How Much Changed by 1898
The three threads, measured
- Technological advances, large-scale production methods, and the opening of new markets encouraged the rise of industrial capitalism in the United States.
- The migrations that accompanied industrialisation transformed both urban and rural areas of the United States and caused dramatic social and cultural change.
- The Gilded Age produced new cultural and intellectual movements, public reform efforts, and political debates over economic and social policies.
Industrialisation brought the least change in...
'Extent' requires a judgement with a limit.
The economy changed most
- Production increased dramatically; firms consolidated into trusts and holding companies; wealth further concentrated.
- Real wages rose and living standards improved while the gap between rich and poor grew — the double fact of 6.7.
- Continuity: sharecropping and tenant farming remained the primary economic activity in the South.
Select all the economic changes this lesson names.
Sharecropping remained the South's primary activity.
Society changed almost as much
- A distinctive middle class, an expanded consumer culture, cities filled by internal and international migration.
- The West was built — railroads, mining, ranching — and native nations were confined to reservations with tribal sovereignty denied.
- Continuity: Plessy marked the end of most Reconstruction gains, and reformers continued to fight.
Economy, society, or politics?
Sort each change by 1898.
Living standards improved and the gap between rich and poor grew.
6.7's double fact, both halves true.
"Extent" requires a judgement with a limit, and the domains rank differently. Industrialisation was transformative in the economy and in cities, much less so in Southern agriculture — where sharecropping and tenant farming continued to be the primary economic activity — and in national politics, still arguing over Civil War loyalties.
Select both things the major parties still did in 1898.
The system had not yet absorbed the economic transformation.
Politics changed least
- The major parties still appealed to Civil War divisions and argued over tariffs and currency.
- A third party formed to demand regulation, and reformers said greed had corrupted all levels of government.
- So the political system had not yet absorbed the economic transformation, which is the argument unit 7 opens with.
A mismatch between economic change and political argument is not stability; it is ____.
And it has to go somewhere — which is unit 7.
'The extent to which' again
- The objective is the extent to which industrialisation brought change from 1865 to 1898.
- Extent requires a judgement with a limit: transformative in the economy and in cities, much less so in Southern agriculture and in national politics.
- Rank the three domains, name a continuity in each, and the answer is complete.
A country can change how nearly everything is made and moved in thirty years while the two things people vote about stay the same. That mismatch is not stability; it is pressure, and it has to go somewhere.
By 1898, industrial capitalism had transformed production (dramatic output, trusts and holding companies, further concentrated wealth) with 6.7's double fact — improved living standards and a growing gap; migration had remade cities and built the West while native nations were confined to reservations; and the political system still argued over tariffs and currency and appealed to Civil War divisions. The extent: greatest in economy and city, least in Southern agriculture and national politics.