New+Industry+and+Technology

=Introduction= The Nineteenth Century there was a plethora of new industrial inventions. Industry skyrocketed because of abundant raw materials, a large cheap and readily available labor supply with many incoming immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, new technological innovations, new young entrepreneurs, a federal government that wanted to help new business, and a larger domestic market due to improvements in transportation. New industries in retail, steel production, and railroad car production boomed. Captains of Industry revolutionized their industries.

=The Steel Industry and its Captain of Industry= The steel industry in particular expanded in the late 1800s, a boom in part shared with the iron industry. Iron was sold for 40,000 new miles of railroad tracks in the 1870s and 1880s. Henry Bessemer (at the same time as the lesser known William Kelly) invented the Bessemer Process for burning out the impurities in iron and creating steel. This == new method allowed for mass production of a new metal that was stronger and more dependable than iron. Unfortunately, this method was later almost entirely replaced by Abram S. Hewitt's (NJ) open-hearth process. The steel industry was so closely linked with the railroad industry that some companies, like The Pennsylvania Railroad, literally built their partner steel companies. In this case the Pennsylvania Steel Company. Within the steel industry emerged the great tycoon Andrew Carnegie, a Scottish immigrant who made the rags-to-riches novels of Horatio Alger seem like reality. Carnegie started a business that became a corporation known as U.S. Steel. In a Free Market Economy Carnegie was able to rise over the smaller companies and created a monopoly. Carnegie was also a great proponent of vertical integration and giving back to the community from which he came. ==

=New Innovations in the railroad Industry= Rise of the railroad industry also promoted the growth of the petroleum industry, right now only used as lubricant but that will later on grow to become the leading source of fuel. George Bissell of Pennsylvania was the first person to realize petroleum's potential and starting digging in Pennsylvania in 1859. By the 1870s it became the fourth most prominent export. John D. Rockefeller emerged from the oil industry and become the manager of a large monopoly and corporation, the Standard Oil Trust. Rockefeller was ruthless and believed in Social Darwinism which made him a much more unwilling philanthropist than Carnegie. ==

=Inventions Whose Significance Came Later On= The airplane was an important new piece of technology that unfortunately didn't make a practical success until much later. Created by Wilbur and Orville Wright in the early 1900s, the airplane was so innovative it got the attention of the United States' Government early on. The automobile industry was another industry that benefited from the expanding railroad industry. Nicolaus Otto from Germany developed a simple "four-stoke" engine but it couldn't be taken anywhere. His employee Gottfried Daimler made the first portable combustion engine. He was the basis for the mass produced Ford cars (1906) from the American automobile industry, which became a major economic force in 1910.

=The New Efficiency of Factories= Innovations in production also severely improved the efficiency of the new menial tasks laborers could perform in factories. "Taylorism" was a scientific thought that claimed work should be subdivided among workers to lessen the dependence on skilled workers. This was also particularly attractive because it was a method to prevent the strengthening of unions dependent on skilled workers. Ford also simplified and put into greater use the idea of the Moving Assembly Line in his car factories. like Cornelius Vanderbilt Vanderbilt merged the local railroad systems and formed the New York Central Railroad in 1867.

=Works Cited=


 * Aamsco, Revised edition
 * [|Immigrants to Ellis Island]
 * Brinkley, American History
 * [|yourprospertyfoundation.org]
 * [|Rockefeller]
 * [|Wright Brothers]