Week of October 3rd - October 7th - Blogs

Monday -

Life of a farmer
- The Grange
  - Started after the Civil War and is still around today
  - Encourages families to work together
  - combats loneliness in a multitude of ways
- Granger Laws
  - Laws passed in the Midwest
  - Fought back against railroad abuse
  - Wanted railroads and grain elevators to have fair prices
- Interstate Commerce Act
  - Allowed US Government to supervise railroads
  - Required railroads to be fair and just
  - Failed to help out farmers at first
- Populist movement - People's Party
  - Started in Omaha
  - Wanted to
    - Help Farmers out of debt
    - Give people a greater voice in government
      - White, rich males dominates everything - makes laws that benefit themselves
    - Increase money supply in circulation
      - Rich people wanted deflation
      - Farmers and common people wanted inflation to make more money
      - William Jennings Bryan - really wanted bimetallic standard
      - Wizard of Oz could be about Bimetallic vs Gold Standard
    - Graduated income tax
      - No federal income tax until 1913
      - 16th Amendment
      - Income Tax gave the government more money - more opportunities
      - Rich people pay more
    - Direct election of Senators
      - 17th Amendment
      - The people decide who's voted - no electoral college
    - Single terms for President/Vice President
      - 22nd Amendment
    - Secret Ballot
      - People can't see who you vote for
      - Some people were bribed to vote for people
    - 8 Hour work day
      - Before hand - 16 hrs a day - 7 days a week
      - in 1886 7 workers died fighting for a 5 day work week

Tuesday -

- Restrictions on Immigration
  - Populists wanted to shut off legal immigration - immigrants took jobs and kept wages low
  - Immigration lowed down the works of labor unions
Industrial Revolution
- What Helped the Industrial Revolution to Take Place in US?
  - Tons of Natural Resources
    - Coal
    - Copper
    - Lead
    - Molybdenum
    - Phosphates
    - Rare Earth Elements
    - Uranium
    - Petroleum
    - Natural Gas
    - Bauxite
    - Gold
    - Iron
    - Mercury
    - Nickle
    - Potash
    - Silver
    - Tungsten
    - Zinc
    - Timber
    - Arable land
  - Government helped business
    - They let businesses do as they pleased
    - Laissez-Faire - hands off
    - Government let businesses do whatever
  - Cities were growing
    - All of the big cities at least doubled in 40 years
    - Grew because job opportunities
    - Immigration
    - African-Americans moved to cities after Civil War
    - Cities offered more fun and opportunities
  - Immigrants provide cheap labor
    - 6-7 days a week, 14 hours a day for next to nothing
    - Henry Ford wanted to pay his workers for five dollars a day - crazy
  - Growing population provided markets for manufactured goods
    - A lot more people in the cities to sell your product to
    - African American population boomed in cities
  - Oil Boom
    - Fueled everything
  - Bessemer Process
    - Cheaper way to make steel
    - Henry Bessemer
    - Blow air into the melted iron - gets rid of impurities - boom, steel
  - Various Inventions
    - Electricity - light bulb (long lasting) - Thomas Alva Edison
    - Typewriter - Christopher Sholes
    - Telephone - Alexander Graham Bell

Wednesday - Work Day on Decades Project

Thursday -

Industrial Revolution
- What helped the Industrial Revolution take off?
  - Railroads
    - Transcontinental Railroad
    - People wanted to live next to Railroads
    - Chinese helped build the railroad
    - Push for time zones
Unit 6.3
- What are monopolies and why are they bad for consumers?
  - Monopoly - when a company tries to get rid of their competition - wants to rule all of the business
  - Vertical and Horizontal Integration
    - Horizontal Integration is when you buy out other companies in the same field
    - Vertical Integration is when you use only your own businesses- not relying on any other businesses
  - When companies control the market, they can put whatever prices they want on products
  - If they control the market, they can become lazy and not update their products
  - Less choice for consumer
  - Drives smaller businesses out of business

Friday -

Andrew Carnegie
- Scottish Immigrant - came over very poor
- Carnegie Steel (later changed to US Steel) - Pittsburgh
- about 30% of US's steel output
- Reduced wages but gave away a lot of money - created a lot of libraries
- Paid workers next to nothing
John D. Rockefeller
- Would be worth $660 Billion in today's money
- Richest person in US history
- Standard Oil
Cornelius Vanderbilt
- Made his fortune with shipping - steam ships
- Created a railroad empire after he retired from the shipping business
- richest person when he died in 1877
- He's the 2nd richest person in US History - worth $200 Billion
- Designed Grand Central Station
J.P. Morgan
- John Pierpont Morgan
- Banker
- Didn't own companies but helped finance them
- JP-Morgan Chase
- His money was invested in multiple things - a lot of power
- The other guys owed him money
- Helped the government - when stock market crashed in early 1900's, he bought stocks with his own money and single-handedly brought the country out of the crash
Explain how companies formed monopolies?
- They took over the smaller businesses
How did the government try to regulate monopolies?
- Sherman Anti-Trust Act
  - Designed to break up monopolies
- Teddy Roosevelt - one of the 1st Presidents to break up the monopolies
- William Taft broke up the monopolies
What are labor union and what did they do?
- Workers joining together - trying to get better wages
- More people - More power
Were Labor Unions successful?

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