Unit 2 Getting Down to Business How did the rise of big businesses help grow and shape America?

Essential Vocabulary

Access to make contact with or gain access to; be able to reach or approach

Aftermath something that results or follows from an event

Mechanization The shift to using machines, instead of only humans, to make things or grow crops

Rural Areas in the countryside; farming areas

Urban City areas

Describe how life on the farm and in the cities changed after the Civil War

Mechanization 0 Decreased the need for workers on farms which allowed farms to produce more food than before. 0 Same happened in factories. This allowed them to make enough things to sell all over the country The mechanical reaper did the work of 6 men and allowed farms to grow larger than they could have without mechanization.

Industrial Development Factories were usually built in cities, new jobs were created, which needed workers. Cities grew because certain industries were there. 0 Chicago was a center of the meat packing industry. 0 Pittsburgh was a center of the steel industry. 0 Detroit became the big city for the automobile industry. 0 Many cities in the New England area had textile (cloth making) factories.

Access to Consumer Goods 0 Industrialization gave consumers (shoppers) access to more and better products 0 A new way to shop: the Sears mail order catalog The Sears company you know today was started in 1893 as a mail order business. The company printed catalogs that customers could get by mail, then flip through the pages to see the thousands of items the company sold. The catalog included everything from sewing machines to toys, tools, books, furniture, clothing, and more! The customer filled out an order form, and sent it together with the payment by mail to Sears. The company warehouse in Chicago sent the items directly to the customer by mail. This was great for people in small towns and farm areas, where the local stores often had higher prices and not much selection. The local stores, of course, were not happy about the mail order catalogs, because people were often ordering products by mail rather than shopping locally.