The Impact of Big Business

Social Studies II Bimester Sixth Grade

Steel Production• In the late 1800s, new inventions were everywhere.

New tools made work easier. Some inventions made farming more efficient, but this meant fewer workers were needed on farms. At the same time, other inventions were creating jobs in cities. To fill these jobs, workers from the farms flooded into the cities. The growth of cities is called urbanization.

• Businesses were growing rapidly. The economy of the United States is a free enterprise system. That means people are free to start their own businesses. They are also free to do whatever work they want.

Business Leaders Take Risks

• It was, and still is, risky to star a business. But if you are successful, there are great rewards. One thing that was needed in the rapidly growing cities was steel.

• An entrepreneur named Andrew Carnegie was determined to supply it.

• An entrepreneur creates and runs a new business and takes on all the risks of the business.

• Carnegie’s family was poor, so Carnegie began working at a factory at age 12. But he studied hard and made te most of every opportunity.

• By the time he was 30 years old, he was a wealthy investor. Then he started to make steel.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoUUC4V1mNE

• Steel had always been expensive, because it was hard to make.

• Then in 1856 a British engineer named Henry Bessemer perfected a new way to make steel.

• The Bessemer process produced good steel at a much lower cost.

• Carnegie wanted to keep his costs as low as possible. He bought the iron and coal mines that produced the raw materials for steel. Next, he bought the ships and railroads that transported the raw materials.

• He helped turn steel into a major American Industry.

• By 1910, the United States made more steel than any other country in the world.

Inventions and Businesses• Growing cities needed

bigger buildings. The strength of steel made bigger buildings possible.

• In 1885, the first skyscraper was built in Chicago, Illionois. Soon tall buildings were going up everywhere.

Inventions and Business• Automobiles were exciting,

but they were expensive.

• Then, in 1903, American entrepreneur Henry Ford started the Ford Motor Company. The Ford Motor Company is a corporation.

• A corporation is a business owned by investors.

• Investors buy stock, a share of the company, to become partial owners.

Inventions and Businesses• Henry Ford had a new idea

about how to build cars: the assembly line.

• With an assembly line, a product is put together as it moves past a line of workers. Each worker works on one part of the product before the product moves to the next worker. So more products can be made faster and more cheaply.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPpTK2ezxL0

• In 1908, The Ford Motor Company started to produce one of its most popular cars: The Model T.

• The Model T was a simple car that many people could afford, and ford sold millions.

Immigration

What is Immigration?Immigration is the movement of people into a destination country which they are not natives of or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle or reside there, especially as permanent residents or naturalized citizens, or to take-up employment as a migrant worker or temporarily as a foreign worker.

Why People Immigrated?

Why immigrants left their homelands?

What immigrants hoped to find in America?

1. They were poor.

3. There were no opportunities.

2. They faced war, prejudice, and oppression.

What is a “melting pot”?

A place where Europeans could

“melt” old ideas and prejudices and be molded into a new

people called Americans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZQl6XBo64M

ReviewLesson 1, 2 and 3

Lesson 1 - Inventors and Inventions

• In the late 1800s, Americans were becoming consumers.

• Important new inventions began to change the way people worked, communicated, and lived.

• New forms of transportation were introduced.

Lesson 2 - The impact of Big Business

• Andrew Carnegie and other entrepreneurs created new industries.

• Natural resources in the United States helped the economy to grow rapidly.

• Many Americans moved to big cities to work in industries there.

Lesson 3 - Immigration

• After the Civil War, millions of new immigrants from Europe and Asia arrived in America.

• Life in America could be hard for immigrants.

QuizStudy Lesson 1, 2, and 3 for next

Thursday.