America: A Narrative History (Ninth Edition)
Chapter 18 - Big Business and Organized Labor
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I. The rise of big business
o A. Overview of factors propelling growth
 1. Natural resources
 2. New technology and mass production techniques
 3. Entrepreneurship
 4. Government policies
 5. Corruption
o B. Second Industrial Revolution
 1. Spurred by innovation and invention
 a. Transportation and communication networks
 b. Electricity
 c. Application of scientific research to industry
II. The railroads
o A. Growth of railroads
o B. The transcontinental railroads
 1. Pacific Railroads Act (1862) authorized transcontinental line on north-central route
 a. Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads
 2. Labor
 a. Union Pacific: Civil War veterans, formers slaves, Irish and German immigrants
 b. Central Pacific: primarily Chinese
 3. First transcontinental railroad completed in Promontory, Utah, 1869
 4. Other transcontinental railroads
o C. Financing the railroads
 1. Role of the robber barons
 a. Crédit Mobilier
 b. Jay Gould
 c. Cornelius Vanderbilt
III. Manufacturing and inventions
o A. The growth of new industries and the transformation of old ones
o B. Technological advances and the impact on daily life
 1. Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone, 1876
 2. Thomas Alva Edison and the electric light, 1879
IV. Entrepreneurs
o A. John D. Rockefeller
 1. Pennsylvania oil rush of 1859
 2. Rockefeller as oil refiner
 3. Growth of Standard Oil
 4. Rockefeller’s organization of Standard Oil
 a. Standard Oil Trust
o B. Andrew Carnegie
 1. Background and early ventures
 2. Carnegie and steel
 3. Carnegie’s approach
 4. “The Gospel of Wealth“
 5. Philanthropy
o C. J. Pierpont Morgan
 1. Family background
 2. Morgan and investment banking
 3. Morgan and railroads
 4. Morgan and U.S. Steel
o D. Sears and Roebuck
 1. Problem of distribution solved by mail order
 2. Opens truly national markets
V. The Working Class
o A. Social trends
 1. Growing disparities in the distribution of wealth
 2. Women, children, and immigrants enter the workforce
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America: A Narrative History (Ninth Edition)
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B. Living and working conditions
 1. Living conditions
 a. Crowded and filthy tenements
 2. Working conditions
 a. Poor safety and health conditions in factories
 b. Rise of impersonal, contractual relationships
o C. Child labor
 1. Dismal work conditions, meager wages
 a. Appalachia mines
 b. Southern and New England textile mills
 2. Few and largely ineffective child labor laws
VI. Early worker protests
o A. Reasons for the slow growth of unions
 1. Property rights valued over labor rights
 2. Large labor supply
 3. Ethnic divisions among laborers
o B. The Molly Maguires
o C. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877
 1. Reduction of wages was immediate cause
 2. The strikes spread across the country
 3. Failure of the strikes
o D. The sand-lot incident
 1. Kearney and the Workingmen’s party of California push for Chinese exclusion act, 1882
o E. Anti-Chinese agitation
VII. The rise of unions
o A. Unions in the 1850s and 1860s
o B. The National Labor Union
 1. The first federation of unions
 2. Leader’s death weakens NLU, which disbands by 1872
 3. Some achievements before disbanding
 a. Influential in persuading Congress to pass eight-hour work day
 b. Repeal of Contract Labor Act
VIII. The Knights of Labor
o A. Founded in 1869 by Uriah S. Stephens
o B. Success under Terrence V. Powderly
 1. Growth in membership
o C. Decline of the Knights of Labor
 1. Anarchism
 2. The Haymarket affair
 a. Riot in Haymarket Square
 b. Trial and sentencing of anarchists
 c. Effects on Knights of Labor
o D. Achievements of Knights of Labor
 1. Creation of the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics
 2. Foran Act of 1885
 3. Popularizing the idea of industrial unions
IX. The American Federation of Labor
o A. Structure of the AFL
 1. Craft unions
 2. Contrast with Knights of Labor
o B. Samuel Gompers
 1. Concern for concrete economic gains
 2. Gompers’s leadership in the AFL
 a. Contrast with Terrence Powderly
o C. Membership growth in the AFL
X. Struggles and setbacks of the 1890s
o A. The Homestead steel strike of 1892
 1. Reasons for the strike
 a. Worker layoffs, introduction of labor saving machinery
 b. Homestead President Henry Clay Frick’s deliberate attempt to smash the Union
 2. Battle between strikers and Pinkerton detectives
 3. Strike failed, union dead at Homestead
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America: A Narrative History (Ninth Edition)
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B. The Pullman strike of 1894
 1. Grievances
 a. Workers forced to live in town of Pullman
 b. Wages cut but not rents
 2. Workers turned to Eugene Debs and the American Railway Union
 3. Strike tied up most midwestern railroads and turned violent
 4. Federal intervention because Pullman carried the U.S. mail
 5. Debs jailed; union called off strike
o C. Mary “Mother Jones“ Harris
 1. Immigrant widow who became embraced labor movement in Chicago in late nineteenth century
 2. Fought for higher wages, shorter hours, safer workplaces, and child labor limits
 3. Organized and involved in several strikes and protests, arrested and imprisoned for her efforts
 4. Lost most strikes she participated in
 5. Still saw improvements in key issues of wage increases, working conditions, and child labor by her death in
1930s
XI. Socialism, radicalism, and the unions
o A. Daniel De Leon and the Socialist Labor party
o B. Eugene Debs and the Social Democratic party
o C. The Socialist party of America
 1. Debs in the presidential elections of 1904 and 1912
 2. Successes of the party
 a. Socialist mayors elected
 b. Growing percentage of popular vote nationally
 (1) 16.5 percent in 1912
 3. Decline of the party
 a. Internal divisions over U.S. involvement in World War I
 b. Defections to the Communist Party
o D. The Industrial Workers of the World
 1. Origins of the IWW: western mining and lumber camps
 2. Goals of the IWW
 a. To include all workers, skilled and unskilled
 b. To replace the state with one big union
 3. Decline of the IWW
 a. Disputes within the group
 b. Strategies of IWW leader William D. “Big Bill“ Haywood
 (1) reached out to fringe elements of labor force to build movement
 (2) resistant to compromising on revolutionary principals to reach labor agreements
 c. IWW radicalism fueled hysterical opposition
 (1) World War I destroys the group
 (2) Leaders jailed or fled