Complete Idiot’s Guide to American History

from the relentless rhythms of the assembly line. The gulf between management and labor, always wide, broadened into a bitter chasm, and if the moneyed classes welcomed the technological revolution, they now had reason to fear a political one.

The Least You Need to Know

The kind of raw energy that animated the “Wild West” seemed to drive the rest of the country as well during the latter half of the 19th century.

After the Civil War, big business grew largely unchecked, even at the expense of the public welfare, creating a roller-coaster boom-and-bust economy.

Big business generated investment in innovation, and the post-Civil War period was an era of great inventions.

Word for the Day

The cowboy’s ancestors are the vaqueros (from the Spanish vaca, “cow”), originally Indians attached to the old Spanish missions and employed by them to handle their beef herds. The cowboys roped steers with a loop of braided rawhide rope known as la reata–a lariat. They wore chaparreras, leather trousers designed to protect their legs from brush and chaparral; later, American cowboys wore chaps. The word vaquero found its American counterpart in a synonym for cowboy.

Stats

For all their notoriety, neither Jesse James nor Billy the Kid holds any Wild West record for gunfighting. In terms of number of men slain, Billy the Kid comes in at 10th place (4 murders), behind Jim Miller (12), Wes Hardin (11), Bill Longley (11), Harvey Logan (9), Wild Bill Hickok (7), John Selman (6), Dallas Stoudenmire (5), Cullen Baker (5), and King Fisher (5). Jesse James doesn’t even come close to the top 10. In nine gunfights, only one killing is confirmed, though James may have assisted in the slaying of three more.

Main Event

Strangely enough, the usually canny Edison saw little future motion pictures. He even decided against projecting the films for audiences, because he didn’t think there would be much demand. Instead, Edison developed an electrically driven peephole viewing machine-the Kinetoscope—which displayed moving images to one viewer at a time for the price of a nickel. Not until 1903 did the Edison Company began to exploit projected motion pictures. In this year, Edwin S. Porter, an Edison employee, directed “The Great Train Robbery,” generally considered the first movie—the filming of a genuine story, complete with beginning, middle, and end. If the origins of the American film industry can be traced to any single event, it is the creation of “The Great Train Robbery.”

Stats

In 1908, Ford manufactured 10,607 cars retailing for $850 each. In 1916, he turned out 730,041 Model T cars at $360 each.

Octopus and Jungle (1877-1906)

In This Chapter

Immigration and opposition to immigration

Oklahoma land rush

Labor organization to fight oppression

Corruption and reform

“History,” said the English writer Thomas Carlyle, “is the biographies of great men.” For a long time, most historians thought of their craft in this way. Thus the tale of the last quarter of the 19th century might be told exclusively through the lives of Carnegie, Gould, Rockefeller, Ford, and the rest. However, more recent historians have come to realize that these biographies relate only part of the story. History is also an account of ordinary people, the working men and women whose lives were influenced, even shaped, by the actions of politicians, robber barons, and (to use another phrase of Carlyle) the “captains of industry.” While the moneyed elite fought one another for control of more and more capital, the nation’s working people were tossed on the brutal seas of an economic tempest. Fortunes were being made and great inventions created, but for plain folk, the waning century presented plenty of hard times.

The Golden Door

America is a nation of immigrants. During the 17th century, colonial entrepreneurs actively recruited new