World Class Education
www.kean.edu
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Topic 7
The New Industrial Order
in
The Post-Civil War Period
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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
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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
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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
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Railroad empire
begins1869
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New York to Chicago
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“What do I care for
the law? Haven’t I
got the Power?”
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Oil empire
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Standard Oil Company
of Ohio, 1870
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90% of nation’s oil
refineries
Supreme Court limits
Rockefeller monopoly
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Steel empire
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Carnegie Steel
Company 1900
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Iron ore deposits
Railroads
Steamships
Steel mills
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The Gospel of Wealth the uses of wealth
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Finance – industrial
consolidation
US Steel
Corporation
American Telephone
and Telegraph
General Electric
Northern Pacific RR
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Gustavus Swift –
meatpacking
Philip D. Armour –
meatpacking
Charles A. Pillsbury –
flour milling
James B. Duke –
cigarette manufacturing
Andrew Mellon –
aluminum
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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
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Exploitation of workers
Corruption of
government
Greed
Destruction of small
producers
Restraint of competition
- monopolies
Abuse of consumers
Laissez faire economics
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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
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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, scandalplagued 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
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Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons: The Great
American Capitalists, 1861–1901
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Leon Litwack, The American Labor Movement