chapter 17

Question 1

What action did businesses take allowing them to still profit?

Answer 1

Industrialization lowered prices through large scale manufacturing SO producers developed new technologies and business tactics

Question 2

What new concept did Railroad Companies create?

Answer 2

a management revolution that created a hierarchy of responsibilities, compartmentalized operations by function, and improved accounting

Question 3

How did the United States become an Industrial Power/

Answer 3

taking vast natural resources in North America, including minerals, lumber, and raw material from the West.

Question 4

Describe the shift in power/electricity in the 1890s-1900.

Answer 4

Due to steam and electricity growing, water-dependent industries began to use COAL instead

Kerosene was used instead of whale oil.
Wood was used to produce light & heat,

American factories and urban homes converted to electric power.

Question 5

Who and what did Gustavus Swift do?

Answer 5

Create the assembly line to improve productivity & create a new enterprise.

This enterprise was vertically integrated and could handle ALL functions of an industry

Used predatory pricing to absorb competitors and attain market control.

Question 6

Who and what did John D. Rockefeller do?

Answer 6

Took advantage of the oil shortage and the discovery of oil in PA during the Civil War (to develop his business)

Rockefeller developed ‘Rockefeller’s Standard Oil of Ohio’ and used vertical integration (for production and sales) and horizontal integration (for national distribution).

Question 7

What did Rockefeller do in 1882

Answer 7

Create the TRUST
= Rockefeller could manage a number of different firms as a single entity.

Other companies (in linseed oil, sugar, and salt) followed

Question 8

What happened in the U.S by 1900?

Answer 8

America’s largest one hundred companies controlled 1/3 of the nation’s productive capacity by 1900

Companies spend over $90 million per year on advertising space in magazines –> thus transforming press into a mass-market industry.

Question 9

Describe the impact of Swift, Rockefeller, and Carnegie

Answer 9

They were criticized during economic downturns

Were applauded during periods of prosperity

Question 10

Why was consumerism encouraged?

Answer 10

improved products became cheaper

railroads transported manufactured goods + fresh produce to national chain stores

Question 11

Who was John Wanamaker

Answer 11

created the department store

= megastores that enticed customers with advertising and low prices

Question 12

What did Montgomery, Ward, and Sears do?

Answer 12

built mail-order empires with money-back guarantee

Question 13

What is “white collar vs blue collar”

Answer 13

White Collar = those who had high-positions and would work for someone else.

Blue Collar = those who would physically work on the shop floor.

Question 14

What was a new concept in major corporations after the introduction of white and blue collars?

Answer 14

Middle Managers

- supervised departments that handled SPECIFIC activities (purchasing, accounting, etc..)

Question 15

How did corporations create new systems to sell their products?

Answer 15

Established national distribution networks.

Traveling Salesman would be trained in the art of “hard sell”

• introduced merchants to new products
• offered incentives
• suggested sales displays

used scripts that had conversations to use with customers

Question 16

Describe the role of women in the corporate office?

Answer 16

Employers began to assign secretarial work to women and by the twentieth century, 77% of all stenographers and typists were female.

By 1920 –> women held half of all low-level office jobs

This was something completely new for white, working-class women as they would often spend time at home, tending to children, taking in laundry, boarders, and piecework.

Women began to stray away from domestic work.

Question 17

Describe Skilled Craft Workers

Answer 17

despite the managerial revolution, they retained autonomy as they were independent contractors

their power could not be limited (even through subcontracting) because of the strong ties between many laborers

however, as technology advanced, skilled craft workers lost their independence characteristics due to mass production

Question 18

What is scientific management?

Answer 18

Frederick W. Taylor believed that he could reduce costs and improve employee efficiency.

Engineers had to time each task with a stopwatch; those who met the time standard would be paid more

Question 19

Describe class difference

Answer 19

industrialization and incorporation widened the gap between white and blue collars.

three class distinctions were made 
= wealthy
= middle class
= struggling class

Question 20

Describe health hazards and pollution in factories

Answer 20

Industrial labor was unregulated and there were high casualty rates in railroad and mining industries

industrialization contributed to air and water pollution, increase in pulmonary disease

Question 21

Describe the impact of unskilled labor?

Answer 21

More and more women and children would work (even though they were instilled and paid lower wages)

1/5 children under 16 worked outside the home

African Americans were at the bottom of the pay scale and turned away from industrial or corporate jobs. African American women had to rely on domestic service instead. African American men worked in personal service or had to do the hard, menial jobs.

Question 22

What did employers in the North and West do instead of the south?

Answer 22

recruit immigrants

Question 23

Describe immigrants during the civil war and world war 1?

Answer 23

Between these two periods, 25 million immigrants entered the united states.

75% of residents in SF and NYC had at least one foreign born parent

Question 24

Why were immigrants the ideal labor supply

Answer 24

took worse jobs at low pay

returned to home during economic downturns, reducing the shock of unemployment in the US

Question 25

Describe the immigrants who arrived at America, why?

Answer 25

Mass migration from Western Europe began in the 1 840s during the potato famine in Ireland.
= European population growth and the commercialization of agriculture displaced western Europeans.

Immigrants endured the journey across the Atlantic and the inspection process at Ellis Island.
= majority were unskilled workers that wanted to save money and then return home

Question 26

Why did Eastern European Jews arrive?

Answer 26

sought economic opportunity and escape religious repression in Eastern Europe.

Question 27

Describe Asian American immigration into the United States

Answer 27

The first Chinese Americans arrived in the 1840s (California gold rush)

After the civil war, the Burlingame Treaty helped Chinese fleeing poverty in Southern China arrive in the US

In the 1870s, law makers shut out Chinese Immigrants.
1882 = Chinese Exclusion Act
20th century = could not apply for citizenship

20th century - Korean and Japanese immigrants began to arrive but were denied citizenship

Question 28

What did the Chinese Exclusion Act do?

Answer 28

set precedent for future immigration limitations.

Chinese began illegal immigrants

Question 29

What two strategies could labor advocates adopt?

Answer 29

1. seek to build broad political alliances (reach out to rural voters who share their problems or are sympathetic to their cause).

= mainly used btwn 1870s and 180s

2. reject politics and create trade unions
   = mainly used in early 20th century

Question 30

What made Americanś conscious of the problem with industrial labor

Answer 30

Great Railroad Strike of 1877
= railroad workers walked off jobs when protesting steep wages during the economic depression of 1873.

= mainly railroad workers were faired and blacklisted for this
= even created national guard to maintain order

Question 31

Who was Henry George

Answer 31

a radical thinker who argued that industrialization would benefit the upper and middle classes, but negatively impact the working class into poverty.

Question 32

What did Agrarians argue?

Answer 32

high tariffs force rural families to pay more for basic necessities, making it harder to protect America’s export of crops, cotton, and wheat.

a prominent Agrarian protest group was the National Grange of the Patrons Of Husbandry (1867)
= wanted to counter new power of corporate middlemen thru cooperation and mutual aid

Question 33

what was the Greenback Labor Party

Answer 33

Grangers, labor advocates and local workingmen forged this party.

Believed in the idea of producerism. Believed that bankers, lawyers, etc.. lived off the sweat of laborers. Believed that the laborers shared common goals and should be one political force.

1878 = Greenback won over a million votes and elected 15 congressmen

1880s = railroad commissions in 29 states were created to supervise railroad rates, policies, regulate insurance, etc..

STARTING POINT OF REFORM

Question 34

What was the Knights of Labor

Answer 34

a secret society of garment workers in Philadelphia

wanted to set up a cooperative commonwealth of factories owned and run by employees (membership was open except for Chinese immigrants)

advocated electoral action and regulation of corporations. negotiated between employers and works during strikes, made demands, and advocated personal responsibility and self-discipline.

membership grew and so did labor activism.

they ended due to some events of anarchism in Chicago: HAYMARKET SQUARE INCIDENT
= anarchists advocated a stateless society
= prompted employers to become violent, make blacklists, and sign “yellow-dog contracts” that renounced union membership.

Question 35

What was the Farmer’s Alliance

Answer 35

discussed issues that Grangers and Greenbackers had earlier sought to address.

Became largest farmer-based movement by 1880s

would use cooperative stores that would buy farmer’s orders at wholesale prices, and the money would go to the farmers.

alliance cooperatives were underfunded and had a lack of credit. faced hostility from the middlemen they would circumvent.

Question 36

How did the Texas Alliance fail? What did they do afterward?

Answer 36

when cotton prices fell

proposed a subtreasury system (modeled after the national banking system) the federal government would hold crops in warehouses and issue loans on their value until they would be profitably sold

Used rural voters for sympathy or because they had similar concerns. CREATED THE POPULIST PARTY

Question 37

What did President Grover Cleveland do in 1887?

Answer 37

1. Hatch Act
   = provide federal funding for agricultural research and education
   = directly meet farmer’s demands
2. Interstate Commerce Act
   = response to pressure from farmer-labor constituents
   = created the ICC (interstate commerce commission)

Question 38

What was the ICC

Answer 38

represented compromise between farmer labor advocates and other reformers

did not work as the supreme court would side with the railroads most of the time.

Question 39

Describe trade unions

Answer 39

focused on narrow and specific ways of everyday needs of workers in skilled occupations

kept out lower-wage workers

asserted rights of worker sto participate in the decision making process

Question 40

Describe trade unions and the Knights of Labor

Answer 40

trade unionists joined the Knights of Labor, but left and created the American Federation of Labor (AFL) after the Haymarket Incident

Question 41

Describe the AFL

Answer 41

initially ran by Samuel Gompers who believed in pure and simple unionism
- collective bargaining and organizing workers by craft and occupation

= this idea of unionism worked as the AFL grew by 2 million in decades

not welcoming to women, and blacks. limited to skilled craftsmen