CIS US History ch 16 vocab

trusts

Companies combined to limit competition.

vertical integration

Company’s avoidance of intermediaries by producing its own supplies and providing for distribution of its product

horizontal expansion

The process by which a corporation acquires or merges with its competitors.

robber barons

Also known as “captains of industry”; Gilded Age industrial figures who inspired both admiration, for their economic leadership and innovation, and hostility and fear, due to their unscrupulous business methods, repressive labor practices, and unprecedented economic control over entire industries.

Gilded Age

The popular but derogatory name for the period from the end of the Civil War to the turn of the century, after the title of the 1873 novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner.

Social Darwinism

Application of Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection to society; used the concept of the “survival of the fittest” to justify class distinctions and to explain poverty.

Great Railroad Strike

A series of demonstrations, some violent, held nationwide in support of striking railroad workers in Martinsburg, West Virginia, who refused to work due to wage cuts.

Knights of Labor

Founded in 1869, the first national union; it lasted, under the leadership of Terence V. Powderly, only into the 1890s; supplanted by the American Federation of Labor.

single tax

Concept of taxing only landowners as a remedy for poverty, promulgated by Henry George in Progress and Poverty (1879).

Social Gospel

Ideals preached by liberal Protestant clergymen in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; advocated the application of Christian principles to social problems generated by industrialization.

Haymarket affair

Violence during an anarchist protest at Haymarket Square in Chicago on May 4, 1886; the deaths of eight, including seven policemen, led to the trial of eight anarchist leaders for conspiracy to commit murder.

bonanza farms

Large farms that covered thousands of acres and employed hundreds of wage laborers in the West in the late nineteenth century.

Battle of the Little Bighorn

Most famous battle of the Black Hills War; took place in 1876 in the Montana Territory; Lakota and Cheyenne warriors massacred a vastly outnumbered U.S. Cavalry commanded by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer.

Dawes Act

Law passed in 1887 meant to encourage adoption of white norms among Indians; broke up tribal holdings into small farms for Indian families, with the remainder sold to white purchasers.

Ghost Dance

A spiritual and political movement among Native Americans whose followers performed a ceremonial “ghost dance” intended to connect the living with the dead and make the Indians bulletproof in battles intended to restore their homelands.

• connected to wounded knee massacre

Wounded Knee massacre

Last incident of the Indian Wars; it took place in 1890 in the Dakota Territory, where the U.S. Cavalry killed over 200 Sioux men, women, and children.

gold standard

Policy at various points in American history by which the value of a dollar was set at a fixed price in terms of gold (in the post–World War II era, for example, $35 per ounce of gold).

Civil Service Act of 1883

Law that established the Civil Service Commission and marked the end of the spoils system.

Interstate Commerce Commission

Organization established by Congress, in reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Wabash Railroad v. Illinois (1886), in order to curb abuses in the railroad industry by regulating rates.

Sherman Antitrust Act

Passed in 1890, first law to restrict monopolistic trusts and business combinations; extended by the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914.