Two other Go-Getters were Morgan and Carnegie. Morgan was a rich organizer who bought all bankrupted companies, and Carnegie was poor, but made money in grain trading. Shortly after, he moved into the steel industry. In 1900, he made 25 million dollars in the steel business. Morgan offered to buy his steel business for 420-480 billion dollars, and soon after, he produced 60% of the countries steel.
When rock oil came along, it changed the world. A man named Bissell opened a rock oil company in Western Pennsylvania. This company was used for medicinal purposes; it was not a moneymaker. He gave a Yale professor named Ben Sillimah, 500 dollars to figure out what to do with it. He figured out that if the oil was distilled, it could operate better than kerosene used as a lubricant. Their problem was getting oil, because it could only be found in lakes, so Bissell sent Edwin Drake to find another way to drill for oil. He stopped in Titusville, and found a man named Uncle Billy Smith to drill for him. It took him 3 months to get 70 feet below the surface. One day, he found oil, and it began the oil rush. Pennsylvania became an oil field. Rockefellar started his business in Cleveland, Ohio. He bought his first oil refinery in 1865. He went to a railroad company and said that he needed to transport barrels of oil, and if they did not help him with the expensive price to do so, he would go to another company to help him, and make them bankrupt. They agreed, and gave him a rebate. After that, he went to a little company and told them to sell their company to him, but they gave him practically nothing. Soon after, he built his own pipeline, where he manufactured oil lamps, and sold it to the Chinese. The oil industry grew and exploded when automobiles were invented.
Between the years of 1860 and 1910, 23 million people immigrated from Europe. In 1860, the government passed a law, making a 10-hour workday for every worker, but no one went around enforcing it. People usually worked 12 hours. In 1868, an 8-hour workday law was passed, but it only applied to government work. Usually people got paid in piecework, which was that they would get paid for the amount of products they made. This was favorable for young people. Later on, a man named Fredrick Taylor developed Efficiency Work. In 1881, he examined the factories and everyone’s job, and put they into tasks. He put a time on each part of the task, which meant that they could not do as they pleased and everything was a on a time scale. There was also a product/craftsmen relationship. Workers were seen as machines. They worked in a strict environment. There was much noise, poor ventilation, and poor lighting. In 1882, there were up to 675 people killed a week. Woman also worked, but had poorer jobs, and poorer pay. They had simple task jobs, such as sewing. There was no room for advancement.
In 1890, the U.S. conducted a census. 9% of the population owned 75% of the wealth. This caused resentment against workers. Cooperation instead of competition began in Europe in 1830. Karl Marx wrote a communist manifesto. Most people turned to trade unions. In 1837, a panic came about, and it was a year of depression. After the Civil War, unions came about more. They provided for members during hard times. In the 1860’s and 1870’s unions began to nationalize. In 1869, the Knights of Labor erupted. It organized many different groups, such as farmers, factory workers, office workers- skilled and unskilled, and African Americans.
Many members believed in strikes, and won the strike against a railroad company, which boosted membership to over 700,000. It controlled money, votes, and fields of work. This was called the American Federation of Labor. A man named Samuel Gompers took people of one skill, and broke them down into specific areas. In 1892, he gained 250,000 members, but women and Africans were excluded. They felt that women took away bargaining power from the union.
Employees working in a factory believed in collective bargaining, which instead of one person doing the same thing at a time to negotiate demands, one did everything for all. They tried to get closed shops, which was a place where you had to join the union to work there. Employers believed in forbidding meetings, and firing union organizers. They made workers promise to not join the unions, and refused to recognize union representatives. They thought that workers most powerful tool was a strike, which was a risk to one’s entire life. In 1877, B & O Railroad spread across the entire country, and demanded better working conditions and better pay. In 1892, the Homestead Strike was developed in Homestead, Pennsylvania. The Pinkertons were called upon to break up union strikes.
The last of the great strikes was Pullman’s Strike. Pullman was a train/car maker, who built for his workers. In 1894, he laid-off and cut wages, which made people very angry. His workers went to protest, so he fired 3 out of 5 of them. The strike spread throughout the country, so employers turned to the government and President Grover Cleveland for help. All laborers had to go back to work by the force of troops that had been sent. This started a trend so that whenever workers went on strike, owners could go to the federal government for help.
A man named Thomas Edison, who started out in a city to improve technology for the stock ticker, received a bonus of 40,000 dollars, and left to open a business in New Jersey. He invented many things, but his favorite of them all was the Phonograph. He invented the light bulb with the help of Lewis Latimer, and hooked up New York City buildings to a power plant. By 1890, power plants were everywhere. He came up with a direct current, that went only 1 mile, but a man named Westinghouse had made a current that was alternating, and was a transformer. By 1898, there were 3,000 power stations powering over 2 million light bulbs. The affects that it had on daily lives were the birth of appliances, such as the refrigerator, and jobs were created.
The development of the Industrial Revolution changed many things, and helped a good portion of them. Americans lives were made easier, and the good that it brought out is still used today. Great accomplishments will continue to occur, and make history such as the big explosion of the development of big industries.
