1865 to 1900 as the “Age of Organization”

The growth of industry was the dominant factor of change during the period. The Civil War had spurred industrial development in the North to a degree unimaginable in the rest of the world. While the North was well on its way to becoming an industrial powerhouse before the war, fielding and supplying the armies accelerated the process. Facing superior generalship in the Southern Army, the North relied on a war of attrition. The North was much better suited to this type of warfare as their industrial base was ten ti

By 1873 reconstruction had run its course, and national support for the black cause was waning. Although a small middle class of professionals had emerged, the South remained under the sway of the numerically small old-money planting class. Industry had made inroads into the southern economy, but northern ownership of most of the South’s post-war railroads and factories made the area the economic backwater of the nation.

Southern farmers faced different problems than those in the rest of the country. The old planter class had retained their grip on the political machines of the state and passed the states’ fiscal burdens onto the backs of the smaller farmers and merchants. Making the small farmers pay the larger share of taxes not only saved the planters money but had the added benefit of forcing the newly freed blacks back to the plantations to work for cash otherwise unobtainable from subsistence farming. The effect was that white and black small farmers alike found it difficult to hold onto their land, and many became sharecroppers. White farmers did organize in groups such as the Populist Party, but their inherent racism towards blacks made them poor allies for the inclusive movements of the rest country.

Railroad companies were granted large tracts of land by the Federal Government to encourage growth. Railroads sold land along the lines in an effort to populate the regions. Their main goal was to generate a customer base for their services. The arid climate found when passing the 98th line of longitude was not suitable to small-scale farming and the life of a prairie settler was not an easy one. When railway stock speculation burst in 1873, the railroad companies were forced to sell large amounts of land at low prices to new organizations that constructed bonanza farms. These farms covered several thousand acres, and were run like a modern business. The Homestead Act of 1862 granted 160 acres to settlers who often found the amount of land to small to farm profitably, and investors consolidated these tracts into large farms as well. New technologies such as the McCormack Reaper allowed larger farms to become very profitable.

The end of the gilded age saw the country moving onto the world stage as a modern country with limitless possibilities. Immigrants continued to pour in from around the world on the premise that America was a place of freedom and opportunity. The power of industry had made enough the country great, and the electorate was soon to empower the people who had suffered at industries hands in the upcoming Progressive Era. New organization methods had moved the United States from the Jeffersonian model to Hamilton’s model of an industrial state. That model is still with us today, and the great organizations of the United States have been the mold in which the modern world has been cast.

Andrew Carnegie took his experience learned in the telegraph and railroad businesses and built an empire based on steel mills. Using a technique that would be later known as vertical integration, Carnegie purchased the aspects of production and transportation that had before been supplied by outside concerns. He made it a point to know exactly what his cost were for a ton of steel, and exactly what his competitors were, and made it a point to undersell them by watching his cost rather than his profits. Everything was measured and sales forecast were made well in advance so that success was assured. Carnegie took pains to incorporate the latest technologies in his mills and captured a large share of the market away from the once dominant English producers. Carnegie’s abilities, however, were not so much in producing steel, but lay in his ability to set up an efficient bureaucracy that enabled him to trust the day to day operations of his many concerns in the hands of the most !

Some topics in this essay:
Pendleton Act, Congress Republicans, Americans Foodstuffs, Civil War, Gomper’s AFL, North Skilled, Age Railroads, Andrew Carnegie, Plains Indians, Marquis Queensberry’s, federal government, war effort, civil war, gilded age, skilled unskilled, union composed skilled, team sports, slave labor, civil rights, power south, industrial economy, strong central government, composed skilled unskilled,