Chapter 24 Reading Guide
Industry Comes of Age 1865-1900
Terms: Transcontinental Railroad, James J. Hill, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Credit Mobilier, Grange, Wabash case, Interstate Commerce Act, Alexander Graham Bell, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Thomas Edison, Horizontal Integration, Vertical Integration, Bessemer Process, Standard Oil, Gospel of Wealth, Social Darwinism, Sherman Anti-Trust act, Henry W. Grady, Yellow dog contracts, Company Town, National Labor Union, Knights of Labor, Terrence Powderly, Haymarket Square Riot, Mother Jones, Samuel Gompers, American Federation of Labor.
I. Railroads
A. The Iron Colt becomes the Iron Horse
1. Describe the expansion of railroads between 1865-1900.
2. How was this expansion federally subsidized?
3. What benefits came to the government because of subsidization?
B. Spanning the Continent with Rails
1. Why was the transcontinental railroad started? How was it possible?
2. Who primarily provided labor for the Central Pacific Railroad?
3. Explain the significance of the transcontinental railroad.
C. Binding the Country with Railroad Ties
How did the great northern railroad differ from the other transcontinental railroad?
D. Railroad Consolidation and Mechanization
Explain how improvements or refinements benefited the railroad industry.
E. Revolution by Railways
1. How did the Railroads affect industrialization?
2. How did the Railroads affect Agriculture?
3. How did the Railroads affect Mining?
4. How did the Railroads affect Cities?
5. How did the Railroads affect Immigration?
6. How did the Railroads affect the Environment?
7. How did the Railroads affect Class Structure?
F. Wrongdoing in Railroading
1. How were the Railroads affected by corruption?
2. How did arrangements like pooling, rebates, and drawbacks affect the small farmer? The Capitalist?
G. Government Bridles the Iron Horse
1. How did the Depression of 1873 affect the Railroads?
2. Why didn’t the states regulate the Railroads? How did regulation eventually come about?
3. How effective was this regulation?
4. What effect did the Interstate Commerce Commission have on the existing business system?
5. Why was the ICC significant?
II. America Industrial Rocket Takes Off
A. Miracles of Mechanization
1. What happened to American manufacturing between 1860-1894?
2. How did the Civil War affect Industrialization?
3. What part did immigration play in the rise of industrialization?
4. What new inventions affected industrialization? How?
5. What effect did the invention of the typewriter and the telephone have on women?
B. The Trust Titan Emerges
1. How did Carnegie out-compete his competition?
2. Explain the difference between vertical integration and horizontal integration.
3. What is a trust? What did Rockefeller seek to do in the oil refining industry? Was he successful?
4. How did J.P. Morgan seek to limit competition?
C. The Supremacy of Steel
1. What made cheap steel possible?
2. How did America go from little steel production to out-producing England and Germany combined by 1900?
D. Carnegie and Other Sultans of Steel
How did Carnegie force J.P. Morgan to buy Carnegie Steel for
$400 million?
E. Rockefeller Grows and American Beauty Rose
1. What was oil used for in the 19th century?
2. What made this obsolete?
3. What replaced the lantern as the main consumer of refined oil? (My Suburban)
4. How did Rockefeller make Standard Oil a monopoly? What is a monopoly? Why was it compared to a Beauty Rose?
5. What were the negatives of such a trust? Positives?
6. What other trusts blossomed during this period?
F. The Gospel of Wealth
1. What was the Gospel of Wealth?
2. How did Social Darwinists explain the difference in wealth between the classes?
3. How were states prevented from regulating or controlling the trusts?
G. Government Tackles the Trust Evil
1. What was the Sherman Anti-Trust Act?
2. How effective was it? Why?
H. The South in the Age of Industry
1. How did technology affect southern agriculture?
2. What barriers were there to southern industrialization?
3. What was the Pittsburgh Plus? Why was it applied to southern steel?
4. In what area of manufacturing did the South excel after the Civil War?
5. What effect did this have on southerners?
I. The Impact of the New Industrial Revolution on America
1. Explain the benefits of Industry.
2. What effect did Industry have on Jeffersonian ideals?
3. How were women affected by the new industrial age?
4. What effect did the machine age have on class?
5. How did the shift from self employed to wage earning affect workers?
6. Why was there strong pressure for foreign trade?
III. Rise of Labor
A. In Unions There is Strength
1. How had factory work changed post war?
2. How did machines and a glutted labor market affect wages?
3. What tactics did employers use against labor?
4. How did the middle class react to organized labor? Why?
B. Labor Limps Along
1. What were the goals of the National Labor Union? What led to its demise?
2. What were the goals of the Knights of Labor?
C. Unhorsing the Knights of Labor
1. What led to the demise of the Knights of Labor?
2. Why did the Haymarket incident result in the decline of the Knights of Labor?
3. What were other reasons for the Knights of Labor to decline?
4. Makers of America: How did Powderly and Gompers’ vision differ?
D. The AF of L to the Fore
1. How was the AF of L organized?
2. What were the goals of the American Federation of Labor?
3. What were their tactics?
4. What effect did strikes have in the last two decades of the 19th century?
IV. Varying Viewpoints- Industrialization: Boon or Blight
1. Why has class-based protest never been as powerful a force in the U.S. as in Europe?
2. How did success differ in regards to ethnicity and how does this challenge interpretations of social mobility in America?