HIST 151 Lecture 7 Chapter 18 Business and Politics in the Gilded Age 1865 1900 Outline of Last Lecture I Wounded Knee II 1890 Census and Frederick Jackson Turner s The Significance of the Frontier in American History III Helen Hunt Jackson s A Century of Dishonor Outline of Current Lecture I Mark Twain Gilded C Age II Railroads Union Pacific Central Pacific Great Northern III Golden Spike IV Steel and Oil a Carnegie Steel b Rockefeller and Standard Oil and Tarbell V Laissez Faire Current Lecture Mark Twain Gilded C Age Twain was a bitter critic and saw this period of history as a trap which is the best way to describe it for 98 of the people living during this time period It looked wonderful from the outside but that glamorous layer was very thin Behind it was the truth and it was a cage like squalor Railroads Union Pacific Central Pacific Great Northern The first major cities emerge such as New York City Cleveland Pittsburg Philadelphia etc These are all because of RAILROADS Towns and cities pop up along railroads and the government hands out land for more railroads so more cities and money can be made In this time railroads had all the power and could do whatever they wanted without regulation Golden Spike These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute This was the last spike to be placed at Promontory Summit in Utah completing the Transcontinental Railroad Now people could travel from east to west easily which was HUGE Steel and Oil Steel is better than iron So o Carnegie who works his way up from an errand boy to an assistant for a company goes to Europe to check out the Bessemer Method This is a method of purifying iron ore before it sets which turns it into steel It s a special combination of heating and blowing air into the ore o Carnegie then brings this method back to the US with him and because one of the first millionaires o He ends up donating his fortune to schools and other public projects when he died If you lube up steel you can do so much more with it Thus the need for Oil o Standard Oil and Exon is born from Rockefeller who becomes another one of the first millionaires o McCores Magazines wanted to see how Standard Oil worked so muckraker Ida Tarbell investigated the business tactics and such for years She ended up writing the book The History of the Standard Oil Company It told the story of Rockefeller and what a terrible man he was due to awful business practices and the treatment of his employees Laissez Faire Means let it be in French Referring to government policy at the time They were absolutely hands off when it came to the economy business and regulations Because of this these millionaires became as powerful as they were and essentially bought the government and ran politics They weren t breaking any rules because there were no rules to break
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