Click on the standard number to jump to the details for that standard. From the era of Reconstruction to the end of the 19th century, the United States underwent an economic transformation that involved the maturing of the industrial economy, the rapid expansion of big business, the development of large-scale agriculture, and the rise of national labor unions and pronounced industrial conflict.
Students can begin to see a resemblance to possibilities and problems that our society faces today.
The late 19th century marked a spectacular outburst of technological innovation, which fueled headlong economic growth and delivered material benefits to many Americans. Yet, the advances in productive and extractive enterprises that technology permitted also had ecological effects that Americans were just beginning to understand and confront. In the last third of the 19th century, the rise of the American corporation and the advent of big business brought about a concentration of the nation's productive capacities in many fewer hands. This period also witnessed unprecedented immigration and urbanization, both of which were indispensable to industrial expansion. As newcomers created a new American mosaic, the old Protestant European Americans' sway over the diverse people of this nation began to loosen.