2.  1870-1900 a BOOM in industrial growth  Coal, oil, electricity, steel and railroads  Inventions happening like wildfire  Bessemer process key  Process of making steel, quicker and more efficient  Started in England, had to have it in US

3.  Explosion of inventive activity  Goal to harness this and control it  Invention factories established  Thomas Edison key in this movement  Organize system  Control R&D  Produce ideas in a efficient and profitable way

4.  Concept was key to success  Scrambling to better communicate and transport goods  Telegraph: 1844, by 1861 lines covered 76,000 miles  Soon outdone  Telephone: 1876 Alexander Graham Bell  Proved to be a great invention

5.  The Corporation  Advantages of the corporation: raise large sums of money, outlive its owners, limited liability, separated owners from day-to-day management  By the turn of the century, corporations were making two-thirds of all manufactured products in the U.S.  An International Pool of Labor  Global labor network  Migration chains  Domestic sources

6.  Hiccups in Railroad industry  Railroads saddled with enormous fixed costs: equipment, payroll, high debts  Pooling: informal agreements among competing companies to act together  The Challenge of Finance  New ways of raising money; stocks  Investment bankers advised companies about their business affairs

7.  Horizontal combination  Eliminate competition by buying others out  Vertical combination  Controlling all stages of production  Trusts  Way to get around state regulations, did not actually “own” business

8.  Early on evidence of environmental concerns  Labor concerns arising  Unions on the rise  Big business in the hands of a few  People fearing the worst  Regulation limited