Download growth of big business during the gilded age

GROWTH OF BIG BUSINESS
DURING THE GILDED AGE
Economic System in 1800’s
• Laissez faire capitalism … idea
that the free market will produce
the best result for everyone.
• Gov’t should not get involved.
• Entrepreneurs – individuals willing
to take risks.
Robber Barons
• Entrepreneurs who would use any tactics
necessary in order to succeed in business
• Famous …
– Andrew Carnegie – Steel Industry
– J.P. Morgan – Banker and RR
industrialist
– John Rockefeller – Standard Oil
Company
Robber Barons
Vanderbilt
Andrew Carnegie
JP Morgan
DuPont
Robber Baron Tactics
LIMIT THE
COMPETITION
POOLS
HOLDING CO.
TRUSTS
&
MONOPOLIES
Were robber barons
justified?
Charles Darwin
• Wrote Origins of Species
• Species have biological
variations
• Evolution based on
Natural Selection
• Natural selection –
biology will select those
with the useful traits;
others will die out.
Herbert Spencer
1820-1903
• Wrote The Evolution of Society
• Social Darwinism
– Applied Darwinism to humans
– Some people adapt better than others
– Those who adapt more efficiently dominate
– Came up with the term ‘survival of the fittest’
Social Darwinism
• Society should allow the weak and less fit
to fail and die, and that this is not only
good policy, but morally right.
• Poor people, or disadvantaged minorities
must have deserved their situations
because they were “less fit” than those
who were better off.
• Spencer’s publication sold over 400,000
copies in the US alone.