The Rise of Industry- Maija

    The industrial revolution reached the U.S. in the early 1800s. Business and industry grew pretty rapidly in America after the Civil War. A population of 30 million Americans had only 1.3 million working in industry. The U.S. was the world’s leading industrial nation by the late 1800s. In 1914 the nation’s Gross Natural Product was eight times larger than when the Civil War ended in 1865. The U.S. had a vast amount of natural resources like timber, coal, iron, and copper. It saved the U.S. money because there was no need to import these products. The wealth of the raw materials is said to be a major part in the success of the industry. In the late 1800s people began living by laissez-faire; relied on supply and demand and helped regulate prices and wages.

       The oil industry in the U.S. was built because of the need for kerosene. Kerosene could be made by oil and was used for lanterns and stoves. In 1859 Edwin Drake drilled the first oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Oil fields from Pennsylvania to Texas were drilled by the early 1900s. The faster oil companies grew the better the economy did. The triple of population in the U.S. between 1860 and 1910 provided the industry with greater demands for factory made goods. Towards the end of the 1800s the U.S. was one of the largest trade areas in the world.

Titusville, Pennsylvania 1859 – Edwin Drake

The Railroads - Madison

              

              The railroads were constructed rapidly after the Civil War ended.  In 1865, the U.S. had approximately 35,000 miles of tracks that ran along to almost the entire eastern part of the Mississippi River.  There was 200,000 miles of tracks at the beginning of the 1900’s, which was a significant jump from the previous 35 years.  All of this would not have been possible if it weren't for Abraham Lincoln, who signed the Pacific Railway Act in 1862, starting the production of these railroads.  It forced two corporations of railroad contractors and laborers to work together and form the Transcontinental Railroad.  The government enticed them with the offer of bountiful land to build the tracks over.

                One of the corporations, the Union Pacific, employed Civil War veterans, Irish immigrants, miners, farmers, cooks, and ex-convicts.  They had a total of 10,000 of these workers, sweating and exerting themselves every day to help construct this ridiculously long railroad that stretched clear across the continental U.S.  It began building westward from Omaha, its goal along the lines of the Pacific Ocean.  The workers had to eventually face the arid heat of the scorching desert and the wrath of the angry Native Americans.

The other railroad corporation was the Central Pacific Railroad.  This railroad company was led by four Sacramento merchants named Charley Crocker, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Collis P. Huntington.   They hired around 10,000 workers too, but these were from California and China.  Their daily wages were a dollar, and it was enough to keep them from quitting.  They used new, industrial equipment to build the tracks and the locomotives, and all of it was supplied from the eastern U.S.

Big Business - Jenn

After the 1830’s and the Civil War, business was beginning to boom because of the rise of corporations.  With these newly formed corporations, many people could own a specific share of the company by buying stocks.  The benefits of this included that the corporation as a whole could grow and raise more money and spread out the financial dangers that might happen if the sales and distribution went down.  Additional income gave the companies an opportunity to invest in new technologies and hire more people, which ended up lowering the manufacturing prices of their goods because they were made swiftly and profusely.

A couple of the front-runners of big business were, unquestionably, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.  Carnegie started out inevitably poor; he was an immigrant from Scotland and had started working at the age of 12 in a textile factory.  He managed to work his way up to become a telegraph messenger, and after a few years of hard work and dedication, he became the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad.   With his experience, he found it wise to invest in the railroad industry, and he ended up quitting his job after he started making $50,000 a year to focus on these investments.  In 1875, Carnegie founded a steel company stationed in Pittsburgh, and he started copying an efficient steel producing process created by Sir Henry Bessemer.  His company began to become successful, and in order to preserve that, Carnegie started the vertical integration of his industry to own all of the businesses incorporated into his larger one, including coal mines and iron ore fields.  This made his company transform into an enormous industry and made him unfathomably wealthy.

The second most successful entrepreneur was John D. Rockefeller, who built the largest oil refinery company in America.  Many people were creating their own little businesses to try and drill for the “black gold”, but 90% of them were ended up being bought out by Rockefeller’s company!  This is an example of horizontal integration, which combines companies with the same products into an overall larger corporation.  Standard Oil ended up making a staggering amount of money and helped boost the nation’s economy significantly.  

Unions - Isaac

In the 1830’s craft workers began to form trade unions. By 1873 there were 32 national trade unions in the United States, for all the different businesses like glass making and coal mines.  Unions came into play because people believe the work place should be safe and that workers should have a voice, so the union protects them at work and keeps the work places safe and workable.

These unions weren’t always effective and they never got the respect that they thought they deserved.  Most of the time, when the employees went on strike, these revolts would only end in bloodshed.  An example of this is the Great Railroad Strike, which happened because of the troubling recession in 1873.  The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad declared that it would continue cutting wages for its employees, and they became fed up with it.  A strike formed with 80,000 workers who went out of control and vandalized the railroad company’s property.  The government had to send out militias to end the dispute, and when it ended, there was $10 million in damage inflicted on the railroads and 100 casualties from a fight that never should have happened.

Immigration - Madison

         Around the time the Civil War ended and World War I started, 25 million Europeans immigrated to the U.S.  In the late 1890's over half the immigrants in the U.S. were from eastern and southern Europe, including Italy, Greece, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Serbia.  This time period was known as the "new" immigration, while before the 1890's it was known as the "old" immigration, and those people were from northern and eastern Europe.

Urbanization - Isaac

  

Urbanization forced many things upon the government.  As cities became more crowded and there were more filthy people, most women demanded reform for things like meat inspections, building inspections and better treatment of child workers. This also was focused on taking down big businesses because they had so much power.   The workers had none and they couldn’t stand up to the bosses, and if they tried, they would just get fired.

                Political machines also reigned in urban cities.  Party bosses were powerful and controlled the assets of the city they ran.  The government would become so corrupted because of all the bribes and graft.  The party bosses made sure to give gifts to the people who resided in their city in exchange for their vote in the next election.  These machines struck another idea for government reform among the future progressives.

The Gilded Age - Jenn

           

           This period was a commencement of new philosophies and inventions.  The new technologies allowed for the swift growth of industrialization, which in turn expanded cities, improved the architectural structures of buildings, and blessed the common people with electricity.  Great writers like Mark Twain and Charles Warner were not fooled by the lavished improvements in this time, and they could tell that they would eventually lead to horrible crimes and economic problems. 

Many new beliefs were developed that revolutionized the relationships of the people of the United States.  One of the biggest philosophies is individualism, which caused people to think that no matter what their background was, they could reach as far as their talents and determination would let them.  This corresponds closely with Social Darwinism, which was a belief based off of Darwin’s theory of evolution.  Followers believed that natural selection was going on in their contemporary society, and that they were evolving through their competitions.  Realism was also born an emphasized in this time period, which is an artistic movement that portrayed the life in the paintings as it essentially is.  Popular culture was then roused and people began to spend more money on entertainment.

President Garfield was assassinated in the Gilded Age because he didn't support the spoils system, which would allow him to hand out government jobs to his friends and the people who supported him the most.  It was soon realized that it was about time for the political system to be reformed.  Congress passed the Pendleton Act to force certain jobs to be won through competitive written tests.  There was also a problem with poor urban dwellers, which desperately needed reform as well.  The Social Gospel movement strived for better conditions in cities, and was supported by the sacred morals of charity.  Salvation Armies provided more aid and help by teaching the principles of religion to poor people.  The YMCA established libraries, auditoriums, and gymnasiums in their buildings for the needy people who could not afford the privileges to go to one.  Settlement houses were constructed in immigrant neighborhoods to provide them with medical care and education.  Public schools also implemented the Americanization of the new immigrants, and taught them the culture, history, and language of the Americans.