Industrial GrowthDuring the Gilded Age

1880-1919

Industry expands

Age of Railroads

Big Business and Labor

$$$$ and poverty....

Causes•Nation has wealth of natural resources•Explosion of inventions improve business and manufacturing efficiency•Growing urban populations provide workers and markets•Railroads establish new markets

Industrial Growth

Effects• Big business emerge• Business consolidates under monopolies and trusts• workers endure harsh conditions• labor unions develop

Railroad $$$

Munn v Illinois•Court case that

gave the states rights to regulate railroads and the rates they charged.

•RR had gotten so big they were ripping people off

Credit Mobilier Scandal

•major railroad scandal

•under President Grant

George M Pullman•Designed the Pullman

car for trains. Built whole cities to produce Pullman cars

Transcontinental Railroad

•Nations first railroad that went from east coast to west coast and back. It was a combination of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads. They met at Promontory Point, Utah in 1869

The Inventors

Alexander Graham Bell

•inventor of telephone

Thomas Alva Edison

•inventor of electricity

Richest Americans

Now

Richest Americans

Then

Andrew Carnegie

•Steel businessman

Today, he would be worth $250 Billion dollars

John D Rockefeller•One of the wealthiest and

most powerful industrialists as head of Standard Oil Company

today his wealth would be worth $190 billion

dollars!

Greed, Guile, Corruption

What Does That

Wealth Look Like?

The Gilded Age meant several lavish “summer cottages” or “castles” were built by the wealthy. In one party guests received party favors of precious jewels even as a deep Depression left thousands of children homeless and starving.

How Did They Get

That Rich?

Social Darwinism

•promoted business competition - let the best business win....

Horizontal integration•Merging/combining of similar companies

Vertical integration•Owning all aspects of a business - from raw materials

through production, through packaging, distribution, and selling

Robber Barons running Congress

Is Everyone Rich in America

During This Gilded Age

During the "Gilded Age," every man was a potential Andrew Carnegie, and Americans who achieved wealth celebrated it as never before. In New York, the opera, the theatre, and lavish parties consumed the ruling class' leisure hours. Sherry's Restaurant hosted formal horseback dinners for the New York Riding Club. Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish once threw a dinner party to honor her dog who arrived sporting a $15,000 diamond collar.

Tenement Housinga substandard, multi-family dwelling in

the urban core, usually old and occupied by the poor.

Tenement Housing

Corruption extended to the highest levels of government. During Ulysses S. Grant's presidency, the president and his cabinet were implicated in the Credit Mobilier, and the Whiskey Ring as well as other notorious scandals

What About The Workers?

What Is A Union?

A labor union is an organization of workers dedicated to protecting their interests and improving wages, hours and working conditions

Samuel Gompers

•president of American Federation of Labor (AFL) union of workers

American Federation of Labor

•one of the first American labor unions: craft unions like plumbers, iron workers, etc.

Eugene Debs

•head

head of Industrial Workers of the World Union

Industrial Workers of the World

very large union of industrial workers throughout the world

What Laws Control the Rich Robber

Barons?

What Laws Make Competition Fair?

Sherman Antitrust Act

•Made monopolies illegal

Interstate Commerce Act

•Law that made it illegal to form trusts that interfered with free trade between states

Populism

• The movement to try and protect farmers during the gilded age. It tried to increase farmers political power and to work for legislation in their interest.

Plessy v Ferguson 1896

Plessy v Ferguson 1896

Supreme Court says: Separate but equal is ok