America 1900-1910

• in 1900 the U.S. was by far the world's largest agricultural producer.
• The first transcontinental rail link had been completed in 1869
• In 1900 th nation had 193,000 miles track, with five railroad systems spanning the continent
• By 1900, major oil fields were being tapped in Kansas, Illinois, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas. The supply of American oil seemed limitless.
• John D. Rockefeller's standard Oil Trust dominated the world's petroleum markets and controlled more than 90% of the nation's refinery capacity.
• The world's first oil well had been drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859
• 1900 the United States was the largest steel producer in the world, turning out 10,000,000 tons a year
• New wealth and devastating fires produced a boom in urban construction. Architects Richardson, Hunt, McKim, Mead, and White flourished; Sullivan pioneered the skyscraper
• Life expectancy for white Americans was just 48 yrs. The gap in life expectancy for whites and non-whites had narrowed from 15 yrs to 7 yrs
• Half of all American school children lived in poverty, most teens did not attend school; instead, they laboured in factories of fields
• The 19th Century was a time of radical transformation in the political and legal status of African Americans
• 90% of African Americans still lived in the Southern US in 1900 - roughly the same percentage as lived In the South in 1870
• African American economic life in the early 1900s centered on Southern cotton agriculture. Some were laborers hired for a short period for specific tasks
• Limitations on the legal rights of African Americans grew more severe in the South in this era
• 1900:

  • Work on the New York subway begins
  • Electric cars
  • Smallpox Epidemic
• 1901:

  • Marconi sends first wireless - 2000 miles across sea
  • President William McKinley is shot
• 1902:

  • First movie theatre opens
  • Shakelton and Scott get further South
• 1903:

  • Work on Queensboro bridge begins
  • First baseball world series
  • Wright brothers create first plane
• 1904:

  • Summer Olympic games
  • Long acre square renamed times square
• 1907:

  • Charles Curtis, first native American elected in office
• 1908:

  • Ford Model T (first accessible car)
  • Naval base in pearl harbour
• 1909:

  • NAACP founded
  • Queensboro bridge opens
• Despite the work of the suffragettes some women still had very little rights in the 1900s and certainly no political rights
• towards the end of the C19th, Elizabeth Garett Anderson became the first lady to qualify to be a doctor (GP)
• Between 1880 and 1910 the number of women employed in the United States increased from 2.6 million to 7.8 million.
• Caroline cotton mills, 1908

  • An example of where child labor took place within America
• Ellis Island, 1905

  • Where immigrant families (e.g. from Italy) would go to stay, the temporary house