Ch. 15
The Second Industrial
Revolution (1865-1905)
US II
Ms. Braden
Age of Invention
• Industrial Innovations
1865-1905 new era of industrial
growth
• Steel
• Bessemer Process increased
production by almost 2000 times
• Steel used in railroads, bridges,
buildings, and everyday materials
• Oil (“Black Gold”)
• Edwin L. Drake drilled for oil in
Pennsylvania
• Patent: guarantee to protect an
inventor’s rights to make, use, or
sell their invention.
*How did the advances in steel production and
oil refining affect U.S. industry?
Production skyrocketed and they were
both used for many uses across the United
States.
Age of Invention
• Transportation
• Railroads
• Transcontinental Railroad (1869)
connected Nebraska to the
Pacific Ocean
• Effects - Linked remote towns to
urban centers, increased
western settlement, stimulated
urban growth, created jobs
• The horseless carriage – the first
automobile
• Airplanes – Wright brothers “First in
Flight” (12 seconds and 120 feet)
* Developments made travel much more
efficient and brought Americans into closer
contact with each other
Age of Invention
• Communications
• Brought Americans into closer contact with each other
• Telegraph
• Invented by Samuel Morse
• Communicating over wires with electricity (dot and dash
code)
• Able to send a message to distant locations within
minutes
• Telephone
• Invented by Alexander Graham Bell
• Bell Telephone company eventually became American
Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T)
• Many women took jobs working as telephone operators
• Typewriter
• Quickly produced legible documents
• Multiple copies could be produced using carbon paper
• Many women took jobs working as typewriters
*How did innovations in communications technology affect American
women?
Employment opportunities were created
Age of Invention
• Edison and Menlo Park
• Thomas Alva Edison – scientist and inventor
• Improved the telegraph capability, light
bulbs, and electricity
• Opened one of the first electric power
plants in New York City
* How did the inventions created by Thomas
Edison’s research affect daily life?
Electricity was delivered to offices and home
The Rise of Big Business
• The New Capitalist Spirit
• Capitalism – Private businesses run most industries and competition drives
how much goods cost and workers are paid
• Horatio Alger Jr. – author who stressed the importance of individualism and
hard work
• Free Enterprise is the idea that the economy will prosper if businesses had no
government intervention
• Criticism
• Response to the idea that with free enterprise, the rich would take
advantage of the poor
• Communism – individual ownership does not exist (everyone is equal)
• Social Darwinism – “survival of the fittest” – Society will progress through
natural competition
• The strong will survive
• The weak will fail
The Rise of Big Business
• The Corporation
• Corporation – organizers raise money by selling shares of
stock, in turn they receive a percentage of the profit
• Andrew Carnegie (famous for his Steel business) urged
people to buy stocks
• Monopoly – With little to no competition, a company has
almost complete control over the price and quality of a
product
• Carnegie and Steel
• Scottish immigrant who worked his way up
• He controlled each stage of production and could
therefore offer lower prices than his competitors
• Rockefeller and Oil
• John D. Rockefeller gained control of the oil market
similarly to Carnegie
The Rise of Big Business
• Mass Marketing
• Companies used advertising to promote their products
• Created a consumer culture in the United States
• The department store
• Created to cater to the demands of the urban market
• Carried a wide variety of items under one roof
• Products purchased in bulk reduced cost
• Targeted women as customers and tried to create a homelike
atmosphere
~~~ How did mass marketing contribute to business growth? - Department stores
thrived due to increase in consumer culture
Section 3: Labor Strives to Organize
• Government and Business
• Public grew angry as corporations began to grow and
dominate industry
• Sherman Antitrust Act – outlawed all monopolies and trusts
that restrained trade
*failed to define what a monopoly
is so they continued to grow
• Government was focused on issues of political corruption
and provided little to no help for workers
• The New Working Class
• Demand for labor was huge and work was filled largely by
immigrants
• African Americans
• Southern industries barred African Americans from jobs
• Northern industries chose native-born whites and
immigrants over African Americans (if they did gain
employment, conditions were dangerous or servicerelated)
• Women and Children
• Women and children worked if their families needed the
income
• 18% of the labor force were women 20% were children
Section 3: Labor Strives to Organize
• Working Conditions
• Children worked 12 hour shifts for pennies a day
• White unskilled men worked for $10 a week – African
Americans, Asian Americans, and Mexican Americans
worked the same amount and time for less money
• Countless work-related deaths
• Some employers created company towns where workers
lives, wages would come in a form where you could only
use them in the town
• The Knights of Labor
• Early national workers union – offered to skilled and
unskilled workers including women, but not African
Americans until 1883
• Mary Harris Jones “the most dangerous woman in
America” – organized strikes, marches, and demonstration
“her place was wherever there was a fight”
• Fought for an 8-hour day, equal pay for equal work, and
end to child labor
Section 3: Labor Strives to Organize
• The Great Upheaval
• Year of 1886 U.S. experienced intense
strikes and violent labor confrontations
• The Haymarket Riot
• Chicago workers struck for an 8-hour
workday
• Under the leadership of radical anarchists
= left 2 strikers dead
• Tried to meet peacefully the next day explosion killed 7 police officers
• 8 leaders found guilty of intent to murder,
4 were hanged
• Decline in Worker Activism
• Worker activism declined after the
Haymarket Riot
• Workers who were union members were
blacklisted by companies and could not
get work
Section 3: Labor Strives to Organize
• The Homestead and Pullman Strikes
• Homestead Strike at the
Carnegie Steel Company due
to wage cuts – 16 dead
• Pullman Car Factory Strike
due to wage cuts
• Eugene V. Debs
• Head of the American
Railroad Union (ARU)
• Supported the Pullman
strikers
• Government intervened and
jailed strikers for delaying
U.S. mail delivery, destroying
the ARU
~~~ How successful were labor strikes in
the late 1800’s?
Most were unsuccessful due to violence,
federal troop intervention, and antiunion activities