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Wabash, st.louis & pacific railroad company vs illinois
A Supreme Court decision that prohibited states from regulating the railroads because the Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. As a result, reformers turned their attention to the federal government, which now held sole power to regulate the railroad industry.
Interstate commerce act of 1887
Prohibited rebates and pools; required the railroads to publish rates openly; forbad unfair discrimination against shippers; outlawed charging more for a short trip than a long one on the same line; MOST IMPORTANT- set up the interstate commerce commission to administer and enforce this new legislation
Vertical integration
The practice perfected by Andrew Carnegie(steel king) of controlling every step of the industrial production progress in order to increase efficiency and limit competition; shifted to marketing
Horizontal inegration
Done by Rockefeller(oil king) ; allying competitors to monopolize a given market
Trust
A mechanism by which one company grants control over its operations, through ownership of its stock, to another company. The Standard Oil Company became known for this practice in the 1870s as it eliminated its competition by taking control of smaller oil companies.
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Standard oil company (1870)
John D. Rockefeller's company, formed in 1870, which came to symbolize the trusts and monopolies of the Gilded Age. By 1877 it 95% of the oil refineries in the US. It was also one of the first multinational corporations, and at times distributed more than half of the company's kerosene production outside the U.S. By the turn of the century it had become a target for trust-busting reformers, and in 1911 the Supreme Court ordered it to break up into several dozen smaller companies.
Interlocking directorates
The practice of having executives or directors from one company serve on the Board of Directors of another company. JP Morgan introduced this practice to eliminate banking competition in the 1890s.
Bessemer process
New process that simplified the steel production and reduced the price of steel. The process involved blowing cold air on red-hot iron to ignite the carbon and eliminate impurities.William Kelley discovered that cold air blown on red hot iron caused the metal to become white hot; he applied the new air boiling techniques to his own product, “Kelly’s fool steel”(buisness declined); ultimately paved way for a modern steel civilization
Social darwinists
Believers in the idea, popular in the late nineteenth century, that people gained wealth by "survival of the fittest." Therefore, the wealthy had simply won by a natural competition and owed nothing to the poor, and indeed service to the poor would interfere with this organic process. Some also applied this theory to whole nations and races, explaining that powerful peoples were naturally endowed with gifts that allowed them to gain superiority over others. This theory provided one of the popular justifications for US imperial ventures like the Spanish-American war.
Sherman anti trust act of 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. At first the law was mostly used to restrain trade unions as the courts tended to side with companies in legal cases. In 1914 the Act was revised so it could more effectively be used against monopolistic corporations.
National labor union
organization in US history founded in 1866 and gained 600,000 members from many parts of the workforce, although it limited the participation of Chinese, women, and blacks. The organization devoted much of its energy to fighting for an 8 hour workday and higher wages before it dissolved in 1872.
Knights of labor
The second national labor organization, organized in 1869 as a secret society and opened for public membership in 1881. were known for their efforts to organize all workers, regardless of skill level, gender, or race. After the mid 1880s their membership declined for a variety of reasons; participation in violent strikes and discord between skilled and unskilled members. Inclusion stopped when it came to Chinese→ supported Chinese exclusion act of 1882
Haymarket square
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. Four were executed, one committed suicide, and 3 were pardoned in 1893; labor unions faces severe backlash and setbacks in their movement even though it was anarchists who started the riot
American federation of labor (AFL)
A national federation of trade unions that included only skilled workers, founded in 1886. Led by Samuel Gompers for nearly 4 decades, the AFL sought to negotiate with employers for a better kind of capitalism that rewarded workers fairly with better wages, hours, and conditions. The AFL's membership was almost entirely white and male until the middle of the 20th century.
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 non-union members.
Waving the bloody shirt
refers to the practice of politicians making reference to the blood of martyrs or heroes to criticize opponents.
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. Boss Tweed was eventually jailed for his crimes and died behind bars.
Credit mobilier scandal in 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 in order to allow the ruse to continue.
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Panic of 1873
Caused by over speculation- too many railroad tracks, too many mines sinking, factory technicalities, more grain fields meaning people took out loans from bank and bank gave out unnecessary loans to compensate, but the loans werent getting paid back; world wide 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. Conflicts over monetary policy greatly influenced politics in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
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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
Similar to the spoils system; Practice of rewarding political support with special favors, often in the form of public office. Upon assuming office, Thomas Jefferson dismissed few Federalists employees, leaving scant openings to fill with political appointees. ; ended by the Pendleton act
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 end military reconstruction in the south. This deal effectively completed the southern return to white-only. Democratic-dominated electoral politics.
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 the Act provided no means of enforcement and was therefore ineffective. In 1883, the Supreme Court declared most of the Act unconstitutional.
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. Sharecropping was the dominant form of southern agriculture after the Civil War, and landowners manipulated this system to keep tenants in perpetual debt and unable to leave their plantations.
Jim Crow
System of racial segregation in the American South from the end of Reconstruction until the mid-twentieth century. Based on the concept of "separate but equal" facilities for blacks and whites, the Jim Crow system sought to prevent racial mixing in public, including restaurants, movie theatres, and public transportation. An informal system, it was generally perpetuated by custom, violence, and intimidation.
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Plessy vs Ferguson 1896
An 1896 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. This decision provided legal justification for the Jim Crow system until the 1950s.
Great strike of 1877
nation’s four largest railroads collectively decided in 1877 to cut employees’ wages by 10 percent, the workers struck back—touching off the first nationwide confrontation between capital and labor; quickly descended into bloody violence. Railroad lines and telegraph wires facilitated networks of people and information that allowed work stoppages to spread like wildfire from the eastern seaboard to the deep Midwest; president Hayes called troops to stop strike; over 100 ppl dead; strike failed
Chinese exclusion act of 1882
Federal legislation that prohibited most further Chinese immigration to the United States. This was the first major legal restriction on immigration in U.S. history.
Pendleton act of 1883
Congressional legislation that established the Civil Service Commission, which granted federal government jobs on the basis of examinations instead of political patronage, this reigning in the spoils system.
new immigrants
Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe who formed a recognizable wave of immigration from the 1880s until 1924, in contrast to the wave of immigrants from western Europe who had come before them. These new immigrants congregated in ethnic urban neighborhoods, where they worried many native-born Americans, some of whom responded with nativist anti-immigrant campaigns and others of whom introduced urban reforms to help immigrants assimilate.
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 US. Many women, both native-born and immigrant, developed life-long passions for social activism in the settlement houses. Jane Addams's Hull House in Chicago and Lillian Wald's Henry Street Settlement in NYC were two of the most prominent.
liberal protestantism
Members of a branch of Protestantism that flourished from 1875 to 1925 and encouraged followers to use the Bible as a moral compass rather than to believe that the Bible represented scientific or historical truth. Many Liberal Protestants became active in the "social gospel" and other reform movements of the era.
political machines
community “bosses” took care of immigrants by providing jobs, housing, schools, parks, and hospitals. in returnn, immigrants voted for the bosses
land grant colleges
Colleges and universities created from allocations of public land through the Morrell Act of 1962 and the Hatch Act of 1887. These grants helped fuel the boom in higher education in the late 19th century, and many of the today's public universities derive from these grants.
pragmatism
A distinctive American philosophy that e,urged in the late 19th century around the theory that the true value of an idea lay in its ability to solve problems. The ______ thus embraced the provisional, uncertain nature of experimental knowledg
yellow journalism
A scandal-mongering practice of journalism that emerged in NY during the Gilded Age out of the circulation battles between Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. The expression has remained a pejorative term referring to sensationalist journalism practiced with unethical, unprofessional standards.
National american women suffrage association (NAWSA)
An organization founded in 1890 to demand the vote for women; argued that women should be allowed to vote because their responsibilities in the home and family made them indispensable in the public decision-making process. During WWI, they supported the war effort and lauded women's role in the Allied victory, which helped to finally achieve nationwide woman suffrage in the 19th Amendment.
women’s christian temperence union
Founded in 1874, this organization advocated for the prohibition of alcohol, using women's supposedly greater purity and morality as a rallying point. Advocated of prohibition in the US found common sense with activists elsewhere, especially in Britain, and in the 1880s they founded the union, which sent missionaries around the world to spread the gospel of temperance.
realism
focus in the coarse of human comedy and material drama of the world
naturalism
more intense than realism to social dislocations and scientific unrest of the 19th century
regionalism
the movement sought to chronicle the peculiarities of local ways of life before the coming wave of industrial standardization
city beautiful movement
movement wantedd the new american city not just to look beatiful but to convey a confident sense of harmony, order, and monumentality. to achive this, they copied european styles of beaux arts classicism and planning ideas from baron georges-eugene haussmann
world’s columbian exposition
Held in Chicago, Americans saw this World's Fair as their opportunity to claim a place among the world's most "civilized" societies, by which they meant the countries of western Europe. The Fair honored art, architecture, and science, and its promoters built a mini-city in which to hist the fair that reflected all the ideals of city planning popular at the time. For many, this was the high point of the "City Beautiful" movement.
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american protective association
organization created in 1887 against roman catholic canidates in office
reservation system
The system that allotted land with designated boundaries to Native American tribes in the west, beginning in the 1850s and ending with the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887. Within these reservations, most land was used communally, rather than owned individually. The U.S. government encouraged and sometimes violently coerced Native Americans to stay on the reservations at all times.
battle of little bighorn
A particularly violent example of warfare between whites and Native Americans in the late 19th century, also known as "Custer's Last Stand."
battle of wounded knee
battle between the U.S. Army and the Dakota Sioux, in which several hundred Native Americans and 29 US soldiers died. Tensions erupted violently over two major issues: the Sioux practice of the "Ghost Dance," which the government had outlawed, and the dispute over whether Sioux reservation land would be broken up because of the Dawes Act.
sand creek massacre
in 1864, colonel chivington’s colorado militia butchered more than 200 cheyenne indians who apparently had been promised immunity
peace policy
president grant announced a policy to ease the violent clashes between whites and indians. He appointed pious church-people, mostly Quakers, as Indian agents, with instructions to encourage Indians to “walk the white man’s road.” He also forbade military expeditions onto Indian reservations.
dawes severalty act
An act that broke up Indian reservations and distributed land to individual households. Leftover land was sold for money to fund government efforts to "civilize" Native Americans. Of 130 million acres help in Native American reservations before the Act, 90 million were sold to non-Native buyers.
mining industry
gold and silver strike in colorado, nevada, and other western territories and were essential to US industrial growth and sold in world marketts. led to developing of heavy mining machinery and consolidation of mining industry
100th meridian
Line north to south from the Dakotas through west Texas. Lands west of this line were generally poor and marginal. Settlers rashly tried to farm here in the 1870's and met ruin. "Dry farming"
mechanization of agriculture
drove many marginal farmers off the land, thus swelling the ranks of the new industrial work force.
populist
Out of the Farmers’ Alliances a new political party emerged in the early 1890s—the People’s party.
these frustrated farmers at-tacked Wall Street and the “money trust.” Numerous fiery prophets leapt forward to trumpet the Populist cause. The free coinage of silver struck many as a cure-all
homestead strike
1892, a dispute between Carnegie Steel and the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers exploded into violence at a steel plant owned by Andrew Carnegie in Homestead, Pennsylvania. In what would be one of the deadliest labor-management conflicts in the nation’s history, some 12 people were killed when striking workers attacked 300 Pinkerton detectives hired by the plant’s management as security guards.
grandfather clause
if blacks wanted to vote, their eligibility would he determined if their grandfather could vote→ used by white southerners
pullman strike of 1894
A 1894 strike by railroad workers upset by drastic wage cuts. The strike was led by socialist Eugene Debs but not supported by the American Federation of Labor. Eventually President Grover Cleveland intervened and federal troops forced an end to the strike. The strike highlighted both divisions within labor and the government's new willingness to use armed force to combat work stoppages
fourth party system
A term scholars have used to describe national politics from 1896-1932, when Republicans had a tight grip on the White House and issues like industrial regulation and labor concerns became paramount, replacing older concerns like civil service reform and monetary policy.
gold standard act
An act that guaranteed that paper currency would be redeemed freely in gold, putting an end to the already dying "free silver" campaign.
big sister policy
foreign policy of Secretary of State James G. Blaine aimed at rallying Latin American nations behind American leadership and opening Latin American markets to Yankee traders. The policy bore fruit in 1889, when Blaine presided over the First International Conference of American States.
great rapprochment
After decades of occasionally "twisting the lion's tail," American diplomats began to cultivate close, cordial relations with Great Britain at the end of the 19th century- a relationship that would intensify further during WWI.
insurrectos
Cuban insurgents who sought freedom from colonial Spanish rule. Their destructive tactics threatened American economic interests in Cuban plantations and railroads.
maine
American battleship dispatched to keep a "friendly" watch over Cuba in early 1898. It mysteriously blew up in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898, with a loss of 260 sailors. Later evidence co firmed that the explosion was accidental, resulting from combustion in one of the ship's internal coal bunkers. But many Americans, eager for war, insisted that it was the fault of a Spanish submarine mine.
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teller amendment
A proviso to President William McKinley's war plans that proclaimed to the world that when the US had overthrown the Spanish misrule, it would give Cuba its freedom. The amendment testified to the ostensibly "anti-imperialist" designs of the initial war plans.
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rough riders
Organized by Theodore Roosevelt, this was a colorful, motley regimen of Cuban war volunteers consisting of western cowboys, ex-convicts, and effete Ivy Leaguers. Roosevelt emphasized his experience with the regiment in subsequent campaigns for Governor of New York and Vice-President under William McKinley.
anti-imperialist league
diverse group formed in order to protest American colonial oversight in the Philippines. It included university presidents, industrialists, clergymen, and labor leaders.
foraker act
Sponsored by Senator Joseph B. Foraker, a Republican from Ohio, this accorded Puerto Ricans a limited degree of popular government. It was the first comprehensive congressional effort to provide for governance of territories acquired
platt amendment
Following its military occupation, the US successfully pressured the Cuban government to write this amendment into its constitution. It limited Cuba's treaty-making abilities, controlled its debt, and stipulated that the US could intervene militarily to restore order when it saw fit.
insular cases
Beginning in 1901, a badly divided Supreme Court decreed in these cases that the Constitution did not follow the flag. In other words, Puerto Ricans and Filipinos would not necessarily enjoy all American rights.
open door note
A set of diplomatic letters in which Secretary of State John Hay urged the great powers to respect Chinese rights and free and open competition within their spheres of influence. These notes established the "Open Door Policy," which sought to ensure access to the Chinese market for the US, despite the fact that the US did not have a formal sphere of influence in China.
boxer rebellion
An uprising in China directed against foreign influence. It was suppressed by an international force of some 18,000 soldiers, including several thousand Americans. The Boxer Rebellion paved the way for the revolution of 1911, which led to the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912.
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hay- pauncefote treaty
A treated signed between the US and Great Britain, giving Americans a free hand to build a canal in Central America. The treaty nullified the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850, which prohibited the British or US from acquiring territory in Central America.
roosevelt corollary
brazen policy of "preventive intervention" advocated by Theodore Roosevelt in his Annual Message to Congress in 1904. Adding ballast to the Monroe Doctrine, his corollary stipulated that the United States would retain a right to intervene in the domestic affairs of Latin American nations in order to restore military and financial order.
gentlemen’s agreement
An agreement that was negotiated by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908 with the Japanese government. The Japanese agreed to limit immigration, and Roosevelt agreed to discuss with the San Francisco School Board that segregation of Japanese children in school would be stopped.
root-takahira agreement
In 1908 the United States and Japan signed this agreement saying they would both honor the territorial possessions of the respective countries that were in the Pacific Ocean, and they would also uphold China's Open Door Policy.
panama canal
The United States built the this to have a quicker passage to the Pacific from the Atlantic and vice versa. It cost $400,000,000 to build. Columbians would not let Americans build the canal, but then with the assistance of the United States a Panamanian Revolution occurred. The new ruling people allowed the United States to build the canal.
big stick democracy
policy held by Teddy Roosevelt in foreign affairs. The "big stick" symbolizes his power and readiness to use military force if necessary. It is a way of intimidating countries without actually harming them.
Freedman’s bureau
Created to aid newly emancipated slaves by providing food, clothing, medical care, education, and legal support. Its achievements were uneven and depended largely on the quality of local administrators.
Hill house
settlement house that she installed in a ghetto of Chicago. The house inspired many other like settlements across the country, while Addams spent her lifetime battling for garbage removal, playgrounds, better street lighting, and police protection.
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