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Objective 2.2- The Age of Big Business

Added Oct 14, 2015 •

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Bank of the mines in great businessman of our age Bill Gates Steve Jobs Warren Buffett Mark Zuckerberg go on musk each of these men started with an idea and applied the resources they had available to them to make that idea a reality they made millions of dollars and dominated their Industries they are known as the big businessmen of our time but before them there were the original captains of industry in the age of big business the age of big business was a period that saw the creation of American Mega businesses labor unions corporate corruption and Federal Regulation of business in America this time period in American history Define the idea of American Success Through self-reliance a hard work ethic and individual responsibility it's set up a sound ation for which spraying the modern American corporate infrastructure and the urban Workforce we have today because of this era big corporations rule into an American Working Families move to the cities to work for those companies it also forever alter the American socioeconomic hierarchy after this era classes were divided between an upper class middle class working class and Working Poor businessman of the Gilded Age put on hard work Innovation and adaptability and shrew decision-making let's take a look at a few of these tycoons of big business firstly of Andrew Carnegie Carnegie was a penniless Scottish immigrant who made his fortune by starting the Carnegie Steel company Carnegie had perfected the idea of vertical integration or he would buy out and can all his flyers in order to control all areas of production in order to reduce his cost the next ideas horizontal consolidation this technique involves buying out his editor's absorbing all of their production in order to grow his company the next big businessmen of the era was JP Morgan  JP when was a banker who had a vast Fortune of money at his back with this Fortune he created the company us steel JP Morgan us steel what's a holding company is the company created only to buy out the stocks of competing companies can use the vast amount of money at his disposal to slowly take control of his competitors essentially JP Morgan don't know much about making steel but only intended to buy out his competitors in order to monopolize the steel industry this is why the holding company is illegal however 1901 JP Morgan had enough Capital to buy out Carnegie steel and by that time Morgan's us steel made over 80% of the steel in America the next businessman John D Rockefeller Rockefeller founded the company Standard Oil Rockefeller ran the standard oil as a trust where he broke his company up in the mini smaller companies in order to separate the stock this would help him avoid a hostile takeover so no one could ever dominate his company business practices running a company as a trust is now a legal due to his shrewd business practices Rockefeller control 90% of the oil production in America creating a monopoly  the final business in of the age that we will talk about is Cornelius Vanderbilt Vanderbilt was a railroad monopolist who gained control of railroads in the United States by buying out his competitors he would first drive down the price of the competitor stock and then accumulate all of the stock his vast Fortune leaving his companies the only companies left in the railroad industry the practice of driving down the price of stock in the competitors and purchasing that stock gaining pull up their company is what's known as a hostile takeover Cornelius Vanderbilt perfected the practice  these businessmen credited their success and Dom on the idea of social Darwinism social Darwinism is based on survival of the fittest is the idea that fueled by Big Business competition in the market leads to Natural for firms the best survive and dominate the worst go bankrupt and die off in order to work properly outside influences must keep out meaning government should stay out of business and allow them to compete with no regulation in this political cartoon of the era you can see the idea of social Darwinism visualized in JD Morgan Standard Oil Company at the base of a beautiful rose which is his company Standard Oil beneath his feet are the pedals that have been trimmed from the rose which are it says the American beauty rose can be produced in all its Splendor only by sacrificing the early buds that grew up around in those early bud were the competitors that Morgan had to be down in order to become a monopoly in the oil industry  however for all their successes these big businessmen also faced criticism many people in America they gained the term the robber barons  robber barons was a derogatory term given to Big businessman that hark back to the roof what's feudal Lords of the Middle Ages in Europe was controlled by Sophie and Americans big business they began to criticize corporate greed and the corruption that corporate money can play in politics  these robber barons hiked prices cut weed and kept the profits for themselves dinner to send to repair their image the robber barons donated Millions to charity fun fact have you heard a rock lower Center Carnegie Hall or Vanderbilt University all of these are named after robber barons who donated money towards our Construction in order to help future Generations the growing number of legal monopolies and trusts and public outrage over corporate corruption led to tighter government regulation of big business  the main instrument of regulation was the Sherman Antitrust Act this law declared that all trust were legal in the marketplace however it was nearly impossible to enforce the Sherman Acton clearly-defined address companies got around the law by dissolving their trust and creating monopolies in order to keep control of the market the Supreme Court refuse to enforce the law and throughout any cases brought before them why does this matter we Revere the big business and of our ERA American innovators as Titans of our time and we look up to them for inspiration it wasn't until the Gilded Age that Americans please Revere dick businessman as Heroes the Arabic business also created the socio-economic hierarchy of today with the different classes according to income corporate infrastructure developed in the Gilded Age led to a century of American economic dominance it paved the way for the economic success of the 20th century the last reason this is important is because the US government still uses the Sherman Antitrust Act to sue companies today  in 1998 the United States government sued Mike stop off from monopolizing the internet browser industry Microsoft made it impossible to run any internet browser besides Internet Explorer on Windows the United State I rent one forcing Microsoft to allow its competitors to run on Windows leveling the competition in the industry

Uploaded by Mark Lovein.

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Objective 2.2- The Age of Big Business

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