American history and turning points

The history of the United States or the history of the United States, although not as long as other
countries, has greatly influenced the formation of the modern world.

Before the 15th century, the American continent was inhabited by Indian tribes with a long history. They
were originally yellow people from Asia who crossed the Bering Strait and Alaska, and then flooded
North America during the last ice age, about 25,000 years ago.

Americas Discovered

In 1492, under the protection of Spain, explorer Christopher Colombo successfully discovered the
Americas or the New World. From there, European countries began to invade the American continent.

First was Spain, then Catholics who were religiously persecuted in England immigrated to North
America. In the 16th century, France also set foot here and occupied most of the colonies in eastern
North America, on some Caribbean islands and South America.

By 1763, the Seven Years' War broke out in Europe, and Britain and France also faced each other in the
North American colony. France lost the war and had to concede Canada to Britain.

However, in order to compensate for the losses of the war, Britain was forced to impose high taxes on
the colonies. In 1775, the synagogues began to rebel against British rule.

On July 4, 1776, the colonies declared their independence from Great Britain in a document written by
Thomas Jefferson, and the United States of America was born.

The United States of America is born

In 1783, General George Washington led the revolutionary faction to liberate America and defeat Britain
thanks to financial and military support from France. The United States became an independent country.
In 1789, Army Commander-in-Chief George Washington was selected as the first President.

From 1800, the neighbors of the United States experienced great upheaval when Spain ceded Louisiana
to France. France aspires to return and establish a French empire here. But not long after, France was
caught up in the Napoleonic war with European countries.

In 1803, US President Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana territory from France, doubling the size of
the United States.

In 1812, the United States went to war for the second and last time with Great Britain in a war of British
alliances with Native Americans against settlers in the western United States. The war was so tough that,
at one point, the British raided and burned Washington, but in the end the Americans also won.
The Anglo-American Convention of 1818 divided the US-Canada border along the 49th parallel, and later
when the territory of the United States extended to the West, the 49th parallel was also used as the
boundary dividing the border. two countries and Oregon.

Victory in the war with the British, the borders of West and North America were clearly demarcated, the
remaining lands of the native Indians were permanently annexed and the purchase of vast liliana fueled
a wave of migration. Explore new American lands. This also led to conflicts with Spain, a former ally of
the United States.

After negotiating efforts to resolve territorial disputes, in 1819, the United States and Spain signed the
Treaty of Adam 1819. Spain was struggling to agree to cede Florida and Oregon to the United States, In
return the United States had to pay $5 million and end the war.

In the south, Mexico declared its independence from Spain. Both of these countries were countries of
European emigrants who gained independence from Britain and Spain.

After creating their own countries, both rose strongly, leading to a war of survival and the winner will
become the force that controls the whole of North America in particular and the entire Americas in
general.

Texas became the place of that historical demarcation, after many Americans immigrated to the Texas
region, overthrowing the Mexican army to establish the Republic of Texas.

In 1845, the United States merged with the Republic of Texas at their request, which sparked war
between the United States and Mexico.

The US army defeated and captured the capital of Mexico. In the end, Mexico had to sign a peace treaty
and recognize California as part of the United States.

American Civil War

After territorial expansion, technology-based industrialization, means of transport, canals, and railways
developed strongly. However, there is still an opposition between the south that favors slavery and the
north that opposes slavery.

In the election of 1860, the Republican Party backed by the industrial bourgeoisie with candidate
Abraham Lincoln was elected President.

The victory of the Republican Party with the policy of abolition of slavery made slave owners and
Southern states disgruntled. They declared their separation from the Union and established the
Confederacy of the United States of America.

Conflict between the Republican Party and the Southern states over the abolition of slavery led to the
American Civil War that took place from 1861 to 1865.

After 4 years of bloody war, the Confederacy under the leadership of President Lincoln and General
Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederates under the command of General Robert E. Lee. The Union
was preserved, the South became exhausted.
Between the two great wars – the Civil War and World War I – the United States grew and matured. In
less than 50 years, the United States has transformed from an agricultural republic into an industrial
one. The border gradually disappears. Large factories and steel mills, transcontinental railroads, bustling
cities, and large agricultural areas appeared all over the country. With such economic growth and
prosperity, there have been a series of problems. On a national scale, a few firms have dominated entire
industries by either combining with other firms or being self-exclusive. Working conditions are often
very bad. Cities grow so fast that they can't provide enough housing for their residents or can't manage
a rapidly growing population.

Technology and change

One writer wrote: “The Civil War inflicted a great wound in American history; This war created a shock
that caused great changes that had begun 20 or 30 years earlier. The need to serve the war strongly
stimulated production, promoted an economic process based on the exploitation of iron ore, steam
engines, electric power and scientific development and inventions. In the years prior to 1860 36,000
patents were granted; In the next 30 years 440,000 patents were granted and in the first 25 years of the
twentieth century, the number of patents issued reached approximately one million.

Between the two great wars – the Civil War and World War I – the United States grew and matured. In
less than 50 years, the United States has transformed from an agricultural republic into an industrial
one. The border gradually disappears. Large factories and steel mills, transcontinental railroads, bustling
cities, and large agricultural areas appeared all over the country. With such economic growth and
prosperity, there have been a series of problems. On a national scale, a few firms have dominated entire
industries by either combining with other firms or being self-exclusive. Working conditions are often
very bad. Cities grew so quickly that they could not provide enough housing for their inhabitants or
could not manage their growing populations. As early as 1844, Samuel F. B. Morse perfected the
technology of the telegraph; Soon the remote parts of America were connected by electric poles and
wires. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone instrument; In just half a century, 16
million telephones made America's socioeconomic life faster. The growth of the business was
accelerated by the invention of the typewriter in 1867, the calculator in 1888, and the cash register in
1897. The lino typewriter was invented in 1886 and the rotary printing press, the printing press. Folding
paper has enabled us to print 240,000 eight-page newspapers in just one hour. Thomas Edison's lamp
has truly illuminated millions of homes. The phonograph was perfected by Edison, and Edison combined
with George Eastman to develop the film industry together. Inventions of this kind and other scientific
applications have pushed labor productivity to new heights in almost every field.

At the same time, America's basic industry - the iron and steel industry - was also progressive and
protected by high tariffs. Metallurgy moved west as geologists discovered new ore deposits, especially
in the vast Mesabi Mountains at the headwaters of Lake Superior that became one of the largest in the
world. Because of the low cost and ease of mining, especially the absence of impurities, the ore at
Mesabi is produced into excellent quality steel at a tenth of the cost of the conventional cost.
Carnegie and the Age of Steel

Andrew Carnegie was the man who made most of the advances in steel production. Carnegie came to
America from Ireland as a 12-year-old boy and went from being a bobbin picker at a cotton mill to a
telegraph and Pennsylvania State Railroad employee. Before the age of 30 he made wise and foresight
investments and from 1865 onward he focused solely on investing in the iron ore industry. In just a few
years, he founded or had dividends in companies that manufactured iron bridges, railroad tracks, and
locomotives. Ten years later, he built the largest steel mill in the United States on the banks of the
Monongahela River in Pennsylvania. He controlled not only the new steel mills but also the coal and coal
mines, iron ore in the Lake Superior region, a fleet of steamboats on the Great Lakes, a port city on Lake
Erie, and the system of rail. His business allied with dozens of other businesses that owned the railroads
and waterways. Never before has one seen such a rapidly growing industry in the United States.

Although Carnegie controlled the industry for a long time, he never had a complete monopoly on
natural resources, transportation, and industrial plants in the steelmaking industry. During the 1890s,
nascent companies challenged his preeminent position. He was persuaded to merge his companies into
a new company and this new company held most of the iron and steel production in the country.

Corporations and Cities

The United States Steel Corporation, the result of the merger in 1901, represents a 30-year long double
process: the consolidation of independent industrial companies into unions or centralized companies.
Beginning with the outbreak of the Civil War, this trend intensified after the 1870s when businessmen
began to worry that overproduction would lead to lower prices and lower profits. They found that if
they controlled both production and the market, they could merge competing companies into one.
Corporations or leaflets are formed to achieve the above goal.

Corporations, with their ample capital reserves and allowing long-term and highly independent
companies, are attractive to investors in terms of both estimated returns and limited liability in the case
of corporations. bankrupt. The leaflets are, in fact, a combination of corporations whose shareholders
each assign shares to the managing directors (“Leaflets as a method of combining rapid corporations”.
quickly set the stage for the establishment of a parent company, but the term did not exist). Flyers
create large-scale integration, centralize control and administration, and share patents. The leaflet's
large capital made it possible to expand and compete with foreign competitors and negotiate with labor
unions that were now beginning to function effectively. Flyers can also claim favorable conditions from
the railway industry and influence politics.
The Standard Petroleum Company, founded by John D. Rockeffeller with a capital contribution, was one
of the earliest and most powerful corporations, and a series of other corporations were quickly
established in the cottonseed, lead and oil industries. , sugar, tobacco fiber and rubber. Soon the
energetic entrepreneurs began to shape their own industries. Four major canned meat companies, the
largest of which are Philip Armor and Gustavus Swift, have created beef leaflets. Cyrus McCormick has
established an edge in the harvester business. An investigation in 1904 revealed that more than 5,000
independent companies had previously assembled into about 300 industrial leaflets.

The trend of consolidation spreads to other sectors, especially in the transportation and communication
sectors. Western Union, dominant in the telegraph industry, merged with the Bell Telephone System
and later with the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. During the 1860s, Cornelius Vanderbilt
merged 13 separate railroad companies into one company with 800 kilometers of railroad connecting
New York with Buffalo. Over the next decade, he controlled the railroads to Chicago in Illinois and
Detroit in Michigan and founded the New York Central Railroad. Soon the major American railroads
were organized into major lines and systems managed by a small number of people.

In this new industrial order, the city is the central hub for all of America's most dynamic economic
resources: the rich accumulations of capital, businesses, financial institutions, railway stations,
machines, armies of manual and mental labor. Villages attract people from the countryside and across
the ocean to and become towns, and towns suddenly become cities. In 1830, one in 15 Americans lived
in communities of 8,000 or more residents; by 1860 the rate had risen to one in six and by 1890 it was
three in ten. In 1860 there was no city with a population of one million; but 30 years later the
population of New York is 1.5 million; Chicago, Illinois and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania have populations
of more than one million. During these three decades, the populations of Philadelphia and Baltimore,
Maryland, doubled; the population of Kansas City, Missouri and Detroit, Michigan quadrupled;
Cleveland, Ohio, increased six times and Chicago increased tenfold.

Minneapolis, Minnesota, Omaha, Nebraska and the like – still small villages when the Civil War broke
out – have increased in population by 50% or moreRailways, laws and tariffs

Railways were especially important when expanding the nation's territory, and railway construction was
often criticized. Railroads are increasingly offering lower freight rates to bulk shippers through partial
reductions in freight rates, and so bulk shippers suffer less. Rates are also often not calculated according
to distance; Competition has resulted in lower freight rates between cities with many railroads
operating. Fares between locations with only one railway operator are often high. Therefore, shipping
from Chicago to New York for a distance of 1,280 km has a lower cost than sending goods from Chicago
to places a few hundred kilometers from Chicago. In addition, to avoid competition, railway companies
sometimes split (share) transportation according to pre-arranged plans and the revenue from this
activity will be put into a common fund. to share later.
Public anger over this prompted the state government to make regulations, but the issue was national.
Shippers demanded action from Congress. In 1887, President Grover Cleveland signed the Interstate
Commerce Act prohibiting surcharges, ridesharing, reduced rates, and rate segregation. The act created
the Federal Trade Commission (ICC) to monitor compliance with the law, but the commission was given
little enforcement power. In the first decades since its inception, it was obvious that all of the ICC's
efforts to regulate and cut rates went unheard of in court.

President Cleveland also opposed protectionist tariffs on foreign goods that were often seen as
permanent national policy under the Republican presidents who dominated the politics of the period.
Cleveland, a conservative Democrat, views tariff protection as an illegal subsidy for big business that
gives the leaflets the power to pressure prices to the detriment of ordinary Americans. Demonstrating
Southern interests, the Democratic Party reverted to its pre-Civil War policy of opposing protectionism
and advocating taxing only revenue.

Cleveland narrowly won the election of 1884 and was unsuccessful in tax reform during his first term. He
made the issue the main theme of his re-election campaign but Republican candidate Benjamin
Harrison, a protectionist advocate, won a close race. In 1890, the Harrison Administration fulfilled its
campaign promise when it passed the McKinley Tariff Act, a tax law that increased already very high
import duties. Criticized for driving retail prices up too high, the McKinley tax law caused widespread
discontent and led to the Republican defeat in the 1890 election, paving the way for a return to office.
Cleveland's president in the 1892 presidential election.

During this period, public aversion to leaflets increased. Huge corporations were attacked by reformers
such as Henry George and Edward Bellamy in the 1880s. The Sherman Antitrust Act, passed in 1890,
forbade all combinations to prevent interstate commerce and introduced a number of coercive
measures with severe sanctions. hidden behind the general provisions, this law has almost no effect
immediately after being passed. But a decade later President Theodore Roosevelt applied the law
forcefully.

Revolution in Agriculture

Despite great achievements in industry, America's agriculture is still the main labor force. The
agricultural revolution – which coincided with the industrial revolution after the Civil War – shifted
manual labor to machine labor and from subsistence farming to commodity farming. From 1860 to
1910, the number of farms in the United States tripled, from two million to six million, while cultivated
area more than doubled, from 160 million hectares to 352 million hectares.
From 1860 to 1890, the production of basic commodities such as wheat, corn, and cotton far exceeded
previous figures for the United States. During the same period, the population of the United States
doubled, with the fastest growth rates in cities. But American farmers grew enough grain and cotton,
raised enough cows and pigs, and sheared enough sheep to make wool not only for American workers,
but also created an unprecedented amount of surplus.

This brilliant achievement is due to several factors. One of those factors is the expansion to the west.
Another factor is the technological revolution. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, with hand-
cutting sickles, farmers expected to cut only one-fifth of a hectare of wheat a day. Thirty years later,
with frame picking, farmers can cut four-fifths of a hectare a day. In 1840, Cyrus McCormich performed
a miracle when he cut two to two and a half hectares a day with the harvester he had spent nearly 10
years researching and building. He headed west to the new prairie towns of Chicago. There he
established a factory and by 1860 he had sold 250,000 harvesters.

Other agricultural machinery also achieved rapid success: automatic tying machines, threshers,
harvesters or machines that combine all functions. Planters, cutters, millers, peelers appeared and at
the same time came with cream separators, fertilizer machines, potato planters, lawn dryers, poultry
incubators and a host of other inventions. another.

No less important than machines in the agricultural revolution was the science of agriculture. In 1862,
the Morill College Land Grant Act allocated public land to individual states to establish agricultural and
industrial universities. These schools are both educational institutions and agricultural scientific research
centers. The National Assembly then allocates funds for the establishment of agricultural experimental
facilities across the country and allocates the budget directly to the Department of Agriculture to fund
research purposes. At the beginning of the twentieth century, scientists across the United States
participated in many agricultural projects.

One of these scientists, Mark Carleton, moved from the Ministry of Agriculture to Russia. In Russia, he
discovered and exported back home a drought-resistant and rust-resistant winter wheat that now
accounts for more than half of America's wheat production. Another scientist, Marion Dorset, controlled
swine cholera and another, George Mohler, helped fight foot-and-mouth disease. From North Africa, a
researcher brought back Kaffir maize; from Turkestan, another importer of golden alfalfa. Luther
Burback in California produces a lot of new fruits and vegetables; in Wisconsin, Stephen Babcock
invented a test to determine the butterfat content of milk; At Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, African-
American scientist George Washington Carver found hundreds of uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, and
peas.

To varying degrees, the development of agricultural science and technology has affected farmers all
over the world, increasing productivity, producing fewer people, creating a wave of migration to the
cities. . Furthermore, railroads and steamships began to merge regional markets into a single world
market with prices constantly updated across the Atlantic via cable and wire. Good news for urban
consumers, falling farm prices threatened the lives of many American farmers and triggered a wave of
farmer discontent.

Revolution in Agriculture

Despite great achievements in industry, America's agriculture is still the main labor force. The
agricultural revolution – which coincided with the industrial revolution after the Civil War – shifted
manual labor to machine labor and from subsistence farming to commodity farming. From 1860 to
1910, the number of farms in the United States tripled, from two million to six million, while cultivated
area more than doubled, from 160 million hectares to 352 million hectares.

From 1860 to 1890, the production of basic commodities such as wheat, corn, and cotton far exceeded
previous figures for the United States. During the same period, the population of the United States
doubled, with the fastest growth rates in cities. But American farmers grew enough grain and cotton,
raised enough cows and pigs, and sheared enough sheep to make wool not only for American workers,
but also created an unprecedented amount of surplus.

This brilliant achievement is due to several factors. One of those factors is the expansion to the west.
Another factor is the technological revolution. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, with hand-
cutting sickles, farmers expected to cut only one-fifth of a hectare of wheat a day. Thirty years later,
with frame picking, farmers can cut four-fifths of a hectare a day. In 1840, Cyrus McCormich performed
a miracle when he cut two to two and a half hectares a day with the harvester he had spent nearly 10
years researching and building. He headed west to the new prairie towns of Chicago. There he
established a factory and by 1860 he had sold 250,000 harvesters.

Other agricultural machinery also achieved rapid success: automatic tying machines, threshers,
harvesters or machines that combine all functions. Planters, cutters, millers, peelers appeared and at
the same time came with cream separators, fertilizer machines, potato planters, lawn dryers, poultry
incubators and a host of other inventions. another.

No less important than machines in the agricultural revolution was the science of agriculture. In 1862,
the Morill College Land Grant Act allocated public land to individual states to establish agricultural and
industrial universities. These schools are both educational institutions and agricultural scientific research
centers. The National Assembly then allocates funds for the establishment of agricultural experimental
facilities across the country and allocates the budget directly to the Department of Agriculture to fund
research purposes. At the beginning of the twentieth century, scientists across the United States
participated in many agricultural projects.
One of these scientists, Mark Carleton, moved from the Ministry of Agriculture to Russia. In Russia, he
discovered and exported back home a drought-resistant and rust-resistant winter wheat that now
accounts for more than half of America's wheat production. Another scientist, Marion Dorset, controlled
swine cholera and another, George Mohler, helped fight foot-and-mouth disease. From North Africa, a
researcher brought back Kaffir maize; from Turkestan, another importer of golden alfalfa. Luther
Burback in California produces a lot of new fruits and vegetables; in Wisconsin, Stephen Babcock
invented a test to determine the butterfat content of milk; At Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, African-
American scientist George Washington Carver found hundreds of uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, and
peas.

To varying degrees, the development of agricultural science and technology has affected farmers all
over the world, increasing productivity, producing fewer people, creating a wave of migration to the
cities. . Furthermore, railroads and steamships began to merge regional markets into a single world
market with prices constantly updated across the Atlantic via cable and wire. Good news for urban
consumers, falling farm prices threatened the lives of many American farmers and triggered a wave of
farmer discontent.

J.P. Morgan and financial capitalism

America's industry flourished not only because of the great industrialists. A large industry requires a
large amount of capital; The outstanding economic development needs foreign investors. John Pierpont
(J.P) Morgan is America's greatest financier who fulfilled both of these conditions.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Morgan was the largest investment banker in the United
States. This bank acts as a broker between US securities companies and wealthy domestic and foreign
investors. Since foreign investors need to be assured that their investments are always represented by a
stable currency, Morgan has been very interested in tying the dollar to its gold value. While America
does not yet have a central bank, his bank has, in fact, performed the duties of a central bank.

From the 1880s to the early twentieth century, Morgan and his firm not only managed the securities
companies that underwritten many important corporate mergers, but it also initiated quite a few of
them. The most spectacular was the merger of American Steel Corporation from Carnegie Steel with
many other companies. The value of shares and bonds that the group sold to investors reached an
unprecedented level in history of $1.4 billion.

Morgan directs and reaps huge profits from mergers. Acting as the lead banker of railway projects, he
succeeded in preventing competition among the companies. His organizing efforts brought stability to
American industry by ending the price wars and bringing losses to farmers and small producers, who
viewed him as a villain. enemy. In 1901, when he founded the Northern Securities Company to manage
important railroad works, President Theodore Roosevelt passed the Sherman Antitrust Act to prevent
this merger.

In the informal role of a central bank, Morgan's bank pioneered the value of the dollar during the
economic crisis of the mid-1890s by offering large quantities of major bonds. government to raise funds
for the gold reserves of the State Treasury. At the same time, his company is also a short-term
guarantee of the nation's gold reserves. In 1907, he led the New York financial community in averting
the threat of mass bankruptcy of companies. In the process, his own company acquired a large
independent steel company, which was later merged with the American Steel Company, and President
Roosevelt personally approved the merger in order to avoid a confrontation. bad crisis.

At that time, Morgan's power was so great that most Americans suddenly turned suspicious and disliked
him. With a bit of exaggeration, many reformers have portrayed him as the director of the financial flyer
that controlled all of America. At the time of his death in 1913, the United States was in the process of
finalizing the creation of a central bank, the Federal Reserve, to carry out the tasks he had previously
performed informally.