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Handout C: Big Business Social Media Feed

Directions:

Using Handout A and conducting additional research as directed by your teacher, develop at least three social media characters to engage in an exchange of at least five posts each with responses. All characters must respond to each post. The postings and responses should be in character as if they were living in the Gilded Age.

Sample Characters

  • An industrialist such as Andrew Carnegie or John Rockefeller
  • A small business owner with a factory in a city
  • A reformer such as Ida Tarbell with a negative view of big business
  • A president such as Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, or Woodrow Wilson
  • An ordinary American such as a worker, farmer, or consumer

Sample Topics

  • The impact of factories, railroads, and big business on society and the economy
  • The mass production and mass marketing of goods and falling prices
  • Opportunity and the American Dream with the rise of big business
  • Wealth inequality and philanthropic projects by the great industrialists
  • Reformer criticism of big business practices
  • Government regulation of business, Supreme Court decisions, and free markets