A New Industrial Age

EXPANSION OF INDUSTRY

Industrialization• Factors that lead to

U.S. Industry:– Nat. Resources– Gov. support for

business– Growing

urbanization

Black Gold

• Edwin L. Drake– Used a steam engine

to drill for oil

• Oil boom spread from the East Coast to the Mid-West.

Steel

• Iron ore deposits found in Minn. and East Coast

• Bessemer Process:Injecting air into liquid

iron.

Used for 90 percent of the nation’s steel.

New Uses for Steel

• The Brooklyn Bridge• Skyscrapers

– Steel frames supported the weight

Electricity• Thomas Alva Edison

– 1876, first research lab in Menlo Park, NJ

– Incandescent light bulb

– Distribution / producing of electricity

• Allowed manufactures to locate plants wherever

• Electric streetcars made traveling cheap.

• Ran many machines from fans to printing presses

Inventions Change Lifestyle• Christopher Sholes:

typewriter (1867)• Alexander Graham

Bell: telephone (1876)

• Women in the workplace: 5% in 1870 / 40% in 1910

Big Business and Labor

• Andrew Carnegie

• Used new management strategies.

• Attracted talented people to work for him.

• Controlled most of the steel industry.

• “Gospel of Wealth”

Social Darwinism• In economic terms, no one has the right to

intervene; it is “survival of the fittest”

• Laissez Faire-means allow to do

• No government intervention

• Supported individual responsibility and blame, it also appealed to the Protestant work ethic.

• “Riches were a sign of Gods favor and the poor must be lazy and inferior.”

Fewer Control More

• John D Rockefeller Used trusts to gain control of the oil industry. (monopolies)

• Then they could fix and set prices to their advantage

• Critics called them “robber barons”

Sherman Anti-Trust Act

• Government was concerned that these expanding corporations would stifle free competition.

• 1890-Congress passed act which made it illegal to form a trust if it interfered with free trade between states or other countries.

• Very hard to enforce

Labor Unions Emerge

• Exploitation and unsafe working conditions drew workers together and formed unions.

• Long hours-6-7 day workweek. 12 hours or more a day

• No vacation, sick leave, unemployment compensation, or workers comp.

•

Wages

• So low everyone in family had to pitch in.

• 1890-1910, the number of women working doubled from 4 million to 8 million

• 20 percent of boys and 10 percent of girls under the age of 15 worked full time.

Wages

• 27 cents for a child’s 14 hour day.

• 1899-annual income for women was $267 and for men it was $498.

• In 1900, Andrew Carnegie made 23 million dollars.

Labor unions

• Objectives were to increase wages,

limit the work day to only 8 hours, equal pay for equal work.

• Strikes were a last resort.

Mother Jones• Mary Harris Jones

• 1903-led 80 children who had been hurt in the mills to Teddy Roosevelt's home

• Influenced the passage of child labor laws

Think About it!

• What is minimum wage today?

• How many hours can a teenager work?

• What happens if you get hurt on the job?

• What happens if you are sick and can’t make it to work?