industrial revolution america the rise of big business
TRANSCRIPT
Industrial RevolutionAmerica
The Rise of Big Business
• The Gilded Age• period between the end of
Radical Reconstruction (1877• beginning of the Progressive
Era (1901)• Brassy• Flamboyant• big business values• political corruption• extremes of wealth and poverty.
• United States changed: • from a predominantly rural/
agrarian nation• to an urban industrial one.
Major DevelopmentsEstablished the foundation for 20th century America
• Industrialization• By 1913 America produced
1/3 of the world’s industrial output.
• ½ of all workers worked in factories
• 2/3 of all workers worked for wages
• Urbanization• 11 million moved from
farms to cities• Great Lakes Region
• Immigration• 1870-1920 25 million
immigrants
TechnologyTelegraphTelephoneTypewriterHandheld Camera
• Mass products• Market, production,
distribution, marketing• National Brands• Nation wide companies
• Thomas Edison• Phonograph• Lightbulb• Motion picture• Electricity - power
• Key to economic growth• Reliable
• Flexible
• Cheap
• Electric motor
Took Problems into 20th Century• Problems generated by
the Age of Energy• the unequal distribution
of wealth• large-scale
unemployment• urban crowding• decline of farm income• reckless exploitation of
natural resources• would carry over into the
20th century.
Distant Corporations
• rural communities:• Self-sufficient• Isolated• satisfied people's needs• replaced by distant
corporations.
• Corporations:• Impersonal • located primarily in the
Northeast• Manufactured products• Provided Services• Generated ideas
Controlled Nation’s Economy• Corporations swallowing up
independent companies• Formed trusts
• Controlled food supply• Fashioned clothing• produced household
furnishings & tools• Dominated methods of
transportation• published its books,
magazines, and newspapers.
Life Profoundly Changed• Allan Nevins & Henry Steele Commanger
provide a vivid description of the impact of trusts on the "island community:"
The life of the average man, especially if he was a city dweller, was profoundly changed by this development. . . . When he sat down to breakfast he ate bacon packed by the beef trusts, seasoned his eggs with salt made by the Michigan salt trust, sweetened his coffee with sugar refined by the American Sugar trust, lit his American Tobacco Company cigar with a Diamond Match Company match.
Standardization
• Then he rode to work on a bicycle built by the bicycle trust or on a trolley car operating under a monopolistic franchise and running on steel rails made by United States Steel. . .
Rapid Industrialization
• By 1890, the value of industrial goods and services, for the first time, exceeded that of agricultural products.
Captains of Industry
• Entrepreneurs with the talent, vision, and willingness to take risks were able to achieve unprecedented wealth and power.
Standard Oil Trust
• In 1882, John D. Rockefeller formed the Standard Oil Trust and consequently dominated 95% of the production, refining, and marketing of oil in the United States.
Horizontal Consolidation
• The merger of competing companies in one area of business, like oil refining, was known as horizontal consolidation.
Raw material Independent Companies
Horizontal Consolidation
ManufacturingRefineries,
pipelines, tankers Standard Oil Trust
Product Distribution
Fuel, kerosene,oil, tar
Independent Companies
Vertical Consolidation
• It was often accompanied by vertical consolidation of industries, in which a firm would strive to control all aspects of production from acquisition of raw materials to final delivery of finished products.
VerticalConsoli-dation
Raw material
U.S. SteelManufacturing
Product Distribution
Giant Corporations
• By 1900, two-thirds of all manufactured goods were being produced by giant corporations. Swift and Armour dominated meat packing, the Duke family controlled tobacco, and Andrew Carnegie took over every aspect of steel production.
Swift armour
1889 Duke Tobacco Advertisement
Swift armour
U. S. Steel Corporation• When he retired in 1901,
he sold Carnegie Steel to financier J. P. Morgan for over $400 million dollars. Morgan subsequently reorganized the company into the United States Steel Corporation.
USS
Equal Protection of the Law• In 1886, the Supreme
Court set a precedent that has been interpreted to mean that corporations have the same rights as living persons under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.*
on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."
* Before oral argument took place in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, Chief Justice Waite announced: "The court does not wish to hear argument
Corporate Personhood• From that point on, the 14th
Amendment, enacted to protect rights of freed slaves, was used routinely to grant corporations constitutional "personhood." Justices have since struck down hundreds of local, state and federal laws enacted to protect people from corporate harm based on this premise. Armed with these "rights," corporations increased control over resources, jobs, commerce, politicians, even judges
Citizens United• In Citizens United v.
Federal Election Commission (2010), the Supreme Court ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.
Federal Regulation of Trusts
• The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 outlawed all contracts, combinations, or conspiracies in restraint of trade, and all monopolies
Theodore Roosevelt: Trust Buster• President Theodore
Roosevelt was successful in cases against the Northern Securities Company, the meatpacker trust, the tobacco trust, and the Standard Oil Company.
Discriminatory Practices
• Rebate: a partial kick back of a large company's shipping costs in exchange for all of its freight business.
• Long and Short Haul Abuses: a short journey where no competition existed cost more than a long one where two or more lines competed.
• Graft: officials bribed public officials by giving out free train passes.