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Kay Bradley

The Granger Revolution - 0 views

www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/...dangers_grangers.html

railroad magnates monopoly agriculture farmer Populist

shared by Kay Bradley on 13 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • The Grangers, an organization of farmers formed in the late 1860s, were being oppressed by the dominance and ubiquitous influence of the railroads
  • Since there was no regulation of big business, and the nature of the economy necessitated high volume transportation of crops, these farmers had no choice but to give in to the whims of the railroad tycoons. When the burden became too great to endure, the Grangers organized a revolt, which eventually led to government regulation of the railroads and other monopolies.
  • The popularity of the Grangers was "less for its social and educational advantages than for the opportunity it presented for farmers to unite against the monopolistic practices of railroads and elevators and to institute for themselves cooperative methods of buying and selling.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • This meant that they had to rely on corporately owned railroads and grain elevators for the transport of their crops. To make matters worse, "elevators, often themselves owned by railroads, charged high prices for their services, weighed and graded grain without supervision, and used their influence with the railroads to ensure that cars were not available to farmers who sought to evade elevator service."
  • the Grangers read their Farmer's Declaration of Independence, which cited all of their grievances and in which they vowed to free themselves from the tyranny of monopoly
  • Munn v. Illinois
  • Following this ruling, several pieces of legislation,
  • were passed. Though they were soon repealed, they represented the first attempts at regulating a private monopoly
  • collectively known as the Granger
  • Laws,
Kay Bradley

16. Capital and Labor | THE AMERICAN YAWP - 2 views

www.americanyawp.com/...16-capital-and-labor

labor US History economics GildedAge

shared by Kay Bradley on 21 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 heralded a new era of labor conflict
  • it was federal troops that finally defeated them
  • American soldiers were deployed all across northern rail lines
  • ...59 more annotations...
  • Nearly 100 Americans died in “The Great Upheaval.” Workers destroyed nearly $40 million worth of property.
  • galvanized the country
  • It convinced laborers of the need for institutionalized unions, persuaded businesses of the need for even greater political influence and government aid, and foretold a half century of labor conflict in the United States
  • II. The March of Capital
  • John Pierpont Morgan
  • Long hours, dangerous working conditions, and the difficulty of supporting a family on meager and unpredictable wages compelled armies of labor to organize and battle against the power of capital.
  • revolutions in American industry
  • Technological innovations
  • national investments
  • slashed the costs of production and distribution
  • New administrative frameworks sustained the weight of vast firms
  • National credit agencies
  • Plummeting transportation and communication costs opened new national media, which advertising agencies used to nationalize various products.
  • Taylorism
  • Frederick Taylor
  • Taylorism increased the scale and scope of manufacturing and allowed for the flowering of mass production.
  • use of interchangeable parts in Civil War–era weapons manufacturing
  • sewing machines
  • packers’ “disassembly” lines
  • grain reapers
  • Duke cigarette rollers
  • Henry Ford made the assembly line famous
  • Cyrus McCormick
  • Industrialization and mass production pushed the United States into the forefront of the world
  • by 1900 the United States was the world’s leading manufacturing nation
  • massive economies of scale
  • New industrial companies therefore hungered for markets to keep their high-volume production facilities operating
  • A new class of managers—comprising what one prominent economic historian called the “visible hand”—operated between the worlds of workers and owners
  • legal creations used to protect investors and sustain the power of massed capital
  • After the Civil War, however, the corporation, using new state incorporation laws passed during the Market Revolution of the early nineteenth century, became a legal mechanism for nearly any enterprise to marshal vast amounts of capital while limiting the liability of shareholders. By washing their hands of legal and financial obligations while still retaining the right to profit massively, investors flooded corporations with the capital needed to industrialize.
  • But a competitive marketplace threatened the promise of investments
  • between 1898 and 1902, a wave of mergers rocked the American economy
  • Competition melted away in what is known as “the great merger movement.”
  • Monopoly had arrived
  • Industrial capitalism realized the greatest advances in efficiency and productivity
  • But it also created millions of low-paid, unskilled, unreliable jobs with long hours and dangerous working conditions
  • new ideas arose to bestow moral legitimacy upon them
  • One of Darwin’s greatest popularizers, the British sociologist and biologist Herbert Spencer, applied Darwin’s theories to society and popularized the phrase survival of the fittest.
  • The fittest, Spencer said, would demonstrate their superiority through economic success, while state welfare and private charity would lead to social degeneration—it would encourage the survival of the weak.10
  • H. L. Mencken wrote in 1907. “All growth must occur at the top. The strong must grow stronger, and that they may do so, they must waste no strength in the vain task of trying to uplift the weak.”11
  • By the time Mencken wrote those words, the ideas of social Darwinism had spread among wealthy Americans and their defenders
  • American workers toiled in difficult jobs for long hours and little pay. Mechanization and mass production threw skilled laborers into unskilled positions
  • The typical industrial laborer could expect to be unemployed one month out of the year. They labored sixty hours a week and could still expect their annual income to fall below the poverty line.
  • skyrocketing rents trapped families in crowded slums.
  • Strikes ruptured American industry throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
  • The failure of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 convinced workers of the need to organize
  • The Knights of Labor enjoyed considerable success in the early 1880s
  • It welcomed all laborers,
  • In the summer of 1886, the campaign for an eight-hour day,
  • culminated in a national strike on May 1, 1886.
  • The deaths of the Chicago policemen sparked outrage across the nation, and the sensationalization of the Haymarket Riot helped many Americans to associate unionism with radicalism
  • Labor leaders and radicals called for a protest at Haymarket Square
  • The American Federation of Labor (AFL) emerged as a conservative alternative to the vision of the Knights of Labor. An alliance of craft unions (unions composed of skilled workers), the AFL rejected the Knights’ expansive vision of a “producerist” economy and advocated “pure and simple trade unionism,” a program that aimed for practical gains (higher wages, fewer hours, and safer conditions) through a conservative approach that tried to avoid strikes.
  • Homestead, Pennsylvania.
  • Henry Clay Frick
  • Pinkerton detectives,
  • Still, despite repeated failure, strikes continued to roll across the industrial landscape.
  • 1894, workers in George Pullman’s Pullman car factories struck when he cut wages by a quarter but kept rents and utilities in his company town constant. The American Railway Union (ARU), led by Eugene Debs, launched a sympathy strike: the ARU would refuse to handle any Pullman cars on any rail line anywhere in the country.
  • workers were not the only ones struggling to stay afloat in industrial America. American farmers also lashed out against the inequalities of the Gilded Age and denounced political corruption for enabling economic theft.
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