Entries Tagged as 'Other'
FREE Online Home Based Business Automated! Earn Big Money!
April 20th, 2010 · 6 Comments
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3 Critical Tips to Finding a Legitimate Home Based Business Opportunity
April 18th, 2010 · No Comments
1. Company Reputation: With all the websites on the Internet claiming to be involved with the best and most legitimate home based business opportunity, you need to also do a little research on your own. The fact is that, not everything might be as pretty and nice as everyone is claiming it to be.
With many companies changing policies on it’s distributors, its important to see what others are mentioning about the company. Beware though, because you will find a whole lot of people trying to discredit companies due to the lack on work on their own part.
A home business is no different than a job in terms of doing work, it all requires WORK. The good thing about most home businesses is that after a while there is better pay than most jobs.
2. Marketable Products: How marketable is the product or service the legitimate home based business opportunity is offering? Is it something that you can find in your local supermarket or other store? Does it have that VALUE that others will be attracted to? Many home business opportunities tend to promote decent products, but a lot of them are also not so decent.
The question for you is, are others going to be interested in buying such a product? What is so special about it? Is it going to help with health? Is it going to save money on travel? Think about it apart from the pay-plan attached to it and you’ll find the right opportunity for you.
3. Pay plan- What pay system is the company offering? Is it a direct, one time pay structure? Or is it a residual pay structure where you get paid over and over again when people buy your products? This is important because if you put in 8 hours a day into promoting your business, you want to make sure that you get paid over and over again for the one time sales you make. That is the best option to building a hefty income from home.
These programs are typically called multi-level marketing (MLM) or network marketing programs.
But now, once you’ve chosen a legitimate home based business opportunity , how are you going to market it? If you don’t have people to sell to you’re not going to make any money.
The solution? The link below…
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How to Choose the Best Home-Based Business Opportunities for Your Personality
April 17th, 2010 · No Comments
There are hundreds of books dedicated to selecting the right career based on your personality type, but following are some basic guidelines to help you get started:
Start by assessing strengths and weaknesses
Begin your job search by honestly examining your strengths and weaknesses. For example, • Are you a decisive and independent kind of person? • Are you diplomatic and a good communicator? • Are you more of a follower or a leader? Based on your assessment, you may be any of four main personality types: • Analytical • Amiable • Driven • Expressive There are even online quizzes and books in your local library that can help you pinpoint your personality type. Based on the result, certain careers “match” your personality better than others.
Add qualifications and skills to the mix
Now that you understand your personality type, you should add your own qualifications and skills to your list. Given your current job situation, what skills can you bring to a new endeavor? Don’t be shy–everyone has something to contribute. Even if you have been a stay at home mother for 5 years, think of the skills you have learned outside the workplace: multi-tasking, perhaps, and definitely patience.
Think of all the computer skills you have, everything from data entry to social networking. This broad range of skills will definitely influence your final career decision because you will be bringing everything you’ve got to the game.
Research the work from home market
Now that you have a thorough understanding of your personality and skills, it’s time to see what jobs are available to people who work from home. The good news is that thanks to the web, people have ample opportunities to work from home.
Many people choose to open their own home based Internet business. This is a field that is really taking flight because it allows people to break free from the rat race and reap the direct benefits of their own hard work. The opportunities are endless for people with the right mindset . When in doubt, hire a consultant
A consultant is an expert that you can hire to help you choose the right business for your needs. Having spent years in the industry, he can steer you in the right direction and help you avoid major drawbacks as you start your new career.
Many new entrepreneurs profit from the professional training, personal mentoring, and attention to detail that a mentor provides. In addition, he is completely dedicated to your success, so you have someone who is 100% committed to helping you reach your goals. A little planning and research will really go far in helping you choose the right work from home career. There is a perfect opportunity out there that is just right for your personality and skills, so stop daydreaming and take the necessary steps to make it your reality!
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Why Income Opportunity Home Based Businesses Are in Demand
April 15th, 2010 · No Comments
The reason why there is so much demand for income opportunity home based businesses is because people are getting really tired of working for corporates and in offices that would offer them no job satisfaction and the job at times becomes very monotonous and that is the time when an employee starts looking for a change that would really help him to develop his talent and skills. Additionally, these small businesses which people operate from their homes, are easily available online which means that you do not even have to commute daily from home to office and back home. These kind of home based businesses ideas really save your time and money which you can devote to other important things in your life.
Another good thing about these home based income businesses is that you can select what kind of work you want to do which attracts most of the people all over the world. If you have a flair for writing you can write articles online, if you have some entrepreneurial skills you can come up with your own site and idea and try it out, if you have good salesman quality you can join other marketing programs online and work for them and get the kind of job satisfaction that you want from your job.
These small home based businesses are available in each and every country on the globe and even if you do not find one in your country you can always work online and get your payments transferred electronically.
Click below to Validate Your Free Membership of the 3 steps Dowline Building Secrets.
http://www.thebestglobalonlinehomebasedjob.com/r/home.html
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Do Not Try To Sell Anything Home Based Business Opportunity Seeker
April 14th, 2010 · No Comments
1. How on earth can you do that?
You as a home based business opportunity seeker have to think like a person who is looking after what you have.
Imaging what he is looking for and what is his attitude to the offer of which he maybe has never heard of? He may have surfed the web and seen some offers. Does your offer has a different approach? Is he probably a starter or an advanced internet marketer? Is he capable to make an income online with that?
2. Keep your focus on your customers.
As a home based business opportunity seeker try to make your custors your friends. Actually it is very simple. Think that they are your friends and you just made up your mind. Now they are your friends. Your own attitude towards your customers is the best joker.
When you have created friendly relationship with your customers, you have done the best possible deed for your home business.
3. As a home business seeker you must communicate with your customers.
It is hard to help without the communication. But if your customer has left his email address, then you have the ball. He is now waiting for contact. Remember that the first impression is critical. Do it with great enthusiastic politeness. Express your willingness to help, whatever your customer will ask. Be a good listener and respect his needs. His needs are your source of income.
4. Soon the customer is your associate.
Your skills as a home business seeker determine, whether you can build a long term relationship with your customer. It is quite stupid to speak about markets. We should rather speak about different needs of people. That is the right attitude to make an income online.
5. Do not try to sell anything.
You may remember that the majority of the people will start searching information with search engine. This means that they have already decided to find some affiliates internet programs, wheich fit to their needs. And they want to make an income online.
They are like fishes, which will follow the bite. So do not try to sell anything but present your offer in so a good way, that the fish will eat the bite.
6. Nobody likes to be the object of the sales effort.
That is true. When a person is a home based business opportunity seeker, he is in a very sensitive state of the mind. He is looking and pondering. He is comparing and dropping offers that he does not like. It is wise to understand this. Joining to an affiliate internet program is not like buying a car. This is a choice, which will require work. So the disappointment is big if the customer will make a wrong choice and not make an income online. It is not even the principals advantage. So tell him the truth and help him as much as you can and your mutual future will be great.
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ExcitingEmu's Blog
April 14th, 2010 · No Comments
Chapter 17: Brinkley
Industrial Supremacy
I. Sources of Industrial Growth
A. Industrial Technologies
1. Last three decades of the 19th century witnessed a transformation of the American economy
2. Iron and steel boomed during this period, contributing to railroads and urban construction
3. Bessemer Process was developed to turn iron into the more durable and versatile steel, and the American Abram S. Hewitt improved upon this method
4. Pittsburgh became the center of the steel world because it already had an iron industry and western Pennsylvania had the hard coal that was needed for the process
5. New transportation systems emerged or improved to support the ore industries, like steam ships on the Great Lakes
6. Railroad and steel companies essentially merged because the railroads transported finished steel and bought steel themselves to make cars and rails (railroads oftentimes gave capital to steel companies)
7. Oil was also present in western Pennsylvania, and the petroleum was mainly used for machine lubrication before people starting using it for fuel
B. The Airplane and the Automobile
1. Essential to the automobile was the creation of gasoline (by removing lubricating oil and fuel oil separately from crude oil) and the internal combustion engine (Nicolaus August Otto invented first gas-powered engine, while Gottfried Daimler made it portable for cars)
2. Charles and Frank Duryea built gasoline-driven motor vehicle, as Henry Ford began producing his cars a few years later
3. Experimenters were tinkering with balloons, kites, and gliders to propel humans through the air
4. Wilbur and Orville Wright designed a glider that could be propelled through the air by an internal-combustion engine
5. First airplane was built in the US, but airplane design was more important in Europe where there was substantial government funding, and American airplanes would reemerge as a significant presence during World War I, and continue to electrify the nation after Charles Lindbergh’s flight from New York to Paris in 1927
C. Research and Development
1. Corporations began to fund research and development laboratories, so as not to fall behind in rapid technological improvements, and this coincided with a decline in government-supported research
2. Engineers were more interested in research and development agendas of corporations that strove to design things of practical use, while scientists scorned this commercialization and preferred to stick to research of no immediate practical applications
3. Universities began to transform in accordance with the needs of the industrial economy by forming a partnership between the academic and commercial world, as the university faculty and laboratories began to receive funding from corporations for research of interest to them
D. The Science of Production
1. Changes in techniques of production favored “Taylorism,” which urged employers to reorganize production by subdividing tasks, which would speed up production and make workers more interchangeable
2. Workers would not need to be highly trained but could work very effectively, and the employers would have greater control over the workplace
3. Change in production technology led to the emergence of mass production via the moving assembly line
E. Railroad Expansion
1. Railroads remained principal form of transportation that gave industrialists access to raw materials and markets
2. When a railroad was built, farms emerged along the route, lumberers came in its wake to cut trees, and herders brought their animals near its path (railroads stimulated economy activity along their routes)
3. Most towns had kept time by position of the sun, so each city had a different time, but railroads needed to make national schedules, so they implemented the four times zones
4. Federal and state government gave subsidies, investments came in from abroad, but most railroad systems continued to be dominated by tycoon individuals
F. The Corporation
1. Modern corporation emerged after the Civil War, as a result of railroad moguls’ realization that no single person or group could finance the great railroad system (or other industrial ventures)
2. Under laws of incorporation, the business organizations could sell stock to members of the public, and Americans considered stock a good investment (even if they were not involved in a particular business) because they only risked their own investment and could not be held liable for any additional debts of the corporation
3. Andrew Carnegie was an example of a tycoon who controlled steel production from the mines to the market, and J.P. Morgan would eventually buy him out and create the United States Steel Corporation
4. National corporations demanded new managerial techniques and so practices emerged like division of responsibilities, designed hierarchy of control, cost- accounting procedures, and “middle managers” that formed a layer between workers and owners
G. Consolidating Corporate America
1. Businessmen created consolidated organization through “horizontal integration,” which meant combined a number of firms engaged in the same enterprise (multiple railroad lines), and “vertical integration,” which meant taking over all the different steps of production (mining the ore, then making the steel, then shipping the steel)
2. Most dramatic corporate empire was John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, which was constructed through both horizontal and vertical integration, and Rockefeller was becoming a leading symbol of monopoly in the US
3. Although they claimed that they believed in free enterprise and a competitive marketplace, Rockefeller and other industrialists feared cutthroat competition, and they were convinced that a successful enterprise was one that could eliminate its competitors, to prevent instability for all
4. Railroads made “pool arrangements” (or arrangements called cartels) with the consolidating corporations, in order to divide up markets among the new corporations, but they did not always work because a few firms always disagreed
H. The Trust and the Holding Company
1. Centralized control led to the creation of the “trust” that was pioneered by Standard Oil and perfected by J.P. Morgan: A “trust” was an economic organization in which stockholders in individual corporations transferred their stocks to a small group of trustees, in exchange for shares in the trust itself, but owners of trust certificates had no direct control over the decisions of the trustees, they simply received a share of the profits of the combination
2. Another form of consolidation involved allowing companies to buy up other companies, making the trust unnecessary, and allowing corporate merger to occur: Rockefeller created a “holding company” that was a central corporate body that would buy up the stock of various members of the Standard Oil trust and establish direct ownership of the corporations that made up the trust
3. This corporate consolidation was putting control of huge amounts of manufacturing in the hands of a few wealthy men
4. Relentless concentration of economy power may or may not have been the best way to promote industrial expansion, but the industrial giants did succeed in integrating operations, cutting costs, creating a great industrial infrastructure, stimulating new markets, creating jobs for unskilled workers, and opening the way for large-scale mass production
II. Capitalism and its Critics
A. The “Self-Made Man”
1. Wealthy capitalists had to defend their system against its critics, and they argued that their elite industrial economy did not reduce opportunities for individual advancement, but created more opportunities for individual to get great wealth
2. Image of self-made man was largely a myth because, although some capitalists grew from rags to riches, most of them had started out with some wealth
3. Businessmen did not usually rise to prominence through hard work and creativity, they usually were ruthless, arrogant, and extensively bribed government officials (at this time many state legislators and corporations were intimately close because of the bribes that politicians received)
B. Survival of the Fittest
1. Traditional view in Protestant America was that the rich received their money through hard work and divine intervention, while poor were lazy and careless
2. Social Darwinism became a popular social theory of the late nineteenth century, as many believed that only the fittest individuals flourished in the marketplace
3. Herbert Spencer (England) was the most important proponent of the theory, and William Graham Sumner (Yale) also believed that individuals should have absolute freedom to struggle and compete for their success or failure
4. Businessmen seized on Social Darwinism to justify the status quo because it legitimized their success and confirmed their virtues, placed their activities within the context of American ideals like freedom and individualism, and justified their tactics (like not raising wages because economic activities were governed by natural laws and competitive struggle just like, for example, the invisible hand of the free market)
5. Social Darwinism was a great ideal for businessmen but usually did not realistically apply to the corporate economy, because while businessmen were celebrating competition, they were actively seeking to protect themselves from competition by forming combinations and eliminate competitors
C. The Gospel of Wealth
1. Businessmen attempted to soften Social Darwinism by supporting the more gentle, but equally self-serving, “gospel of wealth:” Rich people had great power, but also great responsibilities, and they should use their riches to advance social progress, meaning all revenues in excess of the person’s needs should go back into the community (Andrew Carnegie was a great philanthropist and wrote The Gospel of Wealth)
2. Alongside the notion of private wealth acting as a public blessing was another concept involving the notion of great wealth as something available to all: Baptist minister Russell H. Conwell said that every person was sitting on “acres of diamonds,” and that everybody ought to get rich (it was their duty to get rich) and raise themselves off the bottom of the economic ladder through hard work
3. Horatio Alger, who himself grew wealthy over the course of his career, was the most famous promoter of the success story, wrote novels that dealt with poor boys moving to big cities and, through hard work and luck, becoming rich, and became a symbol of the powerful myth that anyone could advance to great wealth through perseverance (became a folk hero in American culture)
D. Alternative Visions
1. Lester Frank Ward rejected the application of Darwinian laws to human society, and argued that civilization was not governed by natural selection but by human intelligence, and, unlike Sumner, he argued that the people should work through the government to intervene and adjust the economy to serve their needs (rather than let competition sort things out)
2. Socialist Labor Party was founded by Daniel De Leon, but it would yield to the ultimately more successful American Socialist Party
3. Henry George (California) wrote an angrily eloquent Progress and Poverty, which explained that while poverty still existed amongst the wealth of modern industry, real progress had not been made
4. George blamed social problems on the ability of a few monopolists to grow wealthy as a result of rising land values
5. Edwards Bellamy’s Looking Backward explained a future world where desire and vice were unknown because the large trusts of the late nineteenth century had grow until they all combined with each other and formed one great trust, owned by the government, who distributed the profits of the industrial economy among all the people
E. The Problems of Monopoly
1. Although many Americans had no problem with capitalism, they did have a problem with the growing monopolies and economic concentration of the large corporate combinations
2. Monopolies created artificially high rates which, in turn, created an unstable economy that was subject to period recessions (in 1893 the system seemed on the verge of total collapse)
3. Monopolies not only created high prices, but they threatened the ability of individuals to advance in the world, because large combinations reduced the opportunity of their competitors to succeed
4. Resentment of monopoly also emerged due to the grotesque luxury of some the wealthy people, like the Vanderbilts’ vast mansions (Andrew Carnegie, on the other hand, lived relatively simply and donated large sums to charity)
5. Standard of living was rising for everyone, but the gap between the rich and the poor was also increasing
III. Industrial Workers in the New Economy
A. The Immigrant Work Force
1. Industrial factories demanded a work force, so rural American flowed into factory towns when they became fed up with life on the farm, and immigrants poured in from Mexico, Asia, and Canada, but the most came from Europe
2. In 1870s-1880s, most of immigrants to eastern industrial cities were traditional English, Irish, and northern European; by the end of the century the major sources of immigrations had shifted to southern and eastern Europe; western industrial cities were filled by Chinese (until the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882) and Mexicans
3. Immigrants were lured to America by poverty and oppression in their homeland, hopes for new opportunities in America, or recruitment by industrial employers that sometimes paid for the passage of workers
4. Ethnic tensions rose as immigrants usually clustered with their fellow countrymen in the same profession, and animosities arose when low-paid Eastern Europeans replaced high-paid Americans or Northern Europeans
B. Wages and Working Conditions
1. Although the wages of the workers increased, they had little job security due to boom-and-bust economy and the advancing technology that was replacing jobs
2. Laborers found it hard to transition from agrarian or craft industries to rigid and disciplined factory life, while the working conditions produced many hazards and accidents
3. One of the worst aspects of factory labor was a loss of control over the conditions of one’s work, as managers ensured that workers had no authority that might disrupt the flow of production
C. Women and Children at Work
1. Women had to increasingly take jobs to augment the salaries of their husbands, but the public did not like to see women in the workforce because they were more vulnerable to injury in the rough factories and it was considered socially- inappropriate for them to work independently, so many families lived on inadequate wages rather than see a married woman work
2. Women workers were mostly white, immigrants or daughters of immigrants, and worked for far fewer wages than men doing the same jobs 3. Children were pressed into workforce because families needed wages and they did not want to permit the wives to work, but child labor was still attacked by reformers, yet all the reforms they pushed through were largely ignored by employers
4. Even for men working was dangerous, as accident rates in America were higher than elsewhere
D. The Struggle to Unionize
1. Just like the employers had organized in large combinations, workers tried similar tactics by creating large unions, but they were mostly ineffective
2. Many craft unions existed, but people realized that the various labor organizations would have to be combined into a single national organization, and William H. Sylvis founded the National Labor Union, which collapsed after the Panic of 1873
3. Women fought for equal opportunity in the workplace, but men usually excluded them from unions because they argued, not without a point, that women workers were used to drive down their wages
4. Middle class was usually hostile toward the unions, and blamed problems on the workers and not the employers, especially when things turned radical, like the actions of the militant “Molly Maguiers,” who resorted to terrorists tactics against coal operators
E. The Great Railroad Strike
1. Hysteria gripped the country during the railroad strike of 1877, when an announced wage cut initiated a protest and something of a class war, with strikers disrupting rail service, destroying equipment, and rioting in the streets all around the country (state militias combated strikers in some areas)
2. Railroad strike was America’s first major national labor conflict and it illustrated how disputes between workers and employers would no longer be localized due to the emerging national economy, it illustrated the depth of resentment between workers and the employers/government, and it illustrated the relatively frailty of the labor movement
F. The Knights of Labor
1. First major efforts to create a genuinely national labor organization was the 1869 founding of the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor, under the direction of Uriah S. Stephens, where membership was opened to all who “toiled,” even women
2. Knights were loosely organized, with local assemblies and a national assembly, with a vague program that looked at short-term reform (eight-hour day and abolition of child labor), but mostly favored long-term reform (workers cooperate with employers and control a large part of the economy)
3. Knights remained a secret fraternity, until Terence V. Powderly moved the order into the open, at which point it expanded too rapidly for moderate leadership to control, and failed strikes by militant branches of the organization discredited the organization as a whole (it soon disappeared altogether)
G. The AFL
1. Rival organization emerged in 1881, called the American Federation of Labor, and it became the most enduring labor group in the country, but rejected the Knights idea of one big union for everybody in favor of an association of essentially autonomous craft unions (it was also for skilled workers and rejected unskilled labor)
2. Samuel Gompers (leader of the AFL) was hostile to the ideal of women entering the work force, because they drove down wages and undermined the image of males as the wage-earners of the family
3. The AFL was hostile to women workers but sought equal pay for those women that did work, and this position was less contradictory than it may seem, because raising the pay of women would make them less attractive to employers and drive them out of the work force
4. AFL’s Agenda: Accepted ideal of capitalism but wanted to secure for the workers a greater share of material rewards, no need for fundamental economic reform, hostile to government efforts to protect labor or improve working conditions because anything that the government gave it could also take away, concentrated on relationship between labor and management on ideas of wages and working hours, hoped to attain goal by collective bargaining but was ready to strike if necessary
5. AFL demanded a national eight-hour work day, and a general strike ensued across the nation, with some areas organized by AFL unions and other demonstrations controlled by more radical groups
6. Haymarket Square Incident: Chicago was a center of radical labor strength and a strike was already in progress at the McCormick Harvester Company, with city police harassing the strikers. A protest meeting was called by labor and radicals at Haymarket Square and a bomb was thrown at the approaching cops that killed many officers. The police fired into the group and killed a handful of people. Conservative Americans were frightened and demanded retribution against the unknown bomb-thrower. Chicago officials rounded up eight anarchists, who were used as scapegoats for the crime, and were executed after an injudicious trial.
7. Middle-class Americans were scared by the social chaos indicated by the Haymarket bombing and “anarchism,” which Americans now saw as terrorism and violence instead of the original peacefulness and visionary beliefs of a new social order, and this middle-class fright was an obstacle to the goals of the AFL, and ultimately devastated the Knights of Labor
H. The Homestead Strike
1. Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, which was affiliated with the AFL, was the most powerful trade union of skilled workers, and employers began to resent the substantial control these workers were gaining over their working conditions
2. Steel industry was introducing production methods that cut down on the factories’ dependence on skilled labor, and Carnegie and his chief lieutenant, Henry Clay Frick, decided that the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers had to be driven out of the Homestead plant near Pittsburgh
3. Frick began to initiate wage cuts, and stopped negotiations with the union entirely, causing Amalgamated to call for a strike, and Frick abruptly called in guards from the Pinkerton Detective Agency, which was a group of well-known strikebreakers that struck fear in the hearts of workers
4. The Pinkertons approached the plant by river, which the strikers filled with oil and lit on fire, and the guards and strikers had a battle at the docks, involving guns and dynamite, that resulted in a handful of deaths and a Pinkerton surrender
5. National Guard of Pennsylvania was sent to Homestead to allow nonunion workers to enter the factory, and public opinion turned against the strikers after a radical attempt to assassinate Frick, and the workers were forced to gradually resume their jobs, with the conclusion of this event symbolizing the erosion of union strength in the late nineteenth century due to factory labor becoming increasingly unskilled and workers easily replaced
I. The Pullman Strike
1. Pullman strike was greater in magnitude but less violent, and took place at the Pullman Palace Car Company (made cars for railroads) in the city of Pullman, which was built by the company and contained houses that were rented to employees
2. Residents were annoyed by regimentation and high rents, and wage cuts caused them to persuade the militant American Railway Union, led by Eugene V. Debs, to support them by refusing to handle Pullman cars and equipment
3. General Managers’ Association, the railroad companies that opposed the strikers, persuaded its member companies to discharge switchmen who refused to handle Pullman cars, while Debs and his Union responded to this by telling its members who worked for the offending companies to walk off their jobs (thousands of railroad workers across the country were on strike, and transportation was paralyzed)
4. Governor of Illinois, John Peter Altgeld, was sympathetic to the workers, and he refused to call out the militia to help employers
5. Bypassing Altgeld, the railroad bosses asked the federal government to send army troops to Illinois, because the strike was preventing the movement of government mail, and President Grover Cleveland sent troops to arrest Debs and his associates (strike collapsed when nonunion workers were hired and Debs went to jail)
J. Sources of Labor Weakness
1. Last decades of the nineteenth century were years in which labor unions organized and won a few legislative victories (many of these laws were ignored by employers), but overall they suffered many important losses that strikes and protests could not overturn (less control over purchasing power and workplace)
2. Workers failed to make greater gains because the principal labor organizations did not represented unskilled workers, women, blacks, or immigrants, female efforts at organizing under the Women’s Trade Union League were largely a failure, and ethnic/racial tensions kept worked divided
3. Many workers were hesitant to organize because the shifting nature of the workforce produced situations like immigrants who intended to earn some money to take home, locals or immigrants who moved from town to town and seldom stayed in one place long enough to exert any real power, and workers who changed jobs periodically (none of these groups really cared about long-term organization or unions)
4. Some workers felt that they would take advantage of social mobility to move out of the working class, so they felt no need to tie themselves to working class organizations
5. Workers were also facing powerful and wealthy corporations, usually supported by state and federal governments who had the troops necessary to crush uprisings
Chapter 18: Brinkley
The Age of the City
I. The Urbanization of America
A. The Lure of the City
1. The 50 years after the Civil War witnessed a sevenfold increase in the urban population of the US
2. Natural increase was only a small part because of high infant mortality and death from disease, but immigration to cities was huge because cities attracted people due to its various job opportunities, entertainments, and cultural experiences
3. Improvements in transportation also brought people to cities more effectively (mainly railroads for domestic use and steam-powered ocean liners for immigrants abroad)
B. Migrations
1. Farmers from East demonstrated tremendous geographical mobility as they went to more productive farms in Midwest or cities of the East
2. Women were the main migrants to cities because mechanized and commercialized agriculture was more of a man’s job, and the domestic skills of farm women were largely unneeded because people could buy clothes and goods in stores
3. Blacks were involved in exodus to cities because of the poverty and oppression they faced in the rural South
4. Black communities were established in cities (mostly Southern, but some Northern) and paved the way for the great African-American migrations of WWI and beyond
5. Immigrants flow was massive and included some people from North America and Asia, large flows from Europe, and an increasingly dense flow from southern and eastern Europe
6. New immigration flow lacked capital and education so they, like the Irish before them, settled in industrial cities to take unskilled jobs
C. The Ethnic City
1. Almost 90% of the population in some urban cities was foreign-born or first generation American
2. Unlike other nations, America was not experiencing a stream of immigration from just one country, because it has a diverse group of newcomers
3. Because moving from the country to the city was such a painful transition, many immigrant groups formed close-knit ethnic “ghettos” to attempt to recreate some of the features of their homeland
4. The benefits of the ethnic communities were that they supplied familiar foods, newspapers, and religious buildings to immigrants
5. Cultural cohesiveness eased the pain of separation from the immigrants’ native land, but it is curious to examine whether it helped the immigrants to become absorbed into the economic life of America
6. Some ethnic groups (like Jews and Germans) advanced economically and this could be explained by the fact that huddling together in ethnic neighborhoods allowed them to reinforce cultural values of their previous societies, and these values were particularly well suited to economic advancement
7. People who aroused racial prejudices among native-born whites (African Americans, Asians, and Mexicans) had the worst change of advancement
D. Assimilation
1. All foreign born groups were composed of immigrants who had to adapt to an urban lifestyle, were mostly young, and were forced to defend their ethnic ties against the powerful force of assimilation
2. Despite disillusion of the New World, many immigrants retained the dream of becoming true “Americans,” and worked hard to rid themselves of the old culture, resenting older generation who favored the ethnic habits over American traditions
3. Foreign-born immigrants came from cultures in which women were even more subordinated and controlled by men, so when women went out in the city to work and live (either by choice or economic necessity), tension arose amidst families
4. Assimilation also occurred due to public schools teaching in English, local stores selling American goods, and religious leaders reforming the faith to make it more compatible with the norms of the new country
E. Exclusion
1. Generalized fear and resentment of foreigners caused locals to blame urban disorder and corruption on immigrants, and other locals had economic concerns because immigrants worked for lower wages and took over the jobs of any natives that were on strike
2. American Protective Association was a xenophobic group committed to stopping the immigrant flow, while the Immigration Restriction League was a more educated society that wanted to screen immigrants with literacy tests and other standard to separate the good from the bad
3. Politicians struggled with the immigration question: Anti-Asian sentiment in California resulted in the restriction of Chinese immigrants, “undesirables” like convicts and the mentally insane were barred from entering, and a small tax was placed on each person admitted
4. These laws had a limited impact because more ambitious proposals (like a literacy requirement for immigrants) were blocked, and many native-born American opposed the restrictions because the immigrants provided a constant supply of cheap labor for industrializing America
II. The Urban Landscape
A. The Creation of Public Space
1. Now that cities were growing rapidly, they began to be more planned out, leading to the creation of public space
2. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux teamed up to design Central Park, which was meant as a refuge from ordered and congested city life
3. Libraries, art galleries, museums, theatres, and opera halls emerged
4. Wealthy residents of cities were the principal force behind the creation of the great public services because they wanted the amenities for themselves, and because their social distinctions grew with these acts of philanthropy
5. The “city beautiful” movement to create monumental avenues lined with impressive buildings was inspired by the “Great White City” of the Chicago World’s Fair, was led by Daniel Burnham, and strove to impose order and symmetry on the disordered life of cities
6. Cities spread into surrounding territory, and Boston filled in the marshy tidal land to create the neighborhood of “Back Bay”
B. Housing the Well-to-Do
1. Middle-class people could all afford homes because the availability of cheap labor allowed them to build houses (created affluent districts)
2. Many of the wealthy began to favor suburbs, because they were connected to the city center by public transportation, and maintained a rural feel that many citizens were comfortable and familiar with
C. Housing Workers and the Poor
1. Poor were forced to rent homes in city centers, and landlords tried to squeeze in as many rent-paying tenants as they could
2. Little improvements were made in the cheap housing, because landlords did not have to make any improvements and people still rented them
3. “Tenement” originally meant a multiple-family rental building, but it soon came to describe slum dwellings, which forced people together with little plumbing and heating
4. Jacob Riis shocked many Americans with his sensational descriptions and pictures of tenements in his book How the Other Half Lives
D. Urban Transportation
1. Transportation problems ensued because of the narrow and unpaved streets
2. To deal with massive amounts of people moving to and fro, New York developed elevated railways, some cities experimented with cable cars and trolleys, and Boston opened the first subway system
E. The “Skyscraper”
1. Previous restrictions on building height included the absence of suitable support systems and elevators
2. Equitable Building in New York was the first to use an elevator, and both the size and number of tall building spread each year
3. Steel-girders paved the way for modern skyscrapers, especially in New York City where expansion had to proceed upward, because outward expansion was cut off on the island of Manhattan
4. Louis Sullivan was pioneer in the development of the skyscraper, and his student, Frank Lloyd Wright, expanded the influence of building innovations
III. Strains of Urban Life
A. Fire and Disease
1. Fires ravaged many downtown areas, because many buildings were still constructed out of wood, but they encouraged the building of newer and grander downtowns (with fireproof buildings, of course)
B. Environmental Degradation
1. Environmental costs of industrialization included fires, disease, and extraordinary crowding of working-class neighborhoods
2. Disposal of human and industrial waste was mishandled and polluted rivers and drinking water, especially in poorer areas
3. Air pollution from factories, stoves, and furnaces created respiratory infections and related diseases in cities
4. Reformers were beginning to achieve success in getting new sewage and drainage system to protect drinking water from sewage disposal
5. Alice Hamilton was a pioneer in the identification of pollution in the workplace (especially lead poisoning), health and safety standard were brought before legislators (federal government created the Public Health Service, which was charged with preventing occupation diseases), and the federal government assumed the power for the protection of public health and the establishment of common health standards for all factories
C. Urban Poverty
1. Public agencies and private philanthropists offered limited relief to the poor, believing that the poor were lazy or alcoholic, but some organizations conducted elaborate “investigations” to determine any “deserving” poor that did deserve aid
2. Some charitable organizations, like the Salvation Army, focused on religious revivalism instead of poor relief, but tensions arose between native Protestants and Catholic immigrants
3. Middle-class people grew alarmed over the rising number of poor children, some orphans, who lived alone or in packs (they were called “street arabs” and received the most attention from reformers, who produced no lasting solutions to their problems)
D. Crime and Violence
1. Violence resulted from poverty and crowded environments, and natives tried to blame the crimes on the immigrants, but native-born Americans committed crimes, as well
2. Just as professional fire departments emerged to deal with fires, professional police forces emerged to deal with criminals, but police forces could spawn corruption and brutality, and treatment was often different depending on the race or wealth of a suspect
3. Members of the middle-class feared urban insurrections and created urban national guard groups, built armories on the outskirts of affluent neighborhoods, and stored large supplies of weapons in preparation for uprisings that would never really happen
E. The Machine and the Boss
1. Newly arrived immigrants were unfamiliar with the laws and language of their new land and the principal source of assistance for these inner-city immigrants was the political machine
2. Power vacuum was created by the rapid growth of cities (and comparatively limited growth of government), and bosses sought to mobilize the voting power of large immigrant communities
3. Bosses were often of foreign birth or parentage, some were Irish (because they spoke English and had political experience from the long Irish struggle against the English at home), most were men, they all tried to win votes for their organization, and they mostly used patronage to get votes
4. In order to win loyalty of constituents: Provide occasional relief (basket of groceries or bags of coal), save someone arrested of a petty crime from going to jail, find jobs for unemployed, use patronage (jobs in city government or city agencies, like the police or public transportation), and give opportunities for advancement in the political organization itself
5. Machines were vehicles for making money because politicians enriched themselves through corruption: Politician discovers where a new road or streetcar line was to be built so he buys interest in the land near it and profits when the city has to buy the land from him, politicians get kickbacks from contractors in exchange for sewers and public buildings near their projects, politicians make money from selling franchises for operation of public utilities
6. Tammany Hall: William M. Tweed in the 1860s and 1870s (jailed in 1872), followed by Richard Croker in the 1880s and 1890s
7. Although motives were corrupt and middle-class people despised them, political machines were beneficial for modernizing city infrastructures, for expanding the role of government, and for created stability in political and social climates
8. Reasons for boss rule: Power of immigrant voters who did not care about political morality and enjoyed the services that machines provided, the link between political organizations and the wealthy citizens who profited from their dealings and did not want to overthrow them, and the structural weakness of city governments
9. Middle-class citizens mobilized reform groups to drive corrupt machine politicians from office, and sometimes the candidates of political machines had dry spells, but the machine usually outlasted the reform organization, so reform organizations turned to the more basic idea of reforming city governments
IV. The Rise of Mass Consumption
A. Patterns of Income and Consumption
1. Rising incomes and less expensive goods, due to mass production, created more demand for products
2. Middle class incomes for middle managers, etc. were rising extremely rapidly, and many professionals saw an increase in the profitability of their businesses
3. Many women, minorities, or Southern workers did not experience such a massive increase in income, but many took in boarders or laundry to supplement their income
4. Ready-made garments were an example of the creation of new merchandising techniques, because people began to buy their clothes from a store, rather than making it themselves or hiring private tailors
5. People became concerned with personal style, and substantial wardrobes developed
6. Food also reflected the mass market as canned foods preserved food items, refrigerated railroad cards made it possible for perishables to travel long distances, and artificially frozen ice made it possible for many households to afford iceboxes
B. Chain Stores and Mail-Order Houses
1. Local stores began receiving competition from “chain stores,” like The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A & P), which opened a national network of grocery stores
2. Chain stores sold manufactured goods at lower prices, so although they were hated by the locally owned independent stores, customers found it hard to resist the great variety and lower prices of the new chains
3. Chain stores were slow to reach rural areas, so rural people gained access to the consumer world through thick mail-order catalogs, which explained and sold many of the latest fashion items and home décor tools to them
C. Department Stores
1. Departments stores transformed buying habits and turned shopping into a more alluring and glamorous activity
2. Brought together array of products that had previously been sold in separate shops, they strove to create an atmosphere of wonder and exciting glamour, they included restaurants and tea rooms to suggest that shopping could be a social event, they brought women together (both as employers and customers), and they sold products at lower prices
D. Women as Consumers
1. New fashions styles affected women more than men and the new food availability changed the way women shopped and cooked (but it also changed the way that everybody ate, providing more nutrition and balance)
2. National Consumer League attempted to mobilize the power of women consumers to force retailers and manufactures to improve wages and working conditions for women workers (the mobilization of women who identified themselves as consumers was one of the most important political developments of the late nineteenth century)
V. Leisure in the Consumer Society
A. Redefining Leisure
1. Leisure had previously been scorned as laziness, and “rest” was only appropriate for the Sabbath
2. As work days shortened, and people got more holidays, leisure became a more generally-accepted right for workers to have
3. Simon Patten explained that leisure and consumption were spreading because old societies had been based on a scarcity of goods, but restraint and self-denial could be abandoned in the new society of pleasure, because industrial societies could make plentiful goods
4. In the late 1800s and early 1900s people spent their leisure time away from the house, drawn by the throngs of people (individuals went to movies, sporting events, and amusement parks to witness the crowds just as much as the film, game, or ride)
5. Class, race, and gender caused divisions, as many of these groups enjoyed different types of entertainment
B. Spectator Sports
1. Baseball was a response to the search for public forms of leisure and was adapted from the game of “rounders,” which was a cricket variant in England
2. Many teams appeared (first salaried team was the Cincinnati Red Stockings), the National League was formed in 1876, and the Boston Red Sox won the first modern world series in 1903
3. Football became popular among the elite segments of the population (because it was a staple of college life beginning in 1869)
4. Big Ten was founded as the center of the collegiate football world shifted to the Midwest, and the government created the NCAA to cut down on football-related deaths
5. James A. Naismith invented basketball, boxing spread from being a lower class sport to an event that all could enjoy, and horse racing spread due to races like the Kentucky Derby
6. Horse racing, boxing, and baseball all developed deep roots in gambling (“Black Sox Scandal”)
7. Women participated in some less-contact sports, but men enjoyed their connection with strenuous physical activity
C. Music and Theater
1. Ethnic theaters emerged that played ethnic music or hosted comedians making light of immigrant experiences in the New World
2. Urban theaters introduced a distinctively American entertainment called “musical comedy”
3. Vaudeville was a form of theater consisting of musicians, comedians, magicians, jugglers, and other acts that amused people in massive numbers
D. The Movies
1. Motion Picture technology allowed large audiences to view the shows
2. Early on, Americans watched plot-less films of trains or waterfalls that were designed to show off the new technology, but D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (celebration of Ku Klux Klan and demeaning of blacks) carried the movies in a more plot-oriented direction
E. Working-Class Leisure
1. Working class people liked free time, because it stood in sharp contrast to the rest of their life, and they had little money, so they wandered the street to watch street entertainers and joke with friends
2. Saloons became popular destinations for working-class men, and opponents like the Anti-Saloon League attacked the saloon because it helped political machines, which was true because saloonkeepers were important in urban political machines, due to their constant contact with so many potential voters
3. Boxing was extensively popular and usually involved bare-knuckled fights in saloons
F. The Fourth of July
1. Before vacations and weekends, the Fourth of July was one of the most celebrated days of the year, and it not only represented national independence, but represented the cultures of many of the ethnic neighborhoods, which organized picnics and parades for the day
2. During Reconstruction, the Fourth in the South had been celebrated by African- Americans/Republicans and resented by white southerners, but whites regained control of the Fourth as they began to redeem their governments and restrict the blacks (even restricted how blacks could celebrate the holiday)
G. Private Pursuits
1. Dime Novels spread widely (tales of Wild West or uplifting stories by Horatio Alger), sentimental novels continued to be published, and people read poetry in their free time
2. Children were taught to play instruments, especially among the middle class
3. Classical music was favored, but ragtime was becoming more popular
H. Mass Communication
1. Newspaper spread rapidly and journalism became more serious
2. National press service used telegraphs to supply news to papers throughout the country, and William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer were rivals for journalism supremacy
VI. High Culture in the Age of the City
A. The Literature of Urban America
1. Some authors evoked an older and more natural world, while others grappled with the modern order
2. Social Realism became a force where authors tried to re-create urban social reality (Stephen Crane, better known for his Civil War book called The Red Badge of Courage, and Theodore Dreiser)
3. America’s oppression of the poor became a popular topic: Frank Norris, the socialist Upton Sinclair who wrote The Jungle as an opposition to capitalism, Kate Chopin, and William Dean Howells
4. Other authors (Henry Adams and Henry James) removed themselves from industrializing American society
5. Reading clubs (book clubs) were popular among white women and African- Americans
B. Art in the Age of the City
1. American art finally broke from Old World Traditions around 1900 (Winslow Homer and James McNeil Whistler)
2. The Ashcan School followed the model of literature and portrayed the grim aspects of modern life
3. Modernism broke from “genteel tradition” and portrayed the ordinary coarseness of everyday life
C. The Impact of Darwinism
1. Most profound intellectual development in the late nineteenth century was the widespread acceptance of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, which broke from the biblical story of creation that was accepted by most Americans
2. By 1900, evolution had been accepted by educators and scientists, found its way into schools, and even theologians were being forced to accept it
3. Cosmopolitan culture of the city was more receptive to new ideas, while the traditional rural areas clung to more fundamental religious beliefs (growing divide between liberal Protestants and fundamental Protestants)
4. Alongside Social Darwinism grew “Pragmatism,” which stated that modern society should not rely on inherited ideals or religious morality for guidance, but rely on the test of scientific inquiry instead
5. Scientific inquiry pervaded work of economists and sociologists who argued for a more active application of the scientific method, historians (like Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles Beard) who argued that concrete factors influenced history as much as spiritual ideas, and educators who wanted education that helped students deal with the realities of society
6. Due to Darwin’s ideas, anthropology became more popular, and people began to examine the cultures of Native Americans
D. Toward Universal Schooling
1. Society depended on skills and science, so education bloomed in the late nineteenth century, but rural areas and blacks were still left out
2. Education for Indians was becoming more accepted, as a means to civilize the tribes, but was never as successful as reformers had hoped
3. Morrill Land Grant of the Civil War era occurred when the federal government donated land to states for the establishment of colleges, and the new “land-grant” institutions produced many more educational opportunities
4. Philanthropists and tycoons donated money to spread education (Stanford University)
E. Education for Women
1. Public high schools accepted women and some colleges were opening up female campuses, but the main source for secondary education was the creation of a network of female colleges
2. Women who went to college did not marry as early, continued to pursue careers after marriage, and felt liberated because they had more roles to fill (like leaders of reform movements)
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Home Based Internet Business Opportunity – 8 Tools to Maximize Profits
April 12th, 2010 · No Comments
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NFL Playoff Preview: Roundtable Style
April 10th, 2010 · No Comments
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4 Steps To Find Legitimate Home Based Business Opportunities
April 10th, 2010 · No Comments
Here are my 4 steps for success in an opportunity. If you follow them through, you can expect more likeliness of success:
* Step 1 To Finding Legitimate Home Business Opportunities – Research
* Step 2 To Finding Legitimate Business Opportunities – Communicate
* Step 3 To Finding Legitimate Home Based Business Opportunities – Try It Out!
* Step 4 To Finding Legitimate Work From Home Business Opportunities – Start!
* Step 1 To Finding Legitimate Home Business Opportunities – Research
The first key to finding those legitimate opportunities is to do research. Often I will see people jump into those work from home opportunities that simply offer a great presentation, glossy brochures, and even big figures of potential income.
I am sure you have experienced in your own life, some friends, family and acquaintances that have simply joined an opportunity without doing key research. Research is essential before choosing to join a home business opportunity.
There are many ways to do your research, but first you need to consider what you want out of your work from home business. Yes, money perhaps is one of them, but what about the skills you have, your talents, and your passion and or knowledge about the product? These considerations will go a long way, and allow you to find an opportunity, that you are in synergy with.
-Note: Remember to make a list of several opportunities; don’t stick with one at this point!
* Step 2 To Finding Legitimate Business Opportunities – Communicate
The next step is to communicate. Go to a meeting, seminar, phone support, speak to upline. Going through these steps will allow you to learn more about the business. You will also get to learn about how interested people are in the company to help you make money, and achieve success in the business.
* Step 3 To Finding Legitimate Home Based Business Opportunities – Try It Out!
Most of the opportunities will want you to join as soon as you are interested. But, if you have an upline or good support, then you can always buy the products in the beginning, and see if you can get customers.
This way, you will not waste time on an opportunity which doesn’t make money! Though this method means that you may sell at a loss or even just break even, you will know whether the model of business works or not.
* Step 4 To Finding Legitimate Work From Home Business Opportunities – Start!
The next step is narrow your choice down to one of the legitimate home based business opportunities. Now, you are in a position to start. You will know if it works, because you have tested. You know what kind of support you will get, and now you can achieve your goals!
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Make Money With Free Home Based Business Opportunities
April 9th, 2010 · No Comments
Let’s start by defining the word “key”. The word “key”, has many meanings. It can be a land mass, as in “Florida Keys”. It can refer to a musical instrument, as in “keys on a piano”.
In fact those 3 letters, k-e-y, make up one of the most powerful words in human language. The reason is, that no matter what type of key you are talking about, whether it is a musical key, a computer “keyboard” or a “mechanical key”, that opens a lock, all keys have one extremely important fact in common – They all, (with the exception of the landmass) GRANT ACCESS to SOMETHING!!
Allowing access is the most important aspect of the word key. Without keys you would be cut off from many things. If you do not believe this to be true, then I suggest you throw away your keychain with your keys attached and see how much fun you’ll have without access to your house, your car, etc.
Now, the funny thing about keys is they are not always “physical objects”. An electronic garage door has a key, to open and close the door.
But you would be wrong if you said the remote itself, was the key. The key is the “electronic signal” sent out by the remote, not the remote itself. The remote control actually generates the “signal key” that opens the garage door. My point is simple, the world is filled with various keys, but not all are physical or even visible to the eye.
And now I’m going to hit you right between the eyes … you probably already OWN, The Key To Making your Free Home Based Business Opportunity Work and don’t even know it!
I can say this with almost absolute certainty, the key has probably been offered to you on various occasions throughout your life, but you weren’t aware of it at the time. And as with all keys – keys are WORTHLESS, unless you USE THEM!!
You have probably already figured out that the key to making Free Home Based Business Opportunities work is not a physical key. It has no physical form in our three dimensional space. It is what I like to call, for the lack of a better term, a “conceptual key”. This type of key requires your mind to make it work, not your hand. And just like any concept, it’s difficult, if not impossible to use if you do not have conscious awareness of it.
Here is another very important quality about keys. They work in two directions; they can either grant or deny access. In fact, if you are like most people, you are currently using this “conceptual key” to limit yourself and deny yourself access to actually make money online and your goals and dreams.
Read my next article to find out how to find the key.
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