Standard Oil felt pressure from the government, they simply reorganized into single corporations. Prosecuting companies under the Sherman act was not easy, however, because the act didn’t clearly define terms such as trust.
#Big business and labor worksheet answers free#
In 1890, the Sherman Antitrust Act made it illegal to form a trust that interfered with free trade between states or with other countries. Although Rockefeller kept most of his assets, he still gave away over $500 million, establishing the Rockefeller Foundation, providing funds to found the University of Chicago, and creating a medical institute that helped find a cure for yellow fever.ĭespite Carnegie’s defense of millionaires, the government was concerned that expanding corporations would stifle free competition. But industrialists were also philanthropists. Alarmed at the tactics of industrialists, critics began to call them robberīarons. Rockefeller reaped huge profitsīy paying his employees extremely low wages and driving his competitors out of business by selling his oil at a lower price than it cost to produce it. Within a decade, it controlled 90 percent of the refining business. In 1870, Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company of Ohio processed two or three percent of the country’s crude oil. Governed by natural law and that no one had the right to intervene.
Sumner, a political science professor at Yale University, promoted the theory that success and failure in business were According to this doctrine, the marketplace should notbe regulated. Soon, economists found in Social Darwinism a way to justify the doctrine of laissez faire (a French term meaning “allow to do”). The English philosopher Herbert Spencer used Darwin’s biological theories to explain the evolution of human society. He explained that a process of “natural selection” weeded out less-suited individuals and enabled the best-adapted to survive. Observations that some individuals of a species flourish and pass their traits along to the next generation, while others do not. In his book On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, Darwin described his The philosophy called Social Darwinism grew out of the English naturalist Charles Darwin’s theory ofīiological evolution. Social philosophers thought that Carnegie’s achievement could be explained scientifically by a new theory-Social Darwinism. Work, shrewd investments, and innovative business practices. Having gained control over his suppliers and having limited his competition, Carnegie controlled almost the entire steel industry.īy the time he sold his business in 1901, Carnegie’s companies produced by far the largestĪndrew Carnegie explained his extraordinary success by pointing to his hard In this process, known as horizontal integration, companies producing similar products merge. Carnegie also attempted to buy outĬompeting steel producers. He did this mainly by vertical integration, a process in which he bought out his suppliers-coal fields and iron mines, ore freighters, and railroad lines-in order to control the raw materials and transportation systems. In addition to improving his own manufacturing operation, CarnegieĪttempted to control as much of the steel industry as he could. Second, he attracted talented people by offering them stock in the company, and he encouraged competition among his assistants. He incorporated new machinery and techniques, such as accounting systems that enabled him to track precise costs. First, he continually searched for ways to make better products more cheaply. Carnegie’s success was due in part to management practices that he initiated and that soon became widespread.
0 kommentar(er)
