16 - The Laws of Industrial Organization, 1870–1920

Summary

The period from 1870 to 1920 was a time of profound challenge for the American legal system. During these years, an indecisively connected country of small producers became a centralized industrial nation, and a legal system devoted to regulating the affairs of independent farmers and businessmen and their few employees had to adapt to the increasingly complex relations entailed in the finance and operation of large corporate enterprises. The dimensions of the project are indicated by the growth in railroading, the defining industry of the age. At the start of the Civil War, the United States contained 30,626 miles of railroad track; in 1916, the year when track mileage reached its historical apogee, there were 254,251 miles. Roughly 60 percent of this increase had come before the turn of the century. In 1870, the railroads employed 160,000 workers, by 1900 this figure was 1,040,000, and by 1920 it would rise to 2,236,000. Growth was comparable in construction, mining, and manufacturing. With more employees came more workers’ collective actions. By the outbreak of World War I, the number of yearly strikes nationally had increased by a multiple of five; in the interim, major labor-business confrontations were directly linked to several crucial political events – passage of the Interstate Commerce Act, for instance, and the presidential election of 1896.