Chapter 9, Section 1 and 2 - Industrialization and Urbanization

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, historical figures, economic concepts, and legislative acts from Chapter 9, Sections 1 and 2 on Industrialization and Urbanization.

Entrepreneur

A person who starts up and takes on the risk of a business.

Free enterprise

Economic system in which individuals and businesses are allowed to compete for profit with a minimum of government interference.

Laissez-faire

Idea that government should play as small a role as possible in economic affairs.

Patent

Exclusive rights over an invention; copyright.

Thomas Edison

American inventor best known for inventing the electric light bulb, acoustic recording on wax cylinders, and motion pictures.

Bessemer Process

A way to manufacture steel quickly and cheaply by blasting hot air through melted iron to quickly remove impurities.

Suspension bridge

Bridge that has a roadway suspended by cables.

Time zones

24 hour zones that are 1,000 miles apart from each other, where each one is an hour before or after the one next to it, helping to differentiate between the different times from one point on the Earth to another point.

Mass production

Process of making large quantities of a product quickly and cheaply.

Cash crop

A crop produced for its commercial value rather than for use by the grower.

Corporation

A business owned by stockholders who share in its profits.

Monopoly

Complete control of a product or business by one person, group, or company.

Cartel

A formal organization of producers that agree to coordinate prices and production.

John D. Rockefeller

Established the Standard Oil Company, the largest monopoly in US history.

Horizontal Integration

System of consolidating many firms in the same business.

Vertical Integration

Practice where a single entity controls many different business types in order to control the entire process of a product, from the raw materials to distribution.

Trust

A group of corporations run by a single board of directors, often with monopolistic practices.

Andrew Carnegie

A Scottish-born American industrialist and philanthropist who founded the Carnegie Steel Company in 1892. By 1901, his company dominated the American steel industry.

Social Darwinism

The application of ideas about evolution and "survival of the fittest" to human societies - particularly as a justification for extreme wealth inequality.

Interstate Commerce Commission

An agency that sets the laws for all the companies that do business across state lines.

Sherman Antitrust Act

First federal action against monopolies, signed into law by Harrison and extensively used by Theodore Roosevelt for trust-busting; however, it was initially misused against labor unions.