Phones up! Have your notes out! 9/20

What do these images represent?

The Gilded Age “What is the chief end of man?-- to get rich. In what way?--dishonestly if we can; honestly if we must” ~Mark Twain

What the heck is “gilded” anyway?

Industrialization Land, labor, capital Government support Three major areas: Transportation and communication Electricity Research and Development

Railroads! Railroads!! RAILROADS!!! Western RRs funded by gov’t Transcontinental RR too How to link old Eastern lines with new Western lines? Cornelius Vanderbilt Left steamboating to focus on land transport Made even more money in RRs Steel rails to replace old iron tracks Standard sized tracks Corruption Bribed politicians’ Divided business in an area and shared products

What’s happening in the South? Before and after CW Agriculture and lack of educated workforce Cash crops like cotton and tobacco What could go wrong focusing on one crop to make $ ? Black Southerners sharecroppers and workers in tobacco factories Development in Textile industry Bring the mills to the cotton! Cheap labor = biggest thing going on for S textile industry Mostly poor white laborers “Hillbillies” came out to work in S factories Northeast hurt Southern industry RRs charged more for items shipping S -> N

Let’s pretend you and your group own a company... What do you produce? How could you beat your competition? How could you limit your competition? How could you reduce your production costs?

Trusts and Cartels Large scale business combination Businesses reaching agreements to fix prices

Vertical Integration -Owning all steps in production - Carnegie Steel owned the mines to dig for iron ore, the ships and railroad lines to ship the ore, and the plants to turn the ore into steel.

Horizontal Integration Owning/controlling all other businesses in your field Standard oil bought out other oil refineries and companies “Monopoly” Rockefeller “Let Us Prey”

Robber Barons or Captains of Industry? Built fortunes at the expense of laborers Drained the US of natural resources -OR- Captains of Industry Created jobs and served US positively Philanthropists gave to charities- founding museums and libraries

Get your vocabulary chart out! Vocab quiz time!