#1: What was the impact of the transcontinental...

#1: What was the impact of the transcontinental rail system on the American economy and society in the late nineteenth century?

• The Iron Colt Becomes an Iron Horse

• Spanning the Continent with Rails

• Binding the Country with Railroad Ties

• Railroad Consolidation and Mechanization

• Revolution by Railways

• Wrongdoing in Railroading

• Government Bridles the Iron Horse *

#2: How did the huge industrial trusts develop in industries and what was their effect on the economy? Was the growth of monopolistic corporations simply the natural end result of economic competition, or did it result from corrupt practices designed to eliminate competition?

• Miracles of Mechanization

• The Trust Titan Emerges: vertical | horizontal

• The Supremacy of Steel

• Carnegie and Rockefeller *

#3: Social Darwinists argued that the wealth and luxury enjoyed by millionaires was justifiable as a “good bargain for society” and that natural law should prevent the wealthy classes from aiding the working classes and poor. Why were such views so popular during the Gilded Age? What criticisms of such views might be offered?

• Gospel of Wealth

• The Social Gospel

• Social Darwinism *

#4: What early efforts were made to control the new corporate industrial giants, and how effective were these efforts?

• Government Tackles the Trust Evil

– Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890

– Supreme Court Weighs in on Regulation

– Clayton Anti-Trust Act of 1914 *

#5: Compare the impact of the new industrialization on the North and the South. Why was the New South more a propagandistic slogan than a reality? *

#6: What was the effect of the new industrial revolution on American society, women, and laborers. How did various labor organizations attempt to respond to the new conditions?

• Impact of the New Industrial Revolution in America

– Jefferson’s agricultural dream | Living by the factory whistle | Women | A Nation of Wage Earners

• In Unions There Is Strength

• Labor Limps Along

• Unhorsing the Knights of Labor

• The AF of L to the Fore *