MOVING WEST

In the years following the end of the Civil War in 1865, Americans settled the western half of the United States. Miners searching for gold and silver went to the Rocky Mountain region. Farmers, including many German and Scandinavian immigrants, settled in Minnesota and the Dakotas. Enormous herds of cattle grazed on the plains of Texas and other western states, managed by hired horsemen (cowboys) who became the most celebrated and romanticized figures in American culture. Most of these horsemen were former Southern soldiers or former slaves, both of whom headed west after the defeat of the South. The cowboy was America's hero: He worked long hours on the open range for low wages. He was not nearly as violent as movies later represented him to be.

Settlers and the United States Army fought frequent battles with Indians, upon whose lands the stream of white settlers was encroaching, but here, too, the bloodshed has been exaggerated. A total of perhaps 7,000 whites and 5,000 Indians were killed in the course of the 19th century. Many more Indians died of hunger and disease caused by the westward movement of settlers. White men forced the Indians from their land and nearly destroyed all of the buffalo, the main source of food and hides for the tribes of the Great Plains.

INDUSTRIAL GROWTH

During this period, the United States was becoming the world's leading industrial power, and great fortunes were made by shrewd businessmen. The first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869.

The petroleum industry prospered, dominated by John D. Rockefeller's giant Standard Oil Company. Andrew Carnnegie, who came to America as a poor Scottish immigrant, built a vast empire of steel mills and iron mines. Textile mills multiplied in the South, and meatpacking plants sprang up in and around Chicago. An electrical industry was created by a series of inventions - the telephone, the phonograph, the light bulb, moving pictures, the alternating-current motor and transformer. In Chicago architect Louis Sullivan used steelframe construction to develop a peculiarly American contribution to the cities of the world - the skyscraper.

But unrestrained economic growth created many serious problems. Some businesses grew too big and too powerful. The United States Steel Corporation, formed in 1901, was the largest corporation in the world, producing 60 percent of the nation's steel. To limit competition, railroads agreed to mergers and standardized shipping rates. "Trusts" - huge combinations of corporations - tried to establish monopoly control over some industries, especially oil.

These giant enterprises could produce goods efficiently and sell them cheaply, but they could also set prices and destroy smaller competitors. Farmers in particular complained that railroads charged high rates for hauling produce. Most Americans, then as now, admired business success and believed in free enterprise; but they also believed that the power of monopolistic corporations had to be limited to protect the rights of the individual.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 796