APUSH Chapter 17

Gilded Age

Gilded Age

Term applied to America in the late 1800s that refers to the shallow display and worship of wealth characteristic of the period.

Panic of 1873

Major economic downturn, launched when the country’s leading financier, Jay Cooke, went bankrupt during which thousands lost their jobs and the country took years to recover

Cornelious Vanderbilt

Created steamboat empire, first in NY Harbor, then around the world. Was very profitable. After civil war switched to railroads. He didn’t build them, but bought them.

John D. Rockefeller

Discovered a way to make money from oil. He refined oil dug up by others and kept his prices low yet products higher quality than his competition, allowing him to dominate the Cleveland refining market.

Horizontal Integration

The merger of competitors within the same industry.

Andrew Carneige

Profited greatly within the Steel business, creating a huge company revolving around it.

Vertical integration

The consolidation of numerous production functions, from the extraction of the raw materials to the distribution and marketing of the finished products, under the direction of one firm.

John Pierpont Morgan

Banker for the richest industrialists within the US. Made great profits during the civil war. Helped pick up the pieces left by Cooke from the Panic of 1873.

John Lewis

Came to US from Britain before Civil war and had a job in wholesale grocery business. Example of middle class person in late 1800s.

Daniel Burnham

Architect, leader in the City Beautiful movement. Designing public buildings in a classical style which showed a permanence and beauty that this emerging class expected.

Louis Sullivan

Architect, opposed City Beautiful movement. Sought much simpler more American style of architecture.

Dwight L. Moody

Great revivalist of this era. Represented the changes to white American Protestantism. Preacher of God.

Stalwarts

Faction of the Republican party in the 1870s and 80s who wanted the party to stay true to its earlier support for reconstruction in the South and who were less connected to the emerging big business interests than others.

Mugwumps

A reform faction of the republican party who supported Cleveland, the Democratic nominee over the Republican Blaine in the 1884 election.

James G. Blaine

Republican nominee for the 1884 election. Ready to focus on future and new economy being created for the nation. (L)

Grover Cleveland

Democratic nominee for 1884 election. He had a reputation for honesty. (W)

Pogroms

Government-directed attacks against Jewish citizens, property, and villages in tsarist Russia beginning in the 1880s, a primary reason for Russian Jewish migration to the US.

Chinese Exclusion Act

Federal legislation that suspended the Chinese immigration, limited the civil rights of the resident Chinese, and forbade their naturalization

New York

Prime point of entry for new immigrants.

Melting pot

Often popular idea that somehow immigrants from other countries should quickly lose their culture and language and “melt” into being just like other Americans

Sweatshops

Small, poorly ventilated shops or apartments crammed with workers, often family members, who pieced together garments.