Bell Work – Respond in Your
Notebook
•What do you know about
business tycoons. What
personal characteristics do
they have? What kinds of
business practices do they
use? Do you look up to them
or reject their values?
Big Business and
Social Darwinism
New Management Techniques
• People searched for
ways to make
products more
cheaply.
• Businesses utilized
better machinery and
technology to make
better products.
• Detailed accounting
systems.
• Hired great people.
New Business Strategies
• Vertical Integration –
When a company buys
all of its suppliers,
transportation
systems, and every
stage of the
manufacturing
process.
• Horizontal
Consolidation – When
a company buys out all
competing producers
Successful Big Business
Owners
• Andrew Carnegie –
U.S. Steel.
• John D. Rockefeller –
Standard Oil.
• Many people became
successful with hard
work, shrewd
investments and
innovative business
practices
Social Darwinism
• A new social theory to
explain why some people
are successful and others
aren’t.
• Based on Biological
Evolution.
• A free market, would
ensure the “survival of the
fittest” as in nature.
• The winners are more fit
than the losers.
• This was dangerous
because it states that your
lot in life is because of
inferiority.
Robber Barons
• Industrialists who were
very successful but
paid their employees
very low and undercut
their competition to
put them out of
business.
• When all competition
was dealt with, they
would raise prices to
gain back their lost
wealth.
The Sherman Anti-Trust Act
• A law that made it illegal
to interfere with free
trade among the states
or internationally by
forming a trust, or
creating a monopoly.
• Trust – A group of
people that ran separate
companies as one large
corporation.
• Monopoly – A company
that controls an entire
industry or market.
Point/Counterpoint
• In your text on page 424, read the
point/counterpoint articles and
respond to the prompt, “Were the
industrialists of the 19th century
robber barons or captains of
industry and why?