The classic experiments on insightful problem solving were done with chimpanzees by _________.

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

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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.