Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

THE closing decades of the nineteenth century were a period of dramatic change at all levels of American society. Central to this change was the rise of a new breed of giant industrial corporation. Internally, these colossal manufacturing firms differed in many ways from their predecessors – in how they were financed, structured, and managed. Externally, they became a central defining feature of American life, the epicenter of key shifts in class relations, in the nature of industrial work, in the legal system, in the role of the federal government as a regulator of economic activity, and even in popular culture, high culture, and the arts. In general surveys of this period in American history, the rise of giant corporations stands at the center of the story of America's transformation from a localistic, rural, agricultural society into a national, urban, industrial one. Although in actuality the discontinuities were not quite this sharp – industrialization took root well before the Civil War, and the majority of Americans lived on farms or in small towns until the 1920s, for instance – the rate of economic growth and concentration during this period was truly remarkable. In the mid-nineteenth century, the United States was a minor economic player compared with the industrialized nations of Europe. By 1900, America led the world in manufacturing output, and featured more miles of ... log in or subscribe to read full text