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Industrialization Between 1865 And 1920

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“No place is free of the threat implied in such phrases as economic growth, job creation, natural resources, human capital, bringing in industry, even bringing in culture—as if every place is adequately identified as the environment and its people as readily replaceable parts of a machine. Devotion to any particular place now carries always the implication of heartbreak (Berry, 2007).” During the Civil War, government contracts were issued to factories in order to produce shoes, clothes, weapons, food, and other goods for the troops. Business owners wanted the money being offered by the government and knew how to get it. People were willing to give up life as they knew it in order to work in the factories and stores, despite the conditions …show more content…

By the 1890s things were different. The U.S. economy had shifted from agriculture to industry. (Roskin & Berry, 2010). Three major aspects of industrialization between 1865 and 1920 were railroad expansion, the steel industry, and the oil industry. Several hundred thousand miles of additional railroad tracks were laid throughout the nation largely with the backing and support of the federal government. Four businessmen from New York who headed to California during the gold rush were the developers for the entire West coast railroad expansion. The steel industry played a huge role in getting railroads expanded. In 1872, Businessman Andrew Carnegie opened a steel plant in the United States. Following on an idea he saw on a trip to England, Carnegie chose to use unskilled workers who would work for cheap. By 1900, his steel company was the largest in the world. Much like Andrew Carnegie in the steel industry, the oil industry had John D. Rockefeller. He figured out how to extract, transport to refineries, package, get the oil out to cities and towns, and market the oil. Rockefeller either worked with his competition, or took over their company. His goal was to provide cheap oil and make a ton of money, and so he did. Each of these industry leaders were very shrewd and ruthless businessmen, but they were also geniuses when it came to making money. They were in the company of …show more content…

In the South between the 1880s and 1890s, a new textile mill was quite common due to cotton being widely available. Typical factory work, they endured poor working conditions, hard labor, and low pay. Black Southerners also had to deal with Jim Crow laws, Ku Klux Klan, and other paramilitary groups who intimidated and even assassinated blacks and their white supporters. Emancipation allowed many of them to earn their wages by being domestic servants, craftsmen, casual laborers, and farm hands. They were now “peers and competitors of white wage laborers (Eberle, 1959).” In order to eliminate the competition, thousands of blacks especially in the South were lynched. They were hung in front of crowds of people that believed they had violated some law or tradition. In 1909 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was formed in hopes of putting an end to the Jim Crow laws and lynching. Many years of going back and forth with lawmakers, the NAACP was unsuccessful in their attempt. The money makers were whites who took most of the skilled paying jobs, and the unskilled jobs were left for the African

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