Brennan Hietpas OShea AMH 2020 January 22, 2014 AMH 2020 Paper Two After the end

of the Civil War, the United States found itself heading into a new era; an era full of new innovations in technology. These new innovations created mass industrialization for the growing and expanding nation, whose results created massive amounts factories and railroads that lead to floods of immigrants and new business tycoons. With the bright new era of industrial development exploding, this created the tangible American Dream. Many people who invested in the new industries found this new dream attainable, however many people found themselves falling short and only finding a dead end in their American citizenship. One of the biggest innovations during the era after the civil war was the new railroad systems reaching new distances and areas previously unattainable by locomotive. Due to the substantial amount of tracks being used to build the railroads nationwide, there had to be steel in order to build these. As a result of the factories there had to be oil to lubricate the equipment, leading to massive refineries. In order to produce steel in foundries, they had to have a sufficient amount of iron ore mining around the country. All of these factors led to mass industrialization, which meant factories being made around the country and many lower class people to work in these factories. The American Industrial Dream reached nobody else as much as it did to the unimaginably wealthy business tycoons at the time. Due to the fact that the industries were so new, many of the businesses didnt have any other competition leading a handful of business

owners in control of the Nations industries. For example, Andrew Carnegie found his American dream by putting all of his investments into the first steel production factories in America. In return, his investment ended up turning into a mass industry as a result of the some 40,000 miles of new railroad tracks and urban construction taking place in America. Carnegie also founded what the modern corporation that turned popular in the late 1800s. His method of vertical integration or the taking over of all the different businesses on which a company relied for its primary function (Brinkley 479). The wealthiest man that ever lived, John D. Rockefeller, did similar methods of eliminating competition by buying companies out for his company Standard Oil. Both of these men however turned their enormous wealth into a venture for helping others through philanthropy or known as the Gospel of Wealth by Andrew Carnegie. Andrew Carnegie believed that due to the wealth inequality of many Americans, the wealthy should redistribute their money to more responsible and caring approach. Mass Industrialization and monopolies that formed off of the industries left the poor with no opportunity to find themselves catching the American Dream. Immigrants from all around the world as well as Americans from rural parts of the country came to cities in the United States to find work in the factories and hopefully attempt to live a better life. However, as many of the immigrants were trying to leave the poverty and oppression of their home countries, they held false expectations of what was ahead for them in America. While much of the east coast factories had European immigrants, the west coast factories had laborers that were from regions such as Asia and Mexico. The new lower-paid immigrants started taking over the higher paid British, Irish, and Anglo-Saxon workers, thus sparking more ethnic tensions between the working-class Americans. While the working-class had very poor living environments in the cities, the factory working conditions were even more atrocious working conditions. Many of

the factories were dirty, unhealthy, and very dangerous to a point where fatal accidents were frequent that typically provided a limited range of jobs for long and repetitive hours at a time (Warner). To this situation of the inequality between sexes in the factory, author Christine Stansell asks herself in her essay: These images of iniquity so dominate the historical evidence that it is difficult to look at the situation analytically: why, we can ask, should these employers have been so particularly abusive and dishonest (Stansell). As a result of these continued horrible working conditions, laborers started coming together and trying to form unions. One of the first organizations of labor that was legitimate was the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor. The point of the unions was for the workers to get together and try to improve workers wages, hours, and conditions, and to put an end to child labor as well as improving the wages for women who were earning around half of what men were making (Brinkley 496). However, after many failed railroad strikes, the membership shrunk significantly and ended up dissolving. Another union, the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, was thwarted when Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick cut the workers wages over and over again at the Homestead. Finally, the Amalgamated called for a strike and as a result, Henry Clay Frick ordered 300 guards from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The strikers were prepared for the Pinkertons and set the river on fire where the Pinkertons came in on a barge. The workers victory only came as a short relief though when the governor ordered National Guard troops to Homestead. Another instance of a violence induced strike was the Pullman Strike. After the Pullman Company, a manufacturer for sleeping and parlor cars for railroads, cut the wages by 25%, yet

kept the same price of rent for the workers houses which were built solely for Pullman Workers. Workers went on strike and induced the American Railway Union, who was controlled by Eugene V. Debs. As a result of the joining of him, Debs union instructed its members who worked for the offending companies to walk off their jobs. Within a few days thousands of railroad workers in twenty-seven states and territories were on strike, causing transportation from Chicago to the Pacific coast to become paralyzed (Brinkley 496). Just like most of the other strikes, in the long-run the workers efforts proved worthless. How can the leaders of America then and now be so hypocritical? The nation of America is supposed to be considered a place can start from ground up, yet the monopolies and corporations in the United States earn so much money. When people with immense wealth and power can use philanthropy to try to help the community, however they slash the wages and put nothing towards their employees. The idea of modern day capitalism gave America a false promise of hope that still is kept alive by people around the world today when it is impossible to make your way into the economy when competition is buying others out. The companies simply wouldnt have dominated and made as much money by raising wages of employees. The economy was grown off of cheap labor and still used similar methods of mass foreign import using cheap sweatshop labor.

Works Cited Brinkley, Alan. Connecting with the Past. 14th ed. Vol. 2. New York: McGraw Hill Companies Inc. 2012. Print. Stansell, Christine. The Origins of the Sweatshop: Women and Early Industrialization in New York City Working-Class America. Ed. Frinch, Michael H. and Daniel J. Walkowitz. Working-Class America. University of Illinois Press: Chicago. 1983. Print. Warner, Deborah J., and Washington, DC. Smithsonian Institution. Perfect In Her Place. Women At Work In Industrial America. n.p.: 1981. ERIC. Web. 28 Jan. 2014.