Industrial Revolution: Key Figures, Labor, and Immigration

Industrial Revolution:

Key Figures

Andrew Carnegie:

• U.S. Steel
• Pennsylvania
• Sold company
• Gave 80% of fortune to educational, cultural, and scientific foundations
• Donated $350M to 2,500 public libraries, universities, and other foundations
• Improved workers' conditions
• Workers were previously treated poorly with low wages, paid for output, not hours
• Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth: Help those who will help themselves

John D. Rockefeller:

• Oil business
• Ohio
• Acquired competitors
• Christian family: Taught to give to charity
• Half of wealth used for public education through philanthropic efforts: building universities (University of Chicago), libraries, and art education
• Workers treated fairly, fostering a sense of belonging in the “Standard Oil Factory”

J.P. Morgan:

• Banking
• Success due to his financier father
• Established Morgan and Company
• Created Federal Steel Company, merged it with Carnegie's U.S. Steel
• Significant contributions to art

Cornelius Vanderbilt:

• Started passenger ferry business in NY Harbor with one boat
• Started steamship company
• Controlled Hudson River traffic
• Established the first rail service between NY and Chicago
• Reputation as a robber baron due to poor working conditions, frequent firings, and low wages

Labor Movements

Unions:

• Created strikes, riots, and collective bargaining
• Initially illegal: Punishment included imprisonment
• Unemployed rioted, seeking revenge on working people, feeling jobs were being taken
• Employed rioted to raise wages and improve working conditions
• Both groups rioted by destroying machinery
• By the 1800s, it became legal to form trade unions

Muckrakers:

• Individuals who exaggerated issues to bring about change (e.g., Upton Sinclair's The Jungle about the meatpacking industry)

Immigration

Push Factors:

• Racism
• Low wages
• Wars
• Disease
• Religious intolerance

Pull Factors:

• New job opportunities
• Religious and political freedom
• Existing communities (family, friends)
• The promise of the American Dream
• Opportunity to own land/farmland
• Lower costs

Ellis Island:

• Border patrol and immigrant processing center
• Immigrants underwent a 6-second medical check; those who failed were given a full medical examination
• If passed, immigrants moved to the great hall for processing
• The process lasted about 4 hours, with 29 questions asked (name, occupation, amount of money)
• 2% were denied due to disease, criminal background, or insanity and were sent back to their countries
• Before 1900: Primarily immigrants from Northern/Western Europe
• After 1900: Primarily immigrants from Eastern/Southern Europe (Slavic, Russian, Italian, and/or Jewish)