The Second Industrial Revolution: Business and Economics in Late- 19 th Century America 1.The Rise of Heavy Industry 2.Big Business and its Practices 3.“Captains of Industry” or “Robber Barons”? 4.New Technologies that Changed America 5.Demographic Change

STEEL The Bessemer Process led to the production of cheaper steel in the late 1800s. Flatiron Building, NYC Brooklyn Bridge

US Iron and Steel Production

US Becomes a World Manufacturing Powerhouse

“Big Business” increasingly replaced smaller firms

Questionable practices were sometimes used to help big businesses expand and prosper: POOLS –Informal price-fixing or market-sharing arrangements between firms in the same industry TRUSTS –Big businesses that buy up smaller businesses (usually in the same industry) to create one large firm

Methods of Expanding Businesses

Andrew Carnegie Carnegie/US Steel – horizontal and vertical integration

John D. Rockefeller Standard Oil Company – horizontal integration

A Political Cartoonist’s View of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company

John Pierpont Morgan and the financing of business expansion Investment Banking (stocks, corporate bonds)

Thomas A. Edison The Electric Light, 1879

Alexander Graham Bell The Telephone, 1876

Late-1800s Society Population Growth –Despite declining birthrate Immigration –“New” Immigrants (Southern and Eastern Europe) came in large numbers –What set “New” Immigrants apart from earlier immigrants?

Where did Americans live in 1890?

Cities in Late-1800s America Increasing physical division of different classes and ethnic groups

Cities of the Late 1800s Impact of new technology: –Gas, then electric lights –Telephones –Transportation improvements and “streetcar suburbs”

Victorian Architecture Late 1800s - Early 1900s

Victorian Architecture

Middle Class Life: Education Education increasingly popular and advanced –Public high schools in US: 1870 – –More colleges with a focus on research and professional education: Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Univ. of Chicago

Middle Class Women Domesticity still a powerful ideal Gradually increasing access to education: –New women’s colleges –Some access to professions (still difficult, though)

The “Gibson Girl” The somewhat more liberated woman of the 1890s, complete with shirtwaist blouse and ankle- length skirt (popularized in advertisements drawn by Charles Gibson)

The Success Ethic Wealth available to anyone willing to pursue it HARD WORK + GOOD CHARACTER = SUCCESS