**Industrialization** Flashcards
Bessemer Process (benefits)
- Allowed factories to make steel cheaper than ever (steel is lighter and stronger than iron)
- Building built much higher – skyscrapers
- Led to inventions such as elevator – new jobs
Transcontinental RR
-Railroad connecting the west and east coasts of the continental US
Promontory Point Utah (x)
-Place where the Transcontinental railroad met -One started in San Fransisco, one started in St. Louis
Alexander Graham Bell
-Invented the first telephone
Thomas Edison
-Improved on older designs and creates the first practical light bulb.
Andrew Carnegie
- Bessemer process — allowed him to make steel more cheaply and efficiently
- Kept costs low, sell product at low price
- Competitors can’t make enough money to make their company work
- Abused his workers
- Philanthropist — someone who donates money to help some cause
- Believed rich people should share their wealth
- Vertical integration – controlled materials, production, and distribution of steel (mines, factories, train system)
John D. Rockefeller
- Sold oil so cheap he wasn’t making money
- Controlled 90% of oil industry
- More variety = cost more money, get less per toy but sell so many more
- Bought out competitors
- Philanthropist for education and medicine
- Horizontal integration - controlled manufacturing
Vertical Integration
- Control all 3 industries
- Raw materials, transportation, manufacturing
Horizontal Integration
-Control one entire industry
Laissez-Faire
- Business owners make all decisions independently of the gov, gov. can’t interfere with economy
- Invisible hand = market
- Don’t trust government - doesn’t work for business
- (+) Benefits consumer - competition, low price, high quality
- (+) Happy employees / customer
- Government can help those left out in free market
- (-) Monopolies of industry - companies have too much power
Social Darwinism
- Unscientific, unproven
- The idea that those who “have” must work harder, be smarter, and thus are inherently better and will/should be the most successful
- (+) Work hard = be rewarded
- (-) People can get things that they don’t really work hard to earn
- (-) Who decided who gets to decide which genes are good?
What event helped to start the Industrial Revolution in the U.S.? Why did it help start the revolution?
- The Civil War created a need to clothe, arm, and supply soldiers during war — helped create faster + more efficient ways to make things and grow more crops
- Needed a railroad system
How did the Industrial Revolution affect farming in the US?
- Farming made much more efficient (61 hours before CW → 3 hours after CW)
- Manufacturing of ice enabled people to transport food over long distances
In what ways was the Bessemer Process so important to industrial growth?
- The Bessemer Process allowed factories to make steel cheaper than ever (steel is lighter and stronger than iron) - Invention of I beams —> big buildings —> invention of elevators
What new inventions, and invented by who, helped to bring about a change in how people lived? (How did the Industrial Age change life for women?)
- Steel (Henry Bessemer)
- The telegraph (Samuel Morse)
- Allowed for communication between regions
- Led to first phone (Alexander Graham Bell)
- The sewing machine (Elias Howe and Isaac Singer)
- Created a new industry for women
- Textile mill (Samuel Slater)
- Women got jobs (textile mill, phone industry, sewing machine)
How was the construction of the Transcontinental RR possible because of the Industrial Revolution?
-More need for industry to spread
How did the government help to encourage railroad construction? (and process)
- Starting in 1992 — local + state governments promoted RR construction with land grants, tax breaks, and money
- Gave railroad companies land surrounding the railroad path at little or no cost
Socialism
- Economic system where there is private business/industry but the government plays a major role in or controls big industry
- Ex: energy, transportation, education, and health
- Government control by high taxes (50%-70%) — like car insurance, people rarely need to use it, so the government makes a lot of money
- Their main goal is to narrow, not totally eliminate, the gap between the rich and the poor
Communism
- Created by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
- A utopian view of society
- Pure version — no government, no army, everyone has a job, no need for money, no religion
- Don’t need money — everyone repays each other to help themselves and others, everything is interconnected, people do not ask for more than what is needed
- Religion becomes the form of governmental control
- Reality — almost total gov. control of economy, politics, and social norms
Monopoly
When only one company controls an entire industry
Capitalism
- An economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
- Types:
- Laissez-Faire
- Social Darwinism
- Gospel of Wealth
What made America such a great place, geographically speaking, for an industrial revolution?
- Wealth of natural resources
- Government support for business
- Growing urban population that provided both cheap labor and markets for new products
What new inventions helped to bring about a change in how people lived?
- Lightbulb – factories could be ope 24 hours – longer hours for workers
How did the Industrial Age change life for women?
- New inventions like the phone and sewing machine opened up new industries
- Allowed women to work outside of home for a real wage
