Lecture 2 – The Growth of Industry in America (1877-1900)

The Growth of Industry in America, 1877-1900

• The rise of “Big Business”
• The formation of the national labor movement
• The Gilded Age
• Commercial amusements and organized sports

Preindustrial Ways of Working

• The Family Labor System: many families worked on or near their homes, including spinning cloth or thread, weaving, and sewing clothing
• Early Factory System
  • This begins to change in the East as American industry burgeons in the late 1800s and early 1900s***

What is Industrialization?

• Occur when over half of all workers are employed in manufacturing and later services
• Coincides with technological advancements
• Results in the growth of the middle class
• See a transition away from an agriculturally based market
• Occurs in the US about 100 years after England
• US industrializes roughly around the same time as France and Germany
• relies on wage labor
• coincides with the growth of capitalism (industrial capitalism) in the US where the US places a high value on a free market with very little to no government regulation of industry
• leads to both positive and negative change in the US (and how progressive industrialization is can be debated)

Industrial Capitalism Triumphs

• By the late 1870s, factories were a familiar sight – factory-made goods replace homemade goods
• Technological revolution in steel making

Growth of Factory System

• US has many rich mineral resources at this time that enables steel industry to grow
• Growth in industry led by major business leaders
• US has an energy revolution, using steam then electric power, allowing rapid expansion of factory system

“Big Business”

• Profiles of Two Major Leaders of Big Business
• Andrew Carnegie
  • Born in poverty in Scotland but claws his way up in America
  • Builds Pittsburgh steel industry and accumulates major wealth
• John D. Rockefeller
  • Created Standard Oil Company
  • Allies with railroads (naturally)
  • Eventually takes over competitors and builds a giant monopoly on oil

Leaders of Business

• Carnegie
• Rockefeller

Revolution in Technology

• Growth of steam power
• The telephone is invented
• The light bulb is invented in this era as well
• Light and power are provided in both industry and urban life
• Gasoline-burning internal combustion engine and the growth of the American automobile
• All these examples and more inspire growth in urbanization and industrialization

Mechanization of Factory Production

• Application of technology to increase production
• Better productivity of labor and increased volume of goods produced
• Use of machinery to streamline production

Expanding Market of Goods

• New department store chains developed, including Sears, Roebuck, and Company and Montgomery Ward
• The growth of catalogs and free delivery to areas outside of cities
• Grocery chains develop as well as chain drugstores
• Growth in American advertising

The World of Work

• Southern Labor
  • Relies on own population for work
  • Low wage industrial sector gets paid rock-bottom wage rates
  • Often whole families hired
  • Generally only whites worked in mills and small factories in the South
  • Not a transient workforce
• Northern Labor
  • Many immigrants were the source of northern labor
  • Ethnic origin often determined nature of the work a person did
  • With more and more mechanized production, little skill was needed for work

City Demographics

• By 1900, US is transforming into an urban nation
• City populations growing at a rate double the nation’s population as a whole
• Diverse populations in cities
• Immigration responsible for major city growth

The Industrial City

• Many beautiful buildings created, but natural landscapes destroyed
• Majority of population lives in crowded apartments
• Incredibly high population density
• Very affluent and beautiful neighborhoods develop as well
• Growth of rapid transit systems, such as the electric trolley in SF
• Some improvements in sanitation but still cities cause pollution of neighboring bodies of water, as sewage is dumped into them

Labor in the Age of Big Business

• Hard work essential and individual initiative is promoted
• Labor movement develops (unions)
• Momentous growth of manufacturing changes type of work needed – nation of wage-workers develops as less people are self-employed
• Young men and women flee to the city to work, as well as immigrants
• Fostered competition
• Many hazardous working conditions as well

The Labor Movement

• Industrialization spurred workers to organize and form unions
• 1880s – distinctly American labor movement forms
• Emphasize collective bargaining

American Federation of Labor

• Led by Samuel Gompers
• Followed a doctrine called “pure and simple unionism”
• Pure: membership restricted to workers organized by craft/occupation
• Simple: would fight for only what immediately benefited workers –wages, hours, and working conditions

Urbanization

• March to the cities in the late 19^th century
• Industrialism made urbanization seemingly inevitable
• City and factory begin to merge

Innovations in City Life

• Mass Transit: elevated railroads develop in New York and Chicago – soon a small subway is built
• Skyscrapers are built – sign of architectural revolution
• Growth of electricity – gas lighting to light the city’s downtown streets and public spaces

The Urban Elite

• Lifestyles of the rich in late 19^th century cities included:
  • Beautiful city mansions
  • Growth of New Money vs. Old Money and culture clash (infusion of new wealth from industrial growth challenges old family elitism)
  • Growth of “high society” or socialite culture

The Middle Class

• Family Structure key:
  • Father goes to the office to earn wages
  • Family purchases most household goods rather than making them
  • Usually has no more than three children (a change from larger families that needed kids to labor on farms)
  • Burdens of domesticity fall heavily on women

Women in the late 19^th century

• Workplace is the home, serving as wife and mother
• Womanly virtue glorified
• Some improvements in legal status but still expected to be submissive to husband
• Some women challenged this by remaining single and rebelling against what they saw as confines of marriage

Changing Views of Women’s Sexuality

• Contraception becomes more acceptable and reliable
• Idea that women actually have sexual desires becomes more accepted
• Women take on the role of consumers
• More acceptance of female athleticism and fashion that does not disguise the female shape

Attitudes towards children

• Before industrialism, children seen as assets to work for the family farm or shop
• Childhood becomes recognized as an important and special period of time
• Adolescence emerges as a new stage in life, where both boys and girls can have more self-expressive independence

City Life

• Completely different from the rural world
• Anonymity in the city – can lend to independence but also alienation, loneliness, vice, and crime
• Impersonal, heterogeneous environment

Urban Blacks

• At turn of the century, African Americans begin to migrate to northern cities from the South
• Concentrated in urban ghettos, or poorer regions of the city
• Racial prejudice cuts down on their job opportunities
• Manage to build own urban communities

City Amusements

• “going out” becomes a common part of life
• Growth of vaudeville houses – programs of singing dancing, comedy acts, become popular
• First early film houses are established, called nickelodeons
• Penny arcades
• Creates a new social space in the city

Commercialized sex

• Urban environment creates the perfect space for prostitution
• Opium and cocaine also become more available
• Growth of “red-light” districts
• Also locations of homosexual culture

High Brow Culture

• Literary Scene:
  • Atlantic Monthly
  • City itself becomes a focus of literary work
• Cultural institutions develop in cities
  • Major art museums
  • Symphony orchestras
  • Philanthropic organizations