what major event pushed the us to become industrial

The Second Industrial Revolution

During the Gilded Age, America adult its mass production, scientific management, and managerial skills.

Learning Objectives

Assess the impact of the 2d Industrial Revolution

Fundamental Takeaways

Key Points

• The incredible economic and industrial growth of America after the Civil War became known as the "Second Industrial Revolution."
• Large corporations or trusts managed the manufacturing of raw materials such as coal, iron, and oil.
• The Bessemer process for manufacturing steel led to America's offset billion-dollar corporation, U.s.a. Steel.
• Improvements in workflow, such as mass production and scientific management, contributed greatly to economic growth.

Key Terms

• 2d Industrial Revolution: The Second Industrial Revolution, also known every bit the "Technological Revolution," was a stage of the larger Industrial Revolution corresponding to the latter half of the nineteenth century until World State of war I. It is considered to take begun with Bessemer steel in the 1860s and culminated in mass product and the production line.
• Bessemer procedure: The first inexpensive industrial process for the mass product of steel from molten pig iron.

The Second Industrial Revolution, also known as the "Technological Revolution," was a phase of rapid industrialization in the last third of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. The Outset Industrial Revolution, which ended in the early on-mid 1800s, was punctuated by a slowdown in macroinventions before the 2nd Industrial Revolution in 1870. Though a number of its characteristic events tin be traced to earlier innovations in manufacturing, such equally the invention of the Bessemer process in 1856, the Second Industrial Revolution is generally dated between 1870 and 1914 up to the outset of World War I.

Advancements in manufacturing and production technology enabled the widespread adoption of preexisting technological systems such equally telegraph and railroad networks, gas and water supply, and sewage systems, which had before been concentrated to a few select cities. The enormous expansion of rail and telegraph lines after 1870 allowed unprecedented motion of people and ideas, which culminated in a new wave of globalization. In the same catamenia, new systems were introduced, nearly significantly electrical power and telephones.

Growth and Change in Manufacture

A synergy between iron and steel, and railroads and coal adult at the get-go of the 2d Industrial Revolution. Railroads allowed cheap transportation of materials and products, which in turn led to cheap rail to build more roads. Railroads also benefited from cheap coal for their steam locomotives. This synergy led to the laying of 75,000 miles of track in the The states in the 1880s, the largest amount anywhere in globe history.

Past 1900, the process of economic concentration had extended into virtually branches of industry—a few large corporations, some organized as "trusts" (e.1000., Standard Oil), dominated in steel, oil, saccharide, meatpacking, and the manufacturing of agriculture machinery. Other major components of this infrastructure were the new methods for manufacturing steel, especially the Bessemer process. The first billion-dollar corporation was U.s. Steel, formed by financier J. P. Morgan in 1901, who purchased and consolidated steel firms congenital past Andrew Carnegie and others.

Diagram of the Bessemer converter: Air blown through holes in the converter bottom creates a violent reaction in the molten sus scrofa iron that oxidizes the excess carbon, converting the pig iron to pure fe or steel, depending on the remainder carbon.

Increased mechanization of industry and improvements to worker efficiency increased the productivity of factories while undercutting the need for skilled labor. Mechanical innovations such as batch and continuous processing began to get much more prominent in factories. This mechanization fabricated some factories an assemblage of unskilled laborers performing unproblematic and repetitive tasks nether the management of skilled foremen and engineers. In some cases, the advancement of such mechanization substituted for low-skilled workers birthday. Both the number of unskilled and skilled workers increased, as their wage rates grew. Technology colleges were established to feed the enormous need for expertise. Together with rapid growth of minor business, a new center class was quickly growing, especially in northern cities.

The menstruum from 1870 to 1890 saw the greatest increase in economic growth in such a short flow as ever in previous history. Living standards improved significantly equally the prices of goods savage dramatically due to the increases in productivity. This caused unemployment and great upheavals in commerce and manufacture, with many laborers being displaced by machines and many factories, ships, and other forms of fixed capital becoming obsolete in a very short time span. Crop failures no longer resulted in starvation in areas connected to big markets through transport infrastructure. By 1870, the work done by steam engines exceeded that washed by animal and man power. Horses and mules remained important in agriculture until the evolution of the internal combustion tractor almost the cease of the 2d Industrial Revolution. Improvements in steam efficiency, such every bit triple-expansion steam engines, allowed ships to carry much more freight than coal, resulting in greatly increased volumes of international trade.

The Second Industrial Revolution continued into the twentieth century with early factory electrification and the production line, and ended at the start of the Earth War I.

The Transcontinental Railroads

Completed in 1869, the Transcontinental Railroad served as a vital link for trade, commerce, and travel betwixt the East and W of the United states of america.

Learning Objectives

Assess the significance of the Transcontinental Railroad

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Railroads replaced stagecoach lines and wagon trains, and provided safer, faster, and cheaper transportation for goods and passengers.
• Many of the workers on the railroad were army veterans and Irish gaelic and Chinese immigrants.
• Known as the "Pacific Railroad" when it opened, the railroad served as a vital link for merchandise, commerce, and travel and opened up vast regions of the North American heartland for settlement.
• The auction of land grants and the ship provided for timber and crops led to the rapid settling of the "Great American Desert."

Key Terms

• First Transcontinental Railroad: A term for a contiguous railroad line constructed in the United states of america betwixt 1863 and 1869 westward of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers to connect the Pacific declension at San Francisco Bay with the existing eastern U.S. rail network at Council Bluffs, Iowa.
• Great American Desert: A term used in the nineteenth century to depict the western part of the Great Plains east of the Rocky Mountains in North America to nearly the 100th meridian. The area is now usually referred to as the "Loftier Plains," and the original term is now sometimes used to describe the arid region of the Southwest, which includes parts of northern Mexico and the four deserts of North America.
• Stagecoach: A blazon of covered wagon for passengers and goods, strongly sprung and fatigued by four horses, usually four-in-paw. Widely used earlier the introduction of railway transport, it made regular trips between stages or stations, which were places of balance provided for wagon travelers.

The Commencement Transcontinental Railroad was congenital between 1863 and 1869 to join the eastern and western halves of the United States. Begun right before the American Civil War, its construction was considered to exist i of the greatest American technological feats of the nineteenth century. Known every bit the "Pacific Railroad" when it opened, information technology served as a vital link for merchandise, commerce, and travel and opened upwardly vast regions of the North American heartland for settlement. Aircraft and commerce could thrive away from navigable watercourses for the first time since the commencement of the nation. Much of this line is even so used by the California Zephyr, although some parts were rerouted or abased.

The structure of the railroad resulted in the end of most of the far slower and more hazardous stagecoach lines and wagon trains. The railroad also led to a slap-up refuse of traffic on the Oregon and California Trail, which had helped populate much of the West. The Transcontinental Railroad provided much faster, safer, and cheaper transportation for people and appurtenances across the western ii-thirds of the continent. It took one week to travel from Omaha to San Francisco via emigrant sleeping car at a fare of about $65 for an adult. The auction of land grants and the send provided for timber and crops led to the rapid settling of the "Great American Desert."

Labor

Many ground forces veterans and Irish gaelic emigrants were the main workers on the Union Pacific, while well-nigh of the engineers were ex-army men who had learned their trade keeping the trains running during the American Civil State of war. The Primal Pacific Railroad, facing a labor shortage in the more sparsely settled West, relied on Chinese laborers who did biggy work building the line over and through the Sierra Nevada mountains and and so across Nevada to northern Utah. The Chinese were commonly referred to at the time equally "Celestials" and People's republic of china equally the "Celestial Kingdom." Labor-saving devices in those days consisted primarily of wheelbarrows, horse- or mule-pulled carts, and a few railroad-pulled gondolas. The construction work involved an immense amount of manual labor. Initially, Central Pacific had a hard time hiring and keeping unskilled workers on its line, as many would get out for the prospect of far more than lucrative golden or silver mining options elsewhere. Most of these Chinese workers were represented by a Chinese "boss" who acted as a translator, collected salaries for his crew, enforced subject area, and relayed orders from an American general supervisor. Most Chinese workers spoke only rudimentary or no English language, and the supervisors typically just learned rudimentary Chinese. Most of the men received between $ane and $three per day, the same as unskilled white workers; but the workers imported direct from China sometimes received less.

Edifice the Railroad

The rails laying was divided up into various parts. In advance of the track layers, surveyors consulting with engineers determined where the track would go. Workers and so built and prepared the roadbed; dug or blasted through hills; filled in washes; congenital trestles, bridges, or culverts across streams or valleys; made tunnels if needed; and laid the ties. The actual track-laying gang would so lay runway on the previously laid ties positioned on the roadbed, drive the spikes, and bolt the fishplate confined to each rail. At the aforementioned time, another gang would distribute telegraph poles and wire forth the course, while the cooks prepared dinner and the clerks busied themselves with accounts and records, using the telegraph line to relay requests for more materials and supplies or to communicate with supervisors. Usually the workers lived in camps built virtually their work site.

Tunnels were blasted through difficult rock by drilling holes in the rock face past paw and filling them with blackness powder. Sometimes cracks were establish which could exist filled with powder and blasted open up. The loosened rock would exist collected and hauled out of the tunnel for use in a fill up surface area or as roadbed, or else dumped over the side equally waste. A human foot or and so accelerate on a tunnel face was a typical solar day's work. Some tunnels took almost a year to finish; the Superlative Tunnel, the longest, took most ii years. In the concluding days of working in the Sierras, the recently invented nitroglycerin explosive was introduced and used on the last tunnels including Summit Tunnel.

Finishing the First Transcontinental Railroad: Workers celebrating the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad on May 10, 1869.

Mod Direction

The mechanization of the manufacturing process immune workers to be more productive in less time and factories to operate more efficiently.

Learning Objectives

Describe the rise of modern direction practices

Central Takeaways

Key Points

• Many of the new workers were unskilled laborers who performed simple, repetitive tasks.
• New systems of management with clear chains of control and complex bureaucratic systems began with railroad companies and spread throughout American businesses.
• Many new blue-collar jobs appeared in manufacturing, every bit well as white-collar jobs for managers.
• By the beginning of the 1900s, the United States had the highest per capita income and industrial production in the earth, with per capita incomes double those of Germany and France, and 50 percentage college than those of Britain.

Key Terms

• mechanization: The use of machinery to supervene upon human being or animate being labor, especially in agronomics and industry.
• management: Assistants; the process or practice of running an arrangement.
• efficiency: The extent to which time is well used for the intended chore.

Manufacturing

Frederick Winslow Taylor: Frederick Winslow Taylor, a mechanical engineer by training, is often credited with inventing scientific management and improving industrial efficiency.

The Gilded Age was marked past increased mechanization in manufacturing. Businesses searched for cheaper and more efficient means to create products. Corporate officials used various techniques, such as timing their workers with stopwatches and using stop-motion photography, to study the production procedure and ameliorate efficiency. Frederick Winslow Taylor observed that the use of more than avant-garde machinery could ameliorate efficiency in steel product by requiring workers to make fewer motions in less fourth dimension. His redesign increased the speed of factory machines and the productivity of factories while undercutting the need for skilled labor. Factories became an assemblage of unskilled laborers performing simple and repetitive tasks under the direction of skilled foremen and engineers. Machine shops, comprised of highly skilled workers and engineers, grew rapidly. The number of unskilled and skilled workers increased every bit their wage rates grew. Applied science colleges were established to feed the enormous demand for expertise.

Railroad Companies and Direction

Railroads gave rise to the evolution of modern management techniques, such equally the use of clear chains of command, statistical reporting, and complex bureaucratic systems. Railroad companies systematized the roles of middle managers and set up explicit career tracks. They hired young men at age 18–21 and promoted them internally until a man reached the status of locomotive engineer, conductor, or station amanuensis at age 40 or so. Career tracks were offered to skilled blue-collar workers and white-neckband managers, starting in railroads and expanding into finance, manufacturing, and trade. Together with rapid growth of small concern, a new middle class was rapidly growing, particularly in northern cities. Extensive national networks for transportation and advice were created. The corporation became the dominant class of business organization, and a managerial revolution transformed concern operations. By the beginning of the 1900s, the United States had the highest per capita income and industrial production in the earth, with per capita incomes double those of Germany and France, and 50 percent higher than those of Great britain.

The Inventions of the Phone and Electricity

The phone and electrical lightbulb are peradventure the two near influential nineteenth-century inventions.

Learning Objectives

Examine the advent of such late nineteenth-century inventions as electricity, the telephone, and the lightbulb

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Alexander Graham Bong invented the first workable telephone, basing his invention on a series of previous primitive examples.
• Thomas Edison, commonly credited with inventing the lightbulb, actually experimented with previous inventors' ideas to create the first commercially successful lightbulb by perfecting the filament material.
• Edison founded the successful Menlo Park enquiry lab to produce innovation.
• Edison and Nikola Tesla both advocated different systems of electricity delivery; eventually, Tesla'southward alternate current (AC) system proved more practical.

Key Terms

• alternating electric current: An electric current in which the direction of catamenia of the electrons reverses periodically having an average of zero, with positive and negative values; especially such a current produced by a rotating generator or alternator.
• Nikola Tesla: (July 10, 1856–Jan vii, 1943) A Serbian-American inventor, physicist, mechanical engineer, electrical engineer, and futurist who was an important contributor to the use of commercial electricity, and is all-time known for his contributions to the modern alternating current (AC) electrical supply system.
• directly electric current: An electric current in which the electrons period in ane direction, but may vary with fourth dimension.

The Telephone

Alexander Graham Bell is commonly credited as the inventor of the first applied phone. He was the commencement to obtain a patent, in 1876, for an, "apparatus for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically," after experimenting with many primitive sound transmitters and receivers.

Patent drawing for Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, March 7, 1876: Bell's telephone was the first apparatus to transmit homo speech via motorcar. His piece of work culminated in one of the most assisting and contested of all nineteenth-century patents.

Bell's telephone transmitter (microphone) consisted of a double electromagnet, in front of which a membrane, stretched on a ring, carried an oblong piece of soft iron cemented to its center. A funnel-shaped mouthpiece directed the vocalisation sounds upon the membrane, and as it vibrated, the soft iron "armature" induced corresponding currents in the coils of the electromagnet. Afterwards traversing the wire, these currents passed through the receiver, which consisted of an electromagnet in a tubular metal tin that had one end partially closed by a sparse circular disc of soft iron. When the undulatory current passed through the coil of this electromagnet, the disc vibrated, thereby creating audio waves in the air.

The kickoff long-distance phone call was made on Baronial 10, 1876, by Bell from the family homestead in Brantford, Ontario, to his banana located in Paris, Ontario, some 10 miles abroad. In June 1876, Bell exhibited a telephone paradigm at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.

The telephone was instrumental to modernization and labor. It aided in the development of suburbs and the separation of homes and businesses, but also became the reason for the separation between women occupying the private sphere and men in the public sphere. This would go on to isolate women and the home.

Women were regarded as the almost frequent users of the telephone. As a means of liberation, information technology enabled women to piece of work in the telecommunications sector as receptionists and operators. The autonomy was celebrated every bit women were able to develop new relationships and nurture preexisting ones in their private lives. Social relations are essential to the access and usage of telephone networks.

The Lightbulb

Thomas Edison'southward major innovation was the first industrial research lab, which was built in Menlo Park, New Jersey, and was the first establishment set upwards for the specific purpose of producing constant technological innovation. Most of the inventions produced at that place were legally attributed to Edison, though many employees carried out research and development under his direction.

Edison did non invent the first electric lightbulb, merely rather the beginning commercially applied incandescent calorie-free. Many earlier inventors had previously devised incandescent lamps, including Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans. Others such equally Humphry Davy, James Bowman Lindsay, Moses G. Farmer, William E. Sawyer, Joseph Swan, and Heinrich Göbel had developed early on and commercially impractical incandescent electric lamps. These early bulbs had an extremely short life, were expensive to produce, or drew a high electric current, making them hard to produce on a large commercial calibration.

By 1879, Edison had produced a new concept: a high resistance lamp in a very high vacuum, which would burn for hundreds of hours. While earlier inventors had produced electrical lighting in laboratory conditions, dating dorsum to a demonstration of a glowing wire by Alessandro Volta in 1800, Edison concentrated on commercial application. He was able to sell the concept to homes and businesses past mass-producing relatively long-lasting lightbulbs and creating a complete system for the generation and distribution of electricity.

Electric lighting in factories profoundly improved working weather, eliminating the estrus and pollution caused by gas lighting, and reducing the burn down hazard to the extent that the cost of electricity for lighting often was start by the reduction in fire insurance premiums. Electrical light was much brighter than that of oil or gas lamps, and at that place was no soot. Although early on electricity was very expensive compared to today, it was far cheaper and more convenient than oil or gas lighting.

Electricity

In 1831 and 1832, Michael Faraday discovered the operating principle of electromagnetic generators. The principle, later called "Faraday's Law," is that an electromotive force is generated in an electrical conductor that is subjected to a varying magnetic flux, as for example, in a wire moving through a magnetic field.

The improvements in electrical-generation technology increased the efficiency and reliability greatly in the nineteenth century. The first magnetos just converted a few percent of mechanical energy to electricity. By the terminate of the nineteenth century, the highest efficiencies were more than than ninety percent.

In the early on days of commercial electrical power, transmission of electric power at the same voltage as used past lighting and mechanical loads restricted the distance between generating constitute and consumers. In 1882, generation was with direct current (DC), which could not easily be increased in voltage for long-distance transmission. Different classes of loads (for example, lighting, stock-still motors, and traction/railway systems) required unlike voltages, and and so used different generators and circuits.

Due to this specialization of lines and because transmission was inefficient for depression-voltage high-current circuits, generators needed to be well-nigh their loads. It seemed, at the fourth dimension, that the industry would develop into what is now known as a "distributed generation system," with large numbers of small generators located nearly their loads.

The transmission of electric ability with alternate current (Air conditioning) became possible in 1881 subsequently Lucien Gaulard and John Dixon Gibbs built what they chosen the "secondary generator," an early on transformer provided with i:i plough ratio and open up magnetic excursion.

The "War of Currents"

Edison'due south truthful success, like that of his friend Henry Ford, was in his ability to maximize profits by establishing mass-production systems and obtaining intellectual-property rights. George Westinghouse became an adversary of Edison when he promoted the directly current (DC) for electric power distribution instead of the more easily transmitted alternating current (AC) system invented by Nikola Tesla and promoted past Westinghouse. Unlike DC, AC could be stepped up to very high voltages with transformers, sent over thinner and cheaper wires, and stepped down again at the destination for distribution to users.

The problem with DC was that power plants could only deliver DC electricity economically to customers within near one and a half miles (about two.4 km) from the generating station, so that information technology simply was suitable for central business concern districts. When George Westinghouse suggested using high-voltage AC instead, every bit information technology could carry electricity hundreds of miles with only marginal loss of power, Edison waged a "War of Currents" to prevent the adoption of the Air-conditioning system.

The war against Ac involved Edison in the development and promotion of the electric chair (using Air conditioning) as an attempt to portray Air conditioning as having greater lethal potential than DC. Edison continued to carry out a brief but intense campaign to ban the use of Air-conditioning or to limit the allowable voltage for rubber purposes. As part of this campaign, Edison's employees publicly electrocuted animals to demonstrate the dangers of Air conditioning. On one of the more than notable occasions, Edison's workers electrocuted Topsy the elephant at Luna Park, near Coney Island, later she had killed several men and her owners wanted her put to death.

AC eventually replaced DC in most instances of generation and power distribution, enormously extending the range and improving the efficiency of power distribution. Though widespread employ of DC ultimately lost favor for distribution, it exists today primarily in long-altitude loftier-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission systems.

Laissez-Faire and the Supreme Courtroom

During the Lochner Era, the Supreme Court advocated a laissez-faire economic policy.

Learning Objectives

Explain the laissez-faire philosophy of the tardily nineteenth century

Key Takeaways

Cardinal Points

• Lochner five. New York (1905), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Courtroom example that held a "liberty of contract" that was implicit in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Subpoena.
• Past a five to four vote, the Supreme Court rejected the argument that the contested New York police limiting a baker's working hours was necessary to protect the health of bakers, deciding instead that it was a labor constabulary attempting to regulate the terms of employment.
• In the 30-year Lochner Era, the Supreme Court issued several controversial decisions invalidating progressive federal and country statutes that sought to regulate working atmospheric condition during the Progressive Era and the Dandy Depression.
• "Laissez-faire" is an economic surroundings in which transactions between private parties are gratis from tariffs, regime subsidies, and enforced monopolies, with merely enough government regulations sufficient to protect belongings rights against theft and assailment.

Fundamental Terms

• Lochner 5. New York: A landmark U.S. Supreme Courtroom case which held that "liberty of contract" was implicit in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case involved a New York police that limited the number of hours that a baker could piece of work each day to x, and limited the number of hours that a baker could piece of work each calendar week to 60.
• laissez-faire: An economic surroundings in which transactions between private parties are gratuitous from tariffs, regime subsidies, and enforced monopolies, with just enough authorities regulations sufficient to protect holding rights against theft and aggression.

Lochner v. New York (1905), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court example that held that the notion of a "freedom of contract" was implicit in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Subpoena. The case involved a New York law called the "Bakeshop Act" that limited the number of hours that a baker could work each day to 10, and limited the number of hours that a baker could work each week to 60.

In 1899, Joseph Lochner, possessor of Lochner'south Home Bakery in Utica, New York, was indicted on a charge that he violated the Bakeshop Act, in that he wrongfully and unlawfully permitted an employee working for him to piece of work more than 60 hours in one calendar week. Lochner was fined twice for the law-breaking and decided to entreatment his second conviction.

Justice Rufus Wheeler Peckham: Rufus Wheeler Peckham, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1895–1909), and author of the Court's opinion in Lochner 5. New York.

Lochner's entreatment was based on the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which provides the following: "… nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." In a serial of cases starting with Dred Scott five. Sandford (1857), the Supreme Court established that the Due Process Clause (found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments) is non merely a procedural guarantee, but also a substantive limitation on the type of control the authorities may exercise over individuals. Although this estimation of the Due Process Clause is a controversial 1, it had become firmly embedded in American jurisprudence by the end of the nineteenth century. Lochner argued that the right to freely contract was one of the rights encompassed by substantive due procedure.

By a v to 4 vote, the Supreme Court rejected the statement that the law was necessary to protect the health of bakers, deciding information technology was a labor law attempting to regulate the terms of employment, and calling it an, "unreasonable, unnecessary, and arbitrary interference with the correct and liberty of the individual to contract." Vii years earlier, the Supreme Court had accepted the argument that the Due Process Clause protected the correct to contract in Allgeyer five. Louisiana (1897). Justice Rufus Peckham wrote for the majority, while Justices John Marshall Harlan and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., filed dissents.

Justice Harlan's dissent argued that the Court gave insufficient weight to the state'south argument that the police was a valid health measure out addressing a legitimate state involvement. Justice Holmes'southward famous dissent criticized the conclusion for discarding sound ramble interpretation in favor of personal beliefs. Although it was only three paragraphs long, Holmes'south dissent is well remembered and frequently quoted. In it, Holmes defendant the majority of judicial activism, claiming that the case was, "decided upon an economic theory which a large part of the country does not entertain." He also attacked the idea that the Fourteenth Subpoena protected the unbridled freedom of contract, writing that, "[t]he Fourteenth Amendment does non enact Mr. Herbert Spencer 's Social Statics." This was a reference to a book in which Spencer advocated a strict laissez-faire economic philosophy.

The term "laissez-faire" refers to an economic environment in which transactions between individual parties are costless from regime interference such equally regulations, privileges, tariffs, and subsidies. The term is role of a larger French phrase and literally translates to "permit (it/them) practise," but in this context, ordinarily means to "let go." Laissez-faire, a production of the Enlightenment, was, "conceived as the way to unleash human potential through the restoration of a natural system, a system unhindered past the restrictions of government." In a similar vein, Adam Smith viewed the economy as a natural system and the market place as an organic function of that organization. Smith saw laissez-faire equally a moral program, and the marketplace its instrument to ensure men the rights of natural law. By extension, free markets become a reflection of the natural organisation of liberty.

Lochner v. New York was ane of the most controversial decisions in the Supreme Courtroom's history, giving its proper noun to what is known as the "Lochner Era." During the Lochner Era, the Supreme Court issued several controversial decisions invalidating progressive federal and state statutes that sought to regulate working weather during the Progressive Era and the Dandy Low. Thus, this era could be characterized equally laissez-faire. The Lochner era often is considered to have concluded with Westward Declension Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937), in which the Supreme Courtroom took a much broader view of the government's power to regulate economic activities.

Robber Barons and the Captains of Industry

The term "robber baron" was applied to powerful nineteenth-century industrialists who were viewed as having used questionable practices to aggregate their wealth. On the other mitt, "captains of manufacture" were business leaders whose means of amassing a personal fortune contributed positively to the state in some way.

Learning Objectives

Identify the qualities of a robber baron and a helm of industry

Fundamental Takeaways

Key Points

• Robber barons were defendant of eliminating competition through predatory pricing and then overcharging when they had a monopoly.
• The term combines the concept of a criminal robber with an illegitimate aristocrat baron.
• The term "robber baron" contrasted with the term "captain of industry," which described industrialists who too benefitted order.
• Nineteenth-century robber barons included J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Andrew W. Mellon, and John D. Rockefeller.
• In order to preclude single companies from developing a monopoly over an entire industry, public officials during this era put passing and enforcing strong antitrust laws high on their agenda.

Primal Terms

• captains of industry: Business concern leaders whose means of amassing a personal fortune contributes positively to the land in some style.
• Robber baron: A derogatory metaphor of social criticism originally practical to certain late nineteenth-century American businessmen who used unscrupulous methods to get rich.
• Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890: A law that prohibits certain business organisation activities that federal government regulators deem to exist anticompetitive, and that requires the federal regime to investigate and pursue trusts.

Robber Barons

"Robber baron" is a derogatory term used for some powerful nineteenth-century American businessmen. By the 1890s, the term was typically practical to businessmen who were viewed as having used questionable practices to amass their wealth. These "questionable practices" usually included a perception that they offered their products at extremely depression prices as to pay their workers very poorly and buying out the competitors that couldn't keep upwards. One time there was no competition, the businessmen would hike prices far higher up the original level. Information technology combines the notions of criminality ("robber") and illegitimate aristocracy ("baron").

The term derives from the medieval German lords who legally charged tolls on ships traversing the Rhine without calculation annihilation of value. U.S. political and economic commentator Matthew Josephson popularized the term during the Great Depression in a 1934 volume by the same title. He attributed the phrase to an 1880 antimonopoly pamphlet well-nigh railroad magnates. Josephson alleged that like the German antecedents, American large businessmen amassed huge fortunes immorally, unethically, and unjustly. The theme was pop during the Bang-up Depression, a fourth dimension of public scorn for the abuses of big business.

Captains of Industry

Robber barons were contrasted with "captains of industry," a term originally used in the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland during the Industrial Revolution describing a business leader whose means of amassing a personal fortune contributes positively to the country in some way. This might have been through increased productivity, expansion of markets, providing more jobs, or acts of philanthropy. Some nineteenth-century industrialists who were called "captains of industry" overlap with those called "robber barons," however. These include people such every bit J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Andrew W. Mellon, and John D. Rockefeller. The positive term was coined by Thomas Carlyle in his 1843 book, Past and Present.

John Davison Rockefeller was an American industrialist and philanthropist. He was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.South. concern trust. Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum manufacture and defined the structure of modern philanthropy. In 1870, he founded the Standard Oil Visitor and aggressively ran it until he officially retired in 1897. As kerosene and gasoline grew in importance, Rockefeller's wealth soared, and he became the earth's richest man and first American worth more than a billion dollars. Adjusting for inflation, he is frequently regarded as the richest person in American history.

Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late nineteenth century. He was likewise one of the near important philanthropists of his era. With the fortune he made from the steel industry, he built Carnegie Hall; afterward he turned to philanthropy and interests in didactics, founding the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Carnegie Mellon University and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh. Carnegie gave well-nigh of his money to establish many libraries, schools, and universities in the U.s.a., the Great britain, Canada, and other countries, besides equally to plant a pension fund for sometime employees. He often is regarded equally the second-richest man in history after John D. Rockefeller.

John Pierpont Morgan was an American financier, banker, and art collector who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation during his time. In 1892, Morgan arranged the merger of Edison Full general Electric and Thomson-Houston Electrical Company to form Full general Electrical. After financing the creation of the Federal Steel Visitor, he merged in 1901 with the Carnegie Steel Company and several other steel and iron businesses, including Consolidated Steel and Wire Company, to form the United States Steel Corporation. At the height of Morgan's career during the early 1900s, he and his partners had fiscal investments in many large corporations and were accused past critics of controlling the nation'due south high finance. He directed the banking coalition that stopped the Panic of 1907. He was the leading financier of the Progressive Era, and his dedication to efficiency and modernization helped transform American business.

Trusts and Antitrust Laws

During the late nineteenth century, hundreds of small short-line railroads were being bought up and consolidated into giant systems. Divide laws and policies emerged regarding railroads and financial concerns such equally banks and insurance companies. The railroads soon discovered that their pools lacked enforcement ability. Those who nominally agreed to be bound by the pooling arrangement could—and often did—cheat. So leaders within the railroad business and across began looking for ways to control and manage their increasingly large manufacture holdings.

The corporate form of business concern enterprise allowed for potentially immense accumulations of capital to exist under the control of a small-scale number of managers; simply in the 1870s and 1880s, the corporation was not withal established as the ascendant legal form of performance. To overcome these disadvantages, clever lawyers for John D. Rockefeller organized his Standard Oil of Ohio every bit a common-constabulary trust. Trustees were given corporate stock certificates of diverse companies; by combining numerous corporations into the trust, the trustees could effectively manage and command an unabridged industry. Within a decade, the Cotton Trust, Atomic number 82 Trust, Sugar Trust, and Whiskey Trust—along with oil, telephone, steel, and tobacco trusts—had go, or were in the process of becoming, monopolies.

Consumers howled in protest. The political parties got the message: In 1888, both Republicans and Democrats put an antitrust plank in their platforms. In 1889, the new president, Republican Benjamin Harrison, condemned monopolies every bit "unsafe conspiracies" and called for legislation to address the tendency of monopolies to "beat out out" contest.

The consequence was the Sherman Antitrust Deed of 1890, sponsored by Senator John Sherman, of Ohio. Its 2 key sections forbade combinations in restraint of trade and monopolizing. The purpose of the Sherman Antitrust Human action is not to protect competitors from harm from legitimately successful businesses, nor to prevent businesses from gaining honest profits from consumers, but rather to preserve a competitive marketplace to protect consumers from abuses. Senator Sherman and other sponsors declared that the act had roots in a common-law policy that frowned on monopolies. To an extent, it did, but it added something quite important for the futurity of business and the U.Due south. economy: the power of the federal government to enforce a national policy confronting monopoly and restraints of merchandise. Withal, passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act did not end the public clamor; 15 years passed before a national administration began to enforce the act, when President Theodore Roosevelt, known every bit "the Trustbuster," sent his chaser general later on the Northern Securities Corporation, a transportation property company.

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Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-ushistory/chapter/the-second-industrial-revolution/

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