Late 19th and Early 20th Century American History Vocabulary

A complete set of vocabulary flashcards covering the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, and the World War I period, detailing economic integration, social reforms, and U.S. foreign policy.

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.

liberty of contract

A judicial concept of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries whereby the courts overturned laws regulating labor conditions as violations of the economic freedom of both employers and employees.

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 $1890$s; 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 $8$, including $7$ policemen, led to the trial of $8$ 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.

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 $1914$.

Populists

Founded in $1892$, a group that advocated a variety of reform issues, including free coinage of silver, income tax, postal savings, regulation of railroads, and direct election of U.S. senators.

Coxey's Army

A march on Washington organized by Jacob Coxey, an Ohio member of the People's Party. Coxey believed in abandoning the gold standard and printing enough legal tender to reinvigorate the economy. The marchers demanded that Congress create jobs and pay workers in paper currency not backed by gold.

American Federation of Labor

A federation of trade unions founded in $1881$ composed mostly of skilled, white, native-born workers; its long-term president was Samuel Gompers.

New South

Atlanta Constitution editor Henry W. Grady's $1886$ term for the prosperous post-Civil War South he envisioned: democratic, industrial, urban, and free of nostalgia for the defeated plantation South.

Kansas Exodus

A migration in $1879$ and $1880$ by some $40,000-60,000$ Blacks to Kansas to escape the oppressive environment of the New South.

Atlanta Compromise

Speech to the Cotton States and International Exposition in $1895$ by educator Booker T. Washington, the leading Black spokesman of the day; Black scholar W. E. B. Du Bois gave the speech its derisive name and criticized Washington for encouraging Blacks to accommodate segregation and disenfranchisement.

grandfather clause

Loophole created by southern disenfranchising legislatures of the $1890$s for illiterate white males whose grandfathers had been eligible to vote before the Civil War.

disenfranchisement

Depriving a person or persons of the right to vote; in the United States, exclusionary policies were used to deny groups, especially African Americans and women, their voting rights.

lynching

Practice, particularly widespread in the South between $1890$ and $1940$, in which persons (usually Blacks) accused of a crime were murdered by mobs before standing trial. Lynchings often took place before large crowds, with law enforcement authorities not intervening.

Lost Cause

A romanticized view of slavery, the Old South, and the Confederacy that arose in the decades following the Civil War.

new immigrants

Wave of newcomers from southern and eastern Europe, including many Jews, who became a majority among immigrants to America after $1890$.

Immigration Restriction League

A political organization founded in $1894$ that called for reducing immigration to the United States by requiring a literacy test for immigrants.

Chinese Exclusion Act

$1882$ law that halted Chinese immigration to the United States.

yellow press

Sensationalism in newspaper publishing that reached a peak in the circulation war between Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal in the $1890$s; the papers' accounts of events in Havana Harbor in $1898$ led directly to the Spanish-American War.

Platt Amendment

$1901$ amendment to the Cuban constitution that reserved the right of the United States to intervene in Cuban affairs and that forced newly independent Cuba to host American naval bases on the island.

Open Door Policy

Demand in $1899$ by Secretary of State John Hay, in hopes of protecting the Chinese market for U.S. exports, that Chinese trade be open to all nations.

Philippine War

American military campaign that suppressed the movement for Philippine independence after the Spanish-American War; America's death toll was over $4,000$ and that of the Philippines was far higher.

Insular Cases

Series of cases between $1091$ and $1904$ in which the Supreme Court ruled that constitutional protection of individual rights did not fully apply to residents of "insular" territories acquired by the United States in the Spanish-American War, such as Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

Anti-Imperialist League

Coalition of anti-imperialist groups united in $1899$ to protest American territorial expansion, especially in the Philippine Islands; its membership included prominent politicians, industrialists, labor leaders, and social reformers.

"separate but equal"

Principle underlying legal racial segregation, upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson ($1896$) and struck down in Brown v. Board of Education ($1954$).

U.S.S. Maine

Battleship that exploded in Havana Harbor on February $15$, $1898$, resulting in $266$ deaths; the American public, assuming that the Spanish had mined the ship, clamored for war, and the Spanish-American War was declared two months later.

Plessy v. Ferguson

U.S. Supreme Court decision supporting the legality of Jim Crow laws that permitted or required "separate but equal" facilities for Blacks and whites.

Progressivism

Broad-based reform movement, $1900-1917$, that sought governmental action in solving problems in many areas of American life, including education, public health, the economy, the environment, labor, transportation, and politics.

muckraking

Writing that exposed corruption and abuses in politics, business, meatpacking, child labor, and more, primarily in the first decade of the twentieth century; included popular books and magazine articles that spurred public interest in reform.

Ellis Island

Reception center in New York Harbor through which most European immigrants to America were processed from $1892$ to $1954$.

Fordism

Early twentieth-century term describing the economic system pioneered by Ford Motor Company based on high wages and mass consumption.

"American standard of living"

The Progressive-era idea that American workers were entitled to a wage high enough to allow them full participation in the nation's mass consumption economy.

scientific management

Management campaign to improve worker efficiency using measurements like "time and motion" studies to achieve greater productivity; introduced by Frederick Winslow Taylor in $1911$.

Socialist Party

Political party demanding public ownership of major economic enterprises in the United States as well as reforms like recognition of labor unions and woman suffrage; reached peak of influence in $1912$ when presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs received over $900,000$ votes.

collective bargaining

The process of negotiations between an employer and a group of employees to regulate working conditions.

Industrial Workers of the World

Radical union organized in Chicago in $1905$ and nick-named the Wobblies; its opposition to World War I led to its destruction by the federal government under the Espionage Act.

birth-control movement

An offshoot of the early twentieth-century feminist movement that saw access to birth control and "voluntary motherhood" as essential to women's freedom. The birth-control movement was led by Margaret Sanger.

Society of American Indians

Organization founded in $1911$ that brought together Native American intellectuals of many tribal backgrounds to promote discussion of the plight of Indian peoples.

pragmatism

A philosophical movement that emerged in the late nineteenth century, which insisted that institutions and social policies should be judged by their practical effects, not their longevity or whether they reflected traditional religious or political beliefs.

initiative

A Progressive-era reform that allowed citizens to propose and vote on laws, bypassing state legislatures.

referendum

A Progressive-era reform that allowed public policies to be submitted to popular vote.

recall

A Progressive-era reform that allowed the removal of public officials by popular vote.

Seventeenth Amendment

Progressive reform passed in $1913$ that required U.S. senators to be elected directly by voters; previously, senators were chosen by state legislatures.

settlement house

Late-nineteenth-century movement to offer a broad array of social services in urban immigrant neighborhoods; Chicago's Hull House was one of hundreds of settlement houses that operated by the early twentieth century.

maternalist reforms

Progressive-era reforms that sought to encourage women's childbearing and childrearing abilities and to promote their economic independence.

Pure Food and Drug Act

Passed in $1906$, the first law to regulate manufacturing of food and medicines; prohibited dangerous additives and inaccurate labeling.

conservation movement

A progressive reform movement that focused on the preservation and sustainable management of the nation's natural resources.

Sixteenth Amendment

Constitutional amendment passed in $1913$ that legalized the federal income tax.

Progressive Party

Political party created when former president Theodore Roosevelt broke away from the Republican Party to run for president again in $1912$. The party supported progressive reforms similar to those of the Democrats but stopped short of seeking to eliminate trusts; also the name of the party backing Robert La Follette for president in $1924$.

New Freedom

Democrat Woodrow Wilson's political slogan in the presidential campaign of $1912$; Wilson wanted to improve the banking system, lower tariffs, and, by breaking up monopolies, give small businesses freedom to compete.

New Nationalism

Platform of the Progressive Party and slogan of former president Theodore Roosevelt in the presidential campaign of $1912$; stressed government activism, including regulation of trusts, conservation, and recall of state court decisions that had nullified progressive programs.

Federal Trade Commission (FTC)

Independent agency created by the Wilson administration that replaced the Bureau of Corporations as an even more powerful tool to combat unfair trade practices and monopolies.

Muller v. Oregon

$1908$ Supreme Court decision that held that state interest in protecting women could override liberty of contract. Louis D. Brandeis, with help from his sister-in-law Josephine Goldmark of the National Consumers League, filed a brief in Muller that used statistics about women's health to argue for their protection.

liberal internationalism

Woodrow Wilson's foreign policy theory, which rested on the idea that economic and political freedom went hand in hand, and encouraged American intervention abroad in order to secure these freedoms globally.

Panama Canal Zone

The small strip of land on either side of the Panama Canal; the Canal Zone was under U.S. control from $1903$ to $1979$ as a result of Theodore Roosevelt's assistance in engineering a coup in Colombia that established Panama's independence.

Roosevelt Corollary

$1904$ announcement by President Theodore Roosevelt, essentially a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, stating that the United States could intervene militarily to prevent interference from European powers in the Western Hemisphere.

Dollar Diplomacy

A foreign policy initiative under President William Howard Taft that promoted the spread of American influence through loans and economic investments from American banks.

moral imperialism

The Wilsonian belief that U.S. foreign policy should be guided by morality and should teach other peoples about democracy. Wilson used this belief to both repudiate Dollar Diplomacy and justify frequent military interventions in Latin America.

Zimmermann Telegram

Telegram from the German foreign secretary to the German minister in Mexico, February $1917$, instructing the minister to offer to recover Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona for Mexico if it would fight the United States to divert attention from Germany in the event that the United States joined the war.

Fourteen Points

President Woodrow Wilson's $1918$ plan for peace after World War I; at the Versailles peace conference, however, he failed to incorporate all of the points into the treaty.

Selective Service Act

Law passed in $1917$ to quickly increase enlistment in the army for the U.S. entry into World War I; required men to register with the draft.

War Industries Board

Board run by financier Bernard Baruch that planned production and allocation of war materiel, supervised purchasing, and fixed prices, $1917-1919$.

Eighteenth Amendment

Prohibition amendment passed in $1919$ that made illegal the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic beverages; repealed in $1933$.

Espionage Act

$1917$ law that prohibited spying and interfering with the draft as well as making "false statements" that hurt the war effort.

Sedition Act

$1918$ law that made it a crime to make spoken or printed statements that criticized the U.S. government or encouraged interference with the war effort.

eugenics

The study of the alleged mental and physical characteristics of different groups of people aiming to "improve" the quality of the human race through selective breeding.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

Founded in $1910$, the civil rights organization that brought lawsuits against discriminatory practices and published The Crisis, a journal edited by African American scholar W. E. B. Du Bois.

Great Migration

Large-scale migration of southern Blacks during and after World War I to the North, where jobs had become available during the labor shortage of the war years.

Tulsa massacre

A race riot in $1921$-the worst in American history-that occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma, after a group of Black veterans tried to prevent a lynching. Over $300$ African Americans were killed, and $10,000$ lost their homes in fires set by white mobs.

Marcus Garvey

The leading spokesman for Negro Nationalism, which exalted Blackness, Black cultural expression, and Black exclusiveness. He called upon African Americans to liberate themselves from the surrounding white culture and create their own businesses, cultural centers, and newspapers. He was also the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association.

Red Scare of 1919-1920

Fear among many Americans after World War I of Communists in particular and noncitizens in general, a reaction to the Russian revolution, mail bombs, strikes, and riots.

Versailles Treaty

The treaty signed at the Versailles peace conference after World War I, which established President Woodrow Wilson's vision of an international regulating body, redrew parts of Europe and the Middle East, and assigned economically crippling war reparations to Germany but failed to incorporate all of Wilson's Fourteen Points.

League of Nations

Organization of nations to mediate disputes and avoid war, established after World War I as part of the Treaty of Versailles; President Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points" speech to Congress in $1918$ proposed the formation of the league, which the United States never joined.

Lusitania

British passenger liner sunk by a German U-boat, May $7$, $1915$, creating a diplomatic crisis and public outrage at the loss of $128$ Americans (roughly $10$ percent of the total aboard); Germany agreed to pay reparations, and the United States waited two more years to enter World War I.