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Table of Contents Introduction 3 Railroad and competition 3 The Railroad’s importance and success 4 The oil boom and mass-production 7 Technological advantages and disadvantages 8 Conclusion 9 Bibliography 10 Introduction The Industrial America is closely connected with the World’s Columbian Exposition that took place in Chicago. The remarkable exhibition opened on the 21st of October in 1892 and was accessible for a whole year, until October 1893. The function of Chicago’s exposition was to show the people the industrial development and progress of the past thirty years. Exhibits were for example, two massive steam engines, various inventions by Thomas A. Edison and the first long-distance-phone-calls to the East Coast made possible by American Bell Telephone. Of course, the industrial presentation was visited by many fairgoers but not everyone enjoyed it. People were either astonished and impressed by the latest inventions or immensely overwhelmed, unable to deal with the rate of the world’s industrial movement. Railroad and competition Concerning the so-called “birth of modern industrial America after the Civil War” (Boyer, p. 570) there are five closely interconnected leading features: “first, the exploitation of immense coal deposits as a source of cheap energy: second, the rapid spread of technological innovation and the factory system; third, the constant pressure on firms to compete tooth-and-nail by cutting costs and prices - as well as the impulse to eliminate rivals and create monopolies; fourth, the relentless drop in price levels […]; and finally, the failure of the money supply to keep pace with the productivity” (Boyer, p. 570) which led to high interest rates and restrictions in the availability of credit. Especially the railroad system symbolized the technical evolution and led to a fast growth of cities and expansion since coal was a cheap kind of energy. The innovative equipment and machinery improved the working conditions, increased the productivity and lowered its costs but also meant a rise of harsh competition. On the one hand, farmers and industrial workers had to deal with very low incomes compared to the amount of working hours but on the other hand, they profited from the cheap goods as consumers. Competition was not only a problem in the railroad business but also known in the industries of oil, salt and sugar, tobacco and meatpacking and lessened the amount of industries between 1870 and 1900. The Chicago meatpackers experienced a successful change and were able to enlarge their productivity in meatpacking when refrigerated railcars became available.
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