Key Terms and Figures of the Gilded Age

Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railroad Company v. Illinois (1886)

A Supreme Court decision that prohibited states from regulating the railroads because the Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce.

Interstate Commerce Act (1887)

Congressional legislation that established the Interstate Commerce Commission, compelled railroads to publish standard rates, and prohibited rebates and pools.

vertical integration

The practice perfected by Andrew Carnegie of controlling every step of the industrial production process in order to increase efficiency and limit competition.

horizontal integration

The practice perfected by John D. Rockefeller of dominating a particular phase of the production process in order to monopolize a market, often by forming trusts and alliances with competitors.

trust

A mechanism by which one company grants control over its operations, through ownership of its stock, to another company.

Standard Oil Company (1870-1911)

John D. Rockefeller's company, formed in 1870, which came to symbolize the trusts and monopolies of the Gilded Age.

interlocking directorates

The practice of having executives or directors from one company serve on the board of directors of another company.

Bessemer Process

Refers to the innovation in steel production where air was blown on molten iron to remove impurities, allowing steel to be produced cheaply at mass quantities.

Social Darwinists

Believers in the idea, popular in the late nineteenth century, that people gained wealth by 'survival of the fittest.'

Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890)

A law that forbade trusts or combinations in business, this was landmark legislation because it was one of the first congressional attempts to regulate big business for the public good.

National Labor Union (1866-1872)

This first national labor organization in U.S. history gained 600,000 members from many parts of the work force, although it limited the participation of Chinese, women, and blacks.

Knights of Labor

The second national labor organization, organized in 1869 as a secret society and opened for public membership in 1881. The Knights were known for their efforts to organize all workers, regardless of skill level, gender, or race.

Haymarket Square (1886)

A May Day rally that turned violent when someone threw a bomb into the middle of the meeting, killing several dozen people. Eight anarchists were arrested for conspiracy contributing to the disorder, although evidence linking them to the bombing was thin.

American Federation of Labor

A national federation of trade unions that included only skilled workers, founded in 1886. Led by Samuel Gompers for nearly four decades, the AFL sought to negotiate with employers for a better kind of capitalism that rewarded workers fairly with better wages, hours, and conditions.

closed shop

A union-organizing term that refers to the practice of allowing only unionized employees to work for a particular company. The AFL became known for negotiating closed-shop agreements with employers, in which the employer would agree not to hire nonunion members.

waving the bloody shirt

The use of Civil War imagery by political candidates and parties to draw votes to their side of the ticket.

Tweed Ring

A symbol of Gilded Age corruption, 'Boss' Tweed and his deputies ran the New York City Democratic party in the 1860s and swindled $200 million from the city through bribery, graft, and vote-buying.

Crédit Mobilier scandal (1872)

A construction company was formed by owners of the Union Pacific Railroad for the purpose of receiving government contracts to build the railroad at highly inflated prices—and profits. In 1872 a scandal erupted when journalists discovered that the Crédit Mobilier Company had bribed congressmen and even the vice president to allow the ruse to continue.

panic of 1873

A worldwide depression that began in the United States when one of the nation's largest banks abruptly declared bankruptcy, leading to the collapse of thousands of banks and businesses. The crisis intensified debtors' calls for inflationary measures such as the printing of more paper money and the unlimited coinage of silver.

Gilded Age

A term given to the period 1865-1896 by Mark Twain, indicating both the fabulous wealth and the widespread corruption of the era.

patronage

A system, prevalent during the Gilded Age, in which political parties granted jobs and favors to party regulars who delivered votes on election day.

Compromise of 1877

The agreement that finally resolved the 1876 election and officially ended Reconstruction. In exchange for the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, winning the presidency, Hayes agreed to withdraw the last of the federal troops from the former Confederate states.

Civil Rights Act of 1875

The last piece of federal civil rights legislation until the 1950s, the law promised blacks equal access to public accommodations and banned racism in jury selection, but it provided no means of enforcement and was therefore ineffective.

sharecropping

An agricultural system that emerged after the Civil War in which black and white farmers rented land and residences from a plantation owner in exchange for giving him a certain "share" of each year's crop.

Jim Crow

System of racial segregation in the American South from the end of Reconstruction until the mid-twentieth century.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

A Supreme Court case that upheld the constitutionality of segregation laws, saying that as long as blacks were provided with "separate but equal" facilities, these laws did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment.

Great Strike of 1877

Wage cuts by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company triggered a forty-five-day strike that engulfed Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Missouri.

Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

Federal legislation that prohibited most further Chinese immigration to the United States.

Pendleton Act (1883)

Congressional legislation that established the Civil Service Commission, which granted federal government jobs on the basis of examinations instead of political patronage.

New Immigrants

Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe who formed a recognizable wave of immigration from the 1880s until 1924.

political machines

A term used to describe political organizations that flourished in urban centers that captured the immigrant vote by promising them municipal jobs, housing, and rudimentary social services.

settlement houses

Mostly run by middle-class native-born women, settlement houses in immigrant neighborhoods provided housing, food, education, child care, cultural activities, and social connections for new arrivals to the United States.

liberal Protestants

Members of a branch of Protestantism that flourished from 1875 to 1925 and encouraged followers to use the Bible as a moral compass.

Tuskegee Institute

A normal and industrial school led by Booker T. Washington in Tuskegee, Alabama, focusing on training young black students in agriculture and the trades.

Washington's justification for segregated vocational training

A necessary first step on the road to racial equality, although critics accused him of being too 'accommodationist.'

land-grant colleges

Colleges and universities created from allocations of public land through the Morrill Act of 1862 and the Hatch Act of 1887, fueling the boom in higher education in the late nineteenth century.

pragmatism

A distinctive American philosophy that emerged in the late nineteenth century around the theory that the true value of an idea lay in its ability to solve problems.

yellow journalism

A scandal-mongering practice of journalism that emerged in New York during the Gilded Age, referring to sensationalist journalism practiced with unethical, unprofessional standards.

National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

An organization founded in 1890 to demand the vote for women, arguing that women's responsibilities in the home made them indispensable in public decision-making.

Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

Founded in Ohio in the 1870s to combat excessive alcohol consumption and embraced a broad reform agenda including campaigns to abolish prostitution and gain the right to vote for women.

realism

A mid-nineteenth-century movement in literature and the arts that sought to depict contemporary life and society as it actually was, eschewing idealism.

naturalism

An offshoot of realism, this late-nineteenth-century literary movement applied detached scientific objectivity to the study of human characters shaped by heredity and social environments.

regionalism

An artistic movement that aspired to capture the peculiarities, or 'local color,' of America's various regions in the face of modernization.

City Beautiful movement

A turn-of-the-century movement among progressive architects and city planners aimed at promoting order, harmony, and virtue while beautifying urban spaces.

World's Columbian Exposition (1893)

A world's fair held in Chicago that honored art, architecture, and science, reflecting the ideals of city planning popular at the time.

Cornelius Vanderbilt

(1794-1877) A railroad magnate who made millions in steamboating before consolidating railroads and eliminating competition.

Alexander Graham Bell

(1847-1922) The inventor of the telephone, patented in 1876.

Thomas Alva Edison

(1847-1931) The inventor of the electric light bulb, phonograph, mimeograph, moving picture, and a machine capable of taking X-rays.

Thomas Alva Edison

The inventor of, among other things, the electric light bulb, the phonograph, the mimeograph, the moving picture, and a machine capable of taking X-rays. Ultimately he held more than one thousand patents for his inventions.

Andrew Carnegie

A tycoon who came to dominate the burgeoning steel industry. His company, later named United States Steel, was the biggest corporation in U.S. history in 1901. After he retired, he donated most of his fortune to public libraries, universities, arts organizations, and other charitable causes.

John D. Rockefeller

The founder of the Standard Oil Company, he developed the technique of horizontal integration and compelled other oil companies to join the Standard Oil 'trust.' He became the richest person in the world and the United States' first billionaire. He later became known for his philanthropic support of universities and medical research.

Mary Harris 'Mother' Jones

A prominent labor activist and community organizer, dubbed 'the most dangerous woman in America' in 1902 by a West Virginia district attorney. Jones was born in Ireland and worked as a dressmaker and schoolteacher before turning to labor organizing in the 1870s, first for the Knights of Labor and later for the United Mine Workers. By the turn of the century, she had adopted the matronly public persona of 'Mother Jones.' In 1903 she organized a 'Children's Crusade' of youthful mill and mine workers who marched from Pennsylvania to New York to publicize the issue of child labor.

Samuel Gompers

The president of the American Federation of Labor nearly every year from its founding in 1886 until his death in 1924. Gompers was no foe of capitalism but wanted employers to offer workers a fair deal by paying high wages and providing job security.

Jay Gould

A railroad magnate who was involved in the Black Friday scandal in 1869 and later gained control of many of the nation's largest railroads, including the Union Pacific. He became revered and hated for his ability to manipulate railroad stocks for his personal profit and for his ardent resistance to organized labor.

Horace Greeley

A New York newspaper editor, Greeley ran for president in 1872 under the mantles of the Liberal Republican and Democratic parties.

Rutherford B. Hayes

The former Republican governor of Ohio who became president after the contested 1876 election. By 1880 he had lost the support of his party and was not renominated for the office.

James A. Garfield

Elected to the presidency in 1880, Garfield served as president for only a few months before being assassinated by Charles Guiteau, who claimed to have killed him because he was denied a job through patronage when Garfield was elected. The assassination fueled efforts to reform the spoils system.

Chester Arthur

Elected as vice president in 1880, Arthur became president after Garfield's assassination. He was primarily known for his efforts at civil service reform, which culminated in the Pendleton Act.

Grover Cleveland

President from 1885 to 1889 and again from 1893 to 1897; Cleveland's first term was dominated by the issues of military pensions and tariff reforms. He lost the election of 1888, but he ran again and won in 1892. During his second term, he faced one of the most serious economic depressions in the nation's history but failed to enact policies to ease the crisis.

Thomas B. Reed

The Republican congressman from Maine who became Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1889 and then led the Billion-Dollar Congress like a 'czar,' making sure that his agenda dictated the business of the legislature.

Jane Addams

Addams founded Hull House, America's first settlement house, to help immigrants assimilate through education, counseling, and municipal reform efforts.

Pacifism

The advocacy of peace and opposition to war, notably supported by individuals like the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1931.

Charles Darwin

A British naturalist whose 1859 book On the Origin of Species outlined a theory of evolution based on natural selection.

Natural Selection

A theory whereby the strongest individuals of a species survive and reproduce while weaker individuals die out.

Booker T. Washington

Head of the Tuskegee Institute who advocated for vocational education for African Americans to gain economic security.

W. E. B. Du Bois

A Harvard-educated leader in the fight for racial equality who believed in liberal arts education for the 'talented tenth' of African Americans.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

An organization co-founded by W. E. B. Du Bois to address racism and advocate for civil rights.

Joseph Pulitzer

A publisher known for his sensationalist journalism, particularly through the New York World.

William Randolph Hearst

A newspaper magnate responsible for the spread of sensationalist journalism across the United States.

John Dewey

A leader of the pragmatist movement who promoted 'learning by doing' and applied knowledge to solve real-life problems.

Carrie Chapman Catt

A leader of the women's suffrage movement and president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).

Horatio Alger

An author known for his novels that popularized the 'rags to riches' narrative for children.

Mark Twain

A satirist and writer known for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, critiquing American society.

Henry James

An expatriate novelist known for his psychological realism and works like The Portrait of a Lady.

Winslow Homer

An artist known for his depictions of New England's pastoral landscapes and seas.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens

An Irish-born sculptor known for producing fine beaux arts sculptures, including the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial.

Frederick Law Olmsted

A leading American landscape architect known for designing New York's Central Park and Boston's 'Emerald Necklace.'