CARNEGIE & HOMESTEAD (Station 1)
This 1889 essay argued the rich man should act as a trustee of his wealth for the community.
What is "Wealth," or The Gospel of Wealth?
By 1880, Standard Oil refined approximately this share of all American oil.
What is 90%?
Asked in 1882 whether he ran a train for the public's benefit, he answered, "The public be damned."
Asked in 1882 whether he ran a train for the public's benefit, he answered, "The public be damned."
The standard steel worker's shift length, worked seven days a week.
What is 12 hours?
Carnegie's strategy: own the mines, the ships, the railroads, and the mills — every stage of production.
What is vertical integration?
Carnegie's eight-word verdict on wealthy men who never give their fortunes away.
What is "The man who dies rich dies disgraced"?
In his 1909 memoir Rockefeller defends combination as the cure for this destructive condition in the early oil business.
What is ruinous (chaotic, overbuilt) competition?
Vanderbilt said he ran his railroads for these people instead of the public.
Who are his stockholders?
The continuous 24-hour shift steel workers pulled when day and night crews swapped.
What is the "long turn"?
Rockefeller's strategy: buy out or destroy every competitor at the same stage of production.
What is horizontal integration?
Carnegie's plant manager who cut wages, built "Fort Frick," and hired the Pinkertons.
Who is Henry Clay Frick?
Her five-year investigation ran in McClure's from 1902 to 1904 and created modern investigative journalism.
Who is Ida Tarbell?
This 1889 Puck cartoon by Joseph Keppler shows moneybag-bodied trusts towering over seated senators.
What is "The Bosses of the Senate"?
This Fall River mule spinner testified to the Senate in 1883 that he earned about $133 in a year and fed his children clams he dug himself.
Who is Thomas O'Donnell?
The secret refund a railroad paid Standard Oil on freight — while charging its competitors full price.
What is a rebate?
This many armed Pinkerton detectives came up the river on barges on July 6, 1892 — and ten people died in the twelve-hour battle.
What is 300?
Tarbell conceded Standard Oil was efficient — her attack was aimed at this instead.
What are its methods (secrecy, espionage, predatory pricing)?
In the cartoon, this entrance on the far left is bolted shut and marked closed.
What is the People's Entrance?
O'Donnell testified he couldn't get hired because mills preferred men who brought this to work with them.
What is a large family (more children to put in the mill)?
The 1882 legal structure: shareholders in many companies hand their stock to one board that runs them all as a unit.
What is a trust?
Frick gave his account of Homestead under oath to this body, which shapes how we read his claim that the Pinkertons were purely defensive.
What is the U.S. House Judiciary Committee (a congressional investigation)?
In this year the Supreme Court split Standard Oil into 34 companies — and Rockefeller, holding stock in all 34, got richer.
What is 1911?
Keppler's sign — "of the Monopolists, by the Monopolists, and for the Monopolists" — parodies this Lincoln speech.
What is the Gettysburg Address?
This photographer documented breaker boys for the National Child Labor Committee, recording each child's name and age.
Who is Lewis Hine?
This 1890 antitrust law was used more often against labor unions than corporations in its first decade.
What is the Sherman Antitrust Act?