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Industrialization in America Standard 11
| Date post: | 10-Feb-2017 |
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Industrialization in America
Standard 11
Steel industry: • The growth of American railroads
helped expand the industries that supplied the railroad companies’ need for steel rails laid on wood ties, iron locomotives burning huge quantities of coal, wooden freight cars, and passenger cars with fabric-covered seats and glass windows.
Steel industry: • The railroads were the biggest
customers for the steel industry because thousands of miles of steel track were laid. In turn, the railroads had a great impact on the steel industry.
•
In 1856 Henry Bessemer devised a way of converting iron into steel on a large
scale.
His invention involved blowing air through molten iron in a converter, or furnace, in order to burn off the excess
carbon.
His invention revolutionized the Industrial Age.
New Uses for Steel Steel used in railroads, barbed wire,
farm machines
Changes construction: Brooklyn Bridge; steel-framed skyscrapers
Chinese laborers: • Fed government granted tracks of western land to
build railroads to connect East and West.
• These Asian immigrants accepted lower pay than other laborers demanded.
• The work was dangerous. Many Chinese died in the explosive blasts they ignited to clear the path across the railroad companies’ land.
• Many others died under rock slides and heavy snowfalls before the first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869.
Chinese Laborers: • More than 10k worked on the RR
• The work was brutally difficult, the pay was low, and workers were injured and killed at a very high rate.
• For Chinese laborers, though, it represented a chance to enter the workforce, and they accepted lower wages than many native-born U.S. workers.
• It would not have been finished in the time it did if it was not for the Chinese.
Construction of the Union Pacific Railroad
• Chinese laborers
New map of the Union Pacific Railway, the short, quick and safe line to all points west.
•May 10, 1869 at Promontory, Utah
•“The Wedding of the Rails”
•Central Pacific and Union Pacific
Development of the West: • Western farmers used the trains to ship their
grain east and western cattle ranchers shipped their steers to eastern butchers.
• Both farmers and ranchers sold their goods to people they could not easily reach without railroads.
• The railroads earned money by transporting the settlers west and the goods east.
Rise of Big Business:
• The rapid rise of the steel and railroad industries between the end of the Civil War and the early 1900s spurred the growth of other big businesses, especially in the oil, financial, and manufacturing sectors of the economy.
• These big businesses acquired enormous financial wealth.
• They often used this wealth to dominate and control many aspects of American cultural and political life, and by the beginning of the 20th century, as a consequence of these practices, big business became the target of government reform movements at the state and national levels.
John D. Rockefeller & Standard Oil:
• Rockefeller also gained control of most other oil companies and created what is called a trust. By means of a trust, Rockefeller came to own more than 90% of America’s oil industry.
• Standard Oil thus became a monopoly––a single company that controlled virtually all the U.S. oil production and distribution.
John D. Rockefeller & Standard Oil:
• Oil companies grew swiftly in this period, most notably the Standard Oil Company founded by John D. Rockefeller.
• Standard Oil was the most famous big business of the era.
New Financial Businessman
The Broker: J. Pierpont Morgan
Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt
Can’t I do what I want with my money?
Andrew Carnegie
Led the expansion of the steel industry in America. US Steel Company
Was a big philanthropist, donating much of his money to libraries, museums, schools, and universities. He would be worth an estimated 300 billion dollars today!!
