Industrial Revolution

• Improvements in Agriculture

  • Mechanized reaper – reduced labor force

  • Steel plow – cut through dense sod

  • Barbed wire – kept cattle off crops

  • Windmills – powers irrigation systems

  • Hybridization – allowed greater yields
• Transcontinental Railroad, 1869


  Union Pacific began in Omaha in 1865 and went west. Central Pacific went east from Sacramento and met the Union Pacific Railroad at Promontory Point, Utah.
• Influence of Big Business

  • Larger pools of capital

  • Wider geographic span

  • Broader range of operations

  • Revised role of ownership

  • New methods of management
• Laissez-faire


  A theory that the economy does better without government intervention in business.
• Monopolies


  A market structure where a company has been able to either buy out all of its competitors or simply run them out of business. At that point the company has complete control over a product 

  or service in that area. Ex. Standard Oil
• Industrialists

  John D. Rockefeller - Oil
• Industrialists

  Andrew Carnegie - Steel
• Industrialists

  J.P. Morgan - Banking & finance
• Social Darwinism


  Applied Darwin's theory of natural selection and "survival of the fittest" to human society -- the poor are poor because they are not as fit to survive. Used as an argument against social reforms to help the poor.
• Gospel of Wealth, 1889

  Andrew Carnegie was an American millionaire and philanthropist who donated large sums of money for public works. His book argued that the wealthy have an obligation to give something back to society.
• Inventors & Inventions

  Alexander Graham Bell - The telephone
• Inventors & Inventions

  Christopher Sholes - The typewriter
• Inventors & Inventions

  Henry Bessemer - Bessemer Steel process
• Inventors & Inventions

  Thomas Alva Edison - He had over 1,000 inventions including electricity. (light bulb, fans, & printing presses).
• Assembly Line


  Arrangement of equipment and workers in which work passes from operation to operation in a direct line until the product is assembled.
• Factory Working Conditions

  • 12 hour days, 6 sometimes 7 days a week

  • Unsafe, dangerous, dirty, poorly ventilated, poorly lit, faulty equipment

  • Low wages

  • No benefits

  • Children as young as 5 worked in factory.
• Labor Unions


  A labor union is an association of workers who join together to promote and protect the welfare, interest, and rights of its members by a process called Collective Bargaining.
• Examples of Labor Unions

  Knights of Labor

  • An American labor union originally established as a secret fraternal order and noted as the first union of all workers. It was founded in 1869.
• Examples of Labor Unions

  American Federation of Labor

  • Began in 1886 with about 140,000 members; by 1917 it had 2.5 million members. It is a federation of different unions.
• Labor Practices

  Collective Bargaining - Discussions held between workers and their employers over wages, hours, and conditions.
• Tactics of Labor - Strike


  This is a work stoppage intended to force an employer to respond to workers demands.
• Tactics of Labor - Boycott


  Here workers encourage citizens to not buy or use a company product until that company gives into the worker’s demands.
• Tactics of Management - Lockouts


  Here the owners of the factory lock the workers out of the factory building until the workers give in or compromise with the factory owners demands.
• Great Strike 1877


  This was a railroad strike over cuts in worker’s wages. This strike set the scene for violent strikes to come.
• Pullman Strike 1894


  Workers of the Pullman rail car company went on strike over wage cuts & layoffs. The strike grew violent. 12,000 federal troops were called in to end the strike.
• Pullman Strike 1894

  The factory owners used the federal courts to limit the power of the unions. This led to a decrease in union membership.
• Interstate Commerce Act


  A law, enacted by Congress in 1887, which created the (ICC) Interstate Commerce Commission that attempted to supervise and regulate railroad companies and activities.
• Sherman Anti-trust Act


  A law, enacted by Congress in 1890, that was intended to prevent the creation of monopolies by making it illegal to establish trusts that interfered with free trade.