Essay About Mass Transportation And Smaller Businesses

Machine Age
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The Machine Age(1877-1900) AKA The Gilded Age
Assembly Line Production
12 -14 hour workday
One mistake results in many injuries
Corporate Consildation
Businesses getting larger and larger
Bc court was very pro business
Gov’t unsure how to enforce
Holding Companies
Held certain amount of stock in industry
Usually meant it controlled the industrya
Factors of production
Leads to monopoly
Horizontal integration
Cartels
John D rockafeller
Standard oil
illegal
Verticle Integration
Own all factors of production in an industry
Allowed smaller businesses to “compete”
Legal
Both integrations practiced by captains of industry for guilded age
Created class of extremely powerful men
Interests not as same as society
Leads to Sherman Anti Act of 1890
Stops business from combination of conspiracy in restraint of trade
Supreme Court found loophole
Allowed businesses go
But condemned unions
Ex) EC knight owned 98% of sugar refining plant let go
Social Darwinism
Steel mogul Andrew Carnegie promotes
Only natural that richest are at the top
The gospel of wealth
Wealth means philanthropy
Suburbs
Bc mass transportation allowed Middle class would escape city surroundings
Lead to cities mainly immigrants
Ethnic neighborhoods
To escape prejudice
Political bosses
Think gangs of an area except more legal
Head of political machines
Gave all services a neighborhood needed
In return for vote as instructed
Ex) boss tweed
Knights of Labor
Founded by Uriah Stephens
Goals were
8 hour work day
= pay for men and women
Child labor laws
Safety and sanitary codes
Fed income tax
Gov’t ownership of railroad and telegraph
Eventually used violence which lead to decline in popularity
Terrence Powderly leads these strikes
Unsuccessful
Haymarket Square Riot
Someone blew a bomb
People blame a labor union
Even though no one really knows
“socialist radicals” from unions
Many in unions were socialist/utopian philosophy
American Federation of Labor(AFL)
Led by Samule Gompers
Concentrated on bread and butter issues
Higher wage shorter work hours
Realized union = more power by disclude unskilled ones
Most did not accept immigrants
Blacks nor women
Was just a confederation of trade unions
A bunch of unions exclusive to a trade
Settlement houses
Hull House was the first one
Headed by Jane Addams
Won Nobel peace prize in 1931
Laid foundation for progressive era
Increasing gap between rich and poor
Defines era
Entertainment industry
Popular novels
Newspaper
Yellow journalism
Joesph Pulizter and William Randolph Hearst
South stayed on agriculture
Some progress
Tobacco processing plants
Hired some workers
Textile mills
Reduced dependence
Most stayed as farmers
Post war econ
Made many farmers sell land
Wealthy bought
Forced in share cropping
Using the crop lien system
Kept poor very poor
No money so borrowed $$ to buy seeds
Huge debts and interest; unscrupulous owners
Jim Crow Laws