THE SECOND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION - Book Report/Review Example

THE SECOND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Smith October 22, The Changing Structure Of American Industry, Ch. 17 The quantity and quality of knowledge I get from reading the article is second to none. It starts by allowing me the chance to understand the American industrialization during the early 19th century. There was an increase in the number of people working in manufacturing industries was increasing rapidly between the year1810 and 1860. A great change is seen on the aspect that on 1810, only 75000 people worked on manufacturing industries but by the year 1860, 1.

3million people were working on manufacturing industries. Effect of world war one on the labor force supply which was an increase to 27% is well explained which grants me the challenge to try and establish why this happened. One of the interesting topics handled in the article is the change in market structure during the industrialization in America. A keen analysis by Fred Bateman and Thomas Weiss indicate the type of competition that existed during that time. Competition by the economist in small scale production during the pre-war period was eliminated by ensuring by the production of homogeneous goods thus the target market did not have much of a choice on the available goods (The Changing Structure Of American Industry 462).

Another important aspect I learn from the subtopic is the post-war market structures that came in mainly as a result of large firms that produced commodities in large quantities. The location of the manufacturing firms was highly affected by the presence of cheap and efficient systems of transporting the raw materials and finished products to the market. Several key questions are tackled in the article with an article with possible answers and explanations given to make me understand. The first is the contrast between pre-war and post-war industrialization that has driven many scholars to great depths of explaining it.

The possible answer is about the scale of production, location and the homogeneity of the goods produced.An important aspect in this article that I can relate to economics is the monopolistic market strategy. Large firms located in a certain area during that time came together and monopolized the market making sure they determined a lot of factors in the market. However, they were afraid of overpricing so as not to attract other firms to that market.