1. The Rise of Big Business
PROS
CONS

2. Robber Barons or Captains of Industry?
Andrew Carnegie John D. Rockefeller J.P. Morgan Cornelius Vanderbilt

3. The American Beauty Rose can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it. This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working-out of a law of nature and a law of God.
John D Rockefeller
What point is JDR making by
Comparing the American Beauty
Rose to “business” in the Gilded
Age?

4. “survival of the fittest” in business
Social Darwinism
“survival of the fittest” in business
The most competent businesses would survive and society would benefit from fierce competition
Laissez faire
“allow to do”
Gov’t should leave business alone to let this take place and not regulate big business
Government actually supports big business:
High tariffs
No immigration restrictions
Subsidizes the railroads

5. POSITIVE EFFECTS OF THE Rise of big business in the Gilded Age (1870s- early 1900s)
1870s, 80s- Largest economic growth in history
Pass Britain as world’s #1
RR- transform the economy
Mechanized farming- massive production of food in the west
Corporations become the dominate form of business
By 1900 “trusts” dominate steel, oil, sugar, meat and farm machinery industries (horizontal, vertical integration)
Millions employed- huge era of innovation and inventions (kerosene, steel, telephone, electricity, running water, phonograph)
Rise of the middle class (wages increase 60%) and wealth (per capita income #1 in the world)

6. “Gospel of Wealth”- Industrialists become philanthropists
Carnegie donates 90% of wealth to charity
Rockefeller- $500,000,000
1000s of colleges, hospitals, museums, academies, schools, opera houses, public libraries, charities paid for by industrialists

7. By the end of the 1800s, many began to be critical of the power of big business and the wealth of industrialists…

8. According to the cartoons…
What was the problem with the rise of big business, formation of monopolies and trusts, and the growing power and wealth of industrialists….
(on back of your cartoon, write down at least three issues the cartoons are critical of)

9. “What a Funny Little Government”, by Horace Taylor for the September 25, 1899 issue of The Verdict
THE TRUST GIANTS POINT OF VIEW
“WHAT A FUNNY LITTLE GOVERNMENT”
White House, President
McKinley

10. Mark Hanna- iron and coal industrialist Philip Armour- meatpacking
LABOR
ONE SEES HIS FINISH UNLESS GOOD GOVERNMENT RETAKES THE SHIP
Mark Hanna- iron and coal
industrialist
Philip Armour- meatpacking
industrialist

11. “The Standard Oil Octopus”

12. Joseph Keppler - 1889 political cartoon "The Bosses of the Senate",

13. “The Protectors of our Industry” 1883
Russell Sage- financier and
Railroad executive
William Henry
Vanderbilt- railroads
Cyrus
Field-
American
Telegraph
Company
Jay Gould-
Railroad
Developer
And
speculator

14. Samuel Ehrhardt, ‘History Repeats Itself: The Robber Barons of the Middle Ages and the Robber Barons of Today’, Puck, c. 1889

15. On back of your cartoon…..
If you haven’t, please write down 3 specific problems the cartoonists saw with the rise of big business, formation of monopolies and trusts, and the growing power and wealth of industrialists….
For at least one, write down a possible solution to the problem….
Challenge: what might the arguments be against the(se) solution(s)