1. 1870-1900

2. Gilded Age West—Frontier, Populism, and Native American Removal Gilded Age East—Worker abuse, Robber Barons, and Financial turmoil.

3. Replacing muscle with steam and electricit Steel processed at 3-5 tons per day (increase of 15x from 1860) Today 5 tons takes 15 minutes! Steel: 1880-1,000,000 tons Steel: 1900-25,000,000 tons 1900 there was 193,000 miles of rail…up from 30,000 in 1860. Farming—it took 61 hours to cultivate an acre of wheat…in 1900 it took 3 hours! Mining—in 1860 14,000,000 tons were mind. By 1884 that number was now 100,000,000 tons with ½ the workforce.

4. New York 1860: 800,000 1900: 4,000,000 Chicago: 1860: 110,000 1900: 2,000,000

5. Thomas Edison—what didn’t he invent? Electrical devices, communication devices, and light. Gustavus Swift: ice cooled railway car to transport food James Duke: Cigarette rolling machine…1,000 cigarettes versus 100,000. Duke University

6. Edison promised every legislator $1,000 gift for favorable legislation. Jay Gould spent $1,000,000 in 1 year bribing the Congress. Central Pacific (Gould) spent $200,000 bribing Congress for rights to 9,000,000 acres of free land. Gould charged Congress $79,000,000 to build a railroad that cost $24,000,000. Graft!

7. JP Morgan…an auspices beginning. Rifle story. Loans to fuel industry were vital. Stock sales becoming vital. 1895: US ran out of gold to back currency. JP Morgan lent them the gold in exchange for bonds that they immediately resold for a 50% profit!

8. Businesses sought to crush one another. Rockefeller and Carnegie—Monopoly Politics Rockefeller eventually created a $2,000,000,000 empire valued at nearly 100 times that figure in today’s currency. Morgan bought US Steel for $492,000,000 from Carnegie and created a global monopoly on steel.