chapter 6 through the lens

Corporations

Companies or groups of people that invest in a business and then share its profit

Depression

Is a severe and long-term economic decline in which many businesses fail.

Recession

Is a shorter-lasting downturn in business activity

Robber barons

Businessmen who sought to buy out their competitors and who conspired to set prices, enriching themselves

Interstate Commerce Act

Established a commission to investigate complaints and sue companies that violated its regulations.

Bessemer Process

Workers forced air through molten pig iron to remove impurities.

Vertical integration

The control of all phases of production from start to finish.

Horizontal integration

Purchasing other companies to reduce the number of competitors.

Monopoly

Having exclusive control over, such as the steel industry

Social Darwinism

Wealthy individuals, who represented the fittest of humans, were destined to survive and succeed.

Trust

A company managed by members of a board rather than by owners or stockholders.

Muckrakers

Journalists who expose misconduct by an organization or a person.

Telegraph

A machine that transmitted messages along connected wires, to communicate over long distances.

Patent

A license that would give a person sole right to make and sell their invention.

Subsidiary

A secondary business of a larger business.

Parent company

Controlling company of a subsidiary.

Phonograph

record player

Monoculture

The practice of growing only one crop.

Deflation

A decrease in the prices of goods and services.

Workers' compensation

That a worker who had been injured could receive assistance for medical care and loss of income.

Laissez-faire economics

The government rarely interferes in the free market and businesses choose how they will operate, with little or no oversight.

Labor unions

Groups of workers who band together to achieve better pay, safer working conditions, and other benefits.

Scabs

Nonunion workers willing to cross strike lines in order to work.

Anarchism

Anti-government beliefs.

Socialism

The political theory that advocates that the community as a whole should control the production, distribution, and exchange of goods and services.

Push-pull factors

Pressures that forced them from their home countries and drew them to a new one.

Americanization

An effort to immerse immigrants in what some people defined as American culture and transform them into 'true' Americans.

Anti-Semitism

Prejudice against Jewish people.

Tenements

Six- or seven-story, multi-resident buildings, constructed on narrow lots.

Assimilate

Helping people blend in with and adopt American ways of life in the United States.

Nativists

American citizens that felt threatened by what they saw as changing cultural values and competition for employment.

Proganda

Misleading ideas and information that are spread in order to influence people's opinions or advance an organization's or party's ideas.

Vaudeville

A type of show featuring a variety of specialty acts such as singing and instrumental music, dancing, comedy, drama, and acrobatics.

Department stores

Stores offering a unique shopping experience by providing a wide variety of merchandise all under one roof.

Sanitation

Proper waste disposal and a system for providing clean water.

Political machines

Agreed upon exclusive power structures, involving city officials bribing politicians, contractors, and constituents with all manner of favors to keep the city running.

Progressivism

Reform movement from 1890 to 1920 that sought to make state and national politics more democratic and government more efficient.

Referendums

Public votes on individual issues.

Segregation

The separation of different groups of people, usually based on race.

Jim Crow laws

Whites enforced laws to establish and maintain power in society.