Sign New York Banking Agreement Free

Industry sign banking new york agreement free

14 different railroads can fit for freight and passenger traffic from New York to Chicago as simply is not enough business for all in 1869 Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt sets out to combine the best of the routes and to consolidate the weak lines into one strong and efficient system the New York Central to get control of the railroad routes between New York and Chicago Vanderbilt engages in a financial war with unscrupulous promoters Daniel drew Jay Gould and Jim Fisk who controlled the competing Erie Railroad system disk is known as the Barnum of Wall Street he is called first in the pockets of his country Vanderbilt attempts to purchase a majority control of the Erie Railroad for wild Vanderbilt agents in Wall Street are buying up millions of dollars worth of Erie stock this Gould and drew simply keep the presses busy printing up more and more fake Erie stock when the scheme is discovered the conspirators hide from the police and then flee in a ferry boat to the Jersey side of the Hudson River where the New York police cannot arrest them the fight for control the earring becomes a war which lasts for years speculators are ruined the railroad goes bankrupt never recovers Vanderburgh gives up the fight to discuss but already Cornelius Vanderbilt has seen that efficient operation of the railroads requires unification of lines offering similar rates and services the process of combination consolidation is soon taking place in other overlapping and inefficient rail system throughout the country domination can be an escape from destructive competition consolidation can be a means of growth but they can also be a ruthless method of strangling competition and creating a monopoly the process of combination takes one form in the oil industry another in the steel industry by 1875 Andrew Carnegie is entering the steel industry the rise of Andrew Carnegie is an authentic rags to riches success stone the son of the for Scotch Weaver at the age of 12 he comes to America his first job in a mill like this pays him a dollar and 20 cents a week young Carnegie is bright studious and determined to advance himself by the time he is 18 he has become secretary to the head of the Pennsylvania Railroad his salary has risen to $420 a year and already he is looking for investment opportunities he first organizes a company to make iron railroad bridges then Vince that steel is the metal of the future Carnegie builds his first steel mill in Pittsburgh within a year the single mill is turning out more steel than all the other steel mills in America put together Carnegie's career seems to be living proof that opportunity in America is boundless he is constantly urging others to follow his example if any of you have as much as 50 or $100 I do not know of any business into which you cannot plunge at once and be successful year after year the Carnegie steel Empire grows he adds railroad lines iron ore mines or boats the deliver or from a newly discovered Mesabi Range to his mills he controls vast supplies of coal and coke in steel the Carnegie combination is a giant able to manufacture everything Marah big iron to the finished steel products when he finally sells out to the banking firm of JP Morgan the former Boy Weaver asks and receives a price of almost half a billion dollars and then as vigorously as yet labor to make his fortune Carnegie now works to give it away Andrew Carnegie spends the last eighteen years of his life establishing free libraries and making other important contributions to philanthropy the process of consolidation and combination is at work in almost every important American industry but it is in the oil industry that combination takes on a dangerous new form oil has been discovered in western Pennsylvania by Colonel Drake in 1859 by 1870 men are becoming rich the oil business is a dizzy spiral boom towns spring up and disappear overnight each knew well that comes in tries to undersell all the others with inadequate storage and refining facilities the oil frequently just spills over onto the ground a 23 year old Cleveland produce merchant and who's the picture john d rockefeller decides that control of the oil industry lies in refining which is incompetently carried out and excessively wasteful Rockefeller finds this waste sinful he's been raised by god-fearing mother who instilled in him the idea that willful waste makes woeful one as a boy Rockefeller has been taught to save when he finds an egg a hand has hidden he is permitted to keep the money later is given his own chickens to raise by the time the boy is 10 he is saved $50 which he is able to learn a farmer at 7% interest he makes the discovery that capital makes money more easily than muscle ducks rockefeller sees his fortune in the oil business to control the market Rockefellers company's Standard Oil enters into an arrangement with other important refiners and signs a secret agreement with the railroads promising them large and regular oil shipments but in return the members of Rockefellers group receive a rebate a secret refund on all the oil they ship and in addition they also receive a rebate on all the oil their competitors ship moreover the railroads agreed to supply the Rockefeller group with secret information on all their competitor shipments where their competitors are shipping whom they are shipping and the total amount of each ship against secret information like this no one can compete ruthlessly and remorselessly Rockefeller drives his competitors to the wall within a year standard is able to buy up 21 of the 26 competing refineries in the Cleveland area in 1870 Rockefellers company controls only 10% of refined petroleum in the country by 1880 standard controls 92 the selling its oil in the four corners of the work no order is too small no place to distant to save money it builds its own barracks it becomes the most efficient business organization real world has ever known as the Rockefeller Empire grows it goes far beyond refining it begins to produce its own oil begins to acquire its own oil fields soon it begins to own its own railroads builds its own pipelines ships in a fleet of its own steamers soon Rockefeller is called the king of combinations and is becoming one of the richest men in the world to avoid laws against monopolies Standard absorbs some of its former competitors with a new legal device called a trust stockholders and merged companies exchange their holdings for shares of standard the stock is still owned by the stockholders but it is surrendered is entrusted the nine-man Rockefeller dominated Standard Oil Board of Trustees Rockefeller and his group control and run all the merged companies in one operation thus eliminating competition the oil trust is widely admired by other industries and is soon copied by a copper trust an iron trust a sugar trust at entrust and behind this multiplying of Trust's and combinations is the growing financial power of the great banking houses of Wall Street with some newspapers are beginning to call the money trust the formation of combinations and Trust requires tremendous finance and the inventor whose ideas help create new industries must also turn to a great pennant series in Menlo Park Thomas Alva Edison is methodically turning out inventions to order 1877 the talking machine 1878 the incandescent lamp 1893 the first motion picture machine the Kinetoscope one invention after the other patents than are ever granted to one man in all history 1093 patents but to make his incandescent light useful Edison was perfect not only the bulb he must also work out a dynamo to supply the electric current figure out a safe way to send the dangerous current over wires and finally he must set up a plant to manufacture the light bulbs at a reasonable price to supply a single American customer with electric light means creating a complete new industry and this takes tremendous finance more and more important inventors must turn to bankers and financiers the banking house of JPMorgan helps create General Electric the American telephone and telegraph company International Harvester Western Union the house of Morgan provides the financing for many of the railroads Morgan's banking house is the financial power behind the formation of many of the Trust's Morgan calls the tune for some of the most important industrial interests of the country his picture is having more power than kings when JPMorgan proudly says America is good enough for me William Jennings Bryan Riley replies whenever he doesn't like it he can give it back to us a proud imperious man JP Morgan is confident that he personally knows what is best for America he says if it is good business for the country to do it I do it and Morgan firmly believes that what is best for America is combination questioned by a congressional committee whether he prefers combination or free competition the banker replies I would rather have combination I do not object to competition either I like a little competition but if Morgan likes a little competition the Rockefellers prefer none at all john d rockefeller jr. says the American Beauty rose can be produced in all its Bunder only by sacrificing the early buds that grow around it never a man to waste even words john d rockefeller sums up the uncompromising attitude of most of the industrial giants it had to come the day of the combination is here to stay individualism is gone never to return public reaction to the trust until the industrial giants is confused on the one hand the trust fulfill American yearnings for bigness and boulders when a man like JP Morgan is pictured as being bigger and more powerful than Uncle Sam is he not to be admired to some the industrial giants are the new American heroes who reflect the Horatio Alger virtue men who've made good like luck and luck they seem to show that it is possible to go from being a poor boy - someone like rockefeller one of the richest men in the world but as the power of the industrial giants and the trust grows public resentment gathers farmers lining their livelihood threatened by the power of the railroads to send rates begin to protest begin to organize into granges the American working man vines he can no longer take his problems to an employer who knows him personally to the industrial giants [ __ ] in offices frequently thousands of miles from their plants labor is just another pawn in a game whose goal is the greatest profit Andrew Carnegie says those who are most successful in the acquisition of property are the very men who are able to handle it in the way most useful to society the industrial giants believe they alone have the right to set wages and determine outlets when working men join unions and strike against long hours and pickups the industrial giants shut down the plants or bring in strike breakers strikes against the railroads against the Pullman Company against Andrew Carnegie's own homestead steel campaign against mining companies become increasingly bloody and violent as unrest mounts as dissatisfaction increases the cry of monopoly is heard more and more frequently it is felt that the old free America where few were very rich and few very poor is turning into the land of the trusts as America enters the 20th century the industrial giants are riding high and there is a growing feeling that the common people are being crushed under the weight of the Trust's there is a desperate feeling that something must be done to restore a fairer system of checks and balances