AMERICA ENTERS THE INDUSTRIAL AGE
The Industrial Revolution Continues
During the mid-1800s there was an industrial revolution that was underway in America. Rather than specialized skills and practices of the American culture, factories were beginning to replace hand tools. It was in the late 1800s that the mass amount of industrialization totally transformed the United states.
A surge of industrialization dramatically changed the nation in the late 1800s, fueled by the new Bessemer steam process and the growth of the electric power industry. William Kelly and Henry Bessemer in England developed the Bessemer steel process. This was a new process that used much less coal than the older process. It cut the cost of making steel in half, and this market increased 350 times between 1867 and 1900. The result? Plows, barbed wire, nails, and beams made by factories rapidly.
The typewriter was invented in 1876 as well as the sewing machine in 1846. All of these new technological advances meant the creation of new work work opportunities. These inventions opened more jobs for women and introduced ready-made clothes to the market.
Thomas Edison was the inventor who found many ways to use electricity in the late 1800s. He opened a laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey in 1876. Throughout his life he received more than 1,000 U.S. patents, including the electric light bulb and a system that delivered electricity to buildings safely. He employed Lewis Latimer, an African-American inventor who played a key role in improving practical electrical lighting.
Alexander Graham Bell as another accomplished inventor. He invented the telephone in 1876. Within four years 50,000 telephones were in use. Switchboard operators, mostly women, connected calls. Again, another job opportunity due to an invention!
Timeline of Technology and Transportation
Corporations Gain Power
In order to keep up with the fast growth and changing times, businesses needed to stay updated with the new technology. In order to afford this, they had to become corporations to raise money. There were very few laws that regulated corporations. Many corporations gained too much money and power.
An example of this was Oil baron John D. Rockefeller. He bought refineries and made secret deals to deliver oil at a lower rate than his competitors. He also built and purchased his own pipelines to carry oil. By doing this, he created a monopoly. A monopoly is a company that wipes out its competitors and controls an industry. One of his most famous moves to end competition was developing the trust . That is a legal body created to hold stock in many companies, often in the same industry. Many oil companies joined Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust. By 1880 he controlled 95% of all oil refining in the U.S., and was able to set a high price for oil. They had to pay his high price for oil, because they could not buy it anywhere else.
He became known as a robber baron, a business leader who uses dishonest methods to grow rich.
Andrew Carnegie, unlike Rockefeller, tried to beat his competition in the steel industry by making the best and cheapest product. He bought companies that provided the iron and others that carried it to the mills, thereby controlling all of the processes related to the manufacturing of steel and its delivery.
Carnegie and Rockefeller both were multimillionaires. Both men were also philanthropists, or people who give large sums of money to charities.
Economic Growth Brings Wealth and Poverty
Industrialization made many business owners very rich and inspired Americans to believe that everyone could succeed with hard work. Mark Twain and Charles Warner named the era the Gilded Age. To gild is to coat an object with gold leaf. The name has a deeper meaning. Just as a gold leaf can disguise an object of lesser value, the wealth of a few masked society's problems, including corrupt politics and widesepread poverty. The average income for 11 million of the nation's 12 million families was $380. The South largely missed out on the benefits of the industrial revolution as well, and remained mainly agricultural.
(Dallek, Robert. )American History: Reconstruction to the Present. Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell, 2008. Print.
Watch the video on Andrew Carnegie for a better idea of his life, and life during the Industrial Revolution in America. (Click Andrew Carnegie).
During the mid-1800s there was an industrial revolution that was underway in America. Rather than specialized skills and practices of the American culture, factories were beginning to replace hand tools. It was in the late 1800s that the mass amount of industrialization totally transformed the United states.
A surge of industrialization dramatically changed the nation in the late 1800s, fueled by the new Bessemer steam process and the growth of the electric power industry. William Kelly and Henry Bessemer in England developed the Bessemer steel process. This was a new process that used much less coal than the older process. It cut the cost of making steel in half, and this market increased 350 times between 1867 and 1900. The result? Plows, barbed wire, nails, and beams made by factories rapidly.
The typewriter was invented in 1876 as well as the sewing machine in 1846. All of these new technological advances meant the creation of new work work opportunities. These inventions opened more jobs for women and introduced ready-made clothes to the market.
Thomas Edison was the inventor who found many ways to use electricity in the late 1800s. He opened a laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey in 1876. Throughout his life he received more than 1,000 U.S. patents, including the electric light bulb and a system that delivered electricity to buildings safely. He employed Lewis Latimer, an African-American inventor who played a key role in improving practical electrical lighting.
Alexander Graham Bell as another accomplished inventor. He invented the telephone in 1876. Within four years 50,000 telephones were in use. Switchboard operators, mostly women, connected calls. Again, another job opportunity due to an invention!
Timeline of Technology and Transportation
Corporations Gain Power
In order to keep up with the fast growth and changing times, businesses needed to stay updated with the new technology. In order to afford this, they had to become corporations to raise money. There were very few laws that regulated corporations. Many corporations gained too much money and power.
An example of this was Oil baron John D. Rockefeller. He bought refineries and made secret deals to deliver oil at a lower rate than his competitors. He also built and purchased his own pipelines to carry oil. By doing this, he created a monopoly. A monopoly is a company that wipes out its competitors and controls an industry. One of his most famous moves to end competition was developing the trust . That is a legal body created to hold stock in many companies, often in the same industry. Many oil companies joined Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust. By 1880 he controlled 95% of all oil refining in the U.S., and was able to set a high price for oil. They had to pay his high price for oil, because they could not buy it anywhere else.
He became known as a robber baron, a business leader who uses dishonest methods to grow rich.
Andrew Carnegie, unlike Rockefeller, tried to beat his competition in the steel industry by making the best and cheapest product. He bought companies that provided the iron and others that carried it to the mills, thereby controlling all of the processes related to the manufacturing of steel and its delivery.
Carnegie and Rockefeller both were multimillionaires. Both men were also philanthropists, or people who give large sums of money to charities.
Economic Growth Brings Wealth and Poverty
Industrialization made many business owners very rich and inspired Americans to believe that everyone could succeed with hard work. Mark Twain and Charles Warner named the era the Gilded Age. To gild is to coat an object with gold leaf. The name has a deeper meaning. Just as a gold leaf can disguise an object of lesser value, the wealth of a few masked society's problems, including corrupt politics and widesepread poverty. The average income for 11 million of the nation's 12 million families was $380. The South largely missed out on the benefits of the industrial revolution as well, and remained mainly agricultural.
(Dallek, Robert. )American History: Reconstruction to the Present. Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell, 2008. Print.
Watch the video on Andrew Carnegie for a better idea of his life, and life during the Industrial Revolution in America. (Click Andrew Carnegie).