Industry Influence

This worksheet helps students in Grades 6, 7, and 8 examine the rise of big business during the Gilded Age through historical analysis, economic reasoning, matching activities, and short written responses. By connecting major companies, influential founders, and business practices such as vertical and horizontal integration, learners gain a clearer understanding of how corporations accumulated power and shaped competition, markets, and consumer choice.

Skills Reinforced

• Big Business & Monopolies (Grades 6-8) – Identify how large corporations gained and maintained economic power
• Economic Systems – Understand business strategies like vertical and horizontal integration
• Cause and Effect – Analyze how industrial practices affected competition and consumers
• Evidence-Based Writing – Support analysis with historical details in short responses

Instructional Benefits

• Teacher-Created Resource – Designed by educators to align with middle school social studies and ELA standards
• Matching + Analysis Format – Combines recall with higher-level interpretation
• Key Vocabulary Application – Reinforces essential economic and historical terms
• Flexible Use – Suitable for classwork, review, assessment, or homeschool instruction
• Supports Critical Thinking – Encourages evaluation of economic power and its consequences

This Industry Influence worksheet helps students move beyond names and dates to understand how industrial strategies shaped the Gilded Age economy. By analyzing monopolies, integration practices, and their broader effects, learners strengthen historical reasoning, economic literacy, and analytical writing skills. It’s a no-prep, effective resource for classroom and homeschool settings focused on understanding big business and its lasting impact on American society.

This worksheet is part of our Industrialization and the Gilded Age Worksheets collection.