The Rise of Big Business

Henry Bessemer

• Created a cheap and efficient process for making steel

Thomas Edison

• Perfected the incandescent light bulb

• Enabled factory work to continue after dark

Alexander Graham Bell

• Invented the telephone

• Along with telegraph made communication easier

Mergers/Monopolies

Mergers: when one corporation buys out the stock of another company

Monopoly: complete control over it’s industry’s production, wages, and prices

Andrew Carnegie

• Controlled Steel Industry

• Wrote “Gospel of Wealth”, said those with money should help others

Vertical Integration

• A company’s taking over its suppliers and distributors and transportation systems to gain control over the quality and cost of its product

• Used by Carnegie

John D. Rockefeller

• Oil Industry

• Company was called Standard Oil

Horizontal Integration

• Taking over competition in order to create a monopoly within a certain industry

• Used by Rockefeller

J.P. Morgan

• Banking and investing

Cornelius Vanderbilt

• Railroads and transportation

Robber Barons

• Name given to big business leaders

• Controlled industry through monopolies

• Often put smaller companies out of business

Social Darwinism

• Economic and social philosophy holding that a system of unrestrained competition would result in survival of the fittest

• Advocated by big business leaders

Horatio Alger

• Author who wrote “rags to riches” stories

• Showed how young men could achieve success through hard work

The Gilded Age

• Term coined by Mark Twain to describe the late 1800’s

• Prosperity of the few covered up the struggles of the majority