World Class Education

The New Industrial Order in The Post-Civil War Period 1 Topic 7

 Natural resources – iron and oil  Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments  Favorable state and federal Government policies  Immigration – influx of cheap labor  New sources of power – oil / electricity  American inventions and innovations  Improved transportation – regional and transcontinental railroads Giant corporations drive industrialization after the Civil War 2

 New industrial products – factory-made goods  Improved standard of living begins  Urban development  Increased overseas trade / imperialism  Problems of unregulated capitalism – monopolies and ruthless competition  Great fortunes accumulated 3

 Big corporations begin to replace single-owner business / partnerships with limited capital  Unfettered Competition  Major investments in railroads, steel, oil, telegraph and telephone communications  Corporations chartered to act as an “artificial legal person”  Emergence of powerful corporate tycoons 4

Cornelius Vanderbilt  Railroad empire begins1869  New York to Chicago  “What do I care for the law? Haven’t I got the Power?” 5

John D. Rockefeller  Oil empire  Standard Oil Company of Ohio, 1870  90% of nation’s oil refineries  Supreme Court limits Rockefeller monopoly 6

Andrew Carnegie  Steel empire  Carnegie Steel Company 1900  Iron ore deposits  Railroads  Steamships  Steel mills  The Gospel of Wealth - the uses of wealth 7

J. Pierpont Morgan  Finance – industrial consolidation  US Steel Corporation  American Telephone and Telegraph  General Electric  Northern Pacific RR 8

Others Industrialists  Gustavus Swift – meatpacking  Philip D. Armour – meatpacking  Charles A. Pillsbury – flour milling  James B. Duke – cigarette manufacturing  Andrew Mellon – aluminum 9

 Created new industries  Efficiency  Order out of economic chaos  Better services  Improved quality of products  America becomes an industrial giant  Philanthropies – endowment of museums, universities, libraries  Exploitation of workers  Corruption of government  Greed  Destruction of small producers  Restraint of competition - monopolies  Abuse of consumers  Laissez faire economics 10

 Haymarket Affair, 1886  Homestead Steel Strike, 1892  Pullman Strike, 1894  Anthracite Coal Strike, 1902  Knights of Labor  American Federation of Labor  The Industrial Workers of the World  Low pay  Long hours  Unsafe working conditions  No minimum wage  Employer lockouts 11

The Legacy of the Gilded Age  “Mark Twain called the late 19th century the "Gilded Age." In the popular view, the late 19th century was a period of greed and guile, when rapacious robber barons, unscrupulous speculators, and corporate buccaneers engaged in shady business practices and vulgar displays of wealth. It is easy to caricature the Gilded Age as an era of corruption, scandal- plagued politics, conspicuous consumption, and unfettered capitalism. But it is more useful to think of this period as modern America's formative era, when the rules of modern politics and business practice were just beginning to be written.” from 12

 Charles R. Morris, The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy  Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861–1901  Leon Litwack, The American Labor Movement 13