Essay about Chapter 18

Submitted By amylynn2012
Words: 976
Pages: 4

Chapter 18
I. The rise of big business
A. Overview of factors propelling growth
1. Natural resources
2. New technology and mass production techniques
3. Entrepreneurship
4. Government policies
5. Corruption
B. Second Industrial Revolution
1. Spurred by innovation and invention
a. Transportation and communication networks
b. Electricity
c. Application of scientific research to industry
II. The railroads
A. Growth of railroads
B. The transcontinental railroads
1. Pacific Railroads Act (1862) authorized transcontinental line on north-central route
a. Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads
2. Labor
a. Union Pacific: Civil War veterans, formers slaves, Irish and German immigrants
b. Central Pacific: primarily Chinese
3. First transcontinental railroad completed in Promontory, Utah, 1869
4. Other transcontinental railroads
C. Financing the railroads
1. Role of the robber barons
a. Crédit Mobilier
b. Jay Gould
c. Cornelius Vanderbilt
III. Manufacturing and inventions
A. The growth of new industries and the transformation of old ones
B. Technological advances and the impact on daily life
1. Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone, 1876
2. Thomas Alva Edison and the electric light, 1879
IV. Entrepreneurs
A. John D. Rockefeller
1. Pennsylvania oil rush of 1859
2. Rockefeller as oil refiner
3. Growth of Standard Oil
4. Rockefeller’s organization of Standard Oil
a. Standard Oil Trust
B. Andrew Carnegie
1. Background and early ventures
2. Carnegie and steel
3. Carnegie’s approach
4. “The Gospel of Wealth“
5. Philanthropy
C. J. Pierpont Morgan
1. Family background
2. Morgan and investment banking
3. Morgan and railroads
4. Morgan and U.S. Steel
D. Sears and Roebuck
1. Problem of distribution solved by mail order
2. Opens truly national markets
V. The Working Class
A. Social trends
1. Growing disparities in the distribution of wealth
2. Women, children, and immigrants enter the workforce
B. Living and working conditions
1. Living conditions
a. Crowded and filthy tenements
2. Working conditions
a. Poor safety and health conditions in factories
b. Rise of impersonal, contractual relationships
C. Child labor
1. Dismal work conditions, meager wages
a. Appalachia mines
b. Southern and New England textile mills
2. Few and largely ineffective child labor laws
VI. Early worker protests
A. Reasons for the slow growth of unions
1. Property rights valued over labor rights
2. Large labor supply
3. Ethnic divisions among laborers
B. The Molly Maguires
C. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877
1. Reduction of wages was immediate cause
2. The strikes spread across the country
3. Failure of the strikes
D. The sand-lot incident
1. Kearney and the Workingmen’s party of California push for Chinese exclusion act, 1882
E. Anti-Chinese agitation
VII. The rise of unions
A. Unions in the 1850s and 1860s
B. The National Labor Union
1. The first federation of unions
2. Leader’s death weakens NLU, which disbands by 1872
3. Some achievements before disbanding
a. Influential in persuading Congress to pass eight-hour work day
b. Repeal of Contract Labor Act
VIII. The Knights of Labor
A. Founded in 1869 by Uriah S. Stephens
B. Success under Terrence V. Powderly
1. Growth in membership
C. Decline of the Knights of Labor
1. Anarchism
2. The Haymarket affair
a. Riot in Haymarket Square
b. Trial and sentencing of anarchists
c. Effects on Knights of Labor
D. Achievements of Knights of Labor
1. Creation of the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics
2. Foran Act of 1885
3. Popularizing the idea of industrial unions
IX. The American Federation of Labor
A. Structure of the AFL
1. Craft unions
2. Contrast with Knights of Labor
B. Samuel Gompers
1. Concern for concrete economic gains
2. Gompers’s leadership in the AFL
a. Contrast with Terrence Powderly
C. Membership growth in the AFL
X. Struggles and setbacks of the 1890s
A. The Homestead steel strike of 1892
1.