Economic Consequences of the Civil War

America was not the same country after four years of total war than when America had split in 1861. Coming out of the Civil War, the industry soared. Driven by the North, which emerged from the Civil War as an industrial powerhouse, the United States experienced a burst of remarkable growth and industrialization, with a country full of unlimited natural resources and railroads. Some historians have referred to this era as America's second Industrial Revolution, because it completely changed American society, politics, and the economy. Even though big business was no match for organized labor, labor still played a vital role in establishing the country after the war as there were needs for any sort of job. Roughly between the years of Reconstruction and the dawn of a new century, this era saw a rapid change in industry and organized labor.

Gilded Age industrialization began in the Civil War, which instigated Congress and the northern states to build more railroads and increased demand for a variety of manufactured goods. Originally, because railroading was such an expensive enterprise at the time, the federal government provided subsidies by the mile to railroad companies in exchange for discounted rates. Congress also provided federal land grants to railroad companies so that they could lay down more track. With this free land and tens of thousands of dollars per mile in subsidies, railroading became a highly profitable business venture. Big businessmen controlled the new industrialized America. These captains of industry were not regulated by the government and did whatever they could to make as much money as possible. These industrialists' business practices were sometimes so corrupt that they were given the name robber barons. Among the wealthiest and most famous captains of industry in the late 1800s was Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie turned his production plant into a steel empire through a business plan known as vertical integration. He vertically integrated his production process by buying out all of the companies needed to produce his steel, as well as the companies that shipped and sold the steel. Eventually, Carnegie sold his company to banker J. P. Morgan, who used the company as the foundation for the U.S. Steel Corporation. With the very little demand for oil during the Civil War, demand increased during the machine age. The biggest names in the oil industry were John D. Rockefeller and his Standard Oil Company. As Carnegie employed vertical integration to create his steel empire, Rockefeller used horizontal integration, buying out all the other oil companies so that he had no competition left. In doing so, Rockefeller created one of America's first trusts

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