How did the carnegie’s purchase of allegheny steel contribute to the formation of his monopoly?

2 Industrial America and Its Discontents

Everett Collection/SuperStock

In the Gilded Age a handful of industrialists grew enormously wealthy. Their workers, who formed the

backbone of the nation’s economic expansion, struggled to make ends meet. While some called the industrialists

“captains of industry,” others referred to them as “robber barons” because they gained wealth on the

hard labor of their employees.

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American Lives: Andrew Carnegie

Pre-Test

1. John D. Rockefeller was one of the most important industrialists of the Gilded Age. His name was synonymous with the rise of big business. T/F

2. Even though there was a growth of big business in the late 19th century, and some became very wealthy, there was little change in the nature of work for the average laborer. T/F

3. The United States was a destination for European immigrants through two main waves in the 19th century. The second wave emigrated primarily from Scandinavia, Germany, and Great Britain. T/F

4. The American Federation of Labor was the largest union in the United States. It welcomed into its membership all workers and sought to bring a fundamental challenge to the capitalist system. T/F

5. Chinese immigrants to the United States faced more racial prejudice and anti-immigrant sentiment than those hailing from other nations. T/F

Answers can be found at the end of the chapter.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

• Understand the role immigrants played in the transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy.

• Explain the ways that cities changed in the Gilded Age and discuss the relationship between urbanization, immigration, and industrialization.

• Explain the technological changes that occurred in the Gilded Age. • Understand how the rise of big business altered the American economy. • Discuss how the new technology and business organization affected American workers

in the Gilded Age. • Discuss working-class activism in response to industrialization. Explain how the

government and public responded to that activism.

American Lives: Andrew Carnegie

In March 1901 steel magnate Andrew Carnegie sold his vast business interests to industrialist and banker J. P. Morgan for a record $480 million. The sale made Carnegie, by some accounts, the richest man in the world, and it allowed Morgan to combine Carnegie’s holdings with his own to form U.S. Steel, the world’s first billion-dollar corporation.

Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1835. There his father was displaced from his skilled occupation as a hand weaver when textile mills mechanized cloth production. He brought the family to America in 1848, and after reaching Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Carnegies— Andrew, his brother Tom, and his parents—squeezed into two rooms a relative provided them free of rent.

Photos.com/Thinkstock

By the late 19th century, steel magnate and immigrant Andrew Carnegie was among the richest men in the world. His life story represents the ultimate rags-to-riches dream of success in America.

bar82063_02_c02_031-066.indd 32 12/18/14 3:01 PM

Since it was not possible to follow his father in the weaving trade, Carnegie took a messenger’s job at a Pittsburgh telegraph office. His earnest work and resourcefulness caught the attention of Thomas A. Scott, a superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad, who hired him as his personal telegrapher and pri- vate secretary at a salary of $35 a month, about $750 in today’s dollars.

Carnegie parlayed the connections he made through Scott into a series of business investments, little by little accumulating enough capital to strike out on his own. He eventually settled on steel manufactur- ing as his primary focus. Locating his first plant out- side Pittsburgh, Carnegie contributed significantly to the shift from skilled to unskilled labor in the steel industry. In many ways he was responsible for creat- ing a situation very like the mechanized textile mills that had pushed his father to leave their homeland in search of new ways to support the family.

Immigrant workers from southern and eastern Europe were drawn to Carnegie’s mills, where they hoped to realize their own success in America. In real- ity, though, the drive for profit and increased produc- tivity meant that workers at Carnegie Steel faced low pay and increasingly difficult and dangerous working conditions. The average unskilled steel mill worker toiled 12 hours a day in hot and dangerous conditions for less than $2 a shift, about $45 in today’s dollars. When transitioning from day to night turns, which happened twice a month, workers endured a 24-hour shift, followed by a day off. Few experienced any of the upward mobility that characterized their employer’s immigrant experience. Instead, Carnegie fought against the workers’ unionization attempts and did little to assist workers injured on the job.

Carnegie became emblematic of a number of industrialists who grew rich at the expense of their workers around the turn of the 20th century. Somewhat ironically, later in life Carnegie turned toward philanthropy. He established the Carnegie Corporation of New York and endowed nearly 3,000 libraries across the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. Many were located in the same communities as his steel mills, but few of his workers could enjoy the leisure of visiting a library. Giving away almost all his fortune, Carnegie spent his last years in a quest for world peace and harmony. He died in 1919 (Rau, 2006).

For further thought:

1. What does Carnegie’s life story reveal about industrializing America? 2. Do you think it is possible to succeed in business without exploiting the labor of others?

Pre-Test

1. John D. Rockefeller was one of the most important industrialists of the Gilded Age. His name was synonymous with the rise of big business. T/F

2. Even though there was a growth of big business in the late 19th century, and some became very wealthy, there was little change in the nature of work for the average laborer. T/F

3. The United States was a destination for European immigrants through two main waves in the 19th century. The second wave emigrated primarily from Scandinavia, Germany, and Great Britain. T/F

4. The American Federation of Labor was the largest union in the United States. It welcomed into its membership all workers and sought to bring a fundamental challenge to the capitalist system. T/F

5. Chinese immigrants to the United States faced more racial prejudice and anti-immigrant sentiment than those hailing from other nations. T/F

Answers can be found at the end of the chapter.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

• Understand the role immigrants played in the transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy.

• Explain the ways that cities changed in the Gilded Age and discuss the relationship between urbanization, immigration, and industrialization.

• Explain the technological changes that occurred in the Gilded Age. • Understand how the rise of big business altered the American economy. • Discuss how the new technology and business organization affected American workers

in the Gilded Age. • Discuss working-class activism in response to industrialization. Explain how the

government and public responded to that activism.

American Lives: Andrew Carnegie

In March 1901 steel magnate Andrew Carnegie sold his vast business interests to industrialist and banker J. P. Morgan for a record $480 million. The sale made Carnegie, by some accounts, the richest man in the world, and it allowed Morgan to combine Carnegie’s holdings with his own to form U.S. Steel, the world’s first billion-dollar corporation.

Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1835. There his father was displaced from his skilled occupation as a hand weaver when textile mills mechanized cloth production. He brought the family to America in 1848, and after reaching Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Carnegies— Andrew, his brother Tom, and his parents—squeezed into two rooms a relative provided them free of rent.

Photos.com/Thinkstock

By the late 19th century, steel magnate and immigrant Andrew Carnegie was among the richest men in the world. His life story represents the ultimate rags-to-riches dream of success in America.

American Lives: Andrew Carnegie

bar82063_02_c02_031-066.indd 33 12/18/14 3:01 PM

Section 2.1 The Immigrants

2.1 The Immigrants

Between 1877 and 1900 industrialization, urbanization, and immigration reshaped Ameri- can society. In that period 12 million immigrants flooded into the United States seeking jobs, opportunities, and a better life. Millions of rural Americans abandoned the countryside to seek employment in the cities as well, especially once the mechanization of agriculture reduced the need for farm labor. Arriving in New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Birmingham, and other industrial centers, they found themselves amid a sea of unfamiliar faces from around the world.

Coming to America

Unlike earlier waves of immigrants from Ireland, England, Germany, and Scandinavia, many of these “new immigrants” hailed from areas of eastern and southern Europe, as well as from Asian countries like China and Japan. There the forces of industrialization, unemployment, food shortages, and forced military service served as push factors that sent millions across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Among the earliest to arrive were thousands of Italians fleeing an 1887 cholera epidemic. Russian and Polish Jews sought refuge from anti-Semitic pogroms in the 1880s. The majority left their homelands after industrial pressures left them few job opportunities. So many immigrants arrived that by 1890 nearly 15% of the American popula- tion was foreign born (see Table 2.1).

Table 2.1: Immigration to the United States, 1860–1900

Year Foreign born Total population

Percentage of total population foreign born

1860 4,138,697 31,443,321 13.16%

1870 5,567,229 38,558,371 14.44%

1880 6,679,943 50,155,783 13.32%

1890 9,249,547 62,662,250 14.76%

1900 10,341,276 75,994,575 13.61%

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 1999.

Just as economic and political factors served to push immigrants from their European and Asian communities, pull factors in America attracted them. Better and cheaper transpor- tation made the transoceanic passage affordable to many, but it was the lure of work that most often figured into the decision to emigrate. Although industrialization was a world- wide phenomenon, the United States was quickly growing to be the world’s largest indus- trial employer. A combination of new technology, capital investment, and especially abundant natural resources helped support the rise of natural resource extraction and manufacturing.

Transnationalism also serves to explain the flow of immigrants into the United States in the late 19th century. The global flow of capital, ideas, and resources among countries made the industrializing United States the natural temporary destination for immigrants

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Section 2.1 The Immigrants

hoping to take what they earned and skills learned in the United States and use it to increase their resources and possibilities back in their homeland. Many of the earliest immigrants were young, single men who possessed few job skills. Particularly among Greeks and Ital- ians, some single men came with no intention of staying in America permanently. Called birds of passage, they arrived in the United States aiming to earn enough money to pur- chase land or make a start in a trade or business once they returned to Europe. They used connections in American ethnic communities to find employment and lodging but funneled resources home.

Ellis Island

Europeans initially arrived at East Coast port cities, including Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. The largest number landed at New York Harbor, where they were processed at Castle Garden at the Battery in Lower Manhattan. Before long, however, the ris- ing numbers of immigrants made it useful to estab- lish federal control over and unify the process. The Immigration Act of 1891 shifted immigration reg- ulation from the states to the federal government and established the Office of Immigration (later the Bureau of Immigration) to oversee the process. With the increased influx of immigrants, Congress saw the measure as an important means to secure federal oversight and control. It also established an inspection process that aimed to exclude undesir- able immigrants. Those who were seriously sick, mentally ill, or likely to come under the public charge were to be returned to their homelands.

In 1892, in order to accommodate the rising num- bers of immigrants, the Office of Immigration opened a receiving center on Ellis Island, 1 mile south of New York City and virtually in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. The statue became an important symbol of hope for the new arrivals (Kraut, 2001). On it were words by poet Emma Lazarus that inspired many who came to America with the hope of a better life:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door! (as cited in Young, 1995)

The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY

Not everyone supported the idea of an immigration center on Ellis Island. This 1890 cover of Judge magazine shows immigrants being dumped at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Lady Liberty responds by saying, “If you are going to make this island a garbage heap, I am going back to France!”

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Section 2.1 The Immigrants

At Ellis Island, new arrivals passed through a medical examination and were questioned about their destination and economic status. For the majority of immigrants, the entire process took no more than 7 hours, after which they were permitted to pass into the city. Less than 1% of immigrants were rejected, but for those separated from family and denied their dream of coming to America (most often those from southern and eastern Europe), the processing center became known as the “Island of Tears.” Nearly 12 million immi- grants were processed at Ellis Island between its opening in 1892 and 1954, when it closed permanently.

The Immigrant Experience

Once they passed through Ellis Island, immigrants experienced a life very different from what many had imagined. One Italian immigrant famously observed:

I came to America because I heard the streets were paved with gold. When I got here I found out three things: First, the streets weren’t paved with gold; second, they weren’t paved at all; and third, I was expected to pave them. (as cited in Puleo, 2007)

Italians and other immigrants provided the labor for the growing industries and city con- struction. They built the New York subway system and worked 12-hour shifts in the steel mills of Pittsburgh and other northeastern cities. Many also worked as day laborers, launder- ers, and domestic servants.

The Italians, Poles, Hungarians, Russians, Greeks, Czechs, and others who came brought with them their own languages, lifestyles, and cultural traditions. Jews were most likely to emigrate in family groups, whereas many Irish arriving in the late 19th century were single women seeking employment as domestic servants. Although historians once believed that immigration was an alienating experience, more careful study has found that the new immi- grants transplanted many facets of their former lives to their new homeland.

Immigrants’ cultural and ethnic values and experiences often determined their work pat- terns. Greeks, often birds of passage who planned to return to the Old World, took itinerant jobs on the railroads or other transient positions. Italians, whose culture valued much family time, preferred more sedentary and stable industrial work. Jews often operated as shopkeep- ers and peddlers or in the needle trades—occupations they transplanted from the Old World, where anti-Semitic regulations restricted their work choices. Some ethnicities, such as the Irish and Slovaks, encouraged women to work in domestic service, whereas others, includ- ing the Italians and Greeks, barred women from working outside the home (Gabaccia, 1995). Women in those groups often took in laundry or sewing work, and many cared for single young male immigrants who paid to board with established families.

Thousands traveled in patterns of chain migration, arriving in Pittsburgh or Buffalo to the welcome greetings of family or friends in an established ethnic neighborhood. In these tightly knit communities, new arrivals found many of the comforts of home, including newspapers in their native language, grocers specializing in familiar foods, and churches where their reli- gious traditions were practiced. Many ethnic groups established self-help and benevolent societies. In New York City the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society assisted Jews, and the Polish National Alliance and the Bohemian–American National Council aided those groups in their

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Section 2.1 The Immigrants

transition to American life. In larger cities immigrant communities established their own the- aters and concert halls, as well as schools to educate their children (Bodnar, 1985).

In some cities tight-knit neighbor- hoods formed familiar cultural homes for multiple ethnic groups. In Pitts- burgh, for example, the more than 12,000 Polish immigrants in that city in 1900 lived primarily in the Strip District, a narrow slice of land along the Allegheny River. There they found stores that catered to their food tastes and ethnic newspapers that reported news from Europe as well as from the local community. From this vantage point they could easily learn about job opportunities in many industrial shops, including Carnegie Steel. By the 1880s Pittsburgh’s Poles had estab- lished their own churches and begun to expand their neighborhood to the nearby hill district, still known by some as Polish Hill (Bodnar, Simon, & Weber, 1983).

Nativism and Anti-immigrant Sentiment

As ethnic communities grew and immigrants continued to transplant their cultures in Amer- ica, a growing number of native-born Americans, especially White Protestants, grew con- cerned. Describing the new immigrants as distinct “races” from inferior civilizations, these nativists pointed to the newcomers’ cultural differences and willingness to work for low wages as causes for alarm. Some argued that they had inborn tendencies toward criminal behavior, and others claimed that the presence of so many foreigners threatened to make fundamental (and undesirable) changes in American society. As feelings of anti-immigrant sentiment increased, the “golden doorway of admission to the United States began to narrow” (Daniels, 2004).

The Chinese faced the most dramatic reaction. From the 1850s through 1870, thousands of Chinese entered the United States to work in western gold fields, on railroad construction, and in West Coast factories. Like their European counterparts in the East, Chinese immigrants built tightly knit ethnic communities to insulate themselves from personal and often violent attacks by nativists and to perpetuate their distinct culture. San Francisco’s growing Chinese quarter stretched six long blocks, from California Street to Broadway (Takaki, 1990).

In response to anti-Chinese concerns, in 1875 Congress passed legislation barring the entrance of Chinese women, and a total exclusion policy began to gain supporters. In the West a growing Workingmen’s Party movement, led by Denis Kearney, lashed out at Chinese

Everett Collection/SuperStock

As more and more people immigrated to the United States, ethnic neighborhoods became common. Shown here is Little Italy in New York City around 1900.

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Section 2.1 The Immigrants

laborers, claiming they unfairly competed with White American labor. Kearney delivered a series of impassioned anti-Chinese speeches, sparking violent attacks on San Francisco’s Asian citizens. Kearney was arrested in November 1877 for inciting a riot, but charges against him were subsequently dropped, and he continued his xenophobic campaign (Soennichsen, 2011).

As explained in Chapter 1, protests by Kearney and others led Congress to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which established a 10-year ban on all Chinese labor immigration. Although law already barred non-Whites from becoming naturalized citizens, this marked the first time that race was used to exclude an entire group’s entrance into the United States. Congress renewed the restriction after 10 years and made the exclusion permanent in 1902. It remained in effect until 1943.

Despite the ban, some Chinese did still enter the United States. Merchants, diplomats, and the sons of U.S. citizens were permitted to immigrate. A trade in falsified citizenship records also allowed many so-called paper sons to pass through the system. Jim Fong, who arrived in San Francisco in 1929 with forged documents, recalled enduring 3 weeks of interrogation by immigration officials before eventually being admitted as a U.S. citizen, despite the fact that he spoke no English. After working as a fruit picker and dishwasher, Fong studied English at night and eventually succeeded as a restaurant manager. Under an amnesty agreement, he relinquished his fraudulent citizenship in 1966 and eventually became a naturalized citizen (Kwok, 2014).

Other nativist groups waged less successful attempts at restriction during the 1890s. The Immigration Restriction League, formed in Boston in 1894, sought to bar illiterate people from entering America. Congress adopted a measure doing so in 1897, but President Grover Cleveland vetoed it. Another guise to restrict immigrant rights came in the form of the secret or “Australian” ballot widely adopted in the 1890s. It ostensibly aimed to protect voter pri- vacy, but it also served to bar the illiterate from receiving help at polling places.

American Experience: Ellis Island Versus Angel Island

As steam ships carrying immigrants entered New York Harbor, passengers leaned over the rails to stare at the Statue of Liberty standing tall and proud. When they rounded Liberty Island, the immigrants beheld another marvelous spectacle: the grandiose buildings that made up the Ellis Island processing station.

Welcoming its first immigrants in 1892, Ellis Island served as the nation’s busiest process- ing station until 1924, when immigration laws reduced the tide of European immigrants to a trickle. Before it closed in 1954, 12 million immigrants passed through its buildings into the United States. For the vast majority, the immigrant processing center was a quick stop on their way to building a new life in America.

(continued)

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Section 2.1 The Immigrants

American Experience: Ellis Island Versus Angel Island

As steam ships carrying immigrants entered New York Harbor, passengers leaned over the rails to stare at the Statue of Liberty standing tall and proud. When they rounded Liberty Island, the immigrants beheld another marvelous spectacle: the grandiose buildings that made up the Ellis Island processing station.

Welcoming its first immigrants in 1892, Ellis Island served as the nation’s busiest process- ing station until 1924, when immigration laws reduced the tide of European immigrants to a trickle. Before it closed in 1954, 12 million immigrants passed through its buildings into the United States. For the vast majority, the immigrant processing center was a quick stop on their way to building a new life in America.

American Experience: Ellis Versus Angel Island (continued)

After stepping off their ships, men, women, and children, most of them from Europe, stored their luggage in the bag- gage room and lined up for processing. When it was their turn, they entered the Great Hall with its massive vaulted ceiling and mosaic tiled walls and floor. Although a daunting experience, the overall atmosphere was one of welcome.

Asian immigrants arriving on the Pacific coast found a very different experi- ence. The Chinese Exclusion Act greatly slowed but did not completely stop Chinese nationals from entering the United States. Beginning in the 1880s a significant number of Japanese also crossed the Pacific.

An immigrant station opened in 1910 on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay to process those arriving from Asia. In sharp contrast to the Great Hall and opulent buildings of Ellis Island, Asian immigrants arrived at a series of wooden barracks, where furnishings consisted of wooden tables and benches and metal bunks for sleeping. The Chinese faced the most intense nativism of any immigrant groups; officials determined to isolate Chinese newcomers, whom they feared might conspire with residents of San Francisco’s growing Chinatown to slip into the city illegally.

Instead of mere hours, immigrants landing at Angel Island were often detained for weeks or even months, and a higher number—between 11% and 30%—were returned to Asia (compared to fewer than 1% at Ellis Island). Some were questioned at length about their backgrounds and asked about subjects of which they had no knowledge. While confined under adverse conditions, many Chinese immigrants scrawled words and poems on the walls reflecting their experience. One immigrant wrote: “Everyone says travelling to North America is a pleasure, I suffered misery on the ship and sadness in the wooden building. After several interrogations, still I am not done. I sigh because my compatriots are being forcibly detained” (Kraut, 2001). After processing several hundred thousand immigrants, the Angel Island processing center closed in 1940.

For further reading, see: Lee, E., & Yung, J. (2010). Angel Island: Immigrant gateway to America. New York: Oxford University Press.

Coan, P. M. (2004). Ellis Island interviews: Immigrants tell their own stories in their own words. New York: Barnes & Noble Books.

© Anonymous/AP/Corbis

At the Angel Island immigration processing center, Chinese and Japanese immigrants were often detained for weeks or months and were subjected to interrogations like the one shown here.

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Section 2.2 The City

2.2 The City

Before the Civil War, America’s total urban population stood at 6.2 million, and most American cities, with the exception of a handful of large urban areas, boasted populations only in the tens of thousands. Luring residents from small towns, farms, and foreign countries, American cities increasingly became home to individuals and families seeking employment in the grow- ing numbers of factories and mills. By the turn of the 20th century, the United States counted 30 million urban residents, and six cities had populations reaching half a million. Three cities—New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia—were home to more than a million residents. By 1920 more Americans lived in urban areas than on farms, and the city was established as a dominant force in economic, social, and cultural life.

City Dwellers and Changing Demographics

The exponential growth of cities came largely from migration and immigration, with almost half of the influx originating from the American countryside. Falling farm prices and increased mechanization meant fewer rural opportunities. These largely working-class Americans joined millions of European immigrants seeking to better their lives in the cities.

Social class differentiated residential areas within the cities. In New York, with its central Wall Street financial center, middle- and upper-middle-class men and women traded and shopped at fancy retail stores and worked in newly constructed office buildings. Most middle-class residents moved their homes outside the city center to the fringes to avoid the growing num- ber of ethnic and working-class neighborhoods that straddled the new industrial zones. Sur- rounding Wall Street were rings of tenements and apartment buildings where rural migrants, immigrants and the city’s poorest residents sometimes packed their entire families into a single room (Shrock, 2004).

The Changing Shape of the City

The city was a place of contrasts in the era that became known as the Gilded Age. This satirical term was coined by Mark Twain to describe the period of rapid urban and industrial change from 1877 to about 1900. In his 1873 novel, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, Twain described a glittering society with serious problems beneath the surface. A city skyline itself was evoked as a breathtaking symbol of progress, featuring new buildings that crept ever higher toward the heavens. In New York, for example, the Manhattan Life Insurance building towered over the city at nearly 350 feet. The city’s second largest building, the American Surety Building, stood 21 stories tall and 312 feet upon its completion in 1894 (Korom, 2013). It appeared that the technological wonders of these new places knew no bounds.

But for all the examples of progress in the American city, the tragic realities of poor living conditions, ethnic prejudice, and unfair working environments significantly tainted the urban experience for many. The American city was a paradox, a place that exemplified hope for the future while at the same time demonstrating the worst that life had to offer.

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Section 2.2 The City

The Tenement In addition to stunning new skyscrapers, Gilded Age builders tried new construction tech- niques to enable cities to house more workers and their families. Construction of the dumb- bell tenement house, so named because of its distinctive shape, dominated between 1879 and 1901. Typically, these were very tightly packed structures with only a couple of feet between them. The entrance hallway was a long passage, sometimes less than 3 feet wide, that reached 60 feet to the back of the structure. Each floor was divided, with seven rooms on each side (see Figure 2.1). Only four of these rooms on each floor had ventilation or were reached by sunlight.

Figure 2.1: Dumbbell tenement house

Built on a narrow, 25-foot-wide lot, the dumbbell tenement could house many families but lacked adequate ventilation and sanitary conditions. In 1901 New York City required new tenement buildings to have windows, ventilation, and indoor toilets.

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Section 2.2 The City

Tiny interior airshafts were supposed to provide ventilation, but the air between the build- ings was so foul that residents often nailed their windows shut. Others used the shafts for garbage disposal, and the filth left to rot served as a breeding ground for disease. Privacy was impossible because the walls were paper-thin and windows often looked directly into the room of a neighbor.

An 1893 publication described the tenements in the following way:

The Tenements display the lowly side and often dark side of New-York life. . . . Tenement houses are as a rule great towering buildings, many of them squalid and in bad repair, and devoid of anything but the rudest arrangements for existence. They are packed with human beings. . . . Frequently half a dozen people eat, sleep, and somehow exist in a single room, and tenants who have two or three rooms generally keep boarders besides their own large fami- lies. . . . The landlords of these old tenement houses become very rich out of the needs of the poor tenants. (King, 1893, p. 220)

The buildings were also fire hazards with very few safety features. The bathroom facilities were primitive, generally just outhouses in the back alleys with poor sanitation. A very high percentage of the New York City population lived in these conditions. In 1901 the city had 3.4 million inhabitants, and 2.3 million lived in tenement houses (Veiller and New York State, 1903).

Reformers such as Jacob Riis worked to bring attention to the plight of those living in the tenements. In the middle of one night in 1888, Riis and a group of men slipped into a New York tenement building. Though most of the residents were still awake, no one stopped them from ascending the steps because no one possessed anything of value. The men entered an unlocked room that was dark and tiny with only one small window that opened to a clogged airshaft. Designed for a family of four, there were 15 immigrants living there, sleeping on every possible horizontal surface. The mysterious men set down some equipment, and one held what looked to be a gun. Before anyone said a word, a brilliant flash of light blinded the occupants, and while their eyes tried to adjust from the flash the men ran out.

Riis had taken his first of many images of tenement life and had begun his campaign to improve the tenements’ horrendous living conditions (Pascal, 2005). As a result of the work of Riis and others, city officials took small steps toward reform. For example, New York City’s 1901 Tenement House Act required more ventilation, windows facing outward, and indoor toilets (Dunbar & Jackson, 2005).

Technology in America: Elevators and Structural Steel

Before the Gilded Age, buildings were relatively low to the ground. Climbing multiple flights of stairs made buildings of more than four stories inconvenient. The structural instabilities of mid-19th-century building materials also prevented architects from design- ing tall buildings. Elisha Graves Otis solved the first of these problems with his 1852 inven- tion of the mechanical elevator. An electric version appeared in 1889. Advances in cast-iron and steel-frame construction solved the second problem, giving architects the materials needed to build high into the sky.

(continued)

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Section 2.2 The City

A distinctly American contribution to architecture, the combination of the ele- vator and structural steel made possible the skyscraper and the upward growth of cities. Skyscrapers enabled a new type of urban expansion, with build- ings soaring ever higher. Mayors of the largest cities were in constant competi- tion to win the honor of possessing the world’s tallest building, with the tallest in New York reaching 350 feet.

Structural-steel construction also reduced the fires that struck wooden city buildings on a regular basis. Without modern fire hydrants and water systems, fires spread quickly, destroying vast swaths of cities. Each major fire led city planners to rebuild and reshape cities. This was most notable after the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. Killing hundreds and destroying more than 3 square miles, the fire was the worst urban disaster in U.S. history to that point. Chicago planners and structural engineers used the newly available structural steel to reconstruct the city. Steel skyscrapers sprouted out of the burned footprints of their wooden ancestors.

For further reading, see:

Fogelson, R. M. (2001). Downtown: Its rise and fall, 1880–1950. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Hoffer, P. C. (2006). Seven fires: The urban infernos that reshaped America. New York: PublicAffairs.

Technology in America: Elevators and Structural Steel

Before the Gilded Age, buildings were relatively low to the ground. Climbing multiple flights of stairs made buildings of more than four stories inconvenient. The structural instabilities of mid-19th-century building materials also prevented architects from design- ing tall buildings. Elisha Graves Otis solved the first of these problems with his 1852 inven- tion of the mechanical elevator. An electric version appeared in 1889. Advances in cast-iron and steel-frame construction solved the second problem, giving architects the materials needed to build high into the sky.

Getting Around in the New City As immigrants adjusted to their new lives in the United States, cities began to grow to pre- viously unimaginable sizes. Many aspects of city life changed to accommodate the influx of people and the growth of industry. Mass transportation was one of them, and some cities, including New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, began digging below the roads to construct vast networks of subways. Others built elevated train lines above the streets, and San Fran- cisco developed cable cars in 1873. These lines largely served the middle and professional classes who could afford to move outside the industrial zones. Most laborers clustered in less desirable housing near the dirt and pollution of the mills and factories.

Technology in America: Elevators and Structural Steel (continued)

Courtesy Everett Collection

The Reliance Building, built in Chicago in 1890 and designed by architect Daniel Burnham, was the first building to be called a skyscraper.

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Section 2.2 The City

Although not all cities invested in expanded public transportation, all cities redefined the rules of the roads. In the Gilded Age, city streets were unstructured places where people, horses, bicycles, and eventually automobiles intermingled with few rules to govern them. By the 20th century the automobile emerged as the undisputed champion and earned the right of way in most all situations. People were relegated to sidewalks, and the cars dominated the central streets (Norton, 2008).

Entertainment in the City

During this time, cities became centers of culture and entertainment. However, entertain- ment required leisure time, and up until the late 19th century this did not exist for most city residents. Time spent working, caring for family, sleeping, and surviving left few hours free for amusement. Eventually, however, working hours in the factories declined—from 70 hours a week in 1860 to 60 hours a week in 1900. Workers began to enjoy at least 1 day free from work each week (Grover, 1992). City dwellers spent their newfound free time on a variety of activities that included playing sports, visiting zoos, and going to the circus. The middle and working classes often mingled together to watch a performance or a boxing match, which middle-class mores had previously judged taboo because of its violent nature.

Cities were the central location for the development of organized sports and public parks. Just about every major American sport had its birthplace in the city. Team owners organized, commercialized, and professionalized sports, and the inner cities were breeding grounds for athletes (Riess, 1991). By the late 19th century, baseball had become a professional sport, with the Cincinnati Red Stockings established as the first team in 1869. They played a series of nonprofessional teams until the formation of other professional clubs in succeeding years. James Naismith invented basketball in the 1890s while working at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts. Football was more of an elite pastime because it emerged on college and university campuses across the East Coast. By the 1890s the Yale– Princeton game attracted 50,000 spectators each year.

Working-class men had long found release in the physical nature of boxing and other sports, and in the Gilded Age middle-class men increasingly found engaging in sports a viable means of asserting their masculinity. As more shifted their daily work regimes to sedentary clerk activities and desk work, playing baseball or watching boxing or other sports allowed men to gather to assert their physicality and thereby enhance their sense of manliness.

Women had athletic outlets as well, as they began enjoying the bicycle craze in the 1890s. The bicycle was culturally important for many reasons. Besides simply being fun, it initiated the idea of personal transportation. Bicycles also allowed women to explore new and freer types of fashion, because Victorian corsets were not conducive to riding.

Cities also brought nature and the exotic within their bounds with the introduction of the urban zoo. Philadelphia was the site of the first zoological park in the United States in 1874. Zoos soon emerged in other cities, and they quickly became popular leisure destinations as families took pleasure in seeing exotic animals up close. The federal government created the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., in 1889 for the “the advancement of science and the instruc- tion and recreation of the people” (Rhees, 1901). It became part of the Smithsonian Institu- tion 1 year later.

Courtesy Everett Collection

This lithograph from 1898 advertises an upcoming performance of the Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth. The traveling circus was an event attended by city residents of all social classes.

bar82063_02_c02_031-066.indd 44 12/18/14 3:01 PM

Section 2.3 Industrial Capitalism in America

Although not all cities invested in expanded public transportation, all cities redefined the rules of the roads. In the Gilded Age, city streets were unstructured places where people, horses, bicycles, and eventually automobiles intermingled with few rules to govern them. By the 20th century the automobile emerged as the undisputed champion and earned the right of way in most all situations. People were relegated to sidewalks, and the cars dominated the central streets (Norton, 2008).

Entertainment in the City

During this time, cities became centers of culture and entertainment. However, entertain- ment required leisure time, and up until the late 19th century this did not exist for most city residents. Time spent working, caring for family, sleeping, and surviving left few hours free for amusement. Eventually, however, working hours in the factories declined—from 70 hours a week in 1860 to 60 hours a week in 1900. Workers began to enjoy at least 1 day free from work each week (Grover, 1992). City dwellers spent their newfound free time on a variety of activities that included playing sports, visiting zoos, and going to the circus. The middle and working classes often mingled together to watch a performance or a boxing match, which middle-class mores had previously judged taboo because of its violent nature.

Cities were the central location for the development of organized sports and public parks. Just about every major American sport had its birthplace in the city. Team owners organized, commercialized, and professionalized sports, and the inner cities were breeding grounds for athletes (Riess, 1991). By the late 19th century, baseball had become a professional sport, with the Cincinnati Red Stockings established as the first team in 1869. They played a series of nonprofessional teams until the formation of other professional clubs in succeeding years. James Naismith invented basketball in the 1890s while working at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts. Football was more of an elite pastime because it emerged on college and university campuses across the East Coast. By the 1890s the Yale– Princeton game attracted 50,000 spectators each year.

Working-class men had long found release in the physical nature of boxing and other sports, and in the Gilded Age middle-class men increasingly found engaging in sports a viable means of asserting their masculinity. As more shifted their daily work regimes to sedentary clerk activities and desk work, playing baseball or watching boxing or other sports allowed men to gather to assert their physicality and thereby enhance their sense of manliness.

Women had athletic outlets as well, as they began enjoying the bicycle craze in the 1890s. The bicycle was culturally important for many reasons. Besides simply being fun, it initiated the idea of personal transportation. Bicycles also allowed women to explore new and freer types of fashion, because Victorian corsets were not conducive to riding.

Cities also brought nature and the exotic within their bounds with the introduction of the urban zoo. Philadelphia was the site of the first zoological park in the United States in 1874. Zoos soon emerged in other cities, and they quickly became popular leisure destinations as families took pleasure in seeing exotic animals up close. The federal government created the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., in 1889 for the “the advancement of science and the instruc- tion and recreation of the people” (Rhees, 1901). It became part of the Smithsonian Institu- tion 1 year later.

Courtesy Everett Collection

This lithograph from 1898 advertises an upcoming performance of the Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth. The traveling circus was an event attended by city residents of all social classes.

There were other important leisure- time activities in the cities. The Gilded Age represented the birth of the mod- ern circus. Using the railroad to travel from city to city, promoters brought huge tents, animals, acrobats, and odd- ities of nature to audiences across the country. P. T. Barnum capitalized on this type of entertainment and became one of the most well-known showmen in the late 19th century. He became famous for sayings such as “There’s a sucker born every minute” (as cited in Saxon, 1989, p. 335). But to chil- dren, his demonstrations inspired awe and wonder at the “Greatest Show on Earth” (Saxon, 1989, p. 335).

The middle and professional classes enjoyed the most leisure time, includ- ing evenings, weekends, and even vacations, to experience these new

activities and attractions. Sports and recreation offered some men and women an outlet for the social anxieties that the new social order brought. However, many in the middle class worried about the unruly behavior of working-class men and women at amusement parks, theaters, and ballparks and sought to reform and regulate commercial amusements. Through their own examples, they hoped to offer appropriate alternatives, but their efforts met with little positive response (Peiss, 1986).

2.3 Industrial Capitalism in America

Although increased leisure-time activities allowed different classes of people to intersect, Americans in the late 19th century began to witness and experience growing tensions between industrialists and workers. A small minority of men—such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan—became so wealthy that they struggled even to give all their money away. The freewheeling competitive capitalism and enormous prof- its of industrialists contrasted sharply with the low wages and limited mobility that most Americans faced. Although the U.S. economic system had thrived on the individual ownership of property from its inception and inequalities had always existed among Americans, in the Gilded Age industrialists developed new methods of business combinations, mergers, and cooperative solutions that made it possible for a few to grow tremendously wealthy and for the gap between them and everyone else to widen dramatically (Porter, 1992).

In the era of industrialization, millions of workers fought to simply have the right to work in safe conditions, earn a fair wage, and organize for protection. Though there were dramatic strikes, or work stoppages, the power of labor could not match the domination of the indus- trialists, and the unionization drives of the late 19th century failed. Men like Carnegie came to be derisively called robber barons because many believed they increased their wealth by

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Section 2.3 Industrial Capitalism in America

robbing their workers of a fair wage and safe working conditions. Many historians argue that it was the power of big business and the rise of global capitalism that prevented the workers from advancing their cause.

Although American workers did make some advances in terms of wages, the disparity between industrialists such as Carnegie and the workforce accelerated. Real wages rose fairly consis- tently during the Gilded Age. The average income for nonfarm families rose from $375 a year in 1870 to $573 by 1900. This increase was much higher than in industrializing Europe and helped pull many immigrants to the United States. During the same time, however, the dis- parity between the richest and poorest in America expanded. By 1900 the richest 2% owned more than a third of the nation’s wealth, and the top 10% controlled roughly 75% (Long, 1960).

Despite the reality of growing inequality in the United States, the myth persisted around the world that the streets in America were paved with gold and that the nation offered bound- less opportunities. Some came with the hope of realizing the American dream in the growing West, attracted by land offers the railroads provided. Most newcomers, however, entered the rapidly expanding American cities where new skyscrapers rose into the smoky skyline. The stunning success of men like Carnegie made many believe they, too, could prosper. This prom- ise lured new waves of immigrants to the nation’s shores and brought scores of rural men and women into the cities.

A New Industrial Order

The industrial order that came to characterize America after 1877 was new and unfamiliar. Before the Civil War, industries centered on textile production and especially on processing agricultural products like grains or natural resources like timber. Factories produced goods for local and regional markets, and the nation also exported important commodities such as cotton. Most industrial pursuits were thus a natural extension of farming, which employed the largest segment of Americans.

After the war, heavy industries such as steel, oil, and rubber introduced new commodities such as steel rails, gasoline, and rubber tires to the national and world markets. The growth of new technologies, methods of manufacture, and theories of work organization spawned new systems of business organization and combination, ultimately leading to massive, impersonal corporations. The dominance of big business fundamentally altered the way of life for both Americans and newcomers. Giant corporations caused many to lose their faith in the compe- tition and democracy that had long branded the nation as a place where individuals could rise on their own merits through hard work to wealth and accomplishment (Porter, 1992). The astounding rags-to-riches experiences of men like Andrew Carnegie quickly became an unat- tainable fantasy, and by the turn of the 20th century, big business would be seen as the root cause of many of society’s ills.

Gould, Vanderbilt, and the Railroads

As discussed in Chapter 1, railroads spread settlement westward to the Pacific coast through a combination of private corporate investment and government assistance, primarily in the form of massive grants of federal land. As important as the western connections were,

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Railroads

Transcontinental

Section 2.3 Industrial Capitalism in America

however, the intense concentration of railroad lines across the Midwest and Northeast pro- foundly affected U.S. industrialization. After 1870 the nation’s railway mileage quadrupled, so that in 1900 the United States possessed more than 193,000 miles of track (see Figure 2.2) (Husband & O’Loughlin, 2004).

From this dramatic growth, railroads emerged as America’s first industrial corporations. The Pennsylvania Railroad that employed a young Andrew Carnegie became the world’s largest private corporation, employing more than 55,000 workers in the 1870s (Schaefer & Solomon, 2009). The rapid expansion of other railroads made fortunes for a small handful of investors. Jay Gould, for instance, began life as a bookkeeper, but through a series of fortunate invest- ments in the stock market he became a notorious speculator who controlled thousands of miles of track. Among his holdings was the Union Pacific Railroad, part of the initial transcon- tinental network completed in 1869.

Never one to be concerned about public opinion, Gould ruthlessly pursued business oppor- tunities, practicing horizontal integration by secretly manipulating the market and buy- ing up smaller railroads and the telegraph lines that were strung alongside them. Invented by Samuel F. B. Morse in the 1830s, the telegraph revolutionized communication and was

Figure 2.2: Railroads in 1900

By 1900 the nation boasted more than 193,000 total miles of railroad track including the well-known Transcontinental Railroad. The largest concentration of rail lines was in the Northeast.

Railroads

Transcontinental

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Section 2.3 Industrial Capitalism in America

especially important for business growth in the evolving industrial age, allowing for immedi- ate and rapid communication. Gould gained control of the Western Union Company (by far the nation’s largest telegraph company) through a series of stock manipulations in 1879.

As the only real provider of telegraph service, Gould’s actions gave him monopoly, or exclu- sive control, over the nation’s most important means of communicating. Gould and other