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23 The Industrial Economy_ Crash Course US History #23.mp4The Railroad Journey and the Industrial Revolution_ Crash Course World History 214.mp425 Growth, Cities, and Immigration_ Crash Course US History #25.mp426 Gilded Age Politics_Crash Course US History #26.mp4Industrial Revolution.mp4The Industrial Revolution.mp4Gilded Age.mp4The Transcontinental Railroad.mp4Urbanization & Industrialization.mp4Labor Day.mp4Historians call the period of American history from the 1870s to 1900 the Gilded Age. The Gilded Age was a time of amazing economic growth, but it was also a time of growing problems in society. In the questions that follow, you will learn about one of the biggest changes during the Gilded Age: industrialization.
When a society is industrializing, it often experiences these conditions:
The society produces more manufactured goods than it used to.
More people work in factories, and fewer people work on farms.
Technology is more advanced than it used to be.
Were other countries industrializing too?
Yes. In fact, the Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain. But the United States industrialized so rapidly that, by 1900, it passed Great Britain to become the most industrialized country in the world.
Is the U.S. still industrializing today?
Yes and no. The country continues to produce more and more manufactured goods. Also, U.S. technology continues to improve.
But fewer people work in factories today. For example, American steel factories produced more steel in 2011 than they did in 1980, but they did it with only one-fourth as many workers! Factories can produce more goods with fewer people because of improved technology.
Industrialization allowed the U.S. to produce huge amounts of many different products. One product became a symbol for industrialization: steel. Steel is a very strong metal made by heating iron until it melts, then adding other elements. Steel was expensive until the 1850s and 1860s, when inventors discovered ways to make steel much more cheaply and in much larger amounts. Strong and inexpensive steel made many of the most impressive construction projects of the Gilded Age possible.
Towers and tunnels in American cities
In the Gilded Age, builders used high-quality, low-cost steel to create new kinds of structures in American cities. These included skyscrapers above ground and subways underground.
Railroad companies were the largest buyers of steel. They used steel to lay more than 100,000 miles of railroad track between 1860 and 1890. The maps below show the U.S. railroad network in each of those years.
Was the West important in American industrialization?
Yes! A lot of the iron that was used to make steel came from iron mines in midwestern states such as Michigan and Minnesota. Railroads carried this iron all over the country.
Coal was needed as a fuel for the fires that turned iron into steel. Coal came from mines in eastern states at first. But miners also dug coal in western states, such as Colorado and Wyoming, and sent it back east on railroads. Today, Wyoming produces more coal than any other state!
There were several reasons why the United States was able to industrialize so quickly.
Why were workers so important?
The United States benefited from its plentiful natural resources and important new inventions. But it was the workers who used those inventions to turn the natural resources into valuable industrial products. For example, it took hard work and skill to turn iron into steel. The painting below shows ironworkers on their noon lunch break. What details in the painting tell you they've been working hard?
Industrialization brought dramatic changes to Americans' daily lives. Read a modern scholar's description of those changes.
Within a few decades, urban American homes became networked. . . . Instead of relying on candles and [fuel] carried into the home, each home was connected to the electricity network that provided electric light . . . Instead of relying on . . . outhouses and cesspools, each home was gradually connected to two more networks, one bringing in a supply of clean running water and the other taking waste out into sewers. Houses of the rich after 1880 and of the working class after 1910 were increasingly supplied with central heating.
networked: connected to a large, complex system
outhouses: outdoor toilets
cesspools: underground pits for storing sewage
Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Princeton University Press, 2016.
Are homes today networked?
Yes! Even more than in the Gilded Age, most houses and apartments today connect to outside networks of pipes, wires, and cables. These networks include electricity, natural gas, communications, water, and sewer networks.
Where are these networks?
Often the networks are underground. Sometimes they are marked with different colored spray paint. Have you seen markings like this in your neighborhood?
Industrialization in the Gilded Age brought the rise of "big business." Big business was a term people used for the giant corporations, or companies, that were founded during the time. These corporations were different from older kinds of companies in several ways:
They had hundreds or even thousands of employees.
They controlled 20% or more of all business in an industry.
They were worth millions of dollars.
They did business in many different states and countries.
What were the first big businesses?
Historians consider the railroad companies to be the first "big businesses" in American history. Running a railroad took much more money and involved many more people than previous American businesses.
For example, Leland Stanford's Central Pacific Railroad laid tracks from California to Utah, made millions of dollars, and employed more than 10,000 people!
Americans disagreed about whether giant corporations were good for the country. They also had different views of the extremely rich men, such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, who led those businesses:
Some people called leaders of big business "robber barons," claiming that they got rich by taking advantage of their workers and cheating their competitors.
Other people called leaders of big business "captains of industry," claiming that they got rich by providing good products at good prices and used their wealth to help their communities.
Leaving something behind
Many business leaders of the Gilded Age wanted to give money in ways that would last beyond their lifetimes. They also wanted to make sure that people would remember their contributions. So, many of them donated millions of dollars to create schools or other institutions that would be named after them. Have you been to any of these places?
Andrew Carnegie paid to build Carnegie Hall, a famous concert hall in New York City.
John D. Rockefeller's son helped to build Rockefeller Center, a group of famous buildings in New York City.
Leland Stanford, who owned railroads and other businesses, founded Stanford University in memory of his son.
Cornelius Vanderbilt, who owned several railroads, donated money to help found Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.
Conditions in industrial factories were very different from the farms and workshops where most Americans had worked before.
What is going on in the painting?
The painting, called "Forging the Shaft," shows workers making the propeller shaft for a ship. But the artist, John Ferguson Weir, was more interested in how the factory felt than in the details of the work. Here is what he wrote to his wife about how he would paint the factory:
I will . . . make it just the spookiest place that ever was, with ghouls for men, and sudden gleams of light, as if it was in pandemonium, and mischief was brewing in the furnace.
ghouls: evil spirits
pandemonium: noisy confusion
Betsy Fahlman, John Ferguson Weir: The Labor of Art, 1997.
Many industrial workers wanted better working conditions and higher wages. In order to force factory owners to listen to them, workers sometimes organized labor unions. A labor union is a group of workers that fights for better working conditions. The table below describes some of the most important labor unions during America's industrialization.
The AFL was different from the Knights and the IWW because it was limited to skilled workers. Since those workers had more knowledge and training than many other workers, they were harder for factory owners to replace. So, factory owners were more willing to compromise with the AFL to keep workers from quitting.
The AFL also usually stayed out of politics and accepted the existing system. But the Knights and the IWW wanted a new system in which workers had more control over factories.
Who led the AFL?
Samuel Gompers was the first and longest-serving president of the AFL. Gompers immigrated to the United States as a child and worked as a cigar maker in New York City.
Gompers later recalled the pride that he took as a skilled worker:
These [complicated tasks] a good cigar maker learned to do more or less mechanically, which left us free to think, talk, listen, or sing.
Often, factory managers would not agree to what workers wanted. In many cases, they refused even to talk to the workers! In those cases, workers sometimes went on strike. In other words, they refused to go back to work until things changed. Going on strike was a difficult decision, and workers would have a meeting to decide whether to do it.
Did strikes ever succeed?
Yes! Going on strike was risky, but under certain conditions, workers could get what they wanted.
In 1877, over 2,000 ribbon weavers went on strike at mills throughout the city of Paterson, New Jersey. They were successful in getting wage increases and a better contract.
A strike could succeed if some of these statements were true:
The workers were willing to stay out of work for a long time.
The workers were not easy to replace.
The owner of the factory needed to make money quickly.
The workers were able to cooperate with other workers in their industry or city.
Local politicians and people in the community supported the workers.
Industrialization in the Gilded Age brought benefits to Americans. But it also created serious new challenges.
One challenge was increasing inequality between the rich and the poor. Some people became extremely wealthy, while many others had to struggle to get by.
How unequal was Gilded Age America?
Very unequal. The rich were extremely rich. For example, historians have estimated that John D. Rockefeller, the founder of the Standard Oil company, was the richest person who ever lived! In today's dollars, he was about twice as wealthy as the richest people today.
On the other hand, average workers in the Gilded Age made much less than average workers today. So, there was a big gap in wealth between the richest Americans and average workers.
Another challenge for Americans during this period was that conflicts between industrial workers and companies often led to violence. One example of violence over a labor conflict took place in 1894 during the Great Pullman Strike. The Pullman Company manufactured and operated railroad cars.
Why did the government side with Pullman?
President Grover Cleveland believed he had to put an end to the strike in order to get the country's trains moving again. Trains carried some U.S. mail, and the government ran the mail service. Cleveland was quoted as saying, "If it takes the entire army and navy of the United States to deliver a postcard in Chicago, that card will be delivered."
But Cleveland also organized a group to investigate the strike, and its report criticized the Pullman Company.
A holiday honoring workers
Politicians worried that unions and workers would be angry about the government's actions during the Pullman Strike. So, just days after the strike ended, Congress passed and the president signed a law creating Labor Day, a federal holiday to honor workers and their contributions to the United States.
Another issue that divided Americans during the Gilded Age was child labor. The passage below was written by Rose Cohen, who immigrated to the U.S. from Russia when she was 12 years old. She went to work in a New York City sweatshop, sewing coats to earn money so that the rest of her family could come to America. Read the passage.
Late at night when the people would stand up and begin to fold their work away, [the boss] would come over with still another coat. "I need it first thing in the morning," he would give as an excuse. I understood that he was taking advantage of me because I was a child. And now that it was dark in the shop . . . and there was no one to see, more tears fell on the sleeve lining than there were stitches in it.
I . . . did not want to leave the shop for fear of losing a day or even more perhaps in finding other work. To lose half a dollar meant that it would take so much longer before mother and the children would come.
Phillip Hoose, We Were There, Too! Young People in U.S. History, Farrar Straus Giroux, 2001.
How bad was air pollution in industrial cities?
Very bad! For example, earlier in the 1800s, a tourist to Pittsburgh described the city as very dirty:
Pittsburgh is full of good things in the eating and drinking way, but it [is difficult] to get them down your throat [unmixed] with smoke and coal-dust.
If a sheet of white paper lie upon your desk for half an hour, you may write on it with your finger's end, through the thin [layer] of coal-dust that has settled upon it during that [time].
Federal and state governments responded to industrialization in different ways at different times. Sometimes government officials helped big corporations, but they also sometimes tried to get them under control.
Did the government usually support big business?
Yes. Both the federal government and the state governments usually supported big business during the Gilded Age. Lawmakers often argued that big business brought many benefits to Americans, especially by creating jobs and by keeping prices low for consumers.
But people who opposed big business did not think the politicians were being honest. They claimed that the politicians supported big business so that rich businessmen and companies would help them get re-elected.
Over the years, historians have debated whether the outcome of industrialization in the Gilded Age was positive or negative.
Which are more important, the good results or the bad?
Industrialization made the United States much wealthier, and that brought benefits to all Americans. Poverty was greatly reduced, and life became more comfortable.
On the other hand, industrialization brought new problems that the American political system struggled to deal with. For example, damage to the environment and inequality between rich and poor are challenges that still face the U.S. today.
Which results are more important to you?
Because of industrialization, more Americans can afford the things they need.
Because of industrialization, the U.S. produces more garbage.
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