Economic Factors Of Big Business Development During The Gilded Age

The nineteenth century, which was also referred to as the Gilded Age, was a century where there were developments in all aspects of the country. Many factors contributed to the developments during the Gilded Age such as Economic factors of big businesses spreading control and beginning to monopolize, Political Factors of Laissez Faire and Survival of the fittest, and Social factors of movements and strikes as well as the exploitation of lower class citizens. At this time big industries began to use two times of integration to start expanding and monopolizing. The two kinds of integration that they began using was Horizontal and Vertical integration. Vertical integration was a form of integration that had businesses control all aspects of

This was referred to as Laissez Faire, which was a French statement that primarily meant leave alone. The government used this as a defense reason for why they are not stopping big industries from monopolizing. Another defense they used was Charles Darwin’s “Survival of the FIttest”. The idea was that anything that can adapt and move along with changes will survive and the ones that cannot will be left behind to die, Political leaders then applied this into the business world so they could sit back and do nothing. Due to the increase of big industries and monopolization along with political leaders not doing anything, many workers fell under and did not get the pay they deserved. Big industries refused to pay their workers well and there was nothing being done to prevent the industries from mistreating and underpaying their workers which eventually led to social problems as

Also at the time children were still being used in factories as laborers they did not have to pay. As David A. Wells said, “[T]he modern manufacturing system has been brought into a condition comparable to that of a military organization, in which the individual no longer works as independently as formerly, but as a private in the ranks, obeying orders, keeping step, as it were, to the tap of the drum..”. Many were just like simple robots being used as cheap labor, no one took pride in their work anymore and once workers and citizens began to realize that they held many strikes to try and change what the government had set for them. Some strikes include The Great Railroad Strike of 1877, Haymarket Bombing 1886, Homestead Strike 1892, and the Pullman Strike 1894. These strikes were held by many different labor unions that had formed at the time, to the public many saw the movements of the unions as radical and aggressive. These labor unions, such as the knights of labor, demanded for higher wages and only an 8 hour working day to accommodate for rest and their own personal free time. Many agreed but also many did not so there was an obvious divide between the people caused by these