Subscribe

7th grade · Social Studies · Unit 2 of 10

Industrial America

Big business, cities and workers

What your child practices

Industry, railroads and inventors after the Civil War, big business and monopolies, new immigrants and growing cities, child labor and unions, farmers' movements, and federal Indian policy on the Plains.

Minnesota K-12 Academic Standards benchmark: 7.4.22.1; 7.3.15.1 · the Industrial Revolution and the movement of people and goods

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. After the Civil War, railroads (with land grants), factories and inventions grew fast. Ford’s assembly line made cars faster and cheaper.
  2. Big businesses became monopolies; the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) tried to protect competition.
  3. Immigrants filled crowded tenements; workers formed unions, and farmers backed the Populist Party.

Example: What did the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 try to do? A monopoly controls a whole industry. The law tried to break up monopolies and protect competition. Answer: break up monopolies and protect competition

Industrial America in Minnesota

In the Minnesota K-12 Academic Standards, this is unit 2 of 10 in 7th grade Social Studies, after Reconstruction and before Factories & Reformers.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Minnesota Department of Education (MDE)

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    Farmers formed the Grange to…

    • build factories
    • end farming
    • mine gold
    • fight high railroad rates and help one another

  2. Question 2

    Tenements were…

    • crowded, unsafe apartment buildings
    • railroad cars
    • large farms
    • factories

  3. Question 3

    The Wright brothers made the first powered airplane flight in…

    • 1869
    • 1776
    • 1903
    • 1849

  4. Question 4

    Alexander Graham Bell is known for the…

    • steel plow
    • cotton gin
    • telegraph
    • telephone

  5. Question 5

    George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla helped spread…

    • the cotton gin
    • the steam engine
    • alternating current (AC) electricity
    • the telegraph

  6. Question 6

    The Homestead Act of 1862 offered settlers…

    • gold coins
    • free railroad tickets
    • 160 acres of land if they farmed it for five years
    • a house in the city

More 7th grade