Big Business and Labor Quiz

        In the late 1800s rich companies would treat their employees with very little respect, giving them very low wages , long working hours and dangerous working conditions. Social Darwinism justified their maltreatment. Social Darwinism was an idea that came from Darwin's theory of evolution, that competition between individuals and businesses helps the society to change and grow. That the rich could take advantage of the poor because they were strong and the weak deserved to suffer at their expense. The government refused to get involved in company affairs such as employee treatment partially because of an ideology called Laissez Faire a belief that the government should have as little to do with businesses Because the government believed that the monopolists were helping the economy grow.

Expansion of Industry

What were the three major factors that contributed to the immense technological boom that took place in the United States after the Civil War? Explain how two of these factors helped to bring about this technological boom.

    America's great technological advancements in the late 19th century are due to four main things; the discovery of new uses for iron and steel,  the discovery of oil in places like Texas, and the settlement of the west/Great Plains.

    Steel contributed to the vast majority of new inventions in the 1800's and early 1900's. The type writer, the telephone and the automobile are just a few of the things the contained and relied on steel. 

    The country's expansion west was also a motivation to create new technology because people now had to communicate much farther distances.