An Industrial Society,

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Chapter 20

• An Industrial Society,
• 18901920

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Sources of U.S. Economic Growth

• Development of new technology
• Electric Power
• Gasoline-powered internal combustion engine
• Led to rise of related industries
• Rise of large corporations
• Made national markets possible
• Mass production and distribution
• To take advantage of national market
  possibilities
• Corporate consolidation
• As edge against potentially ruinous competition
• Merger movement

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Sources of U.S. Economic Growth (cont)

• Revolution in management
• Appearance of complicated corporate hierarchies
• Creation of new middle class
• Adoption of scientific techniques in business
• Scientific management
• Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of
  Scientific Management (1911)
• Not always easy to apply new principles
• Led to greater employer concern for employees

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Industrial America, 19001920
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Change in Distribution of the American Workforce,
18701920
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Model T Prices and Sales, 19091923
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Robber Barons No More

• Andrew Carnegie, Gospel of Wealth
• All excessive income as community trust
• Rise of large-scale philanthropy among corporate
  kingpins
• John D. Rockefeller
• Standard Oil Company

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Obsession with Physical and Racial Fitness

• Pursuit of Theodore Roosevelts the strenuous
  life
• Liberating effect for American women
• Emerging ideas about Anglo-Saxon superiority
• Social Darwinism
• Solidification of racial stereotypes
• Popularity of Social Darwinism

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Gilman
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Emma Goldman
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Margaret Sanger
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Immigration

• 23 million, mostly from Europe
• On surface, differed from old immigrants in
  significant and important ways
• In truth, more similar than different
• New Immigrants as laborers
• Often performed difficult, unskilled jobs
• Tended to cluster in professions by ethnicity
• Faced opposition from unions and old immigrants
  on the job
• 500,000 Japanese and Chinese immigrate in late
  1800s
• Chinese Exclusion Act
• Living conditions difficult and substandard
• Prompted reformist attention to improvements

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Sources of Immigration
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Building Ethnic Communities

• Immigrants established their own, ethnically
  based aid networks
• Replicated Old Country groups
• Established new groups to meet American situation
• Ethnic middle-class began to emerge
• Entrepreneurs in a variety of businesses and
  trades
• Ethnic groups tended to cluster according to
  profession
• Emergence of urban political machines and
  organized crime
• Born of economic necessity
• Machines both a positive and negative force in
  urban life
• Gangsters not numerous, but left their mark

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African-American Labor and Community

• Most blacks still lived in rural areas in the
  South
• Some did migrate to the North, or to industrial
  areas of the South
• Often treated worse than new immigrants
• Discrimination occurred in North as well as South
• Decline of older, black middle-class in some
  cities
• Creation and solidification of local black
  institutions
• Churches, fraternal societies, political
  organizations
• Community building more difficult for blacks than
  for immigrants
• Madame C. J. Walker

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Workers and Unions

• Samuel Gompers and the American Federation of
  Labor
• Focused during 1890s on organizing craft or
  skilled workers
• Then worked to negotiate good contracts for them
• Backed away from political agitation
• Ignored most unskilled workers
• Big Bill Haywood and the Industrial Workers of
  the World
• Hoped to organize workers into one big union
• Commitment to revolution
• Ludlow Massacre

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Joys of the City

• Numerous amusements for industrial workers
• Nickelodeons
• Movies were most popular
• Affordable short required no English
• All kinds of content and subject matter

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New Sexuality and the New Woman

• Revolt against Victorianism and separate
  spheres
• Assault led by young people, especially women
• Greenwich Village
• Calls for sexual equality
• First feminist movement
• Aroused anxiety among American conservatives
• Especially pronounced in rural areas

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Discussion Questions

• Discuss the factors which contributed to the
  dramatic industrial growth of the United States
  in the late 19th century.
• What were the patterns and causes of immigration
  into the United States in the latter 1800s?
• Examine Social Darwinism. Are its premises
  correct or flawed? Defend your position.
• What were some of the successes in organizing
  labor in the late 1800s? Why was it so difficult
  to organize labor in this period?