The civil war is the first war that lead us to railroads, they were a major factor. In the 1850s, an enormous growth in the railroad industry created 22,000 miles of track were build in the northern states and 9,500 miles in the south. The railroads lead us to cities and business because it started trade and interdependence. It also helped transform the diverse regions of the country into a united nation. The growth of railroads influenced the industries. Iron, coal, steel, lumber, and glass industries grew rapidly! The Gilded Age is around the late 1800 and the beginning of 1900. It is called the Gilded Age because on the surface it was glittering but underneath it was a whole different place. It was just a period of greed and guile. Some of the events that happen during the Gilded Age were Rutherford B. Hayes elected president; Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone, McKinley Tariff Act (1890) which raised the taxes on imports, Silver Purchase Act (1890) the federal government agreed to purchase 4,500,000 oz. of silver each month, and Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) this act was aimed at preventing monopolies. Before the Gilded Age we were in the Civil war (slavery) and the United States was expanding to the West with the Gold Rush. During the Gilded Age there were multiple presidents such as William McKinley.
Railroads
Since it was war time when they build the railroads, the war messed up the railroads mostly in the south then in the north. The tracks had a lot of difficulties so it was hard for them to get around. Anything that needed to be transferred from one railroad to another had to be carried across town and loaded into cars. Railroads used their power in a lot of ways that especially effected farmers. They made formal agreements to fix prices in order to keep farmers in their dept. Most of the workers that build the railroads were the Irish immigrants and Chinese men. The Chinese men worked way better then the Irish so they kept more Chinese men in the end. According to the author's of The Americas, "The Credit Mobilier Scandal of 1872-1873 damaged the careers of several Gilded Age politicians. Major stockholders in the union created a company called the Credit Mobilier of America and gave it contracts to build the railroads." The scandal also showed how corruption tainted the Gilded Age politics, and how long the railroads and other economics interest would go to assure and increase profits. The Interstate Commerce Act did not limit the power of the railroads because they didn't think it had enough business so it took them a while to approve of them.
George Pullman
George Mortimer Pullman was an influential industrialist of the nineteenth century and the founder of the Pullman Palace Car Company. His innovations brought comfort and luxury to railroad travel in the 1800s with the introduction of sleeping cars, dining cars, and parlor cars. By 1890, the Pullman Palace Car Company was operating 2,135 railroad cars on approximately 160,000 miles of track in the United States with a work force of 12,367 employees. Unfortunately, the economic panic and depression of 1893 interrupted Pullman’s ambitions when his workers initiated a strike demanding higher wages and better working conditions. This labor conflict grew into a national crisis causing violence, destruction of property, and even death for several strikers.
Growth of Industry, Business, & Labor
Monopoly is the exclusive possession or control of supply or trade in commodity or service. A holding company is a company created to buy and posses the shares of other companies, the it controls. Carnegie Steel was made by Andrew Carnegie. He devoted his full energies to the iron business and his firm received lucrative contracts from the railroads to replace aging wooden bridges with iron ones. On his trip to Europe, Carnegie met and was inspired by Henry Bessemer, developer of breakthrough technology for making steel from pig iron. In 1873, Carnegie sold out his other interests and turned his full attention to steel then he began acquiring the components of what would become the Carnegie Steel Company. Robber Barrons are people who amassed personal fortunes by using illegal and immoral business practices, such as illegally charging tolls to passing merchant ships. Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller were both Robber Barrons. The Sherman Antitrust Act was a federal anti-monopoly and anti-trust statute, passed in 1890. The Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926) Debs organized the American Railway Union, which waged a strike against the Pullman Company of Chicago in 1894. After embracing socialism, he became the party’s standard-bearer in five presidential elections. Late in life, Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his opposition to the United States’ involvement in World War II. (http://www.history.com/topics/eugene-v-debs). In 1877, Mother Jones participated in her first major strike with the railroad workers. The strike started in Martinsburg, West Virginia, and as the news of these protests traveled through the country, strikes sparked up in Pennsylvania and Illinois, and involved coal miners, as well. These strikes were successful in that they opened the eyes of the public to the plight of the working class poor, but they inspired Mother Jones to continue working with efforts to establish trade unions.She joined socialist organizations and in the 1890s started writing for the International Socialist Review and signing her name “Mother Jones.” She then led a series of marches by women in support of their striking husbands. In 1901 she focused on the plight of women workers and helped organize a strike of miner’s daughters working as silk weavers. She also assisted in forming a union of domestic servants. http://www.historyswomen.com/socialreformer/MotherJones.html
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. The family settled in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, where Andrew received no formal education and found work as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill. He later worked as a messenger in a telegraph office and rapidly advanced to telegrapher. In 1853, Carnegie became the private secretary and telegrapher to Thomas A. Scott, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Taking the first step toward an investment program, Carnegie bought stock in a sleeping car company and in a short time was making more from his speculative venture than from his regular job. He later made a similarly small investment in oil during its formative years and again profited handsomely. Carnegie was appointed a superintendent for the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1859. When he opened his first steel plant in 1875, he named the facility for the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, J. Edgar Thompson; shortly thereafter, Carnegie received an enormous order from that organization for the production of steel rails. Carnegie’s growing wealth enabled him to profit from the depression of the 1890s. When others faced bankruptcy, he managed to gobble up steel production facilities. By 1900, he controlled about one-quarter of the nation’s steel output.
Immigration BOOM
America is a nation of immigrants. Our journey and success would no be the same without these immigrants who have come to us from all over the world. Immigrants-owned businesses helped America people get a job by letting them work in there jobs. Immigrants are more likely to create there own jobs so they use there own money to put into a business. As a nation of immigrants, generations of immigrants have helped lay the railroads and build our cities. The Ellis island is from 1892 to 1924, this site was the main gateway to the U.S. and admitted over 12 million immigrants. And the Angel island was also a immigrants station where they would be found. Immigrants was nothing new to America. Immigration started in 1880-1920 in the United States. Many would come from Southern and Eastern Europe, and some would come from as far away as Asia. Most of the immigrant groups that came to America, seemed like if they were not even a real group because they would only be a small amount of people but for a fact they did have lot of the same similarities. The new groups that came by the boatload in the Gilded Age were characterize by some of there traits. There nationalities were Greek, Italian, Polish, Slovak, Serb, Russian, Croat, and some others. Not all Americas welcomed immigrants with open arms. The United States had major waves of immigration during the colonial area, from the 1880s to the 1920. Many immigrants came to America to find grater opportunity, while some, such as Pilgrims in the early 1600s, they came for religious freedom. The Melting Pot was when the U.S people came together to abandoning native culture but the immigrants didn't want to lose or give up culture identity. Americas were built on by the immigrants, but the immigrant system is so messed up. The Native was the favoritism toward native born Americans. The Anti-Asian Sentiment was when Nativism found foothold in labor movement, mostly in the west. The Chinese exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882. It was the most significant on free immigration in US history, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese labors. The Gentlemen's Agreement between the United States and Japan in 1907-1908 represented by President Theodore Roosevelt to clam tension between the two countries over the immigration of Japanese workers.
Chester A. Arthur
Chester A. Arthur was the 21st president of the United States. He served as vice president at the time President James Garfield was assassinated, and acceded to the presidency thereafter. Chester A. Arthur was born on October 5, 1829, in North Fairfield, Vermont. As president, he supported the Pendleton Civil Service Act (1883), which provided for the open appointment and promotion of federal employees based on merit rather than patronage. Arthur advocated lowering tariff rates to help relieve indebted farmers and middle-class consumers. In 1882, he vetoed a pork-barrel project known as the Rivers and Harbor Act, believing that federal surpluses should go to tax relief rather than government expenditures. In 1883, he became a champion of social service reform, signing into law the Pendleton Act, which established a bipartisan Civil Service Commission.
Theodore Roosevelt
He was a New York governor who became the 26th U.S. president, Theodore Roosevelt is remembered for his foreign policy, corporate reforms and ecological preservation. Born in New York City on October 27, 1858, Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was governor of New York before becoming U.S. vice president. At age 42, Teddy Roosevelt became the youngest man to assume the U.S. presidency after President William McKinley was assassinated in 1901.
Modernizing-- Urbanization
In 1900, worldwide, there were 6.7 rural dwellers to each urban dweller; now there is less than one and projections suggest close to three urban dwellers to two rural dwellers by 2025. This has been underpinned by the rapid growth in the world economy and in the proportion of gross world product and of the economically active population working in industry and services (since most industrial and service enterprises are in urban areas). Much is made of the fact that in 2008, the world's urban population exceeded its rural population for the first time. Less attention has been given to two other transitions: around 1980, the economically active population employed in industry and services exceeded that employed in the primary sector (agriculture, forestry, mining and fishing); and around 1940, the economic value generated by industry and services exceeded that generated by the primary sector. Today, agriculture provides the livelihoods for around one-third of the world's labour force and generates 2–3% of global value added—although this is misleading in that a significant proportion of industry and services are related to the production, processing, distribution and sale of food, and other agricultural products. Urbanization is the population shift from rural to urban areas and the ways society adapts to the changes. The America movement was nationwide organized effort in the 1910s to bring million of immigrants into the American system. In the 19th century a lot of people started moving into America's cities. The population doubled from 1800-1880. There was single family's living in those houses until newly arrived immigrants were making them increasingly divided into multiple living spaces. More then 400,000 new patents issued between 1860-1880. Mass-transit System was that people all over the city could reach work. For examples Electric trolleys, subway stations, and coach wagons. There living conditions were not that so god the had lack of safe transportation, unsafe drinking water, lack of sanitation, fire hazards, and crime - pickpockets/thieves. Mass-transit innovations was street cars, and electric subways that were introduced in 1873. New York had bought public water systems, and filtration that was introduced in 1873 also but it did not completely solve the problem of unsaved water. Jane Addams sounded the famous social settlement Hull House on Chicago's Near West Side in 1889. She was also remembered as the first American Women to receive the Nobel Prize.