A New Spirit of Reform1872-1897

The Gilded Age

The American worker hidden under the powerful few

Reform, or change needed – were the industries corrupt?

Railroad Credit Scandal

Union Pacific buys credit company Gives contracts from government to

Union Pacific Overpaid 50 million – stocks look

good? Led to investigation

President Grant

Corruption

Railroad credit scandal Cheated American Indians Illegal payments from whiskey

companies to avoid paying taxes. People were making millions off

the government

Political Corruption …..

Helped immigrates for votes

Boss Tweed – newspaper bribe

Election of 1884-Cleveland wins Interstate Commerce Act

Forced Railroad crossing state lines to charge customers the same fees for the same service.

C. Vanderbilt made a Fortune from building

railroads.

Great Northern Railroad

System – James Hill- “The

Empire builder

Reform was also needed with American workers

Labor Unions established: Strikers – stop

working to get better pay or conditions

Two groups formed AFL Nobel Order of Knights

Two Different Unions:

AFL : American Federation of Labor

-Skilled workers -peaceful

bargaining (talks)

Knights of Labor

Open to all workers Improve pay and

work conditions Strikes and boycotts

Ends with a bomb

Texas Longhorns; 400 ranches

-Ranching big business

-Cattle trails and railroads developed.

Meatpacking developed by Armour and Swift

Andrew Carnegie poor, from Scotland came

over at 12 worked on railroads

Started and invested in Carnegie Steel Co

Became a steel tycoon; railroads, bridges, buildings

Sold in 1901 to J P Morgan for 480 million; libraries, schools, medical research

Tech Boom– “Menlo Park wizard”

Thomas Edison – perfects light bulb, brings electricity to New York, invents many things….like the phonograph

Alexander Gram Bell – invents telephone

Other inventions: George Eastman – The Kodak

camera! Elisha Otis – the elevator! Edwin Drake – strikes oil in Titusville! Ford – gas engine and creates the

assembly line!

Vocabulary:

Selling stock – way for a corporation to make money

Entrepreneur – person who starts and organizes a business

Monopoly – a corporation that has little competition

Corporations

Stockholders – are those who buy shares in a company. The company is led by Board of Directors

Trusts – formed to gain dominance with several companies hence creating monopoly

To control the markets, business bought out their competition – horizontal combination

John D Rockefeller

-started Standard Oil -vertical integration

-owned 90% of pipelines

refined 84% of the oil

Vertical Integration

Control all industries required for production from raw material to the final delivery.

Raw Material Factory production Railroad for delivery

Manufacturing replaces agriculture

Suspension bridges ----Brooklyn bridge Refineries for crude oil---Rockefeller Railroads---Cornelius Vanderbilt Meat packing-----Amour and Gustavo Swift Steel for sky scrappers

US has tremendous natural resources- coal, iron, petroleum

Downside—factories caused pollution.