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Effects Transportation and Labor
Oil Steel
Wildcatters went looking for oil –found in Spindletop, TX
Kicked off 20 year oil boom in TX
Learn to refine crude oil for gasoline
Helps with transportation and industry
Allows production of railways
1st transcontinental railroad connects at Promontory Summit, UT
Railways create time zones
Economics and Business
Entrepreneurs- risk takers who started new ventures (businesses)
Capitalism – businesses are privately owned
Economic Philosophies
Laissez-fair – “allow to do” or “leave alone” – no government interference
Social Darwinism – Stronger businesses would prosper, weaker ones would fail
CORPORATIONS
a business with the legal status of an individual
Owned by people who buy stocks in the company
Board of directors make decisions
Advantages: can expand by selling stock; stockholders only lose money they have invested, can exist after founders leave
John D. Rockefeller
Standard Oil Company
Used vertical integration – acquiring companies that supplied the oil business
Uses Horizontal integration – bought other oil refineries
Andrew Carnegie
Born a Poor Immigrant
Worked for Penn RR and invested money
Founded Carnegie Steel Company
Devoted time to building public libraries and financing Education
Cornelius Vanderbuilt
Invested in RR
Became very wealthy and his holdings stretched from Michigan and Canada
Gave money to Education
Sherman Antitrust Act
Put in place to try to lessen the power of corporations
Illegal to form trust that interfere with free trade
Government did not enforce
Monopolies
Monopoly: A situation in which a single company or individual owns all or nearly all of the market for a given type of product or service
Labor Unions
European immigrants worked industry
African Americans worked as laborers or household help
1900: 1 in 6 children between the ages of 10-15 held a job outside the home
Laborers start to organize to pressure companies for safer workplaces and better pay
KNIGHTS OF LABOR
Leader – Terrence V. Powderly
Accepted unskilled workers, women, African Americans, and employers
Asked for 8 hour work day, end of child labor, and equal pay for equal work
Boycotts and strikes were the main tactics
Great RR Strike Haymarket Riot
1877 – protested for cut wages
2 workers for 2 RR blocked movement of trains
Strikes spreadStopped freight for
over a weekResulted in mobs
and death
1866 – over 1500 strikes over wage cuts
Chicago – Haymarket Square crowds protested police action
Bomb was thrown – panic stricken – 11 dead by end
Blamed foreign unionist
HOW DID BIG BUSINESS RESPOND TO UNIONS?????
Employers forced employees to sign documents stating they wouldn’t join unions
Blacklisted trouble makers to keep them from getting hired at new jobs
American Federation of Labor
Led by Samuel Gompers
Won wage increases and shorter workweeks
Setbacks occurred for unions from Homestead strike and Pullman strike
TELEPHONE
Patented by Alexander Graham Bell
By 1900 more than a million telephones in offices and households
Typewriter
Christopher Latham Sholes
Designed the 1st practical typewriter and keyboard (still used today) – opened jobs for women as typists