1. Discuss the reasons for rapid industrial expansion and the growth of huge corporations between 1860 and 1900. What were some of the benefits the American people reaped from these developments? What were some of the social and economic costs or problems produced by industrialization and the growth of big business?
2. Discuss the impact on labor of industrial development in the post-Civil War period. In your answer include the effects on skilled, unskilled, southern, immigrant, and women workers.
3. Discuss the contemporary intellectual response to late-nineteenth-century industrialism and the social problems that accompanied it. Be sure to include in your answer the ideas of the conservative Social Darwinists, such as William G. Sumner, and their opponents, including Lester F. Ward, Henry George, and Edward Bellamy.
4. Discuss the industrialization of the South in the post-Civil War period. Why did the South lag behind the North? How much had the South's industry grown by 1900? In what ways was southern industrial development different from that in the North? Why?
5. Between 1881 and 1905, there were almost thirty-seven thousand strikes, and workers made numerous attempts to unionize. Yet by 1900 less than 5 percent of the labor force belonged to any union, and workers lost most strikes. What obstacles stood in the way of unionization and successful strikes?