 75,994,575
• Immigration
– 1870: 5,567,229
– 1900: 10,341,276
– Irish, German, British, &
Chinese.
• Urbanization:
– 1850: 15.3% of
population lived in a city
– 1900: 35.1%
– 1910: 45.6%
A case study: Railroads
• Railroads
transformed
American life
– 1865: 35,000 miles of
track
– 1900: 192,000 miles of
track
– Creation of modern
“corporation”
– Stimulated other
industries
• Key Change: Pacific
Railroad Act of 1862
(transcontinental RR)
An Empire on Rails
• U.S. industrial
economy based on
expansion of the
railroads
–
–
Ended rural isolation
Allowed regional
economic specialization
• The telegraph and
railroad made mass
production, mass
consumption possible
How did it happen?
• Land Grants –
– 175 million
acres of public
land
• 1865-1916-Over 200,000
miles of track
• Federal railroad
grants &
corruption
– Credit
Mobilier
Scandal, 186872
Transcontinental Railroad
• 1862--Congress authorizes
the transcontinental
railroad
• Central Pacific founded by
Collis Huntingdon, Charles
Crocker, Leland Stanford &
Mark Hopkins.
• Central Pacific works
eastward using Chinese
immigrants
• Union Pacific works
westward from Nebraska
using Irish laborers
Transcontinental Railroad
•
•
•
May 10, 1869, tracks meet in Utah at Promontory Point.
News of completion transmitted by telegraph to Chicago & San
Francisco simultaneously
By 1900, four more lines crossed the Mid-West
Railroads, 1870 and 1890
Exit Ticket
–
What methods did each of the following use
to build his fortune:
•
•
•
–
Morgan (banking, railroads, and steel)
Rockefeller (oil)
Carnegie (steel)
If Alexander Hamilton were to read this
excerpt, how might he respond? Would he
approve of disapprove of the events he
read? Explain your answer.