1. Aim: How did capitalism contribute to the growth of American industry?
Homework:
Read Birth of American Capitalism excerpt and answer the discussion questions.

2. Natural Resources Fuel Industrialization
By the 1920s, The United States is world’s leading industrial power, due to a vast wealth of natural resources, government support for business, and a growing urban population.

3. Oil
1859, Edwin L. Drake successfully uses steam engine to drill for oil.
•Petroleum-refining industry first makes kerosene, then gasoline.

4. Bessemer Steel Process
•Abundant deposits of coal, iron spur industry
•Bessemer process puts air into iron to remove carbon to make steel.

5. New Uses for Steel
•Steel used in railroads, barbed wire, and farm machines.
•Changes construction: Brooklyn Bridge; steel-framed skyscrapers

6. New Inventions: Thomas Edison – 1880 - Incandescent Light Bulb
Christopher Scholes – 1867 – Typewriter
Alexander Graham Bell Telephone

7. The United States Economic System
Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of capital (money or property)

8. Laissez-Faire is a policy in which the government should not interfere with the workings of business.
•“Hands off”
•Free Enterprise – individual owners make business decisions.

9. Social-Darwinism was the belief that the people who reached the top of the business world were the fittest and deserved their vast power and wealth.
Charles Darwin
Herbert Spencer

10. Entrepreneurs were people who operate a new business or venture and assume accountability for the inherent risks.
•Often difficult and tricky, as many new ventures fail.
•Willing to accept a high level of personal, professional or financial risk to pursue that opportunity and gain all rewards!

11. Carnegie Steel Company Banking/Steel/Railroads
Entrepreneur
Business
John D. Rockefeller
Standard Oil
Andrew Carnegie
Carnegie Steel Company
J.P. Morgan
Banking/Steel/Railroads
Henry Ford
Automobile