458 Chapter 17 An Industrial Giant Emerges
Essentials of Industrial Growth
When the Civil War began, the country’s industrial
output, while important and increasing, did not
approach that of major European powers. By the end
of the century the United States had become far and
away the colossus among world manufacturers, dwarf-
ing the production of Great Britain and Germany. The
world had never seen such a remarkable example of
rapid economic growth. The value of American manu-
factured products rose from $1.8 billion in 1859 to
over $13 billion in 1899.
American manufacturing flourished for many rea-
sons. New natural resources were discovered and
exploited steadily, thereby increasing opportunities.
These opportunities, in turn, attracted the brightest
and most energetic of a vigorous and expanding pop-
ulation. The growth of the country added constantly
to the size of the national market, and protective tar-
iffs shielded that market from foreign competition.
Foreign capital, however, entered the market freely, in
part because tariffs kept out so many foreign goods.
The dominant spirit of the time encouraged busi-
nessmen to maximum effort by emphasizing progress,
yet it also produced a generation of Robber Barons.
The energetic search for wealth led to corrupt business
practices such as stock manipulation, bribery, and cut-
throat competition and ultimately to “combinations in
restraint of trade,” a kind of American euphemism for
monopoly. European immigrants provided the addi-
tional labor needed by expanding
industry; 2.5 million arrived in the
1870s, twice that number in the
1880s. These immigrants saw America
as a land of opportunity, and for many,
probably most, it was that indeed. But
for others, emigrating to the United
States meant a constant struggle for
survival; dreary, often unhealthy living
conditions; and grinding poverty.
The period witnessed rapid
advances in basic science, and techni-
cians created a bountiful harvest of
new machines, processes, and power
sources that increased productivity in
many industries and created new
industries as well. Agriculture was
transformed by improved harvesters
and binding machines, and combines
capable of threshing and bagging
450 pounds of grain a minute. An
1886 report of the Illinois Bureau of
Labor Statistics claimed that “new
machinery has displaced fully 50 per-
cent of the muscular labor formerly
required to do a given amount of work in the manu-
facture of agricultural implements.” Of course that
also meant that many farm families were “displaced”
from their homes and livelihoods, and it made farmers
dependent on the vagaries of distant markets and
powerful economic forces they could not control.
As a result of improvements in the milling of grain,
packaged cereals appeared on the American breakfast
table. The commercial canning of food, spurred by the
“automatic line” canning factory, expanded so rapidly
that by 1887 a writer in Good Housekeepingcould say,
“Housekeeping is getting to be ready made, as well as
clothing.” The Bonsack cigarette-rolling machine cre-
ated a new industry that changed the habits of mil-
lions. George B. Eastman created still another with his
development of mass-produced, roll photographic film
and the simple but efficient Kodak camera. The perfec-
tion of the typewriter by the Remington company in
the 1880s revolutionized office work. But even some
of these inventions were mixed blessings. The harm
done by cigarettes, for example, needs no explanation.Railroads: The First Big Business
In 1866, returning from his honeymoon in Europe,
thirty-year-old Charles Francis Adams Jr., (great-
grandson of John Adams and grandson of John
Quincy Adams), full of ambition and ready, as he put
it, to confront the world “face to face,” looked about
in search of a career. “Surveying the whole field,” heThe daily passenger train of the Union Pacific on its transcontinental line, crosses the Rocky
Mountains. In 1869, just after the transcontinental line was completed, travel from New York
City to San Francisco took nearly a week. First-class passengers, who rode in special cars such
as those pictured, paid a fare of $150. Second-class passengers paid less than half as much,
but they were crowded into cars that were attached to freight trains.