Rise of Big Business

After the civil war, big corporations were created that could mass produce goods more efficiently. So the local retail stores starting advertising and using catalogs to intrigue and attract buyers.  By 1900 big businesses were dominating the economy; the number of factories and warehouses were growing rapidly.

These corporations were owned by numerous people that could sue or be sued. These businesses created a share of ownership called stock. Big businesses made it harder for the small corporations and businesses to compete and earn what they needed to stay in business. Many people disagreed with the idea of big business because they were unethically forcing mom and pop shops to go out of business.

Railroads

After the civil war ended, railroads in America were constructed rapidly. The construction of these railroads required a ton of capital investment and government land grants. Huge profits were made but unfortunately this lead to massive corruption in the business. The railroad boom began when President Lincoln agreed to sign the Pacific Railway Act which allowed the Transcontinental Railroad by the two major corporations.   
These two corporations were The Union Pacific and The Central Pacific. Working conditions were dirty and rough; men dealt with scorching heat through deserts, blizzards in the mountains, and angry Native Americans. Also men were hired from China to work horrible hours for about 1.00$ a day. The Transcontinental Railroad was done in 4 years despite the physical challenges the men faced daily.

New Industries

New inventions resulted in new industries and produced more wealth and jobs. Many inventions were created between 1870 and 1905, some of these inventions included Automatic lubricator for steams engines which allowed trains to run faster and less maintenance was required. This had a positive effect on society, other inventions were the typewriter, the telephone, the phonograph, carbon filament for a light bulb, automatic dishwashers, handheld camera, gas powered automobiles, and a powered flight! These inventions as well as others created a big impact on society and changed the way people lived also the way people communicated.

Free enterprise was a huge part of the success Americans had industrializing the nation. Americans adopted the French phrase Laissez-faire meaning “Let the people do as they choose.” Entrepreneurs were people who risk their capitol to organize and run businesses. These people were the ones who started new businesses and new ideas. They also were a big part of how free enterprise worked.

Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie was born in Scotland; he was the son of a poor hand weaver who moved to the U.S 1848. He became the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad he became very successful. Thomas Scott was impressed by Carnegies’ energy and success so he became the superintendent; he began buying shares in iron mills and factories that produced sleeping cars and locomotives. By age 30 Carnegie was earning 50,000 dollars a year and decided to quit his job and focus on business investments. He opened a new steel company that mass produced steel more efficiently and cheaply. Carnegie used Vertical Integration to make his company more efficient; Vertical Integration is when a company owns all the different companies that it depends on for production. John D. Rockefeller began constructing oil refineries when others began drilling for oil. He used Horizontal Integration which is when a company buys companies that do the same thing as they do. By 1870 Rockefeller's Company was the largest oil refinery in the nation. He began buying out all of his competitors and by 1880 he controlled 90% of the nation’s
oil refining industry creating a monopoly. 

Cornelius Vanderbilt

Cornelius Vanderbilt was one of the most successful men in the railroad business. After the Transcontinental Railroad was finished Vanderbilt purchased and merged three New York railroads, this lead to him to extend his control out to Chicago within 4 years. In 1871 Vanderbilt began constructing The New York Grand Terminal. Before 1880 each community set their clocks by the position of the sun at noon. This lead to collisions and unsafe rides for passengers because two trains traveling on the same track could lead to collisions. So to keep this problem from happening again the American Railway Association divided the country into four time zones in 1883 which the government ratified in 1918. 

Alexander Graham Bell & Thomas Edison

Alexander Graham Bell was a Scottish immigrant. In 1874 he suggested the idea of the telephone to a man named Thomas Watson who was his assistant. He began experimenting with ways to transmit sound through an electrical current. In 1876 he succeeded and in 1877 he created the Bell Telephone Company which eventually evolved into AT&T. Thomas Edison was an extraordinary inventor. He created the phonograph, the light bulb, the battery, the Dictaphone, and the motion picture! In 1889 several Edison companies merged to form the Edison General Electric Company which is known as GE in today’s society.

Thomas Edison was an extraordinary inventor. He created the phonograph, the light bulb, the battery, the Dictaphone, and the motion picture! In 1889 several Edison companies merged to form the Edison General Electric Company which is known as GE in today’s society.

Pan-America Conference

On October 2, 1889 there was the first Pan-America conference held in Washington, D.C. by Benjamin Harrison. The meaning of this conference was to meet between United States and other countries in Latin America. The purpose for this conference was to improve the economics and political relation participants. Blaine the secretary sent invitations to all nations in November 1881. The goal he tried to accomplish was to prevent wars with the nations.

Blaine took the lobby and continued the conference, and then he wrote the article called “The Foreign Policy of the Garfield Administration. Which lead to the second motive for the conference in pan-America. Plus it would have commercial relations with nations avoid war. Grover Cleveland thinks these ideas would work he, he thought it would have little impact. But Blaine didn't stop he keep with kept going with these ideas, so Benjamin Harrison told Blaine to back as Secretary of state and go on with the 
conference.