The Gilded Age

pg 8-9

Andrew Carnegie

Business tycoon who controlled most of the steel industry. Carnegie was also known as the “Captain of the industry” and a “robber baron.”

“The Gospel of Wealth” was Carnegie’s famous essay about the role of industrialists.

John Rockefeller

Business tycoon who owned Standard Oil and controlled 90% of the oil industry in the late 1800s.

He was able to control the industry by making Standard Oil a trust.

Monopoly

One company controls the supply of a product or a service

Trusts

Small companies join together to form one large company, usually as a monopoly

Entrepreneur

A risk taker who establishes new businesses

Capitalism

Economic system where business is privately owned

Free enterprise

Businesses operate in competition and free from state control

social darwinism

success and failure in business were governed by natural law

Philanthropist

someone who gives away large sums of money to build libraries, universities, hospitals, etc.

Bessemer Process

method for converting iron into steel and revolutionized industrialization (bridges, skyscrapers, railroad)

Industrialization

The rise of a manufacturing economy and decline of an agricultural economy due to abundance of natural resources, electricity and new inventions

Interstate Commerce Act

ensure railroads set "reasonable and just" rate and the 1st time gov't stepped in to regulate business

Sherman Antitrust Act

Outlawed business monopolies

Labor Unions

• Organizations that protected the interests of the worker.

• Labor unions dealt with the dangerous working conditions and long working hours that workers were faced with.

• They helped end child labor practices.

• Famous labor unions include the Knights of Labor and American Federation of Labor (AFL).

• Labor unions helped organize strikes to protest the injustices of the workplace.

Urbanization

The large growth of cities from rural areas. With urbanization came a large range of urban problems including sanitation, transportation, and crowded living conditions.

Jane Addams

Founder of Chicago's Hull House, which offered shelter, counseling and education. Addams campaigned for feminists and child labor reform.

Settlement Houses

community centers that helped immigrants address the problems of squalid living conditions, disease, illiteracy, and unemployment.

Political machines

Corrupt organized groups that controlled political parties in the cities. A political boss leads the machine and attempts to grab more votes for his party.

Most immigrants’ form of entry into the US?

Ellis Island

“New Immigrants”

The increase of Southern and Eastern immigrants occurred after 1890, rise in social tension or nativism (favoring native born Americans over immigrants)

How many Chinese immigrants arrived to the U.S. before the est. of the Chinese Exclusion Act?

300,000

1st time the U.S. restricted immigration?

The Chinese Exclusion Act

Tenements

Apartments built in city slums to house large numbers of people. Many immigrants were forced to live in poorly built tenements in and overcrowded and unhealthy neighborhoods.

Child Labor was a major problem during the ____ Age.

Guilded

Americanization

forcing immigrants and Indians to assimilate into US culture