The Gilded Age(New South)

What is the Gilded Age?Period between Civil War and

WWILess than 50 years it was

transformed from a rural republic to an urban nation.

Great factories and steel mills, transcontinental railroad lines, flourishing cities, and vast agricultural holdings marked the land.

What were the Problems with Growth?

Nationwide, a few businesses came to dominate whole industries, either independently or in combination with others.

Working conditions poorCities grew so quickly they

could not properly house or govern their growing populations.

Technology and changeSamuel F. B. Morse had perfected

electrical telegraphyAlexander Graham Bell exhibited a

telephone instrument; within ½ a century, 16 million telephones would quicken the social and economic life of the nation.

typewriter adding machinecash registerThomas Edison’s incandescent lamp

Carnegie and the age of steelAndrew Carnegie was largely

responsible for the great advances in steel production.

built the nation’s largest steel mill on the Monongahela River in Pennsylvania.

He acquired control not only of new mills, but also of coke and coal properties, iron ore from Lake Superior, a fleet of steamers on the Great Lakes, a port town on Lake Erie, and a connecting railroad.

He dominated the industry, he never achieved a complete monopoly over the natural resources, transportation, and industrial plants involved in the making of steel.

Corporations and citiesThe Standard Oil Company, founded by

John D. Rockefeller, was one of the earliest and strongest corporations, and was followed rapidly by other combinations – in cottonseed oil, lead, sugar, tobacco, and rubber. Soon aggressive individual businessmen began to mark out industrial domains for themselves.

Western Union, dominant in telegraphyCornelius Vanderbilt had consolidated 13

separate railroads into a single 800-kilometer line connecting New York City and Buffalo.

Henry Grady and the "New South"http://

www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-newsouth/5489

What are 3 parts of NC?

Describe Industrialization in N.C.

In 1860, N.C. was an agricultural state, with only scattered industry and a handful of towns with a population of more than 1,000.

By 1900, hundreds of factories (tobacco and textile mills) were transforming the Piedmont.

Industrialization needed 5 things to grow:◦Capital

NC lost lots of money during the Civil War prewar mills survived and grew, and their owners

invested the profits in new factories. Many industrialists started quite small, with only a little

savings and borrowed money, and built their businesses slowly.

(Continued)

◦Labor N.C. like other southern states,

had a tremendous supply of cheap labor.

Former slaves and their free-born children were often eager to escape the plantation for new opportunities in cities, even if they earned less than their white counterparts and were often given only menial jobs

Sharecropping As families moved to new mill

villages, women and children, too, took jobs in factories. Children were especially likely to work in textile mills

Continued….

Child Labor, What Issues do you see?

◦Raw materials tobacco, textiles, and timber (or furniture). Cone Mills in Greensboro and Hanes Mills in

Winston-Salem (textile mills) Among them were the Duke operations in

Durham and those of R. J. Reynolds in Winston-Salem (tobacco)

By 1900, the area around High Point had become the furniture capital of the United States.

Biltmore Forest School- was founded to preserve NC mountain forests

Continued……….

◦Markets Where did all these factory-made goods go?

Many went to consumers in northern cities. Department stores and discount “five and

dime” stores sprang up during this time Mail Order Catalogs begin 1900, Americans spent more on tobacco than

they did on clothes!

◦Transportation After the Civil War, NC’s railroads grew rapidly Investors built factories with easy railroad

access.

The Dukes of Durhamhttp://www.learnnc.org/lp/

editions/nchist-newsouth/4418