How to Teach the Gilded Age

"For students that struggled, Flint gently put them back on track. I could do that myself, but not at 9pm when students are reviewing for a quiz. Flint's AI runs personalized review sessions for me, and I can follow up with a kid if they're stuck."

William Heyler, History teacher at 'Iolani

Why this matters

A student who reads that Standard Oil undersold its rivals can decide that Rockefeller ran a better business. The company's size makes that answer easy to believe, and it hides the railroad rebates that made the low prices possible. On a worksheet the answer reads as finished, and the teacher has to wait for quiz day to find out.

How Rockefeller built the Standard Oil monopoly

John D. Rockefeller and his partners founded Standard Oil in Cleveland in 1870, and in the first three months of 1872 the company bought out, shut down or bankrupted 22 of its 26 Cleveland rivals (Library of Congress). Taking over competitors in the same business is called horizontal integration, and Standard Oil's added size let it negotiate railroad rebates that smaller refiners couldn't get. By 1882, when Rockefeller and eight other trustees combined Standard Oil and its affiliated companies into the Standard Oil Trust, Standard Oil controlled the refining of 90 to 95 percent of the oil produced in the United States (Britannica). In 1911 the Supreme Court ruled that Standard Oil had broken the Sherman Antitrust Act and split it into 34 companies (Library of Congress).

In the activity, each student runs a small Cleveland refinery against Standard Oil for four years in a game Sparky builds, and when their buyers disappear, Sparky sends them to the game's railroad records to find the rebate instead of explaining it.

Darius's chat: a sneaker reseller in 1872 Cleveland

Darius resells sneakers on StockX and eBay, so he knows how a price and a margin work. He thinks the bigger company wins because it runs a better business.

The whole class gets the same activity: the same greeting, the same game rules and the same railroad records. Each student's chat is their own. Sparky ties the squeeze to each student's interest, and its next message depends on what the student just wrote.

Sparky uses the student's interestSparky asks a question instead of explainingA right answer gets a harder question

Darius

Interest: Resells sneakers on StockX and eBayStarting point: Knows how pricing works, thinks the bigger company wins by running a better business

Sparky

Welcome to Cleveland, 1872. You own a small oil refinery, and so does a man named John D. Rockefeller. You are going to try to stay in business against his company, Standard Oil. First, tell me one thing you do, buy or sell outside school.

Darius

I resell sneakers on the side, mostly on StockX and eBay

Sparky

Sneaker reselling is a real business with real margins to protect. Here's your refinery game. The prices and costs are made-up round numbers, not real 1872 figures. Set your price, press Next Year four times, then tell me what happened to your buyers and your profit, and why you think it happened.

Darius

i had all 100 buyers the first 2 years at 1.90. then in 1874 standard oil dropped to 1.40 and i went to 1.50 and got 0 buyers. in 1875 i matched 1.30 and got 50 but lost 15 dollars. i think rockefeller just ran a better business, hes bigger so he can afford to go cheaper

Sparky

Bigger companies often do have advantages. Before we settle on that, open the Railroad records panel in your game. It unlocked after 1874. What did each refinery actually pay to ship a barrel?

Darius

oh wait. we both pay 60 cents but standard oil gets 40 cents back. so their shipping is really 20 cents. the railroad is giving them a secret discount so they can go under my break even

Sparky

Exactly right. That's the rebate, and it's why you couldn't match the 1874 price without losing money. Here's the sneaker version: a shipping company secretly refunds $4 of every $10 label to a major reseller moving thousands of pairs a month, while you pay the full $10. Could you beat them just by working harder or finding better deals on shoes?

Darius

no. even if i found shoes cheaper they could just drop their price because theyre paying 6 dollars to ship and im paying 10. working harder doesnt fix that

Sparky

That's the trap rival refiners were stuck in for years. They knew they were being squeezed, but Ida Tarbell's articles in McClure's Magazine, published 1902 to 1904, are what made the public and the government pay attention. What could a magazine writer do that rival refiners could not?

Darius

the refiners would just look like sore losers complaining. tarbell could dig up the actual records and print them where tons of people read it, so regular people and the government get mad instead of just the competitors

Sparky

That's it: she had credibility and reach that a competitor never could. The Sherman Antitrust Act, signed in 1890, had already made monopolizing trade illegal before Tarbell published a word. In 1911, the Supreme Court used that law to break Standard Oil into dozens of separate companies.

Found the railroad rebate in his own game, then explained what Ida Tarbell could do that rival refiners couldn't

Darius blamed his lost buyers on Rockefeller being bigger and better run. Sparky didn't explain the rebate. It sent him to the railroad records in his own game, and Darius found the 40 cents himself. Once he had it, Sparky put the same squeeze in his sneaker business, then asked a harder question about Ida Tarbell.

Darius is an example student, and Sparky's replies are shortened.

What Flint did for Darius

Sparky built a refinery game where Darius set his own price for four years and watched his buyers on a chart.
When Darius said Rockefeller ran a better business, Sparky sent him to the railroad records in his game instead of explaining the rebate.
Once Darius found the rebate, Sparky described the same squeeze in sneaker reselling.
After Darius explained why working harder wouldn't fix it, Sparky asked a harder question: what could Ida Tarbell do that rival refiners couldn't?

A teacher can't do this by hand for 30 students, and Sparky does it in every student's chat.

Who still thinks Standard Oil just ran a better business

When students finish, Sparky reads every chat and sums up the class on the activity page. The teacher sees who is stuck right now, which explanation came up most, and what to practice next.

Flint's activity page for an activity called Run a Refinery Against Standard Oil. Needs attention shows a live alert that one student has said three times that Standard Oil won because Rockefeller worked harder, and hasn't opened the Railroad records yet. Activity analytics lists what the class does well, an area of improvement where 11 students first said Standard Oil won by running a better business, and a follow-up with a button to create a follow-up activity. The Sessions table shows two submitted students and one still in progress. — Example activity page
After a U.S. history class finishes the refinery game
The school and students are made up for this page. In this example, 11 students first said Standard Oil won by running a better business, so the follow-up practices telling a price cut from a secret deal apart from one that comes from a cheaper way of making the product.

Set up the activity for free

The refinery activity is in Flint's public library, with Sparky's guidelines, greeting and greeting suggestions already written. Open it, select Try this activity to copy it into a free Flint account, and move it to a class. In the activity settings, select Try session myself to test it as a student before you assign it.

For more social studies activities, see Flint for social studies.

Start the activity for free