HIST 2620 1nd Edition Lecture 4 Outline of Last Lecture I Race relations in the South II Primary Characteristics of American Industrialization III Economic Growth IV Rise of the Corporation Outline of Current Lecture I Technological Advances improving Corporation Success II Scientific Management on the Factory Floor III Robber Barons No More IV Urbanization Current Lecture I Technological Advances improving Corporation Success As the years went by the trusts that were set up and those involved they found that the government was trying to bust up these trusts How do you continue to protect the bottom line when the method you ve chosen is the target of legal action Holding Companies Held a controlling stock interest in a number of related enterprises These enterprises were called subsidiaries The majority shareholders devoted themselves to directing operations by using the power they had to influence management They are defined by their ownership of securities generally in form of common stock NOT for investment purposes in other companies o After the passage of the interstate congress act the government is coming down more and more on the side of busting up the trusts The holding company was created 1887 as a sort of replacement for the trust Not exact replacement Holding companies id not directly engage in the production and distribution of These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute goods and services These companies that are involved are called the Operating Company Laws at this time are directed towards operating companies NOT holding companies Hence the reason why you can have decisions based on technicalities At this point until the 1930s they were generally free from laws that enabled operating companies due to the law not recognizing their ownership power amongst the companies By 1900 there were 185 holding companies The 185 companies held 1 3 of all the capital invested in the manufacturing in the U S o Technological advances of the time altered people s lives American life from 1870 compared to American life in 1910 many more labor saving devices also the telephone available LIFE HAD CHANGED The most important new technologies of the time The harnessing of electrical power Thomas Edison was the main inventor of the invention of the light bulb which is a big change from the cold oil lamp that allowed for brighter and more clear light Edison was also interested in distributing electric power He was the institutor of the Direct Current power offering across the U S One problem with Direct Current was that it had a limit on how many miles it could be sent from the generator That meant there had to be a step up generator every 2 miles One man who disagreed on Edison s D C grid George Westinghouse He believed D C was too expensive so he decided the future of electrical power was in Alternating Current D C could only go in one current but A C varied and could be carried from generators longer distances at higher voltages All you had to do was include step down transformer for the voltage to be used in houses This A C is still used today Motors only ran on D C at this point so Edison thought he d won till Nicola Tesla invented something new Tesla invents an A C motor and Westinghouse gets the rights to build and sell these motors and supplies A C Gasoline powered internal combustion engine Henry Ford did not invent the automobile Daimler Benz was the company that first created the engine Ford is going to begin as a self taught engineer building very primitive automobiles and he decided to get into the manufacturing As a result the manufacture of cars was at a slow pace The Model T was introduced in 1908 1909 had a four cylinder engine and had 20 horsepower It took several hours to complete one automobile with hand manufacturing so production grew in 1913 He has come up with mass manufacturing getting the idea from watching meatpacking plants Ford had an epiphany the same principle can be applied to automobiles The first Assembly line plant was in Highland Park Michigan 1908 the model T cost 950 11 000 1914 first full year of the assembly line production 240 000 295 it only took 93 minutes to build a model T 1 10th the time it took before o Corporations using these new Assembly line process are growing wildly due to the ability to produce goods faster This led to a greater demand for products and thus more expansion in new business The formation of the United States Steel Corporation 1901 two people were very involved in this formation Andrew Carnegie and J P Morgan are example of 2 different types of capitalists Industrial capitalists and financial capitalists who didn t know anything about production but did know financial techniques that enabled them to manage and run corporations Carnegie is not involved in the running of U S steel after it is formed b c he sold it to J P Morgan to retire Morgan possessed the capital and the financial skills to negotiate and mergers that are popular in this time The famous example is the formation of U S Steel through this merger II Scientific Management on the Factory Floor Frederick Winslow Taylor o An Engineer at the Miovale steel corporation He had been trained to use hard science to the solution of practical problems As he served as Chief engineer of the steel company he began to think of how to solve the problem How to find people and train them in ways that were most efficient in doing the jobs they ve been given He developed the practice of Scientific Management 1911 principles of scientific management were published Tools of this practice were time and motion studies How to type instructions to get all typists to use the same method at the same speed Taylor would come to your company and set up a grid system that would use a motion picture to find the person who types the fastest and the most efficiently The engineer will take the film and analyze what time of motions over time this very efficient typist made Then they d write up instructions and that would be the standard for the company to use for all typists to ensure efficiency O o One man that adopted these practices was Henry Ford These methods would be called Taylorism He would use these to figure out who was better at what job and to best suit each person to a job using time motion studies The problem is if you are doing repetitive actions humans are not robots so
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