American Pageant Chapter 24 Industry Comes Of Age
CHAPTER 24: INDUSTRY COMES OF AGE
1. The advantages of government subsidies for the railroads was the prosperity that they brought. Towns that received railroad to run through them often flourished and the ones that didn’t withered away. It also turned useless land into gold and at a relatively cheap note. They also had disadvantages too. It was extremely costly and only certain towns on the rise economically could receive track.
2. the first transcontinental railroad was built from the labor and hark work of mostly immigrants. On the East fly it was mainly Irishmen who did the track laying and on the West coast it was the Chinese. The track layers also had to be watchful for Indian attacks as well as endure exhausting physical labor. Track was laid part by piece and mile by mile until it met up in Utah to enormous applause.
3. the railroads could both help or hurt Americans. They could help them because they greatly increased economic growth in America. They help cities to flourished and gave many people jobs. They could hurt Americans because some pioneer builders became bankrupt from the rails as did investors.
4. There were a few technological improvements helped railroads. The first was the consume of steel instead of iron for the railroads. Steel was a tougher metal and also was able to hold more weight making it more economic. Another improvement was the Westinghouse air brake which added to the safety of the trains although there were still many accidents.
5. the railroads had huge effects on America as a whole. They spurred the amazing industrialization of the post Civil War. They also changed American landscapes. Corn began being widely planted in the Midwest, and cattle began replacing buffaloes on the plains. Time was also effected by the railroads. Every town had a slightly different time than each other so the railroad companies decided to split America into four different time zones.
6. railroads were guilty of many wrongdoings. The owners “stock watered” which meant they highly over-inflated their railroads profitability and worth and then sold bonds and stocks that were also overpriced. They also bribed considerable people and elected their own people to high political positions and used kickbacks to make more profit.
7. the Interstate Commerce Act was an important piece of legislation. It was the first large scale attempt by Washington to regulate business in the interest of society. It also sparked the series of other regulatory laws that would soon follow in the years to come. Although it did have some disadvantages, it was an important fragment of railroad history nonetheless.
8. There were many factors that made industrial expansion possible. The first was the abundance of natural resources that were objective starting be fully exploited. The second was the massive immigrant population that toiled for long hours and extremely cheap pay. The third was the patents and inventions created. The telephone and the light bulb both boosted American economy even more and contributed into making it the number one manufacturer in the world.
9. businesses organized to try to maximize profits by creating trusts with other businesses. /Rockefeller did this exceptionally well and his monopoly kept on getting more powerful with each puny business he drew under his wing. This also forced businesses to join a trust with him because if they did not they would be thrown to the wall and die out.
10. Steel was so important for industrialization for two reasons. The first was that it was a stronger metal than iron and thus made it much more useful in all areas of industrialization. The second reason was that it could be made cheaply and also there was an abundance of laborers to help make it.
11. Andrew Carnegie’s life and career are quite interesting. He grew up dirt poor and got his first job as a bobbin boy making $1.20 a week. He then began to mount the ladder of success incredibly quickly. He entered the steel business and eventually created ¼ of the nation’s steel. Morgan, on the other hand, was a financial giant and was considered legendary in his reorganization business. He then wanted to steal out Carnegie’s steel and eventually it was sold to him for 400 million. Morgan’s empire ended up becoming the first billion dollar corporation.
12. John D. Rockefeller able to become so wealthy because of his Standard Oil Company. The company was extremely successful and he made it even more so by dominating other oil companies. By 1877 he controlled 95 percent of all oil refineries in the country because he drove other companies to the wall if they did not join his.
13. the wealthy justified their wealth in two ways. The first was that many justified it religiously by saying it was God who made them rich and gave all their money to them. The second way was by Social Darwinism. The rich relied on this and said it was natural law that they were rich and the reason that others were poor was because they were lazy and didn’t work hard enough.
14. The two methods that were tried by those who opposed the trusts didn’t really work. The first was that they tried to control trusts through state legislation, and it failed. The second way was by racy to Congress. This did work because they created the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, but it actually had negative effects on the unions.
15. The South was only moderately successful at industrializing. In some ways they were great. Cigarette factories began to pop up as well as cotton factories. This brought many people who had never worked before flooding to the mills. The South was also discriminated upon by other parts of America however. This was evidenced by the Pittsburg Plus, and how the North wanted to try and keep the South as third world as they possibly could.
16. There was both positive and negative effects of the industrial revolution on working Americans. The definite effects were that the standard of living increased and their were much more job opportunities. The negative effects were that now Americans had to plot their lives to the factory schedule, they were at the mercy of their employers and completely dependant on wages, and unemployment was always on a worker’s mind.
17. The conditions that existed in America that led Jay Gould to say, “I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half” were despicable. Factory workers who decided to strike or join a Union could be easily replaced or forced relieve to work. Often times employers would hire thugs to beat the strikers or hire scabs to force them back to work. Sometimes they would use a procedure called a lockout and try to starve the strikers.
18. the similarities between the National Labor Union and the Knights of Labor were that they sought to include workers in one big union. They also both believed in an 8 hour workday. The differences between the National Labor Union and the Knights of Labor was that the Knights of Labor did not turn away many people because of their ethnicity, but rather if they no producers.
19. There were two factors that led to the decline of the Knights of Labor. The first was the Haymarket Square bomb incident because it led people to associate the Knights with anarchists. The other factory was that many skilled workers and non skilled workers were mixed and the skilled ones left and joined their enjoy Union.
20.the AFL was different from previous unions for two reasons. The first was that they were a federation and consisted of an association of self governing unions, of which they watched over. The other dissimilarity is that they composed of skilled workers and did not let unskilled workers into the AFL, but let them fend for themselves.
21. The Knights were conservative in their ideas because they thought the same thing every other union group thought. They wanted to grow large and eventually buy mines, land, and track so they could have their own utopia, but it all failed. This was no different than what every other worker was thinking at the time.
22.It was only mildly possible for common people to improve their status in industrial America. Although the lives of workers improved a little, only a few actually greatly increased their set. Furthermore even some factory bosses made less than the workers, which leaves us to wonder who is really higher than on the social scale.
Related Posts
Filed under Monopoly Bankruptcy by on Feb 23rd, 2011. 
Leave a Comment