INDUSTRIALISM

Today, we discuss industrialism in the U.S.

Try to name an area of your life not now impacted by industrialism.

“This association of poverty with progress is the great enigma of our times…It is the riddle which the Sphinx of Fate puts to our civilization, and which not to answer is to be destroyed.”

Henry George, Progress and Poverty, 1879

Why does such wretched poverty often seem to accompany vast economic growth?

The Age of Unparalleled Industrial Expansion:

How much growth was there?

Handout:  1860 vs. 1900

1.        Write your name on the back of the handout.

Look at the numbers, but do not say anything to your neighbor. Do, however, write extensively on the paper. Write down any idea that comes to mind, connecting them to the fact that spurred the thought. Circle. Draw lines. Write. Fill the page with your ideas.

Do this first part without conferring with your neighbor.

2.        Pass the paper to someone in a row far far away.

3.         With the paper now in front of you, choose a couple of the ideas that you think are most compelling or brilliant. Comment on them, asking questions, expanding the conclusions of the original author, or remarking in any way that you think will push the conversation on paper forward.

4.        Pass the paper again…continue the conversation.

5. Get the thing back to the original author.

The Age of Unparalleled Industrial Expansion:

I. Why was there such vast growth so rapidly in the U.S.?

1.  War: Why would war encourage industrial growth?

Example #1: Morrill Act (1862)

Example #2: Railroads:

                     1860: 30,000 miles of r.r.

                     1864: Congress grants 131 million acres

                     1910: 240,000 miles of railway

2.         Resources:     land, raw materials, people,

ideas=booooooom!

…in 1800 it took 56 man-hours per acre to raise wheat.

…in 1900, it required only 15 man-hours per acre.

                     1864: 872,000 tons of iron and steel

1919: more than 24 million tons

        

                     1860: 20 million tons of coal

1910: 500 million tons of coal

                     1860: 500,000 barrels of petroleum

1910: 209 million barrels of petroleum

3. Integration:

         a. Horizontal Integration:

--monopolize one part of the productive process

Example: meatpacking plants

b. Vertical Integration:

--monopolize all elements of productive process

        

Example: Andrew Carnegie: mining iron ore, own blast furnaces (factories), own shops, own ships, own railroad and rail lines

4. Mindset:

a. Small Government is Best:

                     Laissez faire: “let it do”

                     Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)

                                 “the invisible hand”

b. Aggressive Business Mentality:

The Robber Barons

         Notable examples:

ü  John D. Rockefeller

ü  Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie: “It is the mind that makes the body rich. There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.”

“The man who dies rich, dies disgraced.”

ü  J.P. Morgan

ü  Jay Gould: “Mephistopheles of Wall

Street”

                                             (bribed Grant’s brother in law for gold

secrets)

ü  Cornelius Van Derbilt:

(steamships and railroads: $100 million)

Gentlemen:

You have undertaken to cheat me. I will not sue you, for law takes too long. I will ruin you.

                                             Sincerely,

                                                         CVD

c. Justifying the New World:

How do you justify the world when fabulous wealth and wretched poverty exist so closely together?

         William Graham Sumner:

Social Darwinism

The product of all that wealth so quickly is the NEW CITY:

The New Impoverished City

Rapid Urbanization:

1860:   25 million Americans lived in rural areas

6.2 million in what the Bureau of the Census

called "urban territory" (2500 or more)

1910: 42 million of the 92 million in urban areas

Tenement Buildings:

1879 NYC law declared that every room must have a window and every floor must have a bathroom

Contamination:

         1877-Philadelphia: 82,000 privies

        

         Boston Harbor was “one vast cesspool, a threat to all

the towns it washed.”

Crime-Filled:

         Murder Rate: 1266 in 1881

 7340 in 1898

(an increase of 25 per million people, to 107 per million people)

Women in Workforce:

         1/7^th of the Paid workforce

         (2.6 million of the 17.4 million)         

                     500,000 married, yet they were paid less than

men, especially after 1900 when the “family wage” idea spread.

Immigration:

Newspaper in 1900: "It is well known that nearly every foreigner…goes armed. Some carry revolvers, while many others hide huge ugly knives upon their person."

Senator William Bruce (Maryland):

Immigrants are “indigestible lumps in

the national stomach.”

         1890-1900: 3.5 million

         1900-1910: 7 million

                     Ellis Island:

“Such an impulse toward better things there certainly is. The German rag-picker of thirty years ago, quite as low in the scale as his Italian successor, is the thrifty tradesman or prosperous farmer of to-day. The Italian scavenger of our time is fast graduating into exclusive control of the corner fruit-stands, while his black-eyed boy monopolizes the boot-blacking industry in which a few years ago he was an intruder.” 

Jacob Riis on social fluidity

Children Working in the cotton mills (Tennessee Valley)

"They were children only in age…little, solemn pygmy people, whom poverty had canned up and compressed…the juices of childhood had been pressed our…no talking in the mill…no singing…they were more dead than alive when at seven o clock, the Steam Beast uttered the last volcanic howl which said they might go home…in a speechless, haggard, over-worked procession."

What if you do not want to justify the disparity between rich and poor? What could you do?
II. Progressivism:

JACOB RIIS HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVE READING GUIDE:

How to Read How the Other Half Lives:

1. Read the book quickly. There’s no need to read every word or remember every story.
2. However, as you read, focus on individual scenes, descriptions, or characters who stand out to you. What makes those parts of the book so gripping? Write down individual page numbers to enhance our discussion.
3. Read the following discussion questions before reading the book. As you read, look for answers to these issues. You will not be turning these in, but the questions will guide our discussion of the book.
Based on the first chapter, describe tenement life.
What is impoverished about tenement life?
Why do you think Riis writes this work?
What impact do the photos have on your reading of this work? What does Riis hope to achieve through images?
As you read, look for evidence of Riis’ views on assimilation. Does he seem to think assimilation is possible?

IMMIGRATION INTERVIEW GUIDELINES AND POSSIBLE QUESTIONS

Interviewer Name: ___________________/ INTERVIEW GUIDELINES/             Due: 9/26/12

Find someone who is at least 50 years old and an immigrant to this country(if possible, 60, but 50 is fine).

Gather the information with as little of your own input as possible. 

What you should include is not your interpretation of what is said. 

Instead, copy direct quotes of what is said:           

BAD:    “Jenny said she was unhappy at first.”    GOOD: “I was so unhappy at first.”

If the respondent agrees, you may record the interview; however, you must bring the transcript on paper.

This may be handwritten. You may bring the interview in another language.

Be prepared for your interview to stray away from the questions below. This is the nature of oral history. Embrace it. Some of the best stories are answers to questions unasked.

HERE ARE SOME SAMPLE QUESTION MEANT TO GUIDE YOUR INTERVIEW...YOU MAY STRAY FROM THEM.

Name of Interview Subject: (optional)

1. Where were you born? What was it like in your country of origin? Have you been back?

2. At approximately what age did you move to the United States?

3. Do you remember, or have you been told, why you left your country of origin?(push)

4. Was the decision to leave your own or were you pressured to leave by someone else? Explain.

5. What made you come to the United States instead of somewhere else? (pull)

6. Did you deal with immigration officials or anyone else in government as part of your journey or at some point after your arrival? How was that experience?

7. What difficulties did you face during the journey?

8. What difficulties did you face in the first years after arriving?

9. Did you find a community of other immigrants when you arrived? What was that like?

10. What do you think are the biggest problems facing immigrants today?

RECONSTRUCTION OUTLINE

I. Reconstruction

     A. PRESIDENTIAL RECONSTRUCTION

           1. Lincoln

           2. Johnson

     B. CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION

           1. RADICALS IN CONGRESS

Thaddeus Stevens & Charles Sumner

“The foundations of their institutions

must be broken up and re-laid, or all our blood and treasure will have been spent in vain.” (Stevens)

                              Frederick Douglass (1865):

"Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot."

           2. MODERATES IN CONGRESS

Wade-Davis Bill (ironclad oath)

                                    --passed Congress at end of 1864:

--sent to the President.

What are his options?

           3. Freedmen's Bureau

     C. JOHNSON'S “RESTORATION”

           --Black Codes

          

Next time we will talk about how the Radicals in Congress begin to take control of the Reconstruction process.

     D. RADICALS STRIKE BACK

           1. First Civil Rights Bill

           2. First Reconstruction Acts

           3. 14th Amendment

           4. Tenure of Office Act

           5. Fifteenth Amendment

     E.   The Compromise of 1877

                 1. Hayes versus Tilden

2. The “End” of Reconstruction

The Souls of Black Folk (1901) W.E.B. DuBois:

"For this much all men know: despite compromise, war, and struggle, the Negro is not free. In the backwoods...he may not leave the plantation of his birth...in the whole rural South the black farmers are...bound by law and custom to an economic slavery, from which the only escape is death or the penitentiary. In the most cultured sections and cities of the South the Negroes are a segregated and servile caste, with restricted rights and privileges. Before the courts, both in law and custom, they stand on a different and peculiar basis...The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line."