Short Answer What are the major characteristics that define the Gilded Age as a historical era? Explain your answer using specific examples.

Rapid economic growth generated vast wealth during the Gilded Age New products and technologies improved middle-class quality of life Industrial workers and farmers did not share in the new prosperity, working long hours in dangerous conditions for low pay. Gilded Age politicians were largely corrupt and ineffective Most Americans during the Gilded Age wanted political and social reforms, but the disagreed on what to do Laissez-faire Westward movement and the Homestead Act Cattle industry boom Completion of transcontinental railroad Labor unions Indian policies Entrepreneurship - growth of big business Political corruption and political machines Urbanization - migration to cities Immigration to US - nativism Factory systems

Short Answer Describe how immigration, urbanization, and industrialization are all related, and how they each impacted American cities during the Gilded Age.

Increased Immigration (Chinese and new immigrants, ethnic neighborhoods, tenement houses, unskilled workers, nativist fear of losing jobs, settlement houses, Americanization movement)  Urbanization (political machines, availability of unskilled jobs, need for infrastructure improvements create jobs and more housing)  Industrialization (factory production, working conditions, lack of job security) * important to know the effects of EACH concept (above in parenthesis), but also how the concepts create a cause/effect chain and are interdependent