Industry: Incandescent Light Bulb and Oil Industry Essay

Submitted By ctrips
Words: 672
Pages: 3

Industry Comes Of Age

Around the first 70 years of America’s existence, there was hardly any comparatively big industry present in the states. America was ranked number four in the world for production, which was low considering the few powers of the world. But soon after the appearance of railroads in America, industries began to spring up. This began the influential and important Industrial Age of America where industries that are necessary today came to age. The major and most important reason that any primary industry today came to age was because of the construction of railroads in America. Before the Civil War is when the first railroads were being constructed. Construction of railroads was mainly concentrated west of the Mississippi. When the South seceded, the production of railroads sky rocketed. Railroads were becoming cheap to build. They were also needed to get across the nation that now stretched from sea to shining sea. The Transcontinental Railroad changed the course of the country onto a more industrial path. After it was completed by the Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad, the country was thrust leaps and bounds ahead in the national market and, soon, in the international market. It also opened up the market for manufactured goods. That led to industrialization. One of the industries that came of age was the steel industry. The raw material needed to make steel is iron. Iron was discovered as a natural resource in the Minnesota-Lake Superior region of the country. The industry was mainly built on immigrants’ low paid work. The Bessemer process for producing steel rocketed America past England and Germany combined in steel production. Another very important reason for why America was ahead of any other country for steel production was because it was abundant in the natural resources needed to produce steel. One thing the Europeans missed out on was all of America’s raw materials to make finished goods. Steel was considered a capital good rather than a consumer good. So steel was mainly used by large businesses or even the government rather than being bought by citizens for every day use. Andrew Carnegie was the “Steel King”. His method of steel production was called vertical integration. That made sure that Carnegie was the only one who was in charge of the production of steel. This cut out the middle man and ultimately made Carnegie the lead producer of fifty percent of the world’s see production. The steel industry led to the construction of skyscrapers and