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30 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Why didn't the government fund the railroads? |
It was too costly and risky for government subsidies. Congress gave liberal money loans to two favored companies. Land grants were made instead. |
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Why didn't people want to extend rails? |
Private promoters didn't want to suffer initial losses. |
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What benefits did the government get from "giving away" public land? |
Lower rates for postal and military traffic. Also, it was a cheap way to subsidize a much-needed transportation. Also avoided new taxes for direct cash grants. |
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What happened to villages where railroads were built near? |
They became boomtowns. Those that were bypassed became "ghost towns." |
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How was deadlock over the proposed railroad broken? |
When the south seceded. The Union wanted to bind the Pacific Coast more securely to the rest of the Republic. |
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What was the Union Pacific Railroad? |
A railroad commissioned to thrust westward fro Omaha, Nebraska. |
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How was rail laying at the California end? |
Central Pacific Railroad- Sacramento through Sierra Nevada. The Big Four were the cheif financial bankers on this enterprise. Included Leland Stanford, Collis P, Huntington, etc. There were many Chinese workers. |
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Where was the wedding of the rails? What was important about this? |
Ogden, Utah. Completion of the transcontinental line was one of America's greatest feats, it welded the West to the Union and facilitated a trade with Asia- growth of the West. |
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Four other railroads built? |
1) Northern Pacific- Lake Superior to Puget Sound- 1883 2) Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe- 1884 3) Southern Pacific Railroad- NOLA to San Fran- 1884 4) Great Northern- 1893- Duluth to Seattle- James J Hill |
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Who was Vanderbilt? |
Commodore Vanderbilt built the New York Central. Success of western lines were facilitated by welding together andd expanding the older eastern networks. |
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What were Vanderbilt's refinements? |
1) Steel raid- iron track to steel 2) Standard gauge 3) Westinghouse air brake 4) Pullman Palace Cars |
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What was a mogul of manipulation in railroading? |
Stock watern- railroad stock promoters would boast and inflate their claims about a given line's profitability and sold stocks far in excess than the actual value. |
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Who exercised more control than the president (kind of)? |
Railroad kings had so much influence. The began to cooperate with each other to rule the dominion. |
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What was the earliest form of combination? |
The pool- divide business and share profits- slash rates on competing lines, but increase on non-competing ones. |
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Why was the Grange formed? |
Agrarian group (the Grange- Patrons of Husbandry) tried to regulate the railroad monopoly during the Depression of 1870s. |
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What happened in the Wabash case? |
A Supreme Court decision that prohibited states from regulating the railroads because the Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. As a result, reformers turned their attention to the federal government, which now held sole power to regulate the railroad industry. |
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What was the first large-scale attempt by Washington to regulate big businesses? |
The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. It established the Interstate Commerce Commission, compelled railroads to publish standard rates, and prohibited rebates and pools. Railroads quickly became adept at using the Act to achieve their own ends, but the Act gave the government an important means to regulate big business. The Act heralded the arrival of a series of independent regulatory commissions in the next century, which wouuld commit the government to the task of monitoruing the private economy. |
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What factors led to industrialization? |
1) Liquid capital- the word millionaire was coined 2) Natural resources- coal, iron, oil (Mesabi Iron Ore) 3) Immigration made labor cheap and plentiful 4) Inventions- cash register, stock ticker, typewriter, telephone, light bulb, etc. |
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How did Carnegie use vertical integration? |
Carnegie pioneered the entrepreneurial tactic of "vertical integration," combining into one organization all phases of manufacturing from mining to market. His goal was to improve efficiency by making supplied more reliable, also eliminating middlemen fees. |
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How did Rockefeller use horizontal integration? |
Rockefeller dominating a particular phase of the production process in order to monopolize a market, often by forming trusts and alliances with competitors. |
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What is a trust? |
A mechanism by which one company grants control over its operations, through ownership of its stock, to another company. The Standard Oil Company became known for this practice in the 1870s as it eliminated its competition by taking control of smaller oil companies. |
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What was so cool about steel? |
Steel held together the new civilization, from skyscrapers to coal scuttles to railroads. Steel was expensive- Vanderbilt still had to import from Britain. |
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What revolutionized the steel making process? |
The Bessemer Process made cheap steel. Within 20 years, the US had been pouring out 1/3 of the world's steel supply. |
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How did the oil industry come up? |
Traces of oil found on streams had been collected but not until Drake's Folly in Pennsylvania. Overnight, and industry began. Inventions were improving other inventions. Rockefeller dominated the industry with his Standard Oil Company. |
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Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 |
A law that forbade trusts or combinations in business, this was landmark legislation because it was one of the first Congressional attempts to regulate big business for the public good. At first the law was mostly used to restrain trade unions as the courts tended to side with companies in legal cases. In 1914 the Act was revised so it could more effectively be used against monopolistic corporations. The Act was ineffective because of legal loopholes and contrary to its intent, it was used to curb labor unions. |
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The National Labor Union |
This first national labor organization in U.S. history was founded in 1866 and gained 600,000 members from many parts of the workforce, although it limited the participation of Chinese, women, and blacks. The organization devoted much of its energy to fighting for an eight-hour workday before it dissolved in 1872 because of the depression. |
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Which labor organization came after the National Labor Union? |
The Knights of Labor was the second national labor organization, organized in 1869 as a secret society and opened for public membership in 1881. The Knights were known for their efforts to organize all workers, regardless of skill level, gender, or race. After the mid-1880s their membership declined for a variety of reasons, including the Knights' participation in violent strikes and discord between skilled and unskilled members. They were under the leadership of Powderly. They succeeded in their strike against Jay Gould's Wabash Railroad. |
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Haymarket Square Riot 1886 |
A May Day rally that turned violent when someone threw a bomb into the middle of the meeting, killing several dozen people. Eight anarchists were arrested for conspiracy contributing to the disorder, although evidence linking them to the bombing was thin. Four were executed, one committed suicide, and three were pardoned in 1893. |
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What was the result of the riot?
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The decline of the KOL movement. Unskilled in the union was bad because they could be replaced by scabs.
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What was the AF of L and who led it? |
A national federation of trade unions that included only skilled workers, founded in 1886. Led by Samuel Gompers for nearly four decades, the AFL sought to negotiate with employers for a better kind of capitalism that rewarded workers fairly with better wages, hours, and conditions. The AFL's membership was almost entirely white and male until the middle of the twentieth century. Labor Day became a national holiday. |
