The growth of industry and businesses in the United States of America occurred by the monopolization of the American market. Over time some firms grew large enough to control as much as 25% of their industry like United Steel. Such big companies would lead to greater jobs plus greater economies of scale, being able to produce at lower costs and so theoretically could sell their products at a lower price. Therefore, most would say that this growth was beneficial for American society and has led to the ‘American Dream’ ideals associated with USA. However, there are benefits and costs to everything. Similarly, there were incredible costs from which these benefits were founded. Therefore, I think the growth of business and the corporate state has been primarily detrimental for the American nation. To elaborate, many of these only came after Government regulation. For instance, better and fair working conditions came only after instances such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory incident in 1911, Roosevelt’s legislation post late 1920’s Depression the Civil and Woman’s right’s movements.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory epitomized all the terrible working conditions of laborers in the early 20th Century. It was a nine storied brick building – known to be fireproof – with the factory located on the top three stories. There was no ventilation except for the open space in the center, as there were no windows; during the winter months only the sewers could move and sit by the boilers. On top of this no clean water was available. The women at the time only earned $6 a day and so buying 2 cent pop to keep them hydrated throughout the day was quite a penny-pincher. It was only after the fire killing most of the seven hundred laborers did the city realize that a lot of changes would have to occur. The city itself couldn’t keep up with the growth of all industry. Many of these workers lived in ghettoes with no heating, windows, lighting or proper sanitation even. Therefore the growth intended to improve the standard of living of the American citizens did not occur. Workers suffered from The supposed better ‘life’ and values of the American Dream led to high influx of people, especially into already over-crowded cities, which led to a host of problems on its own. The increased population density was not healthy. There weren’t enough resources for everyone and so it leads to greater tension within the community.
The fire also showed the inabilities of the public infrastructure as there wasn’t space in the morgues for all the dead bodies, the fire ladders couldn’t reach past the seventh story and there wasn’t even enough water to quench the fire. So though, many people now had jobs because of factories, they lived awfully, worked in worse places and when calamity struck the Municipality was helpless.
This growth itself wasn’t sustained and when industries did expand so, it was immense leading to a lot of immigration into the cities depopulating the rural areas. This too proved problematic. In trying to reduce the unemployment and sustain the agrarian lifestyles, the government passed the Homesteader’s Act in 1862. However the Railroad Companies – credited for helping to modernize the rural areas by making these places more accessible – contracted people to apply for the Homestead Act and inevitably get a hold of the land later. The government, too spent a lot of money and land giving these rail companies, namely to Union Pacific and Central Pacific. Forty-five million acres of land was distributed between the two companies as well as the companies being able to apply for loans of up to $48,000. Though, incentives were needed as these were low demand areas, the rail companies profited immensely whereas, the Government could’ve implemented the resources in other areas, more useful for the citizens.
The extent of the large firms’ influence over the Government is also illustrated by how most of the land from the Homesteader’s Act became Bonanza Farms and big cattle-rancher associations could not only collectively drive up the prices of cattle, but had enough political power to get many laws passed in their favor. The Wyoming Stockgrowers’ Association, for example, were, very successful in driving out their competition and did in so in unethical ways such as the lynching of Ella Watson, coercively taking the competitor’s cows and mass murdering 2000 sheep because they ate the grass that should be reserved for their cows. This kind of big business bullying was also depicted in the movie, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance which goes to show that a community living in fear and uncertainty is never beneficial.
This aggressive monopolization did lead to the passing of the Anti-Sherman Trust and the Interstate Commerce Act, to name a few, that tried to curb the influence of these large firms. However they still remain at large and are a huge influence on the government to this day. Many believe that America’s participation in the World War I was mainly due to the heavy involvement of the American firms and industrialists in the outcome of the war. This statement is true as America to emerge as the primary lender country out of the war. The economy itself was boosted immensely from the war. However those that benefitted were the big firms that had the infrastructure and the capability to produce high volumes of ammunition and war goods. Therefore the smaller businesses were ousted out of the market. The NYE Committee found a correlation between higher profits during WWI, but couldn’t find proof that these Industrialists had affected the American policies during the war.
The increased profits and economic growth did lead to trickle down effects of the 1920’s being the highest standard of living period in the history of USA. However this prosperous Jazz Age was illusionary as many didn’t partake in this higher quality of life. Those that did, became part of the Lost Generation. All this prosperity lead to an increase in immorality as the literature of Fitzgerald and Capote depict, which actually would lead to a decrease in the standards of living.
This age was also influenced by Social Darwinism where altruistic industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie, believed in not helping the unprivileged directly, but rather in affording everyone with the resources to be successful. Therefore he favored the construction of schools and libraries rather than soup kitchens and shelters. His contributions are significant and very generous, but they did not help the general populace of blue collar workers. Standard of living is also not as high when the disparity in incomes is extreme.
This high spending essentially occurred with the richer people, who continued to become richer and the poor continued to become poorer, especially with the advent of advertising. Businesses now advertised directly to the consumers and therefore now demand increased significantly as well as the apparent necessity for luxury goods. This leads to the “Keeping Up With The Joneses” phenomena. This is detrimental for societal progression if we keep pitting ourselves against each other. There will also come a saturation point when everyone already has everything and this Disaccumulation which inevitably led to the Great Depression along which was signaled by the Stock Market Crash. However, it is accredited more towards this flawed ideal of prosperity where the income gap is not bridged and the materialistic craze is fuelled by credit.
This type of an American society could develop because of the laissez-style of pro-business government where the big firms could essentially do as they please with minimal federal intervention. This sort of government, thus failed to prevent or buffer the losses of the farmers, for whom the agricultural depression started by the mid-1920’s.The Government goes so far as to accord Corporations the same rights as of individuals. Now it seems that a super-human is created because firms technically can live on till forever, can be in various places at the same time and worst of all will have no moral code which is characteristic of human beings! Therefore, companies could now exploit workers, competitors and their consumer and market share without having to deal with the consequences as there is a dispersion of responsibility throughout the company board!
Such a heavy dependence on so few firms that have huge production scales, I believe fed into such a Great Depression, among other factors as well such as speculation. The value of stocks of these big business were much higher than the actual worth of the businesses and this happened, because the firms weren’t being regulated and therefore could sugarcoat their image and allow people to believe they were worth more, as at that time they were not required to publish annual reports then.
As proven by Hoover’s decisive inactivity, firms do not have the best intentions for society, but rather for profit maximizing, thereby proving him wrong and plunging the economy into a continuous low as regardless of how beneficial mutually co-operating would be for not only the firms but the entire American economy as well.
Roosevelt strong-arming the various firms into standardizing and following federally regulated industrial policies as well as imposing National Minimum Wage and other labor laws helped some, but of course it wasn’t until WWII that lifted American out of the Depression.
This booming industry now was supplied with a different type of workers, women. Though women now could work and made more money than ever before. They were still discriminated against and only given positions that were lower than those of men and subsequently were making less money than men. In the army, for instance, it wasn’t only until 1943 that Congress forces the military to begin using female doctors and not just employ women as nurses. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) chose to ignore the gender equality aspect of the Equal Rights Act until women banded together to lobby it.
This third wave of discontentment being voiced is steeped in the 1950’s mentality that everything was perfect and peachy. That culture of conformity, where the Cold War mentality forced everyone to be similar, was theorized into the Ideology of Abundance and Adjustment. It was named so, because the idea of affluence came only if one submitted to Society’s views that one must work for a big firm, dress in the business uniform a suit. This idea too was because by this time most of the industries had only three main firms such as in the Automobile, Tobacco or Meat-Packing Industry. Therefore the employees of the firms that were competed out now had to work for one of these three major corporations. Companies these big, were presumed to be too big to fail, so a small company would have no chance to survive such a highly monopolized market.
Their effect on society itself it major as the movie Quiz Show illustrated. Televisions had become the new gadgets to own; at that time each company would sponsor and entire TV show and also be liable for all the content ran during that allotted time slot. Therefore they are literally in power and as we see in the movie, the removal of Herbert Stempel happens after a Geritol executive decides from the ratings that he’s not raking in the ratings anymore. This scandal affected individual families and people that were affiliated with the TV show; however Geritol itself is never dragged through the mud. Therefore Dan Enright’s attempts to catch a corporation in wrong doing and make it repent isn’t fulfilled, as it was too powerful for anything to happen to it. Therefore the wills and whims of big companies, regardless of how it affects people, would be acquiesced to without ever having to deal with the consequences. The fear from the Red and Lavender Scares enables this immense form of compliance from everyone.
The Cold War again was good for these large firms. This illustrates how something so damaging for the entire nature in terms of public image and internal turmoil benefits more for a larger firm. Therefore they would support the continuation of a long war, and the Vietnam War went on for far too long.
The internal turmoil of the Civil Rights too at one level was because of the unfairness of how African-American and women were treated at the workplace. The Counter-Culture aspect of the Youth movement was a direct response to this oppressive culture of conformity that their parents represented and therefore a rebellion against the presence of these large firms that were monopolizing their lives. Out went the uniform and desire to work in these large companies that deindividuated one to just another cog in this mass production. Out went the suits and clean shaven, ‘business-professional’ looks that we still adhere to nowadays. Though this was needed to shock people out of their complacency and stand up for their rights instead of following, revolts are never conducive for society. Differences that people are too riled to communicate over cannot be mitigated when tensions run so high. Worse though was that this Counter-Culture turned many youths to drugs and narcotics in an effort to defy the representation of the previous generation as much as possible.
Businesses are important to an economy and large firms do have benefits such as providing more people with jobs, but the failure of one company leads far worse repercussions as unemployment shoots up! As with our own recession now, we see how badly affected the American economy is with consistently trying to bail-out industries such as the automobile industry where Ford is the main large American company and the ripples of its troubles can be felt throughout USA. Therefore the growth of businesses should be encouraged as it reduced cost of production, increases the incentive for more research and development, is more consumer friendly and a more efficient firm is more employee friendly too. However, this has to be accompanied by cooperation and strict government regulation to curb any monopolizing tactics. As we’ve seen time and again, if the legislation has enough loopholes or is not enforced properly, the firms will stray and be more detrimental to society than beneficial. The nation that is here now is a rather different one from the one in 1865. However the values, I think, are still similar. The goal oriented individualism that created this country perseveres today, and will do so if the growth of these businesses are kept in check.