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Cyrus Mccormick & Western Agriculture Thomas Alva Edison

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Cyrus Mccormick & Western Agriculture Thomas Alva Edison HANDOUT B Rise of Big Business Radio Interview Role-Play For those with Big Business Roles: With your group members, read the Directions: biographical sketch on your assigned figure who contributed to the rise of big business. Prepare to answer questions from the interviewer and audience members. For those with Interviewer Roles: With your group members, prepare a list of questions for the figures who contributed to the rise of big business. After asking your own questions, invite audience participants to contribute their own questions. For the audience: Prepare your own questions for the figures who contributed to the rise of big business. Suggested topics: The character of the business figure The contribution of the business figure to the rise of big business General economic and social questions from the time period Rise of Big Business Role-Play Nametags Cyrus McCormick & Western Agriculture Thomas Alva Edison & Technological Inventions The Gilded Age and Progressive Era Unit 1, Lesson 1: The Rise of Big Business © Bill of Rights Institute Handout B, page 2 James J. Hill & the Railroads Andrew Carnegie & the Steel Industry John D. Rockefeller & the Oil Industry Jay Gould & American Finance J.P. Morgan & American Finance Interviewer The Gilded Age and Progressive Era Unit 1, Lesson 1: The Rise of Big Business © Bill of Rights Institute Handout B, page 3 Cyrus McCormick & the mechanical reaper was in use around the Western Agriculture world…He and his competitors had converted the American prairies from open space to the “In the open spaces of the American Midwest, breadbasket that fed the United States and much old Northwest, and Great Plains lay a potential of Europe. In some ways his firm, which did so wealth equal to that of the cotton fields in the much to modernize the American agricultural South. Three keys were needed to unlock this economy, remained an anachronism at his death, bonanza: people, transportation, and machines. stranded half-way between traditional family Immigration supplied the first, railroads and management and modern bureaucratic control.” canals the second, American manufacturing the last. The mechanical harvester, the machine Harold C. Livesay, American Made: Men Who that most facilitated the transformation of these Shaped the American Economy (Boston: Little, open spaces into a cornucopia, emerged from a Brown, 1979), 53-84. farm workshop in the Shenandoah valley…. Cyrus [McCormick], who often helped his Thomas Alva Edison & father in the shop and early demonstrated an Technological Inventions inventive knack of his own, took up the task. He “As technological advancements broke the fashioned a reaper that operated successfully shackles that had limited transportation and on a neighboring farm during the harvest of communication to the velocity of wind and water 1831….[and] Cyrus McCormick returned to and accelerated them to the speed of sound the workshop to improve his reaper. In 1834, and light, most Americans rejoiced and called satisfied that he had perfected it to a point of it progress. Fundamental to this change and to marketability, McCormick received a patent for the expansion of manufacturing capacity, was his machine….McCormick sold two machines a two-stage revolution in the ways by which in 1840, but his claims of perfection proved man converted potential energy to power… premature when both failed. Consequently, he in the second, electricity and the internal withdrew from the market in 1841 to spend a combustion engine took over….Spending all year in the workshop, getting the bugs out of the of his pocket money on chemicals, bottles, mechanism. In 1842 he reentered the market and other apparatus, Edison [carried out and sold six; in 1843, twenty-nine….Since experiments].Soon mastering the rudiments of reaper marketing demanded extensive personal the craft, Edison…began an eight-year career as contact, McCormick gradually relied more on a a ‘boomer,’ an itinerant [telegraph operator]…. far-flung network of salesmen, on the company’s Edison devised an apparatus to record [voices] reputation…. instantaneously…. Production rose from 1,500 in 1849 to 4,500 By 1876, Edison’s combined labors as inventor in 1858 to 8,000 in 1868….By 1858 Cyrus and manufacturer brought him solvency McCormick was a millionaire; when he died and modest wealth….When he first began to in 1882 he was a millionaire ten times over…. manufacture light bulbs, for example, they cost Cyrus McCormick was born into a world where $1.40 each to produce, but Edison priced them at farmers harvested their grain crops as they had 40 cents, knowing that volume production would since time immemorial; when he died in 1882 soon bring costs down…. The Gilded Age and Progressive Era Unit 1, Lesson 1: The Rise of Big Business © Bill of Rights Institute Handout B, page 4 Edison moved his equipment and his staff to As Hill built his railroad across the Northwest, the hamlet of Menlo Park, New Jersey…At the he followed a consistent strategy. First, he Menlo Park laboratory, Edison institutionalized always built slowly and developed the export of his role as creative inventor, establishing the area before he moved farther west. In the what amounted to an invention factory….The Great Plains this export was wheat….He knew phonograph, which Edison and his helpers that if farmers prospered, their freight would constructed late in 1877, exemplified Edison’s give him steady returns every year. The key was dedication to the profit motive. The talking to get people to come to the Northwest….Hill machine excited the public imagination….The would tell the immigrants, “but we are in the invention of the incandescent electric light, same boat with you, and we have got to prosper which brought Edison enduring, worldwide fame, with you or we have got to be poor with you.”…. resulted from his belief that electricity could be With the E.C. Knight case the law of the harnessed to tasks other than communication…. land, Hill saw no problem when he created During Edison’s lifetime, and partially because the Northern Security Company in 1901….Hill of his work, applied science became a permanent was therefore disappointed when President component of American manufacturing.” Theodore Roosevelt urged the Supreme Court to Harold C. Livesay, American Made: Men Who strike down the Northern Securities under the Shaped the American Economy (Boston: Little, Sherman Act. [Roosevelt] called the Northern Brown, 1979), 127-156. Securities a ‘very arrogant corporation’ and Hill a ‘trust magnate, who attempts to do what James J. Hill & the Railroads the law forbids.’….In 1904, in a landmark case, the Supreme Court decided five to four against “James J. Hill was building a transcontinental the Northern Securities. It had to be dissolved. [railroad] from St. Paul to Seattle with no federal [Justice] Harlan continued with a devastating aid whatsoever. Also, Hill’s road was the best statement: ‘The mere existence of such a built, the least corrupt, the most popular, and combination…constitutes a menace to, and a the only transcontinental never to go bankrupt. restraint upon, that freedom of commerce which It took longer to build than the others, but Hill Congress [in the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act] used this time to get the shortest route on the intended to recognize and protect, and which the best grade with the least curvature. In doing public is entitled to have protected.’” so, he attracted settlement and trade by cutting costs for passengers and freight…. Burton W. Folsom, Jr., The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business To Hill, the Northwest was an opportunity to in America, Seventh Edition (Herndon, VA: develop America’s last frontier. Where some saw Young America’s Foundation, 2013), 17-39. deserts and mountains, Hill had a vision of farms and cities. [Others] might build a few swanky hotels and health spas, but Hill wanted to settle Andrew Carnegie & the the land and develop the resources….Hill wanted Steel Industry to build a railroad to develop the region, and “At the bobbin factory, young Carnegie then to prosper with it…. demonstrated many of the qualities that would The Gilded Age and Progressive Era Unit 1, Lesson 1: The Rise of Big Business © Bill of Rights Institute Handout B, page 5 carry him to the top: reliability, a willingness to As volume rose, costs fell, and profits soared. work hard, an ability to perceive opportunities The first ton of Carnegie steel cost $56 to and to make the most of them….The telegraph produce; by 1900 the cost was down to $11.50. office thus served as an informal but effective In 1888 the firm made 2 million dollars; in 1894, schools of commerce and business methods…. 4 million dollars; in 1900, 40 million dollars…. Distinguishing himself by coming early, staying So Carnegie retired to a life of philanthropy and late, and sweeping out the office when he had promotion of peace. Looking back on his career, no messages to deliver, Andy soon garnered the he could savor many triumphs: his rise to wealth rewards of virtue. His salary rose from $2.50 to through hard work and shrewd investment.” $3.00 a week. The company promoted him…. Harold C. Livesay, American Made: Men Who Carnegie spent twelve years on the Pennsylvania Shaped the American Economy (Boston: Little, Railroad…His railroad service shaped the Brown, 1979), 87-125. rest of his business life: on the railroad he assimilated the managerial skills, grasped the economic principles, and cemented the personal John D. Rockefeller & relationships to become successively manager, the Oil Industry capitalist, and entrepreneur…. “[Rockefeller] began to work at age sixteen Steel also offered a unique opportunity to as an assistant bookkeeper for 50 cents per utilize his manifold talents and connections.
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