Chapter 17

The Industrial
Revolution

­Learning Outcomes
After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following:
17-1 Describe and discuss the development of the Industrial
Revolution in America after the Civil War, concentrating on the major industries and their leaders.
17-2 Describe how America’s regional and local markets merged into one truly national market and how this influenced the consumer demand for products and services, as well as some of the costs associated with the transition.
17-3 Discuss the functioning of national, state, and local politics during the late 1800s.
17-4 Describe the formation of the early labor unions in the United
States, including their goals, activities, and situations at the end of the nineteenth century.

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“

The world that had consisted of small farms, artisans’ workshops, and small factories transformed into a full-scale industrial society.

”

As the process of ensuring political, economic, and social rights of African Americans waned during the 1870s, most
Americans turned their attenNo invention had more lasting impact than the incandestion to another transformation cent light bulb. brought on by the Civil War: the
Strongly Disagree
Strongly Agree
Industrial Revolution. During
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the half-century between                                                   
1865 and 1915, the United
States evolved from a relative economic backwater to become the most powerful economy in the world. Industrialization played a key role in the nation’s advances, and both the
Civil War and a core group of innovative, aggressive, farsighted, and opportunistic entrepreneurs were the main stimulants of growth. They embodied the optimism and inventiveness of the late nineteenth century, although they often pushed too far and engaged in practices we now see as unethical and corrupt, leaving wide gaps between the rich and the poor, between black and white, and between immigrant and native.
Like the Market Revolution of the first half of the century (which focused primarily on improvements in communications and transportation to broaden the reach of
American agricultural goods), the Industrial Revolution of the second half transformed the nation’s economy, its social life, and its politics. During the nineteenth century, the nation’s main energy sources shifted from human and animal power to mechanical power. Builders transitioned from using materials one might find on the ground, such as stones and logs, to using manufactured materials, such as lumber, bricks, and steel.
Smaller craft shops lost business to large specialized factories. Industrial cities grew dramatically as well, as mechanized public transportation allowed wealthier people to move away from noisy city centers. And railroads made travel increasingly easy—even, by 1869, allowing people and goods to cross the continent speedily and safely. During the late nineteenth century, the world that had consisted of small farms, artisans’ workshops, and small- or medium-sized factories at the beginning of the century transformed into a full-scale industrial society of large factories, polyglot urban hubs, and a wide range of people working and managing the newly developed industries.
Unsurprisingly, the politics of the era were poorly equipped to handle all these challenges. In a society uncertain about the moral role of politics (especially after the bloody
Civil War) and eager not to miss out on the economic possibilities of the new age, politics during the last third of the nineteenth century were characterized by high voter participation, extreme partisanship, and massive corruption.
By the early 1900s, three waves of reformers had emerged to demand that the government intervene to curtail the most oppressive practices of big business: (1) the labor movement,
(2) the Populists, and (3) the Progressives. The first of these reformers—the labor movement—was the most radical. It emerged concurrently with the Industrial Age and focused on the working classes. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, workers sought to establish a politics of class by means of an increasingly vocal movement of laborers and

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<< Schoolchildren playand the hills above the Carnegie steel mills, symbols of the effects of the Industrial
Revolution on Americans big small, rich and poor, northern, southern, and western.

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Industrial Revolution

their families. During its first years, this labor movement was raucous and provocative, questioning America’s commitment to capitalism and democracy. Socialists flourished in this environment, as did communists and anarchists. Each challenge to
American democratic capitalism stirred fear among the American upper and middle classes, but that, of course, was the point.
This chapter describes and explains the advent of the Industrial Revolution, focusing on the key industries and business developments, as well as the inability or unwillingness of politicians to manage these challenges. It concludes with an examination of the first grassroots demands for reform in the shape of the American labor movement.

Transformation in the way goods were made and sold, as American businessmen between
1865 and 1915 used continuing technological breakthroughs and creative financing to bring greater efficiency to their businesses 17-1 The Industrial
Revolution
The process of industrialization began well before the Civil War, and indeed, industrialization, along with improved communications and transportation, sparked the Market Revolution during the first half of the nineteenth century. But after the Civil War,
American material output increased dramatically, and big businesses extended their reach deeper into
American life. Together, these events revolutionized the way Americans lived, no matter which region they called home.
The Industrial Revolution can be defined as a transformation in the way goods were made and sold, as American businessmen between 1865 and 1915 used continuing technological breakthroughs and creative financing to bring greater efficiency to their businesses, which dramatically expanded their markets and their ability to produce goods. The effects of this transformation were felt outside the business world, resulting in two key social transitions: (1) more and more Americans left farming to work in factories or retail, which spurred the rapid growth of cities; and
(2) the American economy became dominated less by family businesses and more and more by large-scale corporate firms. Thus, many historians cite the late nineteenth century as the birth of a modern industrialized America. One historian has pinpointed these years as the time when Americans physically and intellectually left behind the small, localized “island communities” that dotted the United States before the Civil War and confronted the large, polyglot nature of the American nation.

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Why an Industrial Revolution in America? The
Industrial Revolution had been launched in England in the 1750s, made its way over to the European continent by the early 1800s, and crossed the Atlantic well before the 1840s. But three reasons figure in its dramatic growth from 1865 to 1915 (see “The reasons why . . .” on American industrialization on page 293).

17-1a The Basic Industries
The central industries of the Industrial Revolution were railroads, steel, and petroleum. Each had leaders who took control of their industry’s development. These “captains of industry” were also sometimes called “robber barons,” depending on the perspective of the observer. Through these industries, Americans created a corporate society.

Railroads
The expansion of the railroads was perhaps the one predictable development of the post–Civil War years. With the support of the federal government, between 1860 and 1915 total railroad development leapt from approximately 30,000 miles of track to more than 250,000 miles (see Map 17.1 on page
294). By the eve of World War I in 1914, the national railroad network was basically complete, such that some historians say that all tracks built after 1890 were simply unnecessary. Railroads spanned the nation, making the movement of goods and products easy, cheap, and reliable.
Several ruthless and ingenious businessmen helped make all the growth possible. Leland Stanford, for example, was one of the “Big Four” captains of the railroad industry. With his partners, Collis

>> Laying track, tying together America, and “opening” the west.

Track-layers gang-building the Union Pacific Railroad through American wilderness, 1860s, (b/w photo), American Photographer, (19th century)/Private
Collection, Peter Newark American Pictures/The Bridgeman Art Library

{

The reasons why . . .

}

There were at least three reasons why American industrialization expanded when it did:

>> Factory work was often cramped.

creation of refrigerated railroad cars. By 1878, inventors had perfected the cars, which permitted long-distance transfer of numerous perishable goods. This, of course, allowed for the development of new towns in the West—so long as they were close to the railroad lines.

Technological breakthroughs. An abundance of scientific developments also contributed to the expansion of big business, and again, the Civil War was the transitional moment. For example, the need to move meat from one place to another in order to feed Union soldiers prompted the

Huntington, Charles Crocker, and
Mark Hopkins, Stanford developed the railroad system in California and made the entire West easily accessible. All four men were
New Yorkers who had headed to
California during the gold rush. All four were Republicans and supporters of Lincoln during the war.
Knowing the war would promote the expansion of railroads, the four invested money and energy in creating a transcontinental network of tracks. Once these railroads were completed, the Big Four controlled much of the access to the West—control that brought great wealth and power.

steel had been used to make weapons. But because the process of making steel—by burning impurities out of iron ore—was laborious and expensive, artisans produced only small quantities. In the mid1850s, English inventor Sir Henry
Bessemer invented a way to convert large quantities of iron ore into steel by using extremely hot air. Mass production of steel did not take off, however, until Andrew Carnegie became interested in the industry. On a trip to
England in 1872, Carnegie saw the Bessemer process at work in a steel plant, and, amazed at its efficiency, he decided to open a steel plant in the United States.
Rather than artisans, he could use cheap, unskilled laborers, who were willing to learn to operate the hot, dangerous machines for low wages. By 1900, he had built the largest steel company in the world

In 1901 Carnegie sold his company for more than
$400 million—the equivalent of $9.8 billion today.

Steel
The steel industry made the massive expansion of railroads possible. As early as the Middle Ages,

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Panoramic Images/Getty Images

Government support. Besides purchasing goods for its troops,
Congress took advantage of the absence of southerners in the
House and the Senate to pass a series of national internal improvement projects. The most majestic of these was the first transcontinental railroad. In July 1862, Congress offered enormous financial incentives to the Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific
Railroad companies to complete the expansive task. This transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, and, over the next twenty years, legendary business moguls erected other transcontinental lines, often with financial incentives from the federal government.
The federal government also supported scientific training and research, developed the first national currency and tax system, and made possible the construction of the first land grant universities
(such as Michigan State University and Rutgers)—all evidence of the government’s willingness to midwife the Industrial Revolution. In the end, government support of the building infrastructure allowed goods and information to travel more quickly and efficiently to wider markets.

Vintage Images/Getty Images

The Civil War. Production needs during the Civil War stimulated industrial development, particularly in the North. For example, the
Union Army’s high demand for food fueled the expansion of western farms. Clothing and shoe manufacturers were encouraged to produce more goods faster. And the government offered huge wartime contracts for uniforms, shoes, weapons, food, and other commodities, sparking breakthroughs in their manufacture.

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vertical integration

and produced more than 25 percent of the steel used in the United States. Carnegie’s steel was used in many national landmarks, including the Brooklyn Bridge.
Carnegie’s greatest contribution in the world of business was his use of vertical integration, which meant placing all aspects of steel production under his control, from the moment iron ore was extracted from mines to the time finFind out more ished steel was shipped to about the steel customers. Carnegie realized business. that, by integrating all the processes of making and distributing steel, he could avoid working with other companies and thus increase his profits. His method worked: in 1901

The system by which a business controls all aspects of its industry, from raw materials to finished product, and is able to avoid working or sharing profits with any other companies

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Carnegie sold his company, U.S. Steel, for more than
$400 million—the equivalent of $9.8 billion today.

Petroleum
In the mid-nineteenth century, petroleum was increasingly used both as a machine lubricant and as a source of illumination. The breakthrough here came in 1855, when Professor Benjamin Silliman of
Yale University discovered that kerosene, a formerly
“useless” byproduct of crude oil (unrefined petroleum), was a powerful illuminant. Entrepreneurs then rushed to find greater supplies of crude oil. The
Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company hired Edwin Drake, a speculator and promoter, to drill for oil in northwestern Pennsylvania. After two years of searching, on August 28, 1859, Drake successfully drilled for oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania. His find ushered in an
American oil boom.

The next challenge was to figure out the best means of extracting crude oil, transporting it to refineries, packaging it, conveying it to cities and towns across the nation, and marketing the finished products. John D. Rockefeller essentially filled all of these niches. He consolidated refining operations in Cleveland, and then, by paying close attention to cost-cutting details, he ruthlessly drove down the costs of producing usable commodities. Much of
Rockefeller’s success can be attributed to his pioneering efforts at horizontal integration. In essence, he took over other oil companies or worked in combination with them to control competition, lower the cost of petroleum, and, of course, maximize profits. He practiced vertical integration as well, much like Andrew Carnegie in the steel industry. But he focused more intently on limiting competition with other businesses in the same industry. His legal adviRead Henry
Demarest Lloyd’s sors created a unique entity
“The Lords of called “the trust,” which
Industry.”
acted as a board of directors for all the oil refiners. Rockefeller intended to provide cheap petroleum and to make himself wealthy.
He succeeded at both.

17-1b Technology

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In addition to the dynamic developments of business leaders, numerous technological, financial, and legal innovations powered the Industrial Revolution.
Indeed, this was the era of many of America’s most

horizontal integration far-reaching inventions and
The system by which a innovations. business takes over its
Perhaps no invention competitors in order to limit competition, lower had more lasting impact costs, and maximize than the incandescent light profits bulb, created by Thomas
Edison in 1879. After years of experimentation, Edison harnessed the power of electricity and transmitted bright light for extended periods of time. The subsequent development of huge electrical power stations made this new form of energy cheap enough to allow middle-class homeowners to purchase it and businesses to operate after dark. Development of the first electric grids spread electricity throughout cities. In addition to light bulbs, Edison also perfected the motion picture camera, the phonograph, the microphone, and more.
He set up the first industrial research laboratory in the world, developed solely to invent new things. It worked. In the United States alone, Edison held 1,093 patents. He possessed more abroad.
Separately, Alexander Graham Bell’s invention in 1876 of the telephone, which also used electrical power, vastly sped up the flow of communications over long distances and enabled businesses to exchange information more efficiently. In architecture, the Bessemer process of steel production allowed architects to design the first skyscrapers, reaching hundreds of feet into the air. And the mechanized elevator, invented by Elisha Otis in 1853, made all these skyscrapers useable. Before the elevator, few people would rent rooms above the sixth

>> Bessemer converter in use at a Pittsburgh steel plant.

Bridge. “Hard! I guess it’s hard.
>>theThe Brooklynmonths I came into this business. IItlost fortythe pounds first three sweats life out of a man.”—Steelworker at a Carnegie plant, circa 1893

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floor. At the same time, the typewriter was invented in the 1860s and marketed by Eliphalet Remington and Sons beginning in 1873. The typewriter created a number of office jobs that opened up to women during these years. In the otherwise patriarchal business world of the nineteenth century, it helped make women earners in an industrializing economy.
Invention bred still more invention. In the seven decades before 1860, the U.S. Patent Office issued
36,000 patent licenses. During the three decades after 1860, that number of patents grew to 144,000.

Despite all these incredible inventions, perhaps no innovation was more transformative than one that emerged from a new breed of financiers.
Such giants as Jay Gould and J. Pierpont Morgan specialized in forming groups of rich men (called syndicates) in order to provide huge amounts of capital to fund promising companies and start up new industries. Morgan and a handful of associates gathered investors from around the globe to underwrite and fund various investment opportunities. The advent of pooled funds allowed Morgan to broker the formation of one of the world’s first billion-dollar corporations, the Northern Securities
Company. In addition to everything else, the latter half of the nineteenth century was also the era of the giant corporation.
Beginning in the mid-1800s, federal and state governments made changes in corporate law that supported these financial schemes and encouraged growth. They provided corporations with the power to acquire and merge with other businesses, thus allowing corporations to accumulate the capital required to finance big businesses. They also provided a significant layer of protection between families’ fortunes and the courts. Rather than relying on any single individual’s fortune to raise money, corporate officers were allowed to sell their stock on the open market. In that way, the investors who bought shares of the stock would become “part owners” of the company. In the event that a corporation was sued successfully, investors holding stock limited their liability to just the number of shares they owned. During the
Industrial Revolution, the number of corporations increased dramatically, creating a sizeable number of organizations with large amounts of money that were able and willing to buy up successful smaller companies and develop a national (and even international) market.

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the nineteenth
>> Inlubricant and as century, petroleum was used as both a machine a powerful illuminant.

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

17-1c Innovative Financing, Law, and Business Practices

the
>> After thousands of hoursaincarbon laboratory, Edison discovered that
The Granger Collection, New York/The Granger Collection

During this era, entrepreneurs also experimented with innovative business practices that allowed them to expand rapidly. For one, they streamlined operations. As businesses became larger, managers could not personally supervise all facets of their operations. So entrepreneurs established a hierarchy of managers and supervisors to coordinate schedules, keep track of shipments, and analyze the costs of each facet of the business. This development had two results: (1) it allowed corporations to control shops across a broad stretch of the nation, often centralizing control in one of the growing cities of the Midwest, such as Chicago; and (2) it created a class of managers that would figure prominently in the rapidly expanding middle class.

filament in an oxygen-free bulb lasted more than forty hours.

tisements began to replace the single-column notices of earlier years. Celebrities were featured wearing watches or hats. The number of advertising agencies expanded rapidly. Billboards and placards sprouted up everywhere.

17-2b National Brands

Along similar lines, the first advertising agencies began rudimentary marketing surveys to identify potential consumers’ preferences and then applied the results to the marketing of individual products. For example, buying biscuits in the late nineteenth century was often problematic because they were stored in open containers; usually they became stale before

17-2 The National Market:
Creating Consumer
Demand
By the late nineteenth century, with railroads spanning the nation and the process of replaceable parts making more and more goods available to a consuming public, the entire American nation became a marketplace. As wise businessmen capitalized on this development, they helped create the modern consumer culture. They also spread the growing pains of industrialization far beyond its central hubs. One significant development in the formation of a modern consumer culture was a revolution in advertising. Before the Industrial Revolution, businessmen notified people about the availability of goods simply by printing announcements in local newspapers or in leaflets handed out to customers. Because their companies served mostly a local market, such advertising techniques were effective.
As the consumer economy evolved after the Civil
War, however, businesses began to market goods more aggressively and across numerous regions. In newspapers, multiple-column, even full-page adver-

Nabisco’s first boy in a
>> of the speciallyads featured a littleunharmedrain slicker carrying a box packaged biscuits through the rain.

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Bettmann/CORBIS

17-2a Advertising

they were bought. The National
Biscuit Company (Nabisco) testmarketed a rather ordinary biscuit that had one difference from typical biscuits—a new, sealed package. Soon, consumers across the country demanded the product. The combination of technological and transportation innovations allowed the creation of truly national brands. 17-2c Stores and Mail Order

>> Sears Roebuck catalogue.

Image cour-

tesy of The Advertising Archives

page list of items, he expanded his lists until his catalogue was heavier than many magazines. Richard
W. Sears and Alvah C. Roebuck were comparative latecomers to the mail order business, but they offered Ward stiff competition. By the late 1890s, the Sears catalogue numbered more than five hundred pages. Next to the family Bible, it was one of the few “books” considered indispensable by farm families.

Chain stores quickly followed. Essentially, chains began when successful storeowners decided to reach more customers by opening branches in sepa17-2d Harmful Business Practices rate locations. Large chain stores had the advanAll this innovation and marketing came with sigtage of being able to negotiate lower wholesale nificant costs; most significantly they signaled the prices because they could purchase items in bulk; advent of corporate life in America, a time when busioften they passed on a portion of their savings to nessmen engaged in several consumers in the form of lower prices. One of the
Read a contemharmful business practices largest grocery chains was the Atlantic and Pacific porary piece to ensure they controlled the
Tea Company, known as A&P. Frank W. Woolworth chronicling market. For most of them, devised another type of chain based on the idea
Rockefeller’s business whatever it took to drive out of selling lots of inexpensive goods at cheap, fixed tactics. competitors, they did. Thus, prices. His Woolworth outlets were originally called while several of the innovations of men like Stanford,
“five and tens,” meaning that almost all of the goods
Carnegie, and Rockefeller benefited the American were priced at either a nickel or a dime. The growth population, often these men took things too far. of his stores was phenomenal. In 1859, Woolworth founded his first store; by 1915 he and his partners
Monopolization
controlled around six hundred outlets.
As brilliant an entrepreneur as he was, Rockefeller
The emergence of advertising and national was involved in many of the harmful practices. In chain stores helped create a consumer culture in the late 1800s, for instance, Rockefeller essentially the nation’s cities. The wide availability of concontrolled the drilling, refining, and transporting sumer goods prompted some entrepreneurs to of most of the nation’s petroleum. But that was not open department stores, which quickly became enough. He was determined to control the product’s the greatest symbol of the emerging desire for conwholesale distribution and retail marketing as well. sumption. In ornate window displays, such as New
So he established regional outlets that ruthlessly
York’s Macy’s (founded 1858) and Philadelphia’s undersold well-established companies for as long
Wanamaker’s (1877), a large selection of items as it took to drive them out of business. Rich as dazzled passersby. The stores also provided employhe was, Rockefeller could absorb short-term losses ment to thousands of urban Americans, especially much longer than his comwomen. petitors. Once he had driven
Chain
retail stores his rivals out of business, he appealed to city and town was free to charge whatever dwellers, but to reach rural he wished for his product customers, farsighted entre(although he had to keep preneurs used catalogues. prices relatively low to keep
In 1872, Aaron Montgomery international competition at
Ward set up a mail order busi—Ida Tarbell, The History of the Standard bay). In 1879, his Standard ness. Beginning with a singleOil Company, 1904

Rockefeller awakened
“Mr.general bitterness. a ”

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Price Gouging
Railroads also engaged in price gouging. For example, in urban areas where demand was high, usually several railroads operated their lines. These railroads often had to provide competitive rates, and during the occasional price wars between their competitors, railroads sometimes cut prices below their own costs. To make up for these losses, railroads gouged customers in other places—usually small towns that were served by just one line. Railroad officials also increased rates for local service, provoking differences between “long haul” and “short haul” charges.
For instance, farmers in the eastern Dakotas complained that it cost more to ship a bushel of wheat 400 miles to Minneapolis than it cost to send that same product to Europe, more than ten times as far. Once again, these practices would eventually motivate the government to act—but not for many decades.

Environmental Damage
A third harmful business practice concerns what the Industrial Revolution did to the environment.
Drilling for petroleum damaged the soil. The development of mechanized hydraulic mining in the
Industrial Age caused much more damage to the land than any of the mining done by miners in previous centuries. Burning coal for all those railroads and machines gave off damaging gases. And railroad tracks cut through lands that were largely untouched by sustained human development. Most
Americans did not express deep concerns for these types of problems, but a few did. The top preservationist of the period was John Muir, the founder of the American environmental organization the Sierra
Club and an influential advocate of preserving the mountain lands between California and Montana.

© Corbis. All rights reserved.

Oil Company controlled 90 percent of all petroleum in the country.
Rockefeller also had his way with railroads. His petroleum shipments comprised the majority of the business of several rail lines. By threatening to take his business to other competitors, he forced several railroad officials to offer him rebates on every barrel he shipped. In this way, Rockefeller paid lower railroad rates than his competitors. Rockefeller also interfered with railroad lines that carried his competitors’ products. He convinced officials that they were hurting his business whenever they shipped a competitor’s products and that they should pay him a refund for each such barrel they shipped. Such business practices tested the limits of how much freedom politicians would allow businessmen to have.

1892, John Muir began in an
>>theInenvironmental damage ofthe Sierra Club Age. effort to protest the Industrial

In 1872, the federal government created the first national park, Yellowstone National Park, which comprises parts of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.
Other parks proliferated shortly thereafter, but the growth of federally preserved lands hardly outpaced the expansion of industry into previously lightly touched terrain.

17-2e Working Conditions
The land was not the only thing transformed by the rise of big business. Workers also faced new challenges. Suddenly at the mercy of powerful machines that required them to perform the same simple task again and again, they worked ten to twelve hours a day, six days a week. They repeated the same boring task, hour after hour, until the whistle finally blew at the end of the shift. Between 1880 and 1900 an average of 35,000 workers died each year on the assembly line. The work was grueling.
Women and children were not spared. As mechanization continued to decrease the need for skilled labor, and as employers kept searching for workers who would accept low pay, women and children entered factories in increasing numbers. By the turn of the century, 20 percent of the industrial work force was female. The textile industry in particular relied almost completely upon women and children. Many states passed child labor laws by the end of the 1800s, but employers routinely ignored these laws, and the number of child factory workers remained high.
Many employers also
View an online callously ignored the basic exhibit on the Triangle Shirtwaist needs of their workers, most
Company fire. notoriously illustrated by the

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299

1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, in the New York City garment
New York City garment district, near Washington factory; scene of a horrific fire in 1911
Square Park. Foremen at the
Triangle Shirtwaist Company sweatshop had bolted the fire escape
Crowded factory in an urban setting, often door shut to prevent female one where workers are workers from taking breaks. exploited When a fire broke out in the front of their sweatshop— located several stories above the street—hundreds of employees were trapped in the back of the shop. They faced two choices: sure death from the fire or probable death by leaping from the window to the pavement below. Bystanders had lifelong nightmares from the sight of falling bodies thudding to the ground. The final death toll was 146 workers, most of them poor women. 17-3 The Politics of the
Industrial Age
The dramatic changes that came about as a result of industrialization—including the growing

strength of business leaders and corporations and the widening economic disparities in the cities— demanded a new kind of politics. Instead, the politics of the late nineteenth century reflected the
Industrial Revolution’s devotion to business, not to the needs of the urban poor or the working classes.
Indeed, politically, the devotion to the needs of business had two vital consequences: (1) it permitted a dramatic decline in attention to the treatment of African Americans, which had dominated the politics of the Reconstruction era; and (2) it sullied the image of politicians, who sometimes were guilty of blatant corruption as they prioritized the interests of business over those of other groups in the population. Federal, state, and local politicians gave massive land grants to their friends, offered government contracts only to their supporters, and accepted bribes for doing all sorts of “public works.”

17-3a Justifications of the Industrial Order
Three intellectual justifications emerged to defend the actions of the leaders of the Industrial Revolution.
Often they overlapped. Any reformer would have to

>> Victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire lay exposed, open invitations to debate the costs of the Industrial Age.
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Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Triangle Shirtwaist
Company

overcome, or at least acknowledge, each of them before attempting to reform American politics.

Mainline Protestant Morality
First, many of the leading industrialists of the late nineteenth century were sons of ministers, and they relied on a hard-line defense of Protestant individualism, arguing that economic problems stemmed from a particular individual’s actions (or inactions) and that these problems were therefore not social in nature. There was a good bit of nativism in this argument too, especially considering that the vast majority of immigrants were Catholics and Jews from southern and eastern Europe (immigration will be discussed more fully in the next chapter).
Furthermore, the industrialists firmly believed that their actions were improving the lot of humankind, which, despite some obvious contradictions, they were in fact doing. It was easy to argue that power grids, electric light, better transportation, and improved communications had increased the convenience and comfort of modern living.

Social Darwinism
The second justification was Social Darwinism.
Railroad tycoons like Charles Francis Adams, Jr., believed that they were justified in their overbearing behavior because they had shown themselves to be the most successful competitors in an open market. Of course, because they had benefited from the federal government’s actions to promote industrial growth through tariffs, subsidies, and cheap land sales, the successful capitalists’ wealth was not as independently earned as they believed.
English philosopher
Herbert Spencer promoted this Darwinistic perspective. After reading
Charles Darwin’s theories on biological evolution,
Spencer coined the phrase
“survival of the fittest” and applied Darwin’s concepts to the contemporary economic environment. Although very few
Americans took Darwin’s theory as far as Spencer

Social Darwinism did, businessmen occasionThe theory that “survival ally borrowed those ideas of the fittest” extended that fit their needs. to the business realm: tycoons believed they
Social Darwinism also were justified in their overhad a racialist tinge, providbearing behavior because ing intellectual justification they had shown themselves to be the most sucfor laws and social practices cessful competitors in an that kept African Americans, open market
Indians, certain categories of immigrants, and women second-class citizens who were often denied the vote and a basic right to property ownership. This notion of a racial or cultural hierarchy of peoples was widely espoused in late-nineteenth-century
America; even the African American intellectual
W. E. B. Du Bois relied on it when he argued that the vast majority of African Americans were ill equipped to be full citizens and instead should rely on a “talented tenth” to lead the way.

The Myth of Success
Successful businessmen also perpetuated the belief that if you worked hard enough, you could become wealthy. This notion was popularized by many writers, none more ardently than Horatio Alger.
An admired and prolific writer (he produced 135 pieces of fiction), Alger wrote virtually all of his stories with the same plot: a good person works hard and, with a little luck, inevitably succeeds.
His protagonist, a young man with working-class roots, moves from a farm or small town to the city. Once there, leading a morally upright life, wholly committed to hard work, and, above all, showing loyalty to his employer, the hero literally rises “from rags to riches.” Alger’s formula was sometimes called
“pluck and luck,” because

“He above doing
>> meanwasdishonorable. anything or
He would not steal, or cheat, or impose upon younger boys, but was frank and straight-forward, manly and self-reliant.”—Horatio
Alger, description of the hero from
Ragged Dick

Bettmann/CORBIS

The Politics of the Industrial Age

301

is the rich
“Whereanybody? If man who is oppressing there was one, the newspapers would ring with it.
”

Crédit Mobilier
Company

their transcontinental railroad—in essence,
A construction company they were their own set up by the directors of the Union Pacific in subcontractors. In
1867 in order to build these dual roles, they part of their transconawarded themselves tinental railroad—in
—William Graham Sumner, in defense essence, they were their generous contracts of Social Darwinism own subcontractors and
(receiving between $7 awarded themselves million and $23 milgenerous contracts lion). To avoid any
Tweed Ring the hero always benefits interference from the government, officials at
Friends and cronies from some fortuitous event
Crédit Mobilier awarded congressmen stock in of New York’s corrupt
“Boss” William M.
(such as rescuing the boss’s the company. The corruption was so blatant that
Tweed
beautiful daughter from the company proxies handed out shares on the floor of
Tammany Hall path of a runaway fire truck). the House of Representatives. Recipients included
A political organization the Speaker of the House, the minority leader, and known as a “machine,”
Schuyler Colfax, vice president of the United States whose members
17-3b Political from 1868 to 1872. When the scandal became regarded politics as an
Corruption
opportunity to get rich public, it led to a congressional investigation and while providing favors to
Supported by these intelsullied the image of many of the era’s leading the urban underclass lectual justifications, many politicians. businessmen brought their
The Tweed Ring pro-business agenda to politicians. Business interests quickly became the strongest lobby in the
Urban politics were equally corrupt, and none more nation, and their requests usually came with reimso than New York’s under “Boss” William M. Tweed. bursements. In order to obtain land grants, proHis Tweed Ring of friends controlled Tammany tective tariffs, tax relief, and other “favors,” many
Hall, a Democratic political organization known as businessmen exchanged cash or stock options with a “machine” whose members regarded politics as the era’s politicians. The exchange of these favors an opportunity to get rich while providing favors to occurred on both national and local levels. These the urban underclass. Through his connections at
“exchanges” often erupted in public scandal.
Tammany, “Boss” Tweed was appointed to supervise

The most damaging of these scandals was the Crédit
Mobilier Scandal. In order to ensure an abundance of subsidies and land grants for their railroad, representatives from the Union Pacific offered federal lawmakers stock in the Crédit Mobilier Company.
The problem was that this construction company had been set up by the directors of the Union Pacific in
1867 in order to build part of
“‘Who Stole the People’s
>> ‘Twas him.” One of cartoonMoney?’ ist Thomas Nast’s famous cartoons on the corruption of the Tweed Ring. Boss
Tweed himself is pictured, far left foreground, with the full beard.

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North Wind/North Wind Picture Archives—All rights reserved

The Crédit Mobilier Scandal

graft, an “There’sofan honestworks. Iand I’msum example how it might easing the transition to the dramatic rebuilding
America for European of New York City’s infranewcomers and in dealstructure during the ing with short-term criformative years of the ses. But the system’s
Industrial Revolution. reliance on above-theTweed profited from law patronage also this rebuilding because bred inefficiency, corhe or his associates
—George Washington Plunkitt, from Plunkitt ruption, and cynicism, owned or had access of Tammany Hall, 1905 as unqualified people to many of the subconfilled important govtractors who did the ernment positions and as bribes raised prices for labor. He also typically overcharged contractors consumers. and took tidy sums off the top for himself. Tweed was eventually exposed as a fraud in 1871 and was subsequently jailed and fined. After a dramatic
17-3c Political Divisions escape, he was returned to jail, where he died in 1878.
Despite the corruption, or perhaps because of it,
Learn more about Tammany But Tammany Hall continued politics were vibrant at the national level, political
Hall and “Boss” to exert influence on local parties dominated, and few major political programs
Tweed.
politics until the early 1900s. were implemented (the battles were too fierce).
Judging from presidential elections, the nation was
The Appeal of Tammany almost evenly divided between Democrats and
Republicans. But if the nation was evenly divided,
Despite its rampant corruption, Tammany appealed the states were not, with Republicans controlling to recent Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants, who most of the northern states and Democrats controlwould provide Tammany polRead excerpts ling the South. Democrats also did well with urban iticians with their votes in from William immigrants. Rarely did the party of the president exchange for preference in
Riordan’s Plunkitt also control Congress, and between 1876 and 1896, getting city jobs, free drinks of Tammany Hall. a series of one-term presidents occupied the White on Election Day, and assorted
House. More than 80 percent of eligible voters social services. One way local “bosses” established turned out for elections, mostly because of the dynaloyalty was to watch over neighborhoods and take mism of the parties and their numerous supporting care of short-term emergencies. George Washington
Plunkitt, for example, a colorful Tammany boss who came to power a generation after the fall of Tweed, told journalist William Riordan that if a family was made homeless by a fire, he went straight to the scene, found the family a temporary place to live, gave them money for immediate necessities, and ensured that they got back on their feet.
What better way was there, he asked, to ensure voters’ gratitude and loyalty? And what did it matter if, once empowered by the votes of those he “served,” he took a little off the top?
Historians
recognize that the machine system had its advantages, both in
Martin Scorsese’s 2002 film Gangs of New York was set in the city presided over by Boss Tweed.

up the whole thing by sayin’: ‘I seen my opportunities and I took ’em.’

Miramax/courtesy Everett Collection

”

>>

The Politics of the Industrial Age

303

mugwumps

machines. Nevertheless, for the most part the nation’s leaders were incapable of managing, or unwilling to manage, the many problems associated with the
Industrial Revolution.
Moreover,
after the trauma of the Civil War, the American people often shied away from such deeply emotional issues as social welfare or concern for minorities. In a brutal reminder of the way politics could inspire passion, in
1881, President James A. Garfield was assassinated by a fellow Republican who disagreed with the president over the issue of civil service reform. Spurred to act by the assassination, Congress passed the Pendleton
Act in 1883, which for the first time created a class of federal jobs that was not entirely controlled by political patronage. (Garfield’s assassin had been fired from his post, not for incompetence, but based on the faction of the Republican Party he had supported during the election of 1880.) The act revealed divisions within the Republican Party, which was split between idealist reformers on the one hand and those supportive of machine politics and the spoils system on the other. Machine politicians mischievously labeled their Republican opponents mugwumps, meaning
Republicans who supported Democratic candidate
Grover Cleveland in the 1884 election only because the Republican candidate, James Blaine, was viewed as a product of machine politics.

The machine’s mischievous nickname for
Republicans who supported Democrat Grover
Cleveland in the 1884 election only because
Republican candidate
James Blaine was considered a product of machine politics

17-4 The Rise of Labor
For the first three decades after the Civil War, then, businessmen generally had their way in the political arena. They could count on friendly legislators to provide subsidies for promising new industries, and more mature industries might receive tariff protection against foreign competition. When workers went on strike, the government often intervened on the side of management by ordering troops to protect strikebreakers. There were few safety regulations mandated by government, and workers’ rights were limited. Job security was nonexistent. Workers who became sick or injured risked being fired, and new inventions in machinery continually made certain jobs obsolete. And pay was minimal. Although the average wage for industrial work rose between
1870 and 1900, that wage in 1900 was still only 20 cents an hour, or less than five dollars today, hardly enough to pay for adequate food, clothing, and shel-

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ter. Nevertheless, workers still went on strike and fought for better working conditions, and one of the most important developments of these years was the rise of organized labor.

17-4a The Railroad Strike of 1877
Tensions caused by these conditions inevitably reached the boiling point, and the first labor conflict to come to national attention occurred in 1877, when railroad workers in West Virginia went on strike and froze most of the country’s train traffic. The railroad industry had expanded enormously following the
Civil War, and wage cuts during the Panic of 1873 created widespread resentment among workers.
When the B&O Railroad announced a second wage cut in the calendar year, workers in Martinsville,
West Virginia, went on strike. Almost immediately, the strike extended to Maryland, Pennsylvania, and
Illinois. The easy transport brought by railroads moved more than goods; it helped circulate ideas around too.
Word of the strike reached President Rutherford
B. Hayes while he was dining in a train car with the president of the B&O Railroad, who argued that the strikers posed a serious threat to public safety. Hayes agreed and authorized the use of the
National Guard to put an end to the strikes. Violence soon erupted in towns and cities across the country, and battles broke out in Baltimore, Chicago,
San Francisco, and Pittsburgh. In St. Louis, striking railroad workers were joined by all other industrial workers in the city, shutting down all manufacturing establishments for four days. The city’s industry was at a standstill.
Eventually, the National Guard defeated the strikers, railroad workers took pay cuts, and strike leaders were jailed. But more than one hundred people were killed nationwide, and there was astronomical property damage. Though the strike’s carnage evaporated public sympathy for the workers, the conflict brought the issue of labor activism into the national consciousness.

17-4b The Struggle over Union
Expansion
As worker discontent grew, emerging unions of organized workers struggled to exert influence. But they faced an uphill battle. Business owners opposed them, had ample resources to do so, and could take advantage of ethnic, religious, and racial divisions among the workers themselves.

Opposition of Business Owners
On a practical level, employers considered unions bad for business. To stay competitive, business owners were constantly seeking to keep costs down.
Labor was one such cost, and a company whose profits were dropping might cut jobs and wages.
Most owners also saw their union-busting tactics as a defense of the American way of life. For them, union organizing ran counter to the American virtues of independence and self-reliance, and they often justified the pitfalls of the capitalist system by citing the theory of Social Darwinism or the fact that their industries were propelling the United States toward building the largest economy in the world.

Business Resources
Regardless of motive, American business owners had several resources at their disposal to fight against unions. They fired workers who joined unions and denied jobs to union organizers. Many workers had to sign a yellow dog contract, in which they promised, upon pain of termination, not to join a union.
Employers also used the blacklist, a compilation of known union activists in a particular area. Employers shared these lists and refused to hire anyone whose name appeared on them. Also, by hiring a mixture of native-born Americans and immigrants of different backgrounds, employers tried to exploit ethnic divisions to forestall any feelings of worker unity, and they did so with considerable success.
Business owners were often just as successful in breaking strikes as they were in hindering union organization. To keep their factories and mines running, they hired strikebreakers, often unemployed immigrant workers from other areas who were hungry for jobs and had no stake in the union struggle.

Divisions Among Workers
In addition to stiff opposition from business owners, union organizers also faced obstacles within the labor pool itself. Workers did not share the same levels of skill and pay, or the same occupations. More highly skilled workers enjoyed higher wages and better job security; for them, unions did not have much appeal.
Immigrant workers also posed a problem to unity.
They were isolated from one another by language and sometimes religion, and native-born Americans, who saw immigrants as a threat to their own jobs, often resented them. Many immigrants were in
America only temporarily, to earn quick money to send back home; they had families to support and did not stand to benefit from a typical strike’s long months of idleness. For these reasons, many labor

unionists despised immigrants, seeing them as not committed to the cause.

yellow dog contract

Labor Solidarity

blacklist

Despite the fractured nature of the American work force, union leaders fought to create a sense of common purpose among its members. Arguing that it was the working class, not owners and managers, who produced America’s wealth, union organizers tried to instill a sense of pride and camaraderie among union members. Some unions, especially those in urban areas with a large immigrant population, sought to overcome the inherent barriers between ethnic groups.
The International Ladies’
Garment Workers’ Union
(ILGWU) of New York City, for example, often conducted its union meetings in five different languages simultaneously.

Contract stipulating that an employee would not join a union
A compilation of known union activists in a particular area; employers refused to hire anyone whose name appeared on one

strikebreakers
Workers who agreed to work while union workers were on strike

International Ladies’
Garment Workers’
Union (ILGWU)
Major New York City union that often conducted its union meetings in five different languages simultaneously Contract Labor Law
Passed in 1885, this prohibited employers from forcing immigrants to work to pay off the costs of their passage to
America

Roles of Government and the Middle Class
To achieve their goals, union leaders needed more than solidarity among workers; they also needed support from government leaders and the politically influential middle class. Such support was hard to find. In the last two decades of the 1800s, some middle-class reformers did address labor issues, and the government did take some actions to improve worker conditions. For instance, many middle-class
Americans participated in charitable reform efforts that sought to improve workers’ living conditions.
As a result of these efforts, Congress in 1868 mandated an eight-hour workday for federal construction projects, and in 1885 it passed the Contract
Labor Law, which prohibited employers from forcing immigrants to work to pay off the costs of their passage to America. But these laws were exceptions. For the most part, the middle class and the government remained supportive of industry leaders.

17-4c The Knights of Labor
At the national level, the Knights of Labor was
America’s first effective union, one that sought to

The Rise of Labor

305

unite all of America’s “toilers” into a single organization that, through the power of its vast membership, could deliver workers from their plight. The Knights of
Labor accepted farm hands and factory workers; it welcomed women, African
Americans, and immigrants.
(The union excluded lawyers, bankers, doctors, and liquor dealers, all of whom, from the union’s perspective, were not toilers but white-collar workers.)
Founded in 1869 by a
Philadelphia tailor named
Uriah Stephens, the Knights of Labor rose to prominence in 1879, when Terence
Powderly assumed leadership. Powderly opened the union’s doors to almost all workers, and it became, for a brief time, the largest union in the country. In 1884 and 1885, the Knights of Labor entered the national spotlight when its members staged successful strikes against railroad companies in the Southwest.
Read the original After the railroad strikes,
Knights of Labor membership in the Knights platform. of Labor exploded; the union had approximately 100,000 members in 1884, and by 1886 its membership rolls had swelled to more than 750,000 workers.

The Knights of Labor, led by
>>Powderly (center), sought to
Terence
unite all the nation’s “toilers,” as indicated by the variety of laborers represented in each of the four corners of the image. The Granger Collection, New

York/The Granger Collection

The Haymarket Riot
Powderly’s distrust of strikes proved to be well founded.
Regardless of other problems plaguing the Knights of Labor, in the end it was a single event that caused the demise of the union.
In spring 1886, workers demanding an eight-hour workday went on strike against the McCormick
Harvester Company of
Chicago. On May 3, four picketers were killed during a clash with the police. The next day a rally was held in Chicago’s Haymarket
Square to protest the police’s actions. When police tried to break up this second gathering, someone threw dynamite at them. The explosion killed seven policemen and wounded dozens of others. Those police who were not injured then fired their guns into the crowd; four more people were killed, and more than a hundred others were trampled and shot at as they fled. The “Haymarket Affair,” as it was called in the press, was believed to be the work of

As quickly as it had grown, the influence of the Knights of Labor faded away. Ultimately, the Knights simply could not coordinate the activities of its members, who came from a variety of regions, industries, and ethnic backgrounds. Also, although the union owed much of its growth to the success of strikes, Powderly resisted using strikes because he believed, correctly, that they would jeopardize the union’s public standing.

>> Woodcut of dynamite exploding among police ranks during the Haymarket Square riot,
Chicago, 1886.

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North Wind/North Wind Picture Archives—All rights reserved

The Fall of the Knights

anarchists (who believed governments were unnecessary and should be abolished), and the incident created a state of hysteria among middle-class citizens, who mistakenly feared that all laborites were anarchists. Eventually, eight reputed anarchists were arrested for conspiring to kill the policemen, and although none of the men could be tied to the actual bomb, they were convicted, and seven received the death sentence.
After the Haymarket bombing, anti-union editorials appeared in newspapers across the country, and the Knights of Labor were a frequent target. One of the convicted men was a
Read Terence union member, and, although
Powderly’s Thirty
Powderly condemned the
Years of Labor. bombing, his organization became synonymous with anarchist activity. It could not survive the mischaracterization, and by the early
1890s the union was gone, and, for a short time at least, its vision of a coalition of all workers disappeared with it.

17-4d Growth and Frustrations
Despite all the setbacks, in the late 1880s and throughout the 1890s, workers continued to organize, although usually on a smaller scale than the
Knights of Labor. Particularly after 1893, when the country experienced a severe economic depression, union activity intensified. But the labor movement was no match for big business. In two important struggles, the Homestead strike of 1892 (which began when the Homestead Steel Factories outside
Pittsburgh cut wages and tried to break the local union) and the Pullman strike of 1894 (which began when the railroad developer George Pullman cut wages on his workers by 25 percent, after firing a full third during the previous weeks), business owners successfully called upon the full weight of the U.S. government to crush labor activism. In both cases, industrial leaders destroyed the strikes and the unions supporting them by calling on the state or national guard. It was clear who had the upper hand.

17-4e The Rise of the AFL
At the time of these highly publicized strikes, another union, the American Federation of Labor
(AFL), became the leading labor organization in
America. Founded in 1881, the AFL gained momentum throughout the 1880s by pursuing a different strategy than the Knights of Labor—one that made it more attractive to middle-class Americans. The
AFL was a loose federation of roughly one hundred craft unions rather than a single national union.

American Federation
It was also avowedly antiof Labor (AFL) socialist and anti-anarchist.
The leading labor organiIts leader, Samuel Gompers, zation in America, founded in 1881 by Samuel coordinated the craft unions’
Gompers and composed actions without making any of craft unions rather than central decisions for them, a single national union and by arbitrating disputes, craft union he ensured they stuck
Union of skilled laborers, by each other. However, the type of union assembled under the American
Gompers did not believe in
Federation of Labor organizing unskilled laborAmerican Socialist ers, who were easily replaced
Party
by strikebreakers.
Political party formed in
The AFL’s successes
1901 and led by Eugene helped offset failures like
V. Debs that advocated replacing the nation’s capithe Homestead and Pullman talist system strikes. Its most important
International Workers early achievement took place of the World (IWW) in 1890, when Gompers’s
A collection of militant own cigar makers’ union mining unions founded established the eight-hour in 1905 in Colorado and
Idaho; sought to use labor workday. Up until then, the activism to overthrow the typical workday had been capitalist system ten hours or longer. In a pattern typical for the AFL, other
AFL unions also demanded the shortened workday, and before long, printers, granite cutters, and coal miners were also working fewer hours per day. By the
Read Samuel
1890s, the AFL had replaced
Gompers’s
congressional the Knights of Labor as the testimony regarding AFL most important labor lobby unions. in the nation.

17-4f Labor and Politics
Despite the AFL’s victories, by the turn of the century government favoritism toward big business had convinced many labor leaders of the need for political solutions. But the labor movement was far from united in how to do this. The AFL’s Samuel Gompers argued that entering the political arena was too costly and that labor’s best strategy was to focus on winning individual concessions from owners.
Other laborites chose to enter the political arena by creating new parties. In 1901, socialists formed the American Socialist Party, led by Eugene V. Debs.
The party fielded candidates in both national and local elections, with some success. It sought to help workers by replacing the nation’s capitalist system, but through involvement in the democratic process.
More radical forms of political protest also emerged, among them those employed by the
International Workers of the World (IWW). Founded

The Rise of Labor

307

anarcho-syndicalism
A radical form of political protest that advocates the use of labor activism to overthrow the capitalist system

Read Eugene
Debs’s “How
I Became a
Socialist.”

was
“My first stepand athus taken in organized labor new influence fired my ambition and changed the whole current of my career. I was filled with enthusiasm and my blood fairly leaped in my veins. Day and night I worked for the brotherhood.

in 1905, the IWW grew out of a collection of
—Eugene V. Debs, “How militant mining unions in Colorado and Idaho, where workers scorned the AFL’s exclusiveness. Under the leadership of “Big
Bill” Haywood, the “Wobblies,” as IWW members were called, pursued anarcho-syndicalism, which sought to use labor activism to overthrow the capitalist system.

The Mainstream
Most labor leaders, however, followed the AFL’s example and avoided challenging the country’s political establishment. Nonetheless, union leaders did begin to see that influencing government officials through the political process could be beneficial to their cause. For example, when President
Theodore Roosevelt arbitrated a coal miners’ strike in 1902, he forced mine owners to make concessions to the union. During the years following 1902, laborites became active participants in the nation’s politics—a role they would continue to play throughout the twentieth century.

What else was happening . . .
1876–
1882

The right arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty cross the Atlantic three times.

1884

N. Thompson, founder of Coney Island Luna Park, introduces the roller coaster, calling it Switchback.

1886

Statue of Liberty is dedicated. The statue, a gift from France intended to commemorate the two nations’ founding ideal of liberty, will come to symbolize American freedom to millions of immigrants.

1895

Independent Labour Party founded in England.

1896

The first comic strip character—the “Yellow
Kid”—appears in the New York Journal.

1899

Felix Hoffmann patents aspirin.

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I

Looking
Ahead . . .

Between 1865 and the early 1900s, the
American
economy was transformed from one run by family shops and small factories to one generally controlled by large corporations. As these
Became a Socialist,” 1902 corporations consolidated their business practices, they helped improve access to food, material wealth, and new technologies. They also helped expand large urban centers, especially in the North, and pushed their innovations into the West and the South, creating what looked like the first national consumer culture to many Americans, where Nabisco crackers could be found in most American grocery stores and where the Sears catalogue could be found in all regions of the country.
Many of the inventions of the late nineteenth century did not seem particularly transformative to contemporaries. The New York Times reporter covering the 1882 story of Edison’s first large-scale light bulb test, in New York City, passively described the test as “in every way satisfactory.” He did not recognize the electric light bulb as something all that different from the gas bulbs that had illuminated the city before. But what the reporter missed was that the bulb required a grid of electrical power that could be extended for miles. He missed the fact that electric automation would lead to widespread electrification and spark hundreds of other inventions. One group that understood the transformative nature of the Industrial Revolution was the working class. They sought to counter the growing size and power of their new corporate bosses by coming together in unions, although beyond the perceived need for solidarity there was little in common between the variety of organizations that emerged in the late nineteenth century. And no matter their particular outlook, unions were often frustrated in their endeavors to improve the lives of the working class, if not by the power of the corporations, then by the actions of the state and federal governments.
They did achieve some success, including the eighthour workday and the forty-hour workweek, but

”

these were hard fought and it was difficult to see if more was coming.
The inventions of the Industrial Age and the expansion of corporate America affected the entire nation, although they affected each region somewhat differently. In the North, the Industrial Revolution would help transform society by inspiring the arrival of millions of immigrants and creating an urban society, along with reactionary politics, as workingclass laborers sought to make the government more responsive to their needs in the budding labor movement. The South would struggle to overcome

the disruptions of the Civil War and try to forge what it called a “New South.” And the West would utilize the developments of the Industrial Age to establish itself as a vital and increasingly well-developed part of the nation. It is to these transformations that we now must turn.
Visit the CourseMate website at www.cengagebrain.com for additional study tools and review materials for this chapter.

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