Corliss Engine, 1876 Its cylinders spun a flywheel 30 feet in diameter, weighing 56 tons,

producing 2500 HP.

The Birth of Modern America

4.03: Describe the causes and effects of the financial difficulties that plagued American farmers and trace the rise and decline of Populism 4.04: Describe innovations in agricultural technology and business practices and assess their impact on the West 5.01: Evaluate the influence of immigration and rapid industrialization on urban life5.02: Explain how business and industrial leaders accumulated wealth and wielded political and economic power 5.03: Assess the impact of labor unions on industry and the lives of workers 5.04: Describe the changing role of government in economic and political affair

Competency Goal #4: The Rise of the Debtor (1860-1896), evaluate the great westward movement and assess the impact of the agricultural revolution on the nation

Competency Goal #5: Becoming an Industrial Society (1877-1900), describe the innovations in technology and business practices and assess their impact on economic, political, and social life in America

Boom and Bust: The unregulated, “laissez-faire” economy led to significant distortions in distribution of wealth and a chaotic cycle of inflationary expansion and depression between 1870 and 1910. The 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, and first decade of the 1900s experienced a major economic Depression, with the worst being 1893—statistically the worst depression in American history. Eventually, the economic rollercoaster ride caused business, banking, labor, and government to reform monetary policy and rationalize the economy.

"The Gilded Age: Boom and Bust, 1870-1910”

Industrialization: Transformation of an economy from an agricultural base to an industrial base built largely on the mechanization of labor, led by steel. Production of steel increased as a direct result of a new method of creating it: the Bessemer system, invented by Englishman, Sir Henry Bessemer, to make a purer and stronger low-carbon steel.

Growth of Railroads after the Civil War

During the 1790s, the U.S. Patent Office issued 276 patents for inventions (including one for a cotton gin). In the 1890s, it issued 234,956. The late nineteenth century was an era of invention. The most brilliant inventor was “The Wizard of Menlo Park.” From his “invention factory” in New Jersey, Edison patented more than a thousand inventions, (e.g. incandescent light, phonograph, and kinetoscope). Also a brilliant businessman, he founded one of the world’s largest corporations, General Electric.

Thomas Alva Edison, 1847-1931:

“Genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration.”

1. What city in the United States is noted for its laundry-machine making?2. Who was Leonidas?3. Who invented logarithms?4. Where is Magdalena Bay?5. What is the first line in the Aeneid? 6. What is the weight of air in a room 10 by 20 by 30 feet?7. Who composed Il Trovatore? 8. What voltage is used on streetcars?9. Which countries supply the most mahogany?10. Who was the Roman emperor when Jesus Christ was born?11. How many cubic yards of concrete in a wall 12 by 20 by 2 feet?12. Who assassinated President Lincoln?

Thomas Edison Job Quiz

ANSWERS: 1. Newton, Iowa 2. Spartan general who died at Thermopylae 3. John Napier 4. Baja California 5. Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris 6. Air at 0.075 pounds per cubic foot x 6,000= 450 pounds 7. Giuseppe Verdi 8. 600 volts, at the time 9. Brazil, Bolivia 10. Augustus 11. 17.78 cubic yards 12. John Wilkes Booth

Alexander Graham Bell, 1847-1922: Scotsman living in the U.S. and Canada who invented the telephone (1876) and the photophone (an early version of fiber-optics), receives patents on 18 inventions in all. Much of his work was motivated by a desire to improve the lives of the deaf or hearing impaired, including his mother and his wife, Mabel

Wright Brothers: Orville and Wilbur Wright, inventors who ran a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, and develop the first successful aircraft, flying it in Kitty Hawk, NC, in 1903

Elisha Otis, 1811-1861: Inventor of the elevator, in 1853. It was improved upon over the next generation and became commercially available in the 1880s. It made skyscrapers possible as the Chicago steel frame structure developed with construction of the Home Insurance Building in 1885.

“Social Darwinism”: Takes Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection and transports it from a biological concept to a sociological one. It is created by Englishman Herbert Spencer (the one who came up with the phrase “survival of the fittest,”) and, in America, Josiah Strong. It contends that to succeed and prosper one must be able to adapt to changes in the economic and social environment. At its most extreme, it holds that those who do not prosper (the poor) deserve their poverty because they have not adapted; they are less fit. Among other things, it argues for free and open economic competition without government regulation. It is the guiding philosophy of such industrial magnates as Andrew Carnegie and J. Pierpont Morgan.

Monopoly: One company or one person controlling an industry: Vertical Integration involves control of entire production and distribution process of a good; Horizontal Integration involves control of a sector or part of an industry through several companies

The Problem of Monopoly

Cornelius Vanderbilt, 1794-1877: First gaining wealth through government contracts for fort construction after the War of 1812, he got another boost when the Supreme Court granted him rights to develop shipping on the Hudson River in the case of Gibbons v. Ogden. He would turn to railroads as a source for new wealth. With real robberbaron, Jay Guild, he built railroads in the northeast, notably consolidating independent railroad lines in upstate New York to create the New York Central Railroad. He gave some small sums to charity, including $1 million to Central University in Nashville which was renamed Vanderbilt University. At the time of his death, he was the richest man in America. His grandson, George Washington Vanderbilt, used some of the family money to build the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC

Robberbaron: Negative name given to powerful and wealthy “captains of industry”; usually recognized as being ruthless toward labor and toward competitors in their market

Born poor in Scotland, he came to the U.S at the age of thirteen and began work in a textile mill. At 14, he started as a telegraph messenger, earning $2.50 per week. Within a few years, he was a telegrapher, then secretary to district superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad, then district superintendent himself. During the Civil War, he developed a military telegraph system. Later, he moved into steel. He bought Homestead Steel in 1882. Over the next 20 years, he monopolized the industry, controlling 60% of nation’s steel business. In 1901, he formed U.S. Steel, the largest corporation in the world at the time. He exemplified the “robberbaron” for his attacks on unions. In 1889, he wrote The Gospel of Wealth, an economic version of Social Darwinism. He proclaimed the wealthy are more fit, but they also needed to accept the responsibility to better the poor through philanthropy to educational and cultural institutions. Among other efforts, he donated some $55 million to build libraries around the world.

Andrew Carnegie, 1835-1919

Born in rural New York, his family moved to Ohio in 1853. He began work as a bookkeeper and by the age of 21 was partnered in a wholesale distributor. In 1862, he invested in a kerosene refinery. By 1870, with his brother and others, he formed Standard Oil Co. of Ohio. Over the next two years, the oil business grew and competition caused prices to crash. Rockefeller brought order to the chaos by creating state trusts. By 1880, he controlled 90% of oil refining and distribution in the U.S., creating a monopoly through vertical integration. In 1892, after the Supreme Court of Ohio dissolved the trust, Rockefeller established a holding company: Standard Oil of New Jersey. That was dissolved by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1911 for violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Like other so-called robberbarons, he gave away enormous amounts of his wealth ($540 million) in philanthropy, especially to the University of Chicago. He later led the Prohibition movement during the Progressive Era. In inflation-adjusted terms, he is considered the wealthiest man in U.S. history.

John D. Rockefeller, 1839-1937

J. Pierpont Morgan, 1837-1913: Wall Street entrepreneur and financier who was among the richest man in America by the 1880s, controlling mines, railroads, steel companies, and banks before he was finished. His personal wealth and his contacts to the other wealthiest business leaders in the 1890s enabled him to bring the U.S. out of the Depression of 1893; in 1901, he bought U.S. Steel from Andrew Carnegie for $500 million and through expansion and consolidation, he raised the holding company's value to $1.4 billion.

Horatio Alger: A Unitarian minister and author, he wrote immensely popular novels celebrating the kind of rags to riches stories that epitomized the age. Indeed, his name came to mean someone who had succeeded in business through thrift, hard work, honesty, and a little luck.

 

Year 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 10th

1860 813,669 565,529 266,661 212,418 177,840 81,129

1870 942,292 674,022 396,099 310,864 298,977 149,473

1880 1,206,299 847,170 566,663 503,185 362,839 216,090

1890 1,515,301 1,099,850 1,046,964 806,343 451,770 261,353

1900 3,437,202 1,698,575 1,293,697 575,238 560,892 325,902

1910 4,766,883 2,185,283 1,549,008 687,029 670,585 423,715

1920 5,620,048 2,701,705 1,823,779 993,078 796,841 576,673

Population of Largest Twenty-five Cities, 1860-1920

Rank

Urbanization: Transformation of American society from a rural base to an urban base. Although it occurs at the same time as the next wave of immigration occurs, urbanization is not caused by immigration.

The traction engine (tractor), mechanical reaper, and belt thresher revolutionized agriculture after the Civil War. As a result, crop production sky-rocketed, improving diet and increasing U.S. exports. Meanwhile, the number of labor hours needed to produce the crop shrank significantly. Demand for migrant farm workers decreased. As a result, farm laborers had to find work in the growing industrial centers.

Mechanization of Farming:

Years Immigrants1820-1829 128,502

1830-1839 538,381

1840-1849 1,427,337

1850-1859 2,814,554

1860-1869 2,081,261

1870-1879 2,742,287

1880-1889 5,248,568

1890-1899 3,694,294

1900-1909 8,202,388

1910-1919 6,347,380

1920-1929 4,295,510

1930-1939 699,375

1940-1949 856,608

1950-1959 2,499,268

1960-1969 3,213,749

1970-1979 4,248,203

1980-1989 6,244,379

1990-1999 9,775,390

The New Immigration:

Melting Pot or Cultural Mosaic?: Two views of what American society was supposed to be as a result of immigration and increased ethnic and racial diversity.

Between 1870 and 1910, roughly 20 million people immigrated to the U.S., nine million of them between 1900 and 1910. Unlike earlier waves of immigration, these newcomers came mostly from Eastern and Southern Europe (Russian Jews, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, Hungarians, Greeks, and Italians). The tremendous numbers profoundly affected American society, politics, and culture. Most of the immigrants entered through the Ellis Island Immigrant Station in New York City. Opened in 1892, Ellis Island processed some 12 million people before it closed in 1954. In its busiest year, 1907, more than a million people were processed, an average of about 5,000 per day. On its busiest day, immigration officials processed nearly 12,000 new arrivals.

Immigrants from Asia tended to be processed through Angel Island in San Francisco Bay.

Ellis Island:

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

Chinese Exclusion Act: Example of nativism pervading U.S. society as a result of the rise in immigration in the late 1800s. The Chinese population of California reached about 75,000 (more than 10 percent of the state) by 1880 and many saw the Chinese as an economic threat. The California Workingmen's Party advanced an anti-Chinese platform, calling Chinese the “Yellow Peril.” In 1882, Congress enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act suspending immigration from China for ten years. President Grover Cleveland vetoed the original bill that called for a twenty-year suspension. Congress revised the law and passed it over Cleveland’s opposition.

Coney Island: In 1884, Lamarcus Thompson built the world’s first rollercoaster at Coney Island, near New York City. It was 600 feet long and gravity propelled--a rail car sped down a steep hill and then up and down successive hills until it lost momentum and stopped. Coney Island was one of many amusement parks that sprang up across the U.S. in the late 1800s and early 1900s as industrialization created a management class and as workdays grew shorter (from 12 to 8 hours), giving workers more leisure time.

Frederick Law Olmsted: Most famous landscape architect who worked to change and improve the urban environment in the late-1800s. Industrial pollution, smoke, and congestion had made cities unpleasant and unhealthy places to live. Olmsted, as designer for the NYC Parks Commission, created Central Park--an oasis amid the nation’s largest city. By 1870, the “uptown” park saw more than 100,000 visitors a day. Olmsted designed parks in Chicago, San Francisco, Montreal, and many other cities.

As cities grew more crowded and transportation systems improved, many middle-class and wealthy residents moved out of the urban core to fresher air and more space in land surrounding the city. These areas became known as “suburban” – neither city, nor rural. Although every city in the U.S. experienced suburban growth, built along streetcar lines, the most representative is Brooklyn, NY, which grew tremendously after completion of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883. By 1970, most Americans would live in suburbs.

Streetcar Suburbs:

Thomas Nast: Probably the most famous political cartoonist in American history. His drawings of Boss Tweed clearly illustrated the corruption of political machines. His drawings, however, went beyond just New York politics, including this famous early rendition of Santa Claus.

Political Machines: A political party organization in cities that usually used corrupt means to control the government. Party “bosses” created disciplined organizations of citywide managers, precinct captains, and block workers. The machine often served the needs of new immigrants, providing them with jobs and city contracts in return for political support, but its means were often unethical or even illegal – using bribes, graft, and intimidation to hold onto power. The most noted machines in U.S. history include: Tammany Hall in NYC, the Daley Machine in Chicago, and the Pendergast machine in Kansas City, MO.

Politics in the Gilded Age

William M. “Boss” Tweed: Political leader of the Democratic Party machine in New York City, known as Tammany Hall. As head of the Tweed Ring, he was imprisoned on bribery and racketeering charges in 1872 and became the symbol of political corruption during the Gilded Age.

General Grant’s popularity as a result of the war won him election as POTUS in 1868. His Presidency is remembered for being riddled with scandals, although Grant was not personally involved in any corruption. Grant supported civil rights legislation, notably the Fifteenth Amendment and was strongly critical of the white racist backlash that developed in the early 1870s, signing the Ku Klux Klan Act and suspending habeas corpus in South Carolina ending Klan activity in piedmont counties. After the Presidency, he moved to New York City. Later wrote his memoirs to pay off debts. He died of throat cancer in 1885 .

President Ulysses S. Grant

At the end of the Civil War, Congressman Oakes Ames (R-MA) and his brother invested in the Credit Mobilier Company to subcontract railroad construction. In 1867, the Union Pacific Railroad signed a contract with Ames to build a segment of its road for $47 million, believing that it had bought regulatory protection. Ames then bribed numerous members of Congress, including future Vice-President Schuyler Colfax and future President James A. Garfield, with stock in the company to ensure the deal. Credit Mobilier then overcharged the government for the construction, some $50 million. It had mostly run its course by the time Grant was elected, the scandal is remembered as one of many examples of corruption in the Grant administration . It also helped bring the Democrats back into power in Congress in 1874.

Credit Mobilier Scandal:

Indian Ring: The veteran of Sherman’s March and Grant’s Secretary of War, William Belknap, took bribes to influence sales of Indian trading posts. He was impeached by the House of Representatives but Grant accepted his resignation before the Senate could complete his trial.

Whiskey Ring: The scandal that came closest to President Grant. It began in St. Louis and involved a plot by whiskey manufacturers to bribe tax collectors not to collect the liquor tax. Among those who participated in the plan was President Grant's private secretary who was paid-off for providing inside information. Grant was not involved, but it was the last straw for many Republicans and guaranteed that they would find another candidate in 1876, despite Grant's willingness to serve another term.

Stalwarts and Half-Breeds: As the Grant administration careened from one scandal to the next and as radicals on reconstruction battled conservatives, divisions in the Republican developed into two warring factions: Half-Breeds, who wanted civil service reform; and Stalwarts, who wanted to protect the patronage (spoils) system. The fight reached its peak in the election of 1880. The party nominated Civil War veteran and Half-Breed James Garfield, a dark horse candidate from Ohio. To satisfy Stalwarts, it nominated Chester A. Arthur, a protégé of New York Senator Roscoe Conkling, as vice-POTUS. Garfield was elected and began to challenge Conkling’s control of the New York Custom House. A disgruntled Stalwart office seeker, Charles Guiteau, stalked Garfield and caught up with him at the railroad station in Washington. Guiteau shot Garfield. For two months, Garfield lingered, doctors unable to find and remove the bullet. He died on September 19th, 1881. Arthur became POTUS and, ironically, eventually signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act into law.

Mugwumps: Reform-minded Republicans in 1884 who split with the party’s candidate, James G. Blaine, because of his ties to railroad interests. Their defection helped lead to the election of Grover Cleveland, the first Democrat to become President since the Civil War. The term “mugwump” comes from an Algonquin word meaning a great chief.

Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883: This law dismantled the “spoils system” of political patronage that had gripped government since Jackson. President Hayes issued an executive order in 1877, ordering that government employees could only be fired for cause and not for politics. President Chester Alan Arthur (who took office on the death of James A. Garfield in 1881) continued the trend. In 1883, Congress passed the Pendleton Civil Service Act which set up a three-member Civil Service Commission to oversee hiring in federal offices and to establish a civil service test to improve the quality of government workers.