Key Terms (page 464-477)
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12-18-10
New Steel Production: Henry Bessemer, William Kelly, and Robert Mushet all collaborating
their ideas into a new way of making steel. First they would take iron and burn out all the
impurities and then add ingredients during conversion to transform it into steel
Rise of Petroleum Industry: Was originally needed for lubricating the machines used in the
steel industry. At first it had not been recognized as an important source of fuel but once
George Bissell was able to show that oil could be used to be burned in lamps, and to yield
things like paraffin, naphtha, and lubricating oil. Until then its plentiful quantity had been
unnoticed but after it had been put to great use Bissell began drilling in western
Pennsylvania to make money
Henry Ford: Three years after Charles and Frank Duryea built the first gasoline-driven
motor vehicle in America in 1903, Henry Ford created the first famous car that would bear
his name. By 1910 the company had become a very big impact on the American social and
cultural life. In 1895 there were only about 4 cars on a highway but by 1915 there were
about 5 million
Wright Brothers: began creating airplanes that they hoped could travel far and carry
passengers. Their first attempt was at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina where the airplane took
off and traveled 120feet in 12 seconds and then by 1904 they had improved it to travel
over 23 miles and even carry a few passengers
Corporate Research and Development: The development of industries and research
laboratories quickly became a way of decentralizing the government support for research.
These laboratories required skilled individuals who were often those that worked for
government agencies previously which meant that there was less funding mainly provided
from the government so the industries would not have to strictly be determined by the
government
Transformation of Higher Education: universities began to form growing connections
based on their research and the needs of the industrial economy. This type of connection
is still visible in the twenty first century and helps fund the universities
“Taylorism”: the idea that employers could reorganize the production process into
subdividing tasks that would be managed by trained experts so that the workers don’t
necessarily have to be skilled
Moving assembly Line: one of the most important changes in production technology that
was first introduced by Henry Ford in his automobile plants in 1914 which cut the time of
making a chassis from twelve and a half hours to one and a half hours meaning he could
raise wages, cut hours, and cut the base price of his Model T Ford
Rapid Expansion of the Railroad: the expansion of railroads throughout the nation and
connecting major railroads was very important to the federal, states and local
governments as well as investments from abroad which provided more capital than
private entrepreneurs in America could raise on their own
Limited Liability: Americans began to consider buying stocks again but what made it most
appealing this time was that if the corporation was in debt they would not be affected so
the only thing they are risking would be the amount of investment
Andrew Carnegie: A central figure in the steel industry because he worked his way up from
a modest beginner to opening his own steel industry in Pittsburgh and soon he had
dominated the entire industry. One of his strategies would be to cut costs and make major
deals with railroads
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New Managerial Techniques: The structure of modern business administration had been
created upon the idea of dividing the responsibilities carefully in a designed hierarchy
which included many modern cost-accounting procedures and the “middle managers”
which were the new executives in between the workers and owners
Horizontal Integration: combining firms engaged in the same enterprise intoa single
corporation
Vertical Integration: taking over all different businesses where a company relied on its
primary function
Rockefeller’s Standard Oil: Rockefeller launched a refining company in Cleveland to
immediately begin trying to eliminate his competition by trying to buy out his competing
refineries and then finally in Ohio he formed the Standard oil Company
The Trust Agreement: the trust agreement started with the Standard Oil Company and
Banker J.P. Morgan. Under the trust agreement stockholders in individual corporations
were transferred to stocks to a small group of trustees in exchange for shares in the trust
itself.
Rapid Corporate consolidation: due to corporate consolidation, one percent of the
corporations in America were able to control more than 33 percent of the manufacturing
industries, which created a system of organization that created power in the hands of
many men like bankers and industrial titans
Myth of Self-Made Man: The idea that some of the main industrial tycoons had started off
in positions of wealth and power rather than what they claimed to be simply hard work
Social Darwinism: application of Charles Darwin’s laws of natural selection and evolution
among society, meaning that only the fittest survived in society and the fittest would
flourish in the marketplace
Russell Conwell: a Baptist minister who became a spokesperson for the idea of “Acres of
Diamonds” where he told the story of people being able to find wealth in their own
backyards
Horatio Alger: one of the most famous promoters of the success story
Lester Frank Ward: a Darwinist who rejected the application of the Darwinist Laws in
Human Society. He argued that the civilizations was not governed by natural selection but
human intelligence
Henry George: A very influential radical who published Progress and Poverty in 1879 which
became one of the best-selling nonfiction works in American publishing history
Increasing Inequality: IN American society there were four fifths of the people who lived
modestly and then at least 10 million people who lived below the commonly accepted
poverty line