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Modern Money and Its Discontents

Modern Money and Its Discontents. Big Business and Labor, 1865-1914. Rise of an Industrial Economy. Second Industrial Revolution—integrated transportation and communication; electric power; scientifically-based research and development

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Modern Money and Its Discontents

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  1. Modern Money and Its Discontents Big Business and Labor, 1865-1914

  2. Rise of an Industrial Economy • Second Industrial Revolution—integrated transportation and communication; electric power; scientifically-based research and development • Laborers were increasingly a proletariat—only their labor to sell in the marketplace.

  3. Railroads • First Transcontinental Railroad completed in 1869 • Financed by private capital and government land grants (129 million acres of public lands between 1850 and 1870 alone) • Much corruption—Credit Mobilier Scandal; “Robber Barons”

  4. Transcontinental Railroad

  5. Robber Barons: Gould and Vanderbilt

  6. Inventions Change Lifeways • Alexander Graham Bell—Telephone—1876 • Thomas Alva Edison—Light bulb in 1879; the phonograph in 1877 • George Westinghouse—airbrake for trains and Alternating Current (beginning of power grid) in 1886. • J. W. McGaffey—vacuum cleaner 1869 • These inventions relied on electricity

  7. Electric Generator

  8. Edison and Westinghouse

  9. New Corporate Models • John David Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Trust • Corporation: “hasn’t a body to be damned or a soul to be kicked” • Vertical Integration: from raw material to market—Andrew Carnegie and Carnegie Steel • Horizontal Integration—control the bottlenecks: John David Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Trust (refining monopoly)

  10. Carnegie and Rockefeller

  11. Oil wells in Titusville, Pa.

  12. The Business of Money • J. P. Morgan and Investment Banking • Interlocking boards of directors • Assumed control over 1/6 of all U. S. railroading • United States Steel (1901) controlled about 90% of U. S. steel production

  13. James Pierpont Morgan

  14. Richard Sears & Alvah Roebuck • Wide range of low priced consumer goods • You could even buy a mail order church—just not the pretty girl on page 614 • Rural Free Delivery plus the railroad made this mail order business possible • 6 million catalogs per year by 1900

  15. New Economy Produced Harm for Many • Concentration of wealth • Alienation of labor • Child labor • Low wages • Industrial accidents

  16. Workers Try to Organize • Contrary to “individualism” • Strife between skilled and unskilled labor • Race/Ethnicity—Dennis Kearney’s Workingmen’s Party • Pinkerton’s as Strikebreakers • Government Prosecution (Sherman Anti-Trust Act)

  17. Knights of Labor • Growth under Terrence V. Powderly • Success in early railroad strikes led membership to swell to 700,000 by 1886 • Lost favor as a result of Haymarket Affair in 1886

  18. Samuel Gompers and Unionism pure and simple 500,000 members by 1890 and 2 million by 1914 American Federation of Labor

  19. 1890s Strikes Illustrate Challenges faced by Unions • Homestead Strike—1892 • Pullman Strike--1894

  20. Eugene Victor Debs, 1855-1926—“While there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

  21. Mary Harris “Mother Jones” (1837-1930)

  22. Socialism and Labor • Socialist Party—polled 900,672 votes in 1912 • IWW • Western Federation of Miners and Big Bill Haywood

  23. William D. Haywood—Leader of WFM

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