AP US History Guided Reading The Rise of Big Business and Corporate America

History Period 6-7 (WXT1,2,3)InstructionsUsing your textbook as a source read the following sections and answer the guided reading questions. This is an individual assignment and should be written on your own sheet of paper.

The Rise of Big Business Page 546 -556 (top)1. See Figure 17.1 Explain the basic economic feature of the Gilded Age illustrated on the chart. Why was it good for the middle and upper classes but bad for the working classes?

2. What was steel baron Andrew Carnegie’s idea known as the Gospel of Wealth?

3. Explain what the text called the management revolution.

4. What resources were quite literally fueling America’s industrial grow?

5. What system was invented by Gustavus Swift to streamline meat production?

6. Explain concept known as vertical integration.

7. John D. Rockefeller was America’s first billionaire. What resource first made him rich?

8. How did Rockefeller vertically integrate his oil industry?

9. Explain the concept of horizontal integration. What was a trust?

10. Who created the first billion-dollar corporation and what was it called?

11. Some have argued that powerful tycoons were bad (robber barons) or possibly even good (captains of industry). What arguments can be made for both positions?

12. In what ways did the expansion of big business create a national consumer culture that still exists to this day? What department stores were cited as the originators of this consumer culture?

13. What role did advertising play in our consumer culture?

14. After reading the section The Corporate Workplace starting on page 549 answer the following questions:

a. How did the rise of big business also help to expand the middle class and how did they differ from the “working class?”

b. How did technology open the way for more women moving into the workplace?

15. Define the following concepts: sub-contracting, deskilling, and mass production, and scientific management.

16. After reading the section Health Hazards and Pollution explain what public health and environmental concerns existed because of rapid industrialization.

17. Why was child labor so common during the Gilded Age?