GA - Key Concepts Lesson
Key Concepts
Before you begin...
Notes are given here as well as in the Readings Document from Boundless that is available to download below. This key concepts lesson is very important as it covers the main areas of the Advanced Placement frameworks and the Georgia Performance Standards. Many of the test questions will relate to items found here.
Download the key concepts questions that are found below and answer these as you read and view the information. The answers are found in the text on this and the following pages and the Readings Document. After you have done this you will use these answers to take the assignment check quiz for this module. Again, it is very important that you answer the questions carefully before taking the assignment check.
Railroads
The federal government granted vast areas of western land to railroad owners so they would lay train track connecting the eastern and western states. To complete this heavy work, the owners relied mainly on Chinese labor. These Asian immigrants accepted lower pay than other laborers demanded. The work was dangerous. Many Chinese died in the explosive blasts they ignited to clear the path across the railroad companies' land. Many others died under rockslides and heavy snowfalls before the first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869. The Central Pacific built track from west to east and the Union Pacific from east to west.
The railroad companies contributed to the development of the West by selling low-cost parcels of their western land for farming. Settlers traveled west on the trains to farm on the fertile soil. Western farmers used the trains to ship their grain east and western cattle ranchers shipped their steers to eastern butchers. Both farmers and ranchers sold their goods to people they could not easily reach without railroads. The railroads earned money by transporting the settlers west and the goods east.
Map of the Transcontinental Railroad
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Steel
The growth of American railroads helped expand the industries that supplied the railroad companies' need for steel rails laid on wood ties, iron locomotives burning huge quantities of coal, wooden freight cars, and passenger cars with fabric-covered seats and glass windows. The railroads were the biggest customers for the steel industry because thousands of miles of steel track were laid. In turn, the railroads had a great impact on the steel industry. To supply their biggest customers, steel producers developed cheap, efficient methods for the mass production of steel rails. These low-cost methods enabled more industries to afford the steel companies' products.
The rapid rise of the steel and railroad industries between the end of the Civil War and the early 1900s spurred the growth of other big businesses, especially in the oil, financial, and manufacturing sectors of the economy. These big businesses acquired enormous financial wealth. They often used this wealth to dominate and control many aspects of American cultural and political life, and by the beginning of the 20th century, as a consequence of these practices big business became the target of government reform movements at the state and national levels.
Oil
Oil companies grew swiftly in this period, most notably the Standard Oil Company founded by John D. Rockefeller. Standard Oil was the most famous big business of the era. Rockefeller also gained control of most other oil companies and created what is called a trust. By means of a trust, Rockefeller came to own more than 90% of America's oil industry. Standard Oil thus became a monopoly - a single company that controlled virtually all the U.S. oil production and distribution.
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