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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

Railroad empire

begins1869

New York to Chicago

“What do I care for

the law? Haven’t I

got the Power?”

5

Oil empire

Standard Oil Company

of Ohio, 1870

90% of nation’s oil

refineries

Supreme Court limits

Rockefeller monopoly

6

Steel empire

Carnegie Steel Company 1900

Iron ore deposits

Railroads

Steamships

Steel mills

The Gospel of Wealth -the uses of wealth

7

Finance – industrial

consolidation

US Steel

Corporation

American Telephone

and Telegraph

General Electric

Northern Pacific RR

8

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

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“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 www.digitalhistory.uh.edu

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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

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