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Mother Jones
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Mary Jones (1837-1930), Aimed to help the working class of workers being taken advantage of in America. She helped defend workers everywhere and went beyond that to help stop child labor as well. -
J.P. Morgan
SourceJ.P. Morgan started one of the most powerful banking houses in the world. After being sucessful he created "Morganization" which reorganized failing busnesses. His experience as a banker and financer helped investors to busnesses he took over. -
The Bessemer Process
SourceBefore the Bessemer process was invented, their was no easy way to make steel in large quantites. So mainly people would be using iron, much heavier and maliable than steel. The Bessemer process is a way to refine iron in a huge ammounts into steel. With the new process they can now makes many tons of steel at one time. Having steel in ubundance means companies can make safer products and not worry about the iron wearing and denting as much. The railroads will be much safer and easier to build. -
Eugene Debs
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Debs was elected the president of the American Railroad Union and aimed to stop the decreasing wages against the workers in the railroads. He went on to become a founding member of Industrial Workers of the World and was a well known socialist living in America. -
Edwin Drake Strikes Oil
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Before Edwin Darke created a way to exctract oil from the ground, people had no other way of getting it in large ammounts. After years of investigating for oil deposits Drake finally drilled nearly 70 feet down and was the first person to build a successful oil shaft and stuck "black gold". -
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Industrial Revolution
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The Credit Mobilier Scandal
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Thomas Durant had the idea to build a transcontinental railroad and make a huge profit from building his own railroad, rather than running it. After getting many investors and money from Union Pacific and limiting their liability, Durant was making huge profit from each mile or railroad build and even built extra, unnessesary routes. -
Christopher Scholes Typewriter
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Christopher scholes (1819-1890) was the first to create and produce a practical typewriter that anyone could use easily. He invented the idea of using a QWERTY keyboard for more ease when typing. At this time nothing came close to being as good as Scholes typewriter and it made the production of books and information keeping much easier. -
Transcontinental Railroad Completed
SourceThe completion of the transcontinental railroad brought thousands to the west. Now a trip to the west that would normally take around 4 months, going around South America by boad or across the plains by wagon, was reduced down to less than a week by the 2000 miles of track built. -
Munn v. Illinois
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Illinois was setting high rates for using the grain elevators. The question was weather or not this is protected by the 14th amendmant or not. It was decided that states may regulate the use of private property when it is nessesary for the public good. -
Alexander Graham Bell Invents the Telephone
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Bell (1847-1922) created one of the most useful technologies in its day and in an even bigger use and supply (with many modifications to the original). Before Bells telephone, people had to communicate long distance by using a telegraph and communicated with morse code. Bells telephone amazed people by being able to communicate with someone far away and hear their voice on your end of the phone. -
Thomas Edison
SourceThomas Edison (1847-1931) was the first to make electric lighting long lasting and reliable. This was a huge discovery at its time, before this people used either candles and lamps or other unsafe and unreliable electic lighting systems. His lightbulb discovery occured in 1879. After that Thomas Edison went on to create some of the worlds first motion pictures. His company created a projector and one of the first movie theaters ever. -
John D. Rockefeller Oil Trust
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Rockefeller started a huge oil trust that would be a model for many other monoplies like his. He dominated the oil busness and every busness involved in it to make his busness run. -
Haymarket Riot
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Workers at McCormik Harvesting Machine Co. began a strike in hope of gaining a shorter work day. During this the crowd claimed to face police brutality. After that another protest was formed against police brutality. The police went in to controll the crowd and were attacked. Then the poilce fought back killing protesters. Many of the people were detained and jailed. -
Interstate Commerce Act
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Before this act railroads were a privatly owned and unregulated monopoly. With the monopoly, these companies could eliminate competition and set low prices to the public. The Interstate Commerce Act steped in to create rules for how the railroads could do busness. Congress could now regulate and make the railroads more fail to the people and took power away from the monopolies. -
Sherman Antitrust Act
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This act was placed to make the market and economy more fair to the people and other buisnesses trying to succed. The act was placed to dissolve the big busness trusts -
Homestead Strike
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Andrew Carnegie's steel manufacturing company was loosing money because steel prices were becoming cheeper due to supply and demand. Carnegie was determined to still make a profit by cutting wages of the workers. The wrokers were outraged and went on strike. During this many were killed in the riot that lasted 14 hours. After many arrests were made, the workers eventually went back to work. -
Pullman Strike
SourceOn this day over three thousand workers went on strike, who were working at the Pullman Palace Car Company. Many of the workers were from the American Railroad Union. The stike pushed back railroad traffic nation wide, and eventually the federal government had to make soldiers and authorities move the people and start running the trains again. This got people to start rethinking unionism to make it more useful and beneficial to the workers. -
Wright Brothers Fly
SourceThe Wright Brothers were two brothers working together inventing transportation mobiles. The Wright brothers began the Arial Age by being the first to create an airplane and fly it too. This started off a whole new way of transportaion that has always been a dream of all people. -
Lochner v. New York
SourceThis was a surpreme Court case where a backery owner protested against a lobar law where workers were limited to no more than 10 hours a a day and 60 hours a week. Lochner disagreed with this law because he believed people working in a bakery could work long hours because it is a safe job. He argued that the only jobs that should be effected by this law is jobs labled unsafe. Lochner eventually won this case with the supreme court. -
Henry Ford
SourceHenry Fords main achievement in the industrial revolution was to revolutionize the way of manufacturing products. He first created the Ford Motor Company, manufacturing one of the first automobiles, the model T. Before Fords idea of a moving assembly line, cars were created by a group of skilled workers one by one. Now with the assembly line, there are many people with no skill required that are assigned to one part of asembling the car. this way many cars can be manufactured at one time.
