A. Explain how the abundance of natural resources, new recovery, and refining methods, and new uses for them led to intensive industrialization.
As ores and other natural resources were mined, new ways of mining and refining them led to intensive industrialization because as these methods were improved, it was possible to generate more product. This in turn led to more use for the product and more availability, and thus lower prices. Thus, consumers were more likely to buy more products involving the raw material, causing a positive feedback loop in which the innovation started over again.
B. Describe how the new inventions changed the way people lived and worked.
The creation of new inventions allowed jobs that were previously done at home to be done in factories, such as the mass-production of clothing, and reduced the duration of a work week. It also allowed women to take office jobs, however some workers felt that their worth was reduced.
C. Explain the role of the railroads in unifying the country.
Railroads unified the country by making settlement of the West possible. It was now easy to make it from one side of the country to another. It also expanded business by opening companies up to new markets, which may have been very far away. The invention of railroad time by C. F. Dowd also helped to unify the country by making it easy to tell what time it was other places in the country and by extension, the world.
D. Evaluate the positive and negative effects of railroads on the nation's economy.
Even though railroads seemed to be all positive, as they allowed for quick travel and opened business to bigger markets, there were problems as well. Railroad magnates abused their power by imposing unfair rates on farmers who needed the railways to move their products. They were also built by workers who were overworked, underpaid, and diseased. This was not well known to the public.
E. Summarize reasons for, and outcomes of, the demand for railroad reform.
Railroad reform was demanded by farmers because the rates that railroads charged was preventing farmers from moving goods and keeping them permanently in debt. This hurt the economy of the United States. In addition, they misused government land grants by selling them to businesses rather than to settlers. When reform finally did happen, it happened in the form of the Interstate Commerce Act, which formed an Interstate Commerce Commission of five members. It struggled to give states the right to set rates because railroads sued, but Congress deemed the act constitutional. However, it was later determined that states should not have the power to set interstate rates, and this should be left to the federal government, and that states couldn't set a maximum rate. It wasn't until Theodore Roosevelt that the ICC gained the powered it needed to be effective.
F. Describe the management and business strategies that contributed to the success of business tycoons such as Andrew Carnegie.
Industrialists in the Gilded Age used many strategies to attain success. This included the constant improvement of manufacturing and finding more cost-effective ways to manufacture, the search for and promotion of talented workers, and buying out competitors, suppliers, and distributors.
G. Explain Social Darwinism and its effect on society.
Social Darwinism is the application of the principles of natural selection (first proposed by Charles Darwin) to our society. It states that those who are better equipped to survive in this economic world are the ones that will profit. It was used as the justification for laissez-faire economics (a free and unregulated market).
H. Summarize the emergence and growth of unions.
The union movement started with the National Labor Union, which was at the core a conglomerate of smaller unions. Due to their racist policies, African Americans formed the CNLU, the Colored National Labor Union. In addition, Uriah Stevens made a union that focused on the individual and was open to anyone, the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor. Samuel Gompers then created the first craft union, the American Federation of Labor. Craft unionism was the inclusion of skilled workers from a multitude of trades. These unions focused on collective bargaining and striking. They were very successful. Another approach to unionism was realized by Eugene V. Debs, who created the American Railway Union and it included all workers in the railway industry, whether skilled or unskilled. It was very large compared to other railroad unions but lost popularity after a major strike failure. William Haywood formed the Industrial Workers of the World bargained for better working conditions, but wasn't very popular.
I. Explain the violent reactions of industry and government to union strikes.
In the Great Strike of 1877, the government sent in federal troops to end the strike because it shut down 50,000 miles of railway. At the Haymarket Affair, people gathered to protest police violence were shot down after provoking the police with a bomb. This resulted in 4 hangings and one suicide of the eight convicts. At the Homestead strike, workers went on strike in order to protest pay cuts that Henry Clay Frick (president of Carnegie Steel) had ordered. He hired a detective agency to protect the plant and end the strike, but the strikers won and the plant was shutdown until the national guard arrived. Finally, in the Pullman Company strike, major lay offs were followed by a decrease in wages but not a decrease in rent, causing workers to go on strike. After a refusal to negotiate, Grover Cleveland sent in troops. The strikers were fired and blacklisted.
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