The Gilded Age
Introduction
As a railroads grew, they came to influence many facts of the American life, including, as in the town of Pullman, the personal lives of the country's citizens. They caused the standard time and time zones to be set and influenced the growth of towns and communities. However, the unchecked power of railroad companies led to widespread abuses that spurred citizen to demand federal regulation of the industry.
RailroadsBy 1856. the railroads extend west to the Mississippi River, and three years later, they crossed the Missouri. Just over a decade later, crowds across the United States cheered as a Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads met at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869. A golden spike marked the spanning of the nation by the first transcontinental railroad. Other transcontinental lines followed, and regional lines multiplied as well At the start of the Civil War, the nation had about 30,000 miles of tracks. By 1890, that figure was nearly six times greater.
The Central Pacific Railroad employed thousands of Chinese immigrants. The Union Pacific hired Irish immigrants and desperate. out-of-work Civil War veterans to lay track across treacherous terrain while enduring attacks by Native Americans. Accidents and disease disabled and killed thousands men each year. In 1888, when first railroad statistic were published, the casualties totaled more than 2,000 employees killed and 20,000 injured.(Pg. 237) |
George PullmanGeorge M. Pullman built a factory for manufacturing sleepers and others railroad cars on the Illinois prairie. The nearby town that Pullman built for his employees followed in part the models of earlier industrial experiment in Europe. Whereas New England textile manufacturers had traditionally provided housing for their workers, the town of Pullman provided for almost all of the workers' basic needs. Pullman residents live in clean, well-constructed brick houses and apartment buildings with at least one window in every room--a luxury for city dwellers. In addition, the town offered services and facilities such as doctors' offices, shops, and an a athletic field. Pullman created his company town out of the desire for control and profit. In some railroad magnates, or powerful and influential industrialists, these desires turned into self-serving corruption. In one of the most infamous schemes, stockholders in the Union Pacific Railroad formed, in 1864, a construction company called Credit Mobilier. The stockholders gave this company a contract to lay track at two to three times the actual cost--and pocketed the profits
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Business & MonopolyOne way to create a monopoly was to set up a holding company, corporation that did nothing but buy out the stock of the companies. Headed by banker J. P. Morgan, United States Steel was one of the most successful holding. companies. In 1901, when it bought the largest manufacturer, Carnegie Steel, it became the world's largest business.
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John D. RockefellerCorporations such as the Standard Oil Company, established by John D. Rockefeller, took a different approach to mergers: they joined with competing companies in trust agreements. Participants in a trust turned their stock over to a group of trustees--people who ran the separate companies as one large corporation. In 1870, Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company of Ohio processed two or three percent of the country's crude oil. Within a decade, it controlled 90 percent of the refining business. Rockefeller reaped huge profits by paying his employees extremely low wages and driving his competitors out of business by selling his oil at a lower price than it cost to produce it. Then, when he controlled the market, he hiked prices far above original levels.
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Immigration BOOMAfter initial moments of excitement, the immigrants faced the anxiety of not knowing whether they would be admitted to the United States. They had pass inspection at immigration stations, such as the one at Castle Garden in New York, which was later moved to Ellis Island in New York Harbor. About 20 percent of the immigrants at Ellis Island were detained for a day or more before being inspected. However, only about 2 percent of those were denied entry.
While European immigrants arriving on the East Coast passed through Ellis Island, Asians--primarily Chinese--arriving on the West coast gained admission at Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. Between 1910 and 1940, about 50,000 Chinese immigrants entered the United Stated through Angel Island. |
Eugene V. DebsSome Labor leaders felt that unions should include all labors--skilled and unskilled--in a specific industry. This concept captured the imagination of Eugene V. Debs, who attempted to form such an industrial union--the American Railway Union (ARU). Most of the new union's members were unskilled and semiskilled laborers, but skilled engineers and firemen joined too. In 1894, the new union won a strike for higher wages. Within two months, it membership climbed to 150,000, dwarfing the 90,000 enrolled in the four skilled railroad brotherhood.
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Modernizing -- UrbanizationThe technological boom in the 19th century contributed to the growing industrial strength of the Untied States. The result was rapid urbanization, or growth of cities, mostly in the regions of the Northeast Midwest.
Most of the immigrants who streamed into the United States in the late 19th century became city dwellers because cities were the cheapest and the most convenient places to live. Cities also offered unskilled laborers steady jobs in mills and factories. |
Jane AddamsSettlement houses in the United States were founded by Charles Stover and Stanton Coit in New York City in 1886. Jane Addams--one of the most influential members of the movement --and Ellen Gates Starr founded Chicago's Hull House in 1889. Addams was also an antiwar activist, a spokesperson for racial justice, and an advocate for quality-for-life issues, from infant mortally to better care for the aged. In 1931, she was a co-winner of the Noble Peace Prize. Until the end of her life, Addams insisted that she was just a "very simple person." But many familiar with her accomplishments consider her source of inspiration.
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