Gilded Age

Lecture 18

  • Three main influences

  • Public policy

  • Congress passes Pacific railway act

  • Increase tarriff

  • Open border help facilitate growth in industry

  • No safely net

  • No tax so wealth not redistributed unless by choice

  • Economic thought

  • Classical liberalism means no regulation on economy

  • Economy law of nature aka supply and demand

  • Boom and bust economic cycle

  • Policies made to stabilize economy didn't

  • Hurt a lot of people

  • 1873 had a panic cost of reconstruction became harder to justify

  • Northern attention focused economic heath of nation think closer 2 home

  • 3% then 12% then 18% employment 1890'S

  • Wealthy elites managed it

  • Railroad boom

  • Massive expansion into places people were living

  • Territory around track create town

  • 250,000 mile truck 1890

  • Standardized track and wheels

  • No never run away trains

  • Inovation Finance

  • Investment banking emerged

  • rich and own major parts economy

  • Stock exchange

  • American steel

  • Steel essential to all this

  • Building block modern America

  • Bessemer converter

  • Heat up to get rid of impurities

  • Andrew Carnegie made money

  • Began and founded the Bessemer

  • Vertical integration

  • From mining to building racks

  • He owned it all

  • Launched carnegiested 1892 made tons of money

  • Change Penn.

  • Mills were 24 hours a day

  • Mining: fueling the boom

  • Cool was essential

  • Iron important too

  • Not a good bossiness be in its dangerous

  • A new commercial market

  • Truly national market

  • Standardization of goods

  • Mass production

  • National advertising

  • J Walter Thompson ist advertising company

  • Downtown department stores

  • Acceptable women to be consumers and single women to work

  • Use catalogs order stuff

  • Everyone access to same stuff

  • Refridged carts for perishable products

  • New capital market = Dow jones

  • Cars!

  • The robber Barons

  • Super wealthy

  • Managers vast business empires

  • Conspicuous consumption

  • Status and wealth had to be displayed

  • Fortune at expense of workers

  • Very arrogant

  • JP Morgan , Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt

  • Change to show Off wealth

  • Jp Morgan bailed out US government personally

  • Bought stake us government

  • Could manipulate stuff destroy competitors

  • No competition so set prices for everything

  • Wife's td elite society

  • Astors are old money Caroline kept track only arrival.400

  • Alva Vanderbilt ball 1883 announce arrival high society

  • Philanthropy part of cc

  • Jacob Rio's : now the other half lives

  • Immigrants paid low seen as expendable

  • Super poor

  • Child labor super common

  • Not educated

  • Child labor department

  • Need sympathetic Photos to end child labor

  • Economic desperation

  • Essential massive economic growth

  • Devastating on personal level

  • m

  • M

  • M and wealth

  • M