The Growth of Industry

Money, Money, Money

Rise of Industry

Toward the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the 20th, the United States became , and the country changed dramatically.

industrialized

Key Factors - Natural Resources

1. An abundant supply of seemed to

promise centuries of fuel for industrial factories. Large amounts of was found in Pennsylvania, in Texas, and

in Minnesota

natural resources

coaloil

iron

Pennsylvania Coal Mine

Key Factors - Transportation

2. Improved transportation expanded trade from coast to coast. allowed farmers to sell agricultural products from the

West to the East picked with mechanized farming equipment made in the East. Internationally, the U.S. exported billion dollars worth of goods each year by 1910.

Railroads

2

Key Factors - Labor & Government Help 3. A huge supply of resulted when

people moved to urban centers, whether from the rural farms in the U.S, or as immigrants coming from the world.

4. The government boosted industry by helping companies get loans ( ), providing minimal regulation

), personal income tax on businessmen was not required until 1913 ( tycoons like made millions), and no environmental controls.

labor

Railroads

(Laissez-faire

Rockefeller

Key Factors - Spirit of Innovation

5. The Spirit of Innovation helped the patent office grant over patents to the inventors of machines, techniques, and tools between 1860-1900.

676,000

Steel

No single innovation affected technological change more than the development of production. The process of making steel helped build the rail system, and also, steel girders supported the buildings that could now be built with multiple to accommodate urban centers that became saturated with people.

steelBessemer

stories

Industry Giants: John D. Rockefeller came to control of the oil

business in the United States. He started with an oil refinery in in 1863. By 1868, his refinery businesses were the largest in the world. In 1870, he co-founded Oil Company. He then merged his business into an even more dominating position by owning pipelines and railroads. He wanted a , saying it would provide economic stability and high quality. By 1900, he was right. By eliminating all competition and owning all the transportation routes, he could make large profits and offer a lower price on oil, to himself, than he had previously.

90%

Cleveland, Ohio

Standard

monopoly

Rockefeller

Standard was among the most monstrous because of Rockefeller’s ruthless tactics to eliminate his competition. When Ohio threatened to dissolve his growing monopoly, he moved the company to where looser state regulation allowed his business practices. The lower costs of oil mattered little to most Americans. Rockefeller bought up the transportation routes, charged himself less for the oil his other companies needed, and then charged more for shipping and transporting other people’s goods.

trusts

New Jersey

was equally successful in the steel business. Immigrating from Scotland to the United States, he had made $400,000 dollars in stock investments by the time he was . He bought a steel plant in Pittsburgh, PA, and used the Bessemer process early on, creating a demand for his steel, which was known as the

. As he opened more steel plants, he also bought up shipping and transportation routes to keep his cost down. Once again, a trust was formed. By 1900, Carnegie rolled in

million worth of profits.

33

highest quality

$40

Andrew Carnegie

realized that Carnegie and Rockefeller would need financing from time to time. By dominating activity in through overseas stocks and loans to the other American tycoons, he racked up his own pile of cash.

JP Morgan

banking

Morality of Profit

By the turn of the Century, the grand monopolies and their super rich owners started to face some public heat. Never before in the history of the modern world had so few individuals controlled the majority of such awesome resources, industries, and utilities. In 1900, the material worth of 1% of the population was greater than that of the other . Critics of big business decried the wide gap between the wealth and power of the tycoons and average Americans.99% combined.

Today? The Top 1% own almost 40% of the nation’s wealth.

If you add in the Top 10%, 72% of the wealth is already taken.

Meanwhile the bottom 2.5% of the United States gets 2.5% of the property of our nation.

The Gospel of Wealth

actually wrote a book with this title. He argued that becoming so rich made you approved by , to act as a trustee over the poor, who obviously could not be trusted with any money. This Gospel also called upon the super rich to be

—that is they should donated a portion of their great wealth to communities for the good of the public. Carnegie himself gave $350 million during his lifetime. He built over 3,000 and donated many statues to art museums.

Carnegie

God

philanthropists

libraries

The Middle Class Approves

Some Americans supported the actions of the wealthy because industry helped some people elevate to the middle class. stores and factories needed a sales force and managers. Those with an education or good clerical skills could rise above the factory floor. A few of the industry workers themselves sacrificed their livelihood for the next generation, remaining poor yet sending their children to and a better life.

Department

college

Hard Times for Average Americans

Most Americans at the turn of the century viewed industry through a lens of drudgery and hardship. Most Americans still used candle power, had no , no telephone, and wood stoves for cooking.

indoor plumbing

Bad sewage and unclean meant that disease and sickness remained common.

killed off thousands. A mere 7 percent of Americans achieved high school diplomas in 1900. Laborers had no time or money for modern social life. The extravagant society parties rumored at the mansions of the tycoons were impossible to even conceive of, let alone achieve.

water

Typhoid, cholera, and the flu

Industrial working conditions

In steel, iron, or coal mines, garment factories, shipyards, or on the railroad tracks, most Americans worked, suffered, and died in

working conditions. hour days were normal for both men and women, six days a week. In the Carnegie steel mills, two shifts kept the mills working 24 hours-a-day, except once a month, when workers were required to pull a 24 hour shift.

horrible 10 to 12

Conditions

In the steel mill, floors were so hot that water

on them. In the furnace room, thousands of men died in fires from the molten steel simply by getting tired and standing too close. In garment factories, women became permanently from working in such close quarters. If a needle plunged through their fingers or bone, as it often did, women were forced to keep working.

sizzled

disabled