 Understand why some Americans wanted trusts to be
banned, and recount how the government responded.
 Describe the working conditions that laborers faced
in the new age of rapid industrialization.
 Explain how businesses reacted to strikes in the late
1800’s, and describe how this affected unions.
Bell Work 4
 What’s the assault rifle invented by Mikhail
Kalashnikov in 1947 best know as?
Time Table
 AK47
 Who were Robber Barons?
 Industrialists of the late 1800’s who amassed huge
personal fortunes, typically as a direct result of
pursuing various anti-competitive or unfair
business practices.
 Do you think the Robber Barons of the Second
Industrial Revolution abused Capitalism?
 Do similar kinds of business practices go on
today? Explain.
 Analyze political cartoons on following slide!
 Bell Work – 10
min.
 Lecture Notes
– 25 min.
 Class Work 2 –
10 min.
 High Cost of
Low Prices – 10
min.
Labor Striving to Organize
 Government and Business
 Many industrial capitalists opposed any government
interference in business activities…unless it helped
them.
 For example, in 1875, Congress raised tariff rates to make
imported steel considerably more expensive than domestic
steel.
 At the same time government did little to regulate
business practices.
 The government’s policies concerning business practices
most often benefited the industrialists, not the workers.
 The government did pass
the Sherman Antitrust Act
in 1890, which outlawed
all monopolies and trusts
that restrained trade.
 This act failed to define
what constituted a
monopoly or a trust,
making it a difficult act to
enforce.
 1890 saw 10 percent of the
population controlling
close to 75 percent of the
nations wealth.
 The New Working Class
 The demand for labor soared and was filled largely by:
 The flood of immigrants moving to the U.S.
 Rural Americans in search of work
 African Americans who moved to the cities following
emancipation
 African American women did compete with poor
immigrant women for domestic jobs and unskilled factory
work
 Children
 By 1890 close to 20 percent
of American children (ages 10-15)
worked for wages, often in poor
conditions like the mines and
factories.
 Working Conditions
 Working Conditions
 Children often worked in textile mills, 12 hour shifts,
often at night for pennies a day.
 Conditions were difficult for all unskilled workers.
 White male laborers worked at least ten hours a day, six days
a week for less than $10
 Minority men worked the same hours while paid less
 Women and children as well, while receiving sometimes half
what the white men would get.
 Fatigue made an unsafe environment worse
 In 1881 alone, some 30,000 railroad workers died on the job
 Most employers felt no responsibility for work-related deaths,
did little to improve conditions or pay workers injured on the
job who could not function
 The Knights of Labor
 A successful labor union fought for temperance, the
eight hour workday, equal pay for equal work and an end
to child labor.
 By 1886, the Knights boasted a membership of over
700,000
 One reason for success was an eventual welcoming of
men, women, and African Americans, skilled or
unskilled.
 However, they actively opposed Chinese workers
 The Great Upheaval
 1886 saw about 1,500 strikes involving more than
400,000 workers, a year known as the Great Upheaval
 Homestead Strike
 1892 saw a strike break out in response to a wage cut in
Homestead Penn.
 Managers responded with a lockout and a hiring of 300
guards to protect the steel plant.
 A violent clash between guards and strikers resulted in
16 dead.
 Pullman Strike
 In May 1894, workers at the Pullman sleeping-car factory
in Pullman, Il. went on strike.
 Pullman had cut wages but refused to lower rents and
prices at the stores in his company town.
 In support, railroad workers brought all rail traffic to a
halt throughout the Midwest.
 The government ordered an end to the strike, claiming it
was a federal offense to prevent the delivery of U.S. mail.
Union officials refused and were jailed.
Class Work 2
 Read the Haymarket section in your text on Pg. 485
and the same on Pg. 173 from you People’s History
handout.
 Bullet point similarities and differences between the
two readings.
 Speed Dial Cell Phone