Brief History of the Conflict

The decades that followed the devastating Civil War are often seen as America's "second industrial revolution." It was marked by several key several developments within the chemical, electrical, petroleum, and steel industries. Besides the obvious inventions of Edison like the light bulb, the most essential development during these times was the progress made in transportation. The miracle of flying was first introduced by the Wright brothers. Henry Ford commercialized cars that were finally practical and cheap. The Bessemer process allowed steel to be produced more efficiently, which allowed cheaper and quicker steam transport. Mass production of consumer goods, the perfection of canning, the invention of refrigerated cars, and other preservation techniques expanded businesses. Large business, in turn, needed more laborers. This period, like the first industrial revolution, was marked by a great migration of rural workers to urban areas in search of labor. Desperation led people to take whichever jobs they could get. Competition for those jobs between arriving immigrants and Americans intensified as the labor force exceeded the number of jobs available. Competition and desperation are never a good mixture; people took jobs that required back-breaking and monotonous work at very low wages. Corporations did little to help as both desperation and competition directly benefited them. And this is where the problem began.