U.S. History Elective

9th Grade

 

 

Big Business in the Gilded Age

Were the entrepreneurs of the late 19th century necessary to our industrial development or did they contribute to the gap between the haves and have-nots?

 

By

SUSAN KURNIT

DeWitt Clinton High School

skurnit@hotmail.com

 

       INTRODUCTION: Let the time machine take you back to the latter half of the 19th century.  The North has won the Civil War and America was rapidly changing.  We were moving from a farming nation to a manufacturing nation.  It was like a chain reaction.  One invention after another transformed America from hand power to machine power.  This transformation was known as the Industrial Revolution.  Machines not only increased manufacturing output, but they increased agricultural output as well, making it possible for less farmers to produce more food.  The government was offering cheap land to farm in the western frontier.  However that didn’t stop the booming industrial revolution.  Manpower for the machines came by boat from Europe.  Immigration increased from 2.3 million in the 1860’s to 8.8 million in the 1900’s.  The Republican Party controlled the presidency from 1861 to 1885.  Their policies were clearly in favor of promoting the Industrial Revolution by raising tariffs to protect our manufactured goods and by supporting a transcontinental railroad, and river and harbor improvements, all of which would help manufacturing by making it easier to transport finished goods to other parts of the country and other parts of the world.

          As industry grew, a need arose for increased capital to keep building mills, factories and railroads.  This gave birth to new forms of businesses.  Very often these new business organizations wanted to eliminate competition and dominate a particular niche of the economy.  Monopolies, conglomerates, trusts, and holding companies were various ways of organizing businesses in their attempts to control a particular industry.  Usually at the helm of these giants were pioneers in their fields. They took chances by investing large sums of money in these new business ventures in the hopes of making enormous profits.  These men were known as entrepreneurs.  Very often their enormous wealth came at the expense of others.  This period was known as the “Gilded Age”, a term coined by Mark Twain to describe a period when society looked rich and prosperous but if you went beneath the surface, many problems existed.  The amount of millionaires in the country increased greatly during this period, but so did the gap between the rich and the poor.  The rich lived better than ever while urban workers suffered from unsanitary and crowded living conditions as well as dangerous workplaces.  While these entrepreneurs accumulated great personal fortunes they were also philanthropists.  They donated huge sums of money to charities.  Were they “Captains of Industry” as some refer to them or “Robber Barons” as others call them?  Is the United States better off because of their contributions, or would the country have been greater without them?

 

          TASK: The assignment is the following.  Each group is to pick an entrepreneur from the list below.  The group will then prepare a power point presentation on that person highlighting his contributions to society, both negative and positive.  The group will then decide if their person was a “Robber Baron” or a “Captain of Industry.”  Each person is responsible for one slide, so if there are six people in the group the presentation must have 6 slides on the person plus one bibliography slide.

Some of the people you can do are:  Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry Ford, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Edward Harriman, George Pullman, Charles Pillsbury, and Phillip Armour.  Your project is due Thursday, May 15, 2003.  Each group will make a slide presentation using Ms. Kurnit’s laptop and the department’s projector.  We will have a few library lessons as well as group time in class. 

 

                                     

 

 

 

 

 

 

PROCESS:

Use the following guidelines to complete your product. 

 

1.     Define and describe the problem (social conditions, players, public policy)

2.     Gather evidence for this problem

3.     Identify causes for this problem

4.     Describe and evaluate the existing policy for this problem

5.     Develop solutions/policies for the problems for this existing policy

6.  Select the best policy for this problem

 

 

 

 

 

The following are websites you might find helpful for your presentation.

RESOURCES:

          1.http://econ161.berkeley.edu/Econ_Articles/carnegie/delong_moscow_paper2           .html

          2. http://www.raken.com/american_wealth/Gilded_age_index4.asp

          3. http://www.gliah.uh.edu/index.cfm

          4. http://bss.sfsu.edu/cherny/gapesites.htm

 

Some search engines are www.google.com, www.dogpatch.com, www.altavista.com

When using the search engines, you can type in the name of the person you are researching, as well as get general information by searching topics like “industrial revolution”, “gilded age”, “robber barons”.  You may also use appropriate books for information.  Cartoons, pictures and visuals will make the presentations more interesting.

 

You will be graded according to the following rubric:

 

X

 

4

3

2

0

10

Completes the Task with Accurate Historical Data

Completes All Aspects of the Task Using Correct Historical Data

Attempts to Address the Task With Correct Information, but Lacks Details.

Confuses information, does not address most aspects of the task, inaccurate.

 

Does not address the task!

 

4

Power Point Presentation

Each member of the group presents, and there is at least 1 slide per person. Each slide is factually important for presentation.

 

Each member presents and you have at least .75 slides per member.

Each member presents and you have .5 slide per member.

All members do not present and/or you have less than .5slide per member.

3

Creativity

Museum quality!

Show potential!

Not too much !

None!

 

 

3

Professionalism

Well thought out and smooth

 

You need to prepare better before a presentation.

Your group is not taking this seriously.

No comment!

3

Grammar

1 – 2 errors.

3 – 5 Errors.

5-7 Errors.

What language is this?

 

2

Spelling

1 – 2 Errors

3 – 5 Errors

5 – 7 Errors.

Ditto!

 

 

On completion of this webquest the students will have met the following interdisciplinary standards:

                English Language Arts Performance Standards

 

E1c:  Read and comprehend informational  materials.

E2a:  Produce a report of  information.

E3b:  Participate in group meetings.

E3c:  Prepare and deliver an individual presentation

 

Social Studies

Standard 2:   World History

Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of major ideas, eras, themes, developments, and turning points in world history and examine the broad sweep of history from a variety of perspectives.

Standard 3:   Geography

Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the geography of the interdependent world in which we live—local, national, and global—including the distribution of people, places, and environments over the Earth’s surface.

Standard 4:   Economics

Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of how the United States and other societies develop economic systems and associated institutions to allocate scarce resources, how major decision-making units function in the United States.

 

CONCLUSION:  Your conclusion will be to judge your person on his contributions to society.  Was he a “Captain of Industry” or was he a “Robber Baron”?  It is up to the group to make the final decision based on the evidence collected.  Good luck and have fun with it.