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
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