Chapter 18Industry and

Urban Growth

Industry Boom

• the nation expanded west and found deposits of coal, iron, and copper,

• Government created policies that favored industrial growth– Including tariffs

– Tax on imports

Steel and Oil

• Building blocks of modern United States

Inventions

• In the late 1800s Americans started to create many new inventions– In 1897 the government issued more patents than

in the ten years before the Civil War• America became known as the land of

Invention

Inventions

• Thomas Edison- invented the light bulb, phonograph, motion picture camera, and hundreds of other devices

• In 1882, Edison opened the nation’s first electrical power plant in New York City– Helped to bring in the age of electricity

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Inventions

• Communications– In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell built a device that

carried the human voice (telephone)• By 1885 more than 300,00 phones had been sold

– Succeeded in 1876 when he sent the first telephone message to his assistant “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you.”

Inventions

• Other inventions include the type writer, shoe making machine, light weight camera, flash for the camera

Inventions

• In 1900 only 8,000 Americans owned automobiles

• Henry Ford perfected a system that made the automobile available to millions, known as the assembly line– By 1917 more than 4.5 million Americans owned

cars

Inventions

• In 1903 Wilbur and Orville Wright were the first people ever to fly– The first flight lasted 12 seconds and flew 120 feet

Chapter 18Industry and

Urban Growth

New Ways of Doing Business

• Business expansion was led by bold entrepreneurs

• Businesses became corporations– Corporations limited the risk of investors

New Ways of Doing Business

• Banks lent huge amounts of money to corporations, which led to industries growing faster

Growth of Big Business

• Government had a laissez-faire approach to business in the late 1800s

• They allowed for the rapid growth of big business and for the creation of monopolies

Growth of Big Business

• Andrew Carnegie– Managed to gain control of the steel industry– Believed that the rich had a duty to improve

society (Gospel of Wealth)

Growth of Big Business

• John D. Rockefeller– Started an oil refinery at the age of 23– Used his profits to buy other oil companies and

managed to take control of the oil industry

Working Conditions

• Industries attracted millions of new workers• Most were immigrants or native born whites

Working Conditions

• Women worked and outnumbered men in some industries, such as textile mills, tobacco factories, and the garment sweatshops of New York

• Children worked in bottle factories, textile mills, tobacco factories, coal mines, and sweatshops– Most child laborers could not go to school, and

had little chance of improving their lives

Working Conditions

• New York City, March 25, 1911 fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.– Hundreds of workers raced to the exits only to find

the exits were locked– Nearly 150 people died as a result of the fire