- The American Revolution and the early federal republic
- The transformation of American society, 1865–1900
- Imperialism, the Progressive era, and the rise to world power, 1896–1920
Industrialization of the U.S. economy
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The growth of industry
By 1878 the United States had reentered a period of prosperity after the long depression of the mid-1870s. In the ensuing 20 years the volume of industrial production, the number of workers employed in industry, and the number of manufacturing plants all more than doubled. A more accurate index to the scope of this industrial advance may be found in the aggregate annual value of all manufactured goods, which increased from about $5,400,000,000 in 1879 to perhaps $13,000,000,000 in 1899. The expansion of the iron and steel industry, always a key factor in any industrial economy, was even more impressive: from 1880 to 1900 the annual production of steel in the United States went from about 1,400,000 to more than 11,000,000 tons. Before the end of the century, the United States surpassed Great Britain in the production of iron and steel and was providing more than one-quarter of the world’s supply of pig iron.
Many factors combined to produce this burst of industrial activity. The exploitation of Western resources, including mines and lumber, stimulated a demand for improved transportation, while the gold and silver mines provided new sources of capital for investment in the East. The construction of railroads, especially in the West and South, with the resulting demand for steel rails, was a major force in the expansion of the steel industry and increased the railroad mileage in the United States from less than 93,262 miles (150,151 kilometers) in 1880 to about 190,000 miles (310,000 kilometers) in 1900. Technological advances, including the utilization of the Bessemer and open-hearth processes in the manufacture of steel, resulted in improved products and lower production costs. A series of major inventions, including the telephone, typewriter, linotype, phonograph, electric light, cash register, air brake, refrigerator car, and the automobile, became the bases for new industries, while many of them revolutionized the conduct of business. The use of petroleum products in industry as well as for domestic heating and lighting became the cornerstone of the most powerful of the new industries of the period, while the trolley car, the increased use of gas and electric power, and the telephone led to the establishment of important public utilities that were natural monopolies and could operate only on the basis of franchises granted by state or municipal governments. The widespread employment of the corporate form of business organization offered new opportunities for large-scale financing of business enterprise and attracted new capital, much of it furnished by European investors. Over all this industrial activity, there presided a colorful and energetic group of entrepreneurs, who gained the attention, if not always the commendation, of the public and who appeared to symbolize for the public the new class of leadership in the United States. Of this numerous group the best known were John D. Rockefeller in oil, Andrew Carnegie in steel, and such railroad builders and promoters as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, Henry Villard, and James J. Hill.
The dispersion of industry
The period was notable also for the wide geographic distribution of industry. The Eastern Seaboard from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania continued to be the most heavily industrialized section of the United States, but there was a substantial development of manufacturing in the states adjacent to the Great Lakes and in certain sections of the South.
The experience of the steel industry reflected this new pattern of diffusion. Two-thirds of the iron and steel industry was concentrated in the area of western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. After 1880, however, the development of iron mines in northern Minnesota (the Vermilion Range in 1884 and the Mesabi Range in 1892) and in Tennessee and northern Alabama was followed by the expansion of the iron and steel industry in the Chicago area and by the establishment of steel mills in northern Alabama and in Tennessee.
Most manufacturing in the Midwest was in enterprises closely associated with agriculture and represented expansion of industries that had first been established before 1860. Meat-packing, which in the years after 1875 became one of the major industries of the nation in terms of the value of its products, was almost a Midwestern monopoly, with a large part of the industry concentrated in Chicago. Flour milling, brewing, and the manufacture of farm machinery and lumber products were other important Midwestern industries.
The industrial invasion of the South was spearheaded by textiles. Cotton mills became the symbol of the New South, and mills and mill towns sprang up in the Piedmont region from Virginia to Georgia and into Alabama. By 1900 almost one-quarter of all the cotton spindles in the United States were in the South, and Southern mills were expanding their operations more rapidly than were their well-established competitors in New England. The development of lumbering in the South was even more impressive, though less publicized; by the end of the century the South led the nation in lumber production, contributing almost one-third of the annual supply.
Industrial combinations
The geographic dispersal of industry was part of a movement that was converting the United States into an industrial nation. It attracted less attention, however, than the trend toward the consolidation of competing firms into large units capable of dominating an entire industry. The movement toward consolidation received special attention in 1882 when Rockefeller and his associates organized the Standard Oil Trust under the laws of Ohio. A trust was a new type of industrial organization, in which the voting rights of a controlling number of shares of competing firms were entrusted to a small group of men, or trustees, who thus were able to prevent competition among the companies they controlled. The stockholders presumably benefited through the larger dividends they received. For a few years the trust was a popular vehicle for the creation of monopolies, and by 1890 there were trusts in whiskey, lead, cottonseed oil, and salt.
In 1892 the courts of Ohio ruled that the trust violated that state’s antimonopoly laws. Standard Oil then reincorporated as a holding company under the more hospitable laws of New Jersey. Thereafter, holding companies or outright mergers became the favorite forms for the creation of monopolies, though the term trust remained in the popular vocabulary as a common description of any monopoly. The best-known mergers of the period were those leading to the formation of the American Tobacco Company (1890) and the American Sugar Refining Company (1891). The latter was especially successful in stifling competition, for it quickly gained control of most of the sugar refined in the United States.
Foreign commerce
The foreign trade of the United States, if judged by the value of exports, kept pace with the growth of domestic industry. Exclusive of gold, silver, and reexports, the annual value of exports from the United States in 1877 was about $590,000,000; by 1900 it had increased to approximately $1,371,000,000. The value of imports also rose, though at a slower rate. When gold and silver are included, there was only one year in the entire period in which the United States had an unfavorable balance of trade; and, as the century drew to a close, the excess of exports over imports increased perceptibly.
Agriculture continued to furnish the bulk of U.S. exports. Cotton, wheat, flour, and meat products were consistently the items with the greatest annual value among exports. Of the nonagricultural products sent abroad, petroleum was the most important, though by the end of the century its position on the list of exports was being challenged by machinery.
Despite the expansion of foreign trade, the U.S. merchant marine was a major casualty of the period. While the aggregate tonnage of all shipping flying the U.S. flag remained remarkably constant, the tonnage engaged in foreign trade declined sharply, dropping from more than 2,400,000 tons on the eve of the Civil War to a low point of only 726,000 tons in 1898. The decline began during the Civil War when hundreds of ships were transferred to foreign registries to avoid destruction. Later, cost disadvantages in shipbuilding and repair and the American policy of registering only American-built ships hindered growth until World War I.
Labor
The expansion of industry was accompanied by increased tensions between employers and workers and by the appearance, for the first time in the United States, of national labor unions.
Formation of unions
The first effective labor organization that was more than regional in membership and influence was the Knights of Labor, organized in 1869. The Knights believed in the unity of the interests of all producing groups and sought to enlist in their ranks not only all laborers but everyone who could be truly classified as a producer. They championed a variety of causes, many of them more political than industrial, and they hoped to gain their ends through politics and education rather than through economic coercion.
The hardships suffered by many workers during the depression of 1873–78 and the failure of a nationwide railroad strike, which was broken when President Hayes sent federal troops to suppress disorders in Pittsburgh and St. Louis (see Great Railroad Strike of 1877), caused much discontent in the ranks of the Knights. In 1879 Terence V. Powderly, a railroad worker and mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania, was elected grand master workman of the national organization. He favored cooperation over a program of aggressive action, but the effective control of the Knights shifted to regional leaders who were willing to initiate strikes or other forms of economic pressure to gain their objectives. The Knights reached the peak of their influence in 1884–85, when much-publicized strikes against the Union Pacific, Southwest System, and Wabash railroads attracted substantial public sympathy and succeeded in preventing a reduction in wages. At that time they claimed a national membership of nearly 700,000. In 1885 Congress, taking note of the apparently increasing power of labor, acceded to union demands to prohibit the entry into the United States of immigrants who had signed contracts to work for specific employers.
The year 1886 was a troubled one in labor relations. There were nearly 1,600 strikes, involving about 600,000 workers, with the eight-hour day the most prominent item in the demands of labor. About half of these strikes were called for May Day; some of them were successful, but the failure of others and internal conflicts between skilled and unskilled members led to a decline in the Knights’ popularity and influence.