It replaced horses as the means to power streetcars.
Electricity soon replaced steam as the source of power for factories. Edison also established the concept of industrial research, and he founded a research laboratory staffed by engineers and technicians in New Jersey.Įdison’s technological achievements were used by other inventors, as evidenced by the development of long-distance electricity transmission, which enabled Edison’s electric light to illuminate buildings, streets, and neighborhoods across the United States. He invented the electric lightbulb, the phonograph, motion pictures, a system for distributing electrical power, and many other technologies powered by electricity. The most famous inventor of the period is Thomas Edison. The effects of technological advances made after Reconstruction forever changed how people lived. The railroads earned money by transporting the settlers west and the goods east. Both farmers and ranchers sold their goods to people they could not easily reach without railroads. Western farmers used the trains to ship their grain east, and western cattle ranchers shipped their steers to eastern butchers. Settlers traveled west on the trains to farm on the fertile soil. The railroad companies contributed to the development of the West by selling low-cost parcels of their western land for farming. Many others died under rock slides and heavy snowfalls before the first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869. Many Chinese died in the explosive blasts they ignited to clear the path across the railroad companies’ land.
These Asian immigrants accepted lower pay than other laborers demanded. To complete this heavy work, the owners relied mainly on Chinese labor. The federal government granted vast areas of western land to railroad owners so they would lay train track connecting the eastern and western states. They often used this wealth to dominate and control many aspects of American cultural and political life, and as a consequence of these practices, by the beginning of the 20th century big business became the target of government reform movements at the state and national levels. These big businesses acquired enormous financial wealth. The rapid rise of the steel and railroad industries between the end of the Civil War and the early 1900s spurred the growth of other big businesses, especially in the oil, financial, and manufacturing sectors of the economy. These low-cost methods enabled more industries to afford the steel companies’ products. To supply their biggest customers, steel producers developed cheap, efficient methods for the mass production of steel rails. In turn, the railroads had a great impact on the steel industry. The railroads were the biggest customers for the steel industry because thousands of miles of steel track were laid. The growth of American railroads helped expand the industries that supplied the railroad companies’ need for steel rails laid on wood ties, iron locomotives burning huge quantities of coal, wooden freight cars, and passenger cars with fabric-covered seats and glass windows.