Answer:
The United States was transformed from an agricultural to industrial society in the years following the Civil War. Factors contributing to this remarkable change included the following: Availability of massive supplies of raw materials, such as timber, iron ore, oil and other resources.
This demand, particularly for steel, helped the US economy to boom. Second, the railroads created a huge national market. Before the expansion of railroads, it had been very hard to get goods from place to place on land. In these ways, the railroad expansion allowed the US economy to expand rapidly in the late 1800s.
During the Gilded Age America was making the major transformation over to industry with their economy growing over 400%. As we can see monopolies were not beneficial to the economy because the inflated prices, and hurt consumers by not having any other competition. Once they had a monopoly on the market, they would raise prices to regain their profit. The most famous trust was Standard Oil Company. John D. Rockefeller owned all the oil refineries, which were in Ohio, in the 1890s.
Industrialization marked a shift to powered, special-purpose machinery, factories and mass production. It was a time epitomised by the wide scale introduction of machinery, the transformation of cities and significant technological developments in a wide range of areas. Many modern mechanisms have their origins from this period.
For those in the industrial sector, organized labor unions fought for better wages, reasonable hours and safer working conditions. The labor movement led efforts to stop child labor, give health benefits and provide aid to workers who were injured or retired.
The two acts that the Federal Government of 1800 tried to enforce for regulating business were The Sherman Act and the Interstate Commerce Act. The Sherman Act was made to control irregular pricing of a product by a company. It simply tried to stop the monopoly nature of business. The interstate Commerce Act on the other hand tried to stop the railways from price discrimination. The railways often charged more for smaller products travelling for a shorter distance. This discrimination was controlled by this act.
