Welcome back to The Professional Student! In my previous post, I discussed how America’s economy was built off slave labor, the development of the steam engine, the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the American Civil War, and more innovations that changed and reshaped the American landscape.
Moving into part 2 of the book, there is a deeper dive into the progression of the Industrial Revolution. I briefly mentioned the telegraph, revolutionizing long-distance communication using undersea cables and radio circuits. Imagine how this affected the stock market and trading stocks in general, as well as other industries, like the expansion of the railroads, newspapers, and how rapidly they could report stories and other businesses, thanks to Samuel Morse. Morse invented the telegraph and Morse code. Morse code is a series of beeps, pauses, or dots and dashes, representing the alphabet and numbers 0 through 9.
Morse code is still used today and can be lifesaving in emergencies. My uncle Wayne progressively went blind and deaf as a child. This was back in the 40s and 50s, and times were different. Many people ended up in asylums or got lobotomized who were disabled. He was able to learn to speak and learn Morse code before he went fully blind and deaf. Fast forward to the late 90s. He got a laptop with inserts for his hands where he could push on the side of the inserts to make dots and dashes. As he got older, he lost his fine motor skills, which was necessary. The inserts were plugged into the laptop, and the headphone jack was plugged into his hearing aid. He could hear the dots and dashes, and the computer relayed whatever was typed in the program back to him in Morse code. When he responded, the computer translated his dots and dashes into words. This seems simple now, but it was a massive advancement at the time. Before that, we wrote letters into his hand, and he could speak, but you wouldn’t understand what he was saying if you didn’t know him.
Previously, I mentioned Vanderbilt, who we know for the railroad consolidation and ownership in America, but let’s talk about another man, Leland Stanford. Yes, the very one in which Stanford University was founded. In proper American pomp, Leland completed the first transcontinental railroad with the tap of a mallet on a golden ceremonial spike. He was part of the “Big Four” who built the railroad: Huntington, Hopkins, and Crocker. This massive project helped drive economic growth by integrating regional markets into a national market. The cost of transporting goods was reduced, and new opportunities for business opened.
Carnegie’s grip and monopoly on the steel industry led him to become one of the wealthiest men of his time, with a peak wealth of around $350 million. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $350 to $375 billion, making him wealthier than Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Besides his wealth, the monopoly he had also sparked the government to step in and develop antitrust laws and regulations to curb monopolistic practices and ensure fair trade. The labor behind these operations was also being worked to death. Literally, and now I present the unionization of American laborers.
With all the industrialization taking place, cities grew, and urbanization emerged. People no longer farmed their land. They flocked to the cities for jobs to live the “American Dream.” Food could be produced at an accelerated rate, harvested, and shipped into the city where folks could purchase it. The farming methods being used led to problems down the road. Instead of diverse farmlands with many varieties, one crop was planted in a large area. Different crops take out different nutrients in the soil that must be replenished, or the land becomes barren. Cover crops can be planted in the off-season and tilled into the soil to decompose or enriched with fertilizers and manure. That’s animal or chicken poop if you didn’t know. Another alternative is crop rotation.
Have you heard of The Dust Bowl during The Great Depression? It was caused by draughts and unsustainable farming practices, like growing the same crop year after year without soil enrichment or rotation. We know better now. Well, we knew better before because the practice of crop rotation is older than Jesus, but why would a farmer grow a less profitable crop if he could make more money growing the same thing repeatedly? Capitalism.
References
Srinivasan, B. (2018). Americana: A 400-year history of American capitalism. Penguin Press.
Innovative Leadership and Entrepreneurship: A Graduate Student's Perspective 