History Notes 1873 Demonetization of silver the crime of 73 congress passed a law that discontinued silver coinage in 1873 this caused the value of silver to drop to 16 to 1 the law was called the crime of 73 Congress pretty much foreclosed an expanding currency and eliminated a potential market for silver miners Silver mine owners wanted to sell the government there surplus of silver for much higher than market price and farmers wanted and increase in the quantity of money Inflation so they could sell their farm goods for high prices to ease their debit They demanded free and unlimited coinage of silver but by time the depression began congress took no response to their needs At the same time the governments gold reserves were dropping because of the Sherman silver purchase act which required the government to buy silver but not coin it Pres Cleveland later repealed the act which caused a permanent split in the Democratic Party 1893 the panic of 93 Began March 1893 Philadelphia and Reading Railroad were unable to meet payments on loans and declared bankruptcy 2 months later the national cordage company failed as well These 2 corporate failures triggered a stock market collapse A lot of New York banks were heavy investors which caused a credit contradiction which caused businesses that were mainly credit dependent to go bankrupt Depressed prices in agriculture since 1887 weakened the farmers purchasing which made up most of the population Within 6 months of the panic 8k businesses 156 railroads and 400 banks failed 1 million workers 20 of the labor force lost their jobs which was the highest level of unemployment in American history Prosperity did not fully return until 1901 Growth of American Industries factors abundant raw materials large and growing labor supply surge in technological innovation emergence of talented ambitious and often ruthless group of entrepreneurs federal gov t eager to assist the growth of entrepreneur s a fed gov t eager to assist growth of business great expanding domestic market for products of manufacturing Taylorism Subdividing every task into an assembly line process would make workers interchangeable and diminish manager s dependence on any particular employee Reduce the need for highly skilled and trained employees if managed by the right people using proper modern technology Taylor claimed workers could produce at a much faster rate Tycoons Captains of industry Henry Ford John D Rockefeller Andrew Carnegie new managerial system impelemented relied heavily on division of responsibilities genesis of modern business administration carefully designed hierarchy of control modern cost accounting procedures and new breed of business managers the middle manager who formed a layer of command between workers and owners Horizontal integration The combining of a number of firms engaged in the same enterprise into a single corporation Vertical integration The taking over of all different businesses on which a company relied for its primary function Social Darwinism the application of Charles Darwin s law of evolution and natural selection among species to human society Just as only the fittest survived in the process of evolution Social Darwinists claimed so in human society only the fittest individuals survived and flourished in the marketplace Herbert Spencer society benefited from the elimination of the unfit and survival of strongest and talented The Gospel of Wealth Andrew Carnegie s book in 1901 that the wealthy should consider all revenues in excess of their own needs as trust funds to be used for the good of the community the person of wealth he said were mere trustee and agent for his poorer brethren Labor response to the concentration of wealth unions and striking Robber barons By the late 1800s the term was typically applied to businessmen who used what were considered to be exploitative practices to amass their wealth These practices included exerting control over national resources accruing high levels of government influence paying extremely low wages squashing competition by acquiring competitors in order to create monopolies and eventually raise prices and schemes to sell stock at inflated prices 2 to unsuspecting investors in a manner which would eventually destroy the company for which the stock was issued and impoverish investors Labor unrest unionization strikes riots picket lines National Labor Union 1866 William H Syvlvis polyglot association claiming 640k members included variety of reform groups having little direct relationship with labor disintegrated after panic of 1873 Great Railroad Strike of of 1877 began when Eastren RR co announced 10 wage cut which spurred into class war Strikers disrupted rail service from Baltimore to St Louis by destroying equipment and rioted streets of Pittsburgh 11 demonstrators died in Baltimore State guard called to Philadelphia and shot at thousands of workers and families blocking railroad crossings killed 20 Knights of Labor founded 1869 under leader Uriah Stephens all who were toiled joined this means all workers and most business and professional people most organizations were loosely organized met in local assemblies loosely affiliated with the national general assembly late 1870s under leader Terrence Powderly the order moved into open and by 1886 over 700k members in defiance of Powderly many local unions associated with the Knights launched series of strikes 1885 striking railway workers forced Missouri Pacific to restore wage cuts and recognize their union the Following year strike on another Gould railroad Pacific and Texas were crushed and power of unions in Gould system were broken By 1890 member of knights decreased to 100k few years and union dismembered American Federation of Labor 1881 existing union workers formed Federation of Organized Trade and Labor Unions 5 years later turned into American Federation of Labor AFL soon became most enduring labor group in country Rejecting Knight s idea of one big union for everybody the Federation was an association of autonomous craft workers and represented mainly skilled workers It was hostile to organizing unskilled workers who did not fit comfortably within the craft based structure of existing organizations all male leaders of AFL were hostile towards idea of women entering paid workforce bc women were weak they believed employers could easily take advantage of them by paying them less therefore women workers drove down wages for all