Industry and Big Business Introduction
While some Americans were moving west on the Transcontinental
Railroad, and having conflict with the Native Americans in the Great
Plains, those who stayed East found themselves building a grand nation of
industry. In the years between the Civil War and World War I, new
inventions in the East led to the growth of industry and big businesses.
In the 1850s, Americans found ways to use oil for heating, lighting
and cooking, and found ways to get it from the ground. Henry Bessemer discovered a way to
manufacture one to two days of steel in ten to twenty minutes, and immigrants moved into the
United States who were willing to do manufacturing work. After the Civil War, new inventors like
Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, brought great change to the country. Edison developed
electric light and an electric power system. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. By
1880 there were 55,000 telephones in America. Twenty years later there were 1.5 million.
Americans had so much more money in the years after the Civil War, this money, along with
advertising and the railroads allowed industry and big business to thrive! America was already filled
with natural resources. Trains, advertising, money and new inventions brought about a boom in big
business, especially in three fields: oil, railroads and steel.
By the late 1800s, oil was found to be useful for power, heating, lighting and
cooking. In efforts to make oil affordable to everyone, businessmen tried to find
cheap ways to pump it, and to refine it. No one was more successful than John D.
Rockefeller. Rockefeller became the titan of the oil industry, starting a company
called Standard Oil Company. Standard Oil made oil less expensive and available to
everyone, but it also became a big monopoly. A monopoly is a when a company has
total control over an industry. This means that they completely control that product.
Rockefeller had almost complete control over the oil business, but many big leaders in
business at that time controlled monopolies too.
As Railroads developed moving east to west, they did two extremely important things. First,
they brought raw materials from the west to the factories in the
east. They would bring things like copper, lead, and iron back to the
factories. They especially brought iron from the west to Pittsburgh.
The second thing railroads did was take the goods (the finished
products) from the factories to people! People could receive goods
that went across the country- creating a national market. The titan
of the railroad and shipping industry was Cornelius Vanderbilt from
New York. The Vanderbilt family made millions, and there are still
rich Vanderbilt’s today (like tv’s Anderson Cooper!).
By the middle of the 1850s, Henry Bessemer had developed the Bessemer process, which
made manufacturing steel easy and cheap. A Scottish immigrant named Andrew Carnegie perfected
the process and developed a steel manufacturing plant in Pittsburgh. Like Rockefeller, Carnegie
came to hold a monopoly over the steel industry, and even bought mines, and railroads so that he
could mine his own materials, create the steel at his factories, and then ship them out on his
railroads. Carnegie was a mastermind, and eventually sold his company in 1901 for $250 billion. Like
Rockefeller and Vanderbilt, Carnegie gave a lot of his money away to public works. He was a very
famous philanthropist.
The growth of business caused a growth in cities, as immigrants and workers had to move into
the cities in order to find work. These big businesses used many workers, which was good in that so
many people had a job, but oftentimes these workers were treated poorly. The main thing to
remember about the Growth of Business is that new inventions from the middle of the 1800s caused
a great wave of business which made luxury items cheaper and easier to make. The big businesses
caused people to move into the cities, but eventually those workers would be mistreated.
After you read, answer these questions:
1. What did new inventions in the east in the years between the Civil War and World War I lead to?
2. What were some ways Americans found they could use oil?
3. Name two inventors, and what they invented.
4. What brought about a boom in big business?
5. What three fields felt that boom?
6. Who was the most successful man in the oil industry? What was his company’s name?
7. What is a monopoly?