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Unit 2Industrialization

Saturday, September 28, 13

I. What industrialization meant to America

A. Definition of Industrialization


I. What industrialization meant to America


“Industrialization . . . divorces work from life, as the imperatives of technology and machines overwhelm nature and culture.”

American Labor Historian Melvin Dubovsky


B. How industrialization would transform America

Military power

World economic powerUrbanization

Transformation of lives




II. Factors contributing to Industrialization - a RICPI for

modernization

• Resources

• Inventions

• Connections

• People

• Ideas


III. Resources

• Iron

• Coal

• Oil

• Aluminum, copper, tungsten, tin, silver and many others


IV. Inventions

• Between 1776 and 1910 the US government issued 1 million patents

• 900,000 of those were issued between 1870-1910


A. Electricity


B. Communications technology

Telegraph, 1837

Telephone, 1876

Typewriter, 1867


C. Production technology

Steel Smelting

Assembly LinesSaturday, September 28, 13

Other Notable Inventions

• Internal combustion engine, 1860

• Electric motor, 1873

• Phonograph, 1877

• X-Ray, 1895


V. ConnectionsA. Railroads

1860- 30,000 miles of track

1890 - 180,000 miles of track


V. ConnectionsA. Railroads

1860- 30,000 miles of track

1890 - 180,000 miles of track

B. Telegraphs and telephones

C. National markets

1869 - First transcontinental (ocean to ocean) link


Prior toRailroads,

customers had to be close by

Railroads allowed producersto sell across the country

Manufacturers now saw the entire nation as potential customers for their goods - This is what is meant by a

“national market”Saturday, September 28, 13

VI. PeopleA. How many came and from where?


Do Illegal Immigrants Actually Hurt the U.S. Economy, by Adam Davidson

Thesis - Immigrants, both legal and illegal, benefit the overall economy

Supporting arguments/evidence/examples:

• While illegal immigrants lower the wages of native workers without High School diplomas, their affect on the overall economy is positive (4)

• Illegal immigrants raise the wages of complementary jobs by as much as 10% (5)

• Illegal immigrants spend most of the money they earn, which boosts the economy (7)

• Illegal immigrants pay more in taxes than they take in services (9)


Arrival

East coast - Ellis Island

West Coast - Angel IslandSaturday, September 28, 13

B. Life in immigrant communities


C. Nativism

• Definition


C. Nativism Nativist Attitudes were widespread:

•Italian and Hungarian immigrants are “of such a character as to endanger our civilization.” Columbia University professor, 1887

•Eastern and Southern Europeans are “beaten men from beaten races. They have none of the ideas and aptitudes which fit men take up readily and easily the problem of self-care and self-government,” . . . continued immigration will lead to “race suicide.” Director of the US Census, 1896

•“Let us Whip these Slavic wolves back to the European dens from which they issue, or in some way exterminate them.” Chicago Newspaper 1870s

•Immigrants must assimilate quickly or “share the fate of the native Indians” and face a “quiet but sure extermination.” Scientific American 1880s


C. Nativism

• Nativist Organizations

• Nativist laws and agreements

• The Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882

• The Gentleman’s agreement, 1907

• National Origins Act (Immigration Control Act), 1924


D. Americanization Movement


Was the Americanization movement more about helping people or prejudice?

With a partner, brainstorm three arguments in favor of the “melting pot” idea promoted by the Americanization movement and three problems or downsides to this idea. List these arguments in a T chart

Arguments in favor of the melting pot model

Arguments opposedto the melting pot model

After completing your T-Chart, individually, answer the following questions:

1. Should America follow the melting pot model?

2. What other possible alternatives to the idea of the melting pot can you think of? Why would these models be better or

worse than the melting pot idea 3. Be prepared to discuss and debate these

issues with the class


Skyscrapers, c. 1900

VII. Living conditions in urban AmericaA. Advancements

and benefits of modern Cities

Subway1904

Sewersc. 1900


B. Problems of urbanization

Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives, 1890


• Read document A (an excerpt from Riis’ book describing the impoverished Mulberry bend neighborhood in New York City) on your own. Highlight the consequences of urbanization and poverty as you read. (10 minutes)

• Share the consequences you found with your group and generate a group list. Each person should put this list into their notes under the heading “Consequences of urbanization and poverty found in the writings of Jacob Riis”. Your group must identify at least five different problems and be able to describe each problem with a quotation from the document (key each problem to a quote).

• With your group, discuss and decide how cities might fix the problems you have discussed.


Documents - Unit 2Document A - Excerpts from Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives, 1890 In the street, where the city wields the broom, there is at least an effort at cleaning up. There has to be, or it would be swamped in filth overrunning from the courts and alleys where the rag-pickers live. It requires more than ordinary courage to explore these on a hot day. The undertaker has to do it then, the police always. Right here, in this tenement on the east side of the street, they found little Antonia Candia, victim of fiendish cruelty, “covered,” says the account found in the records of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, “with sores, and her hair matted with dried blood.” Abuse is the normal condition of “the Bend,” murder its everyday crop, with the tenants not always the criminals. In this block between Bayard, Park, Mulberry, and Baxter Streets, “the Bend” proper, the late Tenement House Commission counted 155 deaths of children 1 in a specimen year (1882). Their percentage of the total mortality in the block was 68.28, while for the whole city the proportion was only 46.20. The infant mortality in any city or place as compared with the whole number of deaths is justly considered a good barometer of its general sanitary condition. Here, in this tenement, No. 59½, next to Bandits’ Roost, fourteen persons died that year, and eleven of them were children; in No. 61 eleven, and eight of them not yet five years old. According to the records in the Bureau of Vital Statistics only thirty-nine people lived in No. 59½ in the year 1888, nine of them little children. There were five baby funerals in that house the same year. Out of the alley itself, No. 59, nine dead were carried in 1888, five in baby coffins. Here is the record of the year for the whole block, as furnished by the Registrar of Vital Statistics, Dr. Roger S. Tracy:

The general death-rate for the whole city that year was 26.27.Accessed on 9.23.12 at http://www.bartleby.com/208/6.html

Goldfield, David, et.al. The American Journey. Upper Saddle River (NJ): Pearson, 2009.

A

A. Tenements were often poorly ventilated and extremely hot

Keying a document


Problems described in Riis(from class brainstorm)

•


VIII. Working Conditions in Industrial America

Problems with working conditions described in the report on the relations between labor and capital from class brainstorm (document B):

•Child Labor•Child labor reducing demand for adult labor•Unemployment•Workers not being able to work enough•Low pay•State government’s did not enforce debt collection laws•Lack of ability to pay for medical care•Lack of ability to pay for clothes for the family•Lack of ability to pay for food•lack of ability to pay for fuel (for heating and cooking)•Many workers suffered these problems•Debt caused by situations beyond worker’s control•Threat of homelessness•Inability to move to find better jobs due to family/lack of money



Statistical evidence of working conditions in Early Industrial America

•Wages - In New York during the first two decades of the twentieth century found that most families fell below the poverty level.

•Hours - Most industrial workers worked incredibly long hours by modern standards:

•by 1920, the average unskilled worker worked 54 hours a week•Steelworkers in 1920 worked on average 63 hours, including one 24 hour shift every two weeks




•Child Labor was common in many industries, particularly the textile and manufacturing sectors.




Workplace safety:

•From 1880 to 1900 - 35,000 were killed each year while another 1/2 million were injured.

•Between 1905 and 1920 no year passed in the coal mining industry without at least 2000 work related deaths

•In 1909 the Triangle Shirtwaist fire killed 146 working women and girls, partly because emergency exits were locked from the outside to prevent unionization

•In the rail industry in 1901, one out of every 399 rail workers died on the job


IX. New Ideas: The Rise of Big Business

A. The Corporation

GE - Founded by Thomas Edison, 1890


GE today - the 6th largest firm in the nation


B. Horizontal Integration - Almost all of a given product is manufactured by one company (a

monopoly). As a customer, you have no choice who you buy from.

Really good carsReally good carsReally good carsReally good cars

Horizontal integration is also known as monopoly. It is good for business (no competition) but bad for consumers


C. Vertical integration

Raw materials

Transport network Factory

Distribution network

Retail Outlet

Really Good Cars

Enterprises


D. New Ideas of the economy and society

Background to Andrew Carnegie and William Graham Sumner

Read documents D and E and answer the following questions:

•What is the main idea of each document?

•How would each writer respond to the following - “The government should make sure that the wealth created by industrialization is more evenly spread throughout the population.”

•What would each writer see as the solution to the poverty described in the Riis document?


D. New Ideas about the economy and society (not all of them good :(

• Social Darwinism - (although it bears his name, Darwin would have considered this idea unscientific and wrong)

• Took Darwin’s idea of the survival of the fittest (which Darwin used to explain the diversity of biological life) and used it as an argument against laws aimed to help poor workers.

• Argued that the poor were poor because they were inferior

• If government intervened it would prevent societal advancement because poor people would survive at the expense of the more capable

• The Gospel of Wealth - A variation of Social Darwinism developed by Andrew Carnegie that argued that the rich were rich because of their superiority, but, that they had an obligation to use their wealth to benefit society.
