The correct answer is number 2) building monopolies.
A business practice employed by the titans of the industry in the late 1800s was building monopolies.
The titans of the industry or the biggest companies that dominated the market in those years built monopolies and trusts that made them even stronger and did not allow other companies to enter the market. Those were the years known as the Gilded Age, a term coined by a novel of Mark Twain called "The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today." That was the period when American companies grew very fast. Industry owners became very rich and some fell in corruptive practices. The workers did not receive so much for their work. The owners were richer but the workers still worked in poor working conditions and received low wages.
