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Meaning (argument, claims, evidence, language and tone)
Context
Historical significance (relative to the DBQ question)
Technological and Industrial Revolution, Rise of Big Business

In the post–Civil War United States,
corporations grew significantly in number, size,
and influence. Analyze the impact of big
business on the economy and politics and the
responses of Americans to these changes.
Confine your answer to the period 1870 to
1900.

Union Pacific RR -> built west from Omaha, NE
 Given 20 square miles of land for each mile of track
laid
 Given generous loans from government
 “Irish Paddies”

Central Pacific RR -> Sacramento to Sierra
Nevada
 Given same subsidies as Union Pacific
 Used predominantly Chinese labor

Great Northern:
 Connected Minnesota to Seattle

Cornelius Vanderbilt:
 Made millions in RR industry,
popularized the steel rail

Two improvements in RR:
 Steel rail  safer, stronger, last
longer
 Standard gauge of track 
interchangeable parts,
popularized by Eli Whitney

Other advancements:
 Westinghouse air brake
 Pullman Palace Cars

RR’s “created an enormous domestic market
for American raw materials and
manufactured goods”

Other impacts of RR:
 Stimulated immigration
 Establishment of time zones

“Stock watering”: Railroad stock promoters grossly
inflated value of stock.
 Stock = share of a company, offered by a company as a
way of earning capital and purchased by investors

RR tycoons became very powerful
 Bribed judges and legislatures, employed lobbyists, etc.

“Pools”
 An agreement to divide the business in a given area and
share the profits (form of combination)

Charged more for short hauls than long ones
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Meaning (argument, claims, evidence, language and tone)
Context
Historical significance (relative to the DBQ question)
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Businesses merge to “corner” a market, eliminate competition and
inflate prices

Corporations are entities that are legally independent from their
owners
 Can sue, be sued, own and sell property, etc.
 Run by powerful capitalists (Carnegie, Rockefeller, Gould, Vanderbilt,
etc.)

Trusts, similar to ”pools,” are businesses that combine and do
business only with one another

Monopoly = when a business has complete control over an
industry (e.g. Rockefeller controlled 90% of oil refineries in the
U.S.)

Millionaires (entrepreneurs/capitalists) look
for areas to invest their capital

Patents were issued at high rates

Key inventions:
 Phone (Alexander G. Bell)  women work the
“switchboard”
 Electric light, phonograph, mimeograph,
Dictaphone, moving pictures.

Andrew Carnegie (steel) introduces vertical
integration:
 Controlling every aspect of production from
beginning to end
 improve efficiency by making supplies more
reliable, controlling quality of the product at all
stages of production, and eliminate middlemen’s
fees
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Horizontal integration: (Rockefeller, oil)
 Owning most or all businesses in an industry
 Illegal
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Meaning (argument, claims, evidence, language and tone)
Context
Historical significance (relative to the DBQ question)

“Survival of the fittest”
 Darwin's ideas about species were
later applied to businesses and
humans

Reverend Russell Conwell of
Philadelphia, “Acres of
Diamonds”: “There is not a poor
person in the United States who
was not made poor by his own
short- comings.”

Carnegie believed the wealthy, as
caretakers, should be morally
responsible

Philanthropy—the belief in giving
back to society in the form of
charity
 Carnegie: “A man who dies rich
dies in disgrace.”

Were the entrepreneurs of the industrial age
captains of industry or robber barons?