Why Did The Number Of Corporations Increase In The Late 1800s

It started in the late 19th century and ended in the early 20th century. During this period, the entrepreneurs Jay Gould, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan and Anrew Carnegie founded large operations are known as trusts. These trusts helped them build their wealth and business empires and laid the foundation for modern America. To achieve this, the businessmen turned to methods that are seen as unscrupulous. Their methods and behavior led to a debate on wheter they are Captains of Industry, who contribute positively to the country, or Robber Barons, who utilized questionable tactics to reach their success.

This essay will generally analyze the relationship between the government and businesses, and how “Big Business” essentially took control of the Gilded Age. America’s first true big business mostly arose because of the railroads, which is fairly significant, because it essentially helped lead the development of other business barons such as, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J. Pierpont Morgan who all had particularly extraordinary accomplishments in shaping our economy. Most of these men who created big businesses after the Civil War were driven by a compelling desire to become rich and influential.

Did you know Andrew Carnegie earned $92,000 everyday while his workers earned a measly $1.50? Andrew Carnegie grew up poor. At twelve he left school and began working to help support his family. He worked 12 hour days for $1.20 a week at a textile mill. He then began delivering telegrams for $4 a week.

Four hundred American billionaires own two trillion dollars, as much as the one hundred and fifty million Americans on the very bottom. The top one percent of the richest American own one fifth of the nation’s total income. Similar to the Gilded Age, people who do business and live in urban centers earn much more money than who do not. The unprecedented technological innovation cause the production easier and faster, which renders the employers benefits. Also, the economy gives huge advantage to those who control lots of money, causing the economic disparity even deeper and promoting the appearance of the “Robber Barons,” unscrupulous businessmen who achieve monopolies in their

The distribution of wealth has always been a conflict of interest between those in an industrial society. Many times, we find the all the poor being grouped as oppressed, and all the rich being grouped as oppressive. But this is not the most accurate way of thinking. We see Andrew Carnegie as part of the rich being grouped as oppressive, or a villain. Given the fact that he saw his success in the height of the American Era of Industrialization, Carnegie got a lot of backlash for the issues surrounding the poor that worked for him.

In the late nineteenth century there were many key technological developments the account for the American industrial growth. Technological developments were not the only thing that contributed to the rise of the American industry: raw materials, labor supply, entrepreneurs, federal government, and and an expanding domestic market. Although there were many contributing factors, technological development was one of the principal sources to industrial growth in the late-nineteenth century. In the late 1800’s Cyrus Field created a transatlantic telegraph cable to Europe and in the next ten year Alexander Graham Bell developed the first telephone taking the communication era to new heights.

Justin Clement APUS DBQ Big businesses controlled the economy and politics throughout 1870-1900. They were in control of the prices for certain items because they destroyed their smaller competitors until there was no competition left. They had much sway over politics and took away the people’s say. As we can see from Document A, between 1870-1899, the price for food, fuel, lighting and living decreased with the emergence of big businesses.

During the period of 1870 to 1900 large corporations, such as the railway company, grew significantly in size, number, and influence. The cause of this was the need for a new way of transportation, the demand was great so the railways expanded all over the United States so that they could meet these demands. These large corporations affected the economy by making it easier to pay for everyday chores, politics in the way that it gave politicians too much power but in doing so gave normal limited power. The corporations had great power and influence which made them a huge impact to society.

To put it in more honest terms, the “fortune” these Business Tycoons “made” is technically coming from their hard working, barely paid workers

During the time of the Gilded Age the governemnt (politicians) was very corrupt. Everything they did was for their own gain. " At the national level, many lawmakers supported bills aiding companies in which they had invested money or from which they received stock or salaries," (pg. 617). This quote shows that the governments lawmakers did things for their own gain intead of the good of the people.

Andrew Carnegie was the father of industrialized steel in the 19th century and owned the affluent Carnegie Steel Company. He quickly expanded steel’s production, became one of the wealthiest men in the world, and thereafter became a striving philanthropist. The pinnacle of Andrew Carnegie’s life was in the midst of the Gilded Age, an era of economic growth that included an underlying societal corruption. During this time, penniless laborers became upset with the unfair way that wealthy industrialists treated them and began to strike against these colossal companies. In 1889, at the peak of his accumulation of wealth, Andrew Carnegie wrote a famous essay titled “Wealth” that described the gap between the rich and the poor.

The Industrial Revolution brought to America new technologies to manufacture and produce goods in quantities unseen before. In the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution new companies were learning how to monopolize and take advantage of the public, these companies would eventually effect America in more ways then one. During the late 1800’s and the early 1900’s many working class individuals lived in poverty because of the formations of monopolies and trusts. A trust is a basically another word for monopoly, which means one large business that corners a market and has no competition allowing it to raise their prices however they choose.

Underpinnings and Effectiveness of Carnegie’s “Gospel of Wealth” In Andrew Carnegie’s “Gospel of Wealth”, Carnegie proposed a system of which he thought was best to dispose of “surplus wealth” through progress of the nation. Carnegie wanted to create opportunities for people “lift themselves up” rather than directly give money to these people. This was because he considered that giving money to these people would be “improper spending”.

Paragraph 1: Industrialization really took of in the United States during the late 1800s and the early 1900s. Before then, America 's population had mostly lived out in the farms and ranches of the country, but that was about to change when more and more people started to move to the cities for work. Most of the people that moved, found themselves in factory jobs for the steel industry or alike, or working for the railroads. Companies could really thrive, as the United States government, adopted a policy of Laissez Faire. This is also about the time that immigration really kicked up, more and more immigrants were showing at Ellis Island, looking for a new start.

Market Structure - Oligopoly Oligopoly is a market structure whereby a few number of firms owns a lion’s share in the market. This market structure is similar to monopoly, except that instead of one firm, two or more firms have control in the market. In an oligopoly, there are no upper limits to the number of firms, but the number must be nadir enough that the operations of one firm remarkably influence and affects the others (Investopedia, 2003). The Walt Disney Company is categorized under an oligopoly market structure.