Module 3 and 4: Immigration, Urbanization, and Industrialization

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, people, concepts, and legislation related to Late 19th and Early 20th Century Immigration, Urbanization, and Industrial Expansion in the U.S.

Joseph Pulitzer

A Hungarian immigrant who bought the New York World in 1883 and pioneered popular newspaper innovations such as a large Sunday edition, comics, sports coverage, and women's news.

William Randolph Hearst

Purchaser of the New York Morning Journal in 1895 and owner of the San Francisco Examiner who attempted to outdo Joseph Pulitzer by filling his paper with exaggerated stories of scandals and hypnotism.

Department Store

A retail concept first brought to America by Marshall Field of Chicago in 1865, featuring several floors of specialized departments and offering bargain basement goods.

Chain Store

Retail stores offering the same merchandise under the same ownership that sell goods for less by buying in quantity and limiting personal service, pioneered in the 1870s by F. W. Woolworth.

Ashcan School

A school of American art led in the early 20th century by Robert Henri that painted urban life and working people with gritty realism and no frills.

Pragmatism

A school of philosophical thought developed in the United States in the 1870s by Charles Peirce and William James that judged the value of an idea or innovation based on its practical application to solve problems.

Vaudeville

A popular theater performance style including song, dance, juggling, and slapstick comedy, described in 1899 as 'an American invention' offering something for everyone.

Kinetograph

The first successful motion picture camera, developed in 1888 by Edison Company engineer William Dickson.

Nickelodeons

Five-cent theaters that debuted around 1903 showing silent motion picture features like The Great Train Robbery.

Ragtime

A style of music around the turn of the century blending African American spirituals and European musical forms, which later led to jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock 'n' roll.

Rural Free Delivery (RFD)

A system introduced by the U.S. Post Office in 1896 that brought packages directly to every rural home.

Dime Novels

Light fiction books selling for ten cents that typically told glorified adventure tales of the American West.

Social Gospel Movement

A 19th-century reform movement that preached salvation through service to the poor, holding that churches had a moral duty to help solve urban social problems through good works.

Settlement Houses

Community centers established in slum neighborhoods in the late 1800s, run largely by middle-class, college-educated women, that provided educational, cultural, and social assistance to local residents and immigrants.

Jane Addams

One of the most influential members of the settlement house movement who cofounded Chicago's Hull House in 1889 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

Urbanization

The rapid growth of cities, occurring mostly in the Northeast and Midwest regions of the United States during the late 19th century.

Americanization Movement

A social campaign sponsored by the government and concerned citizens designed to assimilate people of wide-ranging immigrant cultures into the dominant American culture.

Tenement

An overcrowded and unsanitary multifamily urban dwelling commonly located in urban slums.

Social Stratification

The organization of people into distinct social classes based on wealth.

Mass Transit

Transportation systems designed to move large numbers of people along fixed routes, enabling workers to commute easily and linking urban neighborhoods.

Social Mobility

The ability of families or individuals to move into a higher social class.

Ellis Island

The chief immigration processing station in New York Harbor from 1892 to 1924 through which an estimated 17 million immigrants entered the United States.

Angel Island

An immigration processing station in San Francisco Bay where approximately 50,000 Asian immigrants entered the U.S. between 1910 and 1940 while facing harsh questioning and detention.

Melting Pot

A term describing a mixture of people of different cultures and races who blend together by abandoning their native languages and customs.

Nativism

Overt favoritism toward native-born Americans, which fueled anti-immigrant sentiment and demands for legislative restrictions on immigration.

Chinese Exclusion Act

An 1882 law enacted by Congress that banned entry to all Chinese immigrants except students, teachers, merchants, tourists, and government officials.

Gentlemen's Agreement

A 1907–1908 deal in which Japan's government agreed to limit the emigration of unskilled workers to the U.S. in exchange for the repeal of San Francisco's school segregation order.

Bessemer Process

A cheap and efficient steelmaking process developed around 1850 by Henry Bessemer and William Kelly that involved injecting air into molten iron to remove carbon and impurities.

Transcontinental Railroad

A railway network spanning the continent, completed on May 10, 1869, when the Central Pacific and Union Pacific lines met at Promontory, Utah.

George M. Pullman

An industrialist who built a factory for manufacturing sleeper railroad cars and created a tightly controlled, planned company town for his workers in Illinois.

Crédit Mobilier

A fraudulent construction company formed in 1864 by Union Pacific Railroad stockholders that pocketed profits by charging two to three times the actual cost of laying track.

Munn v. Illinois

An 1877 Supreme Court case upholding Granger laws that affirmed the state and federal government's right to regulate private industry to serve the public interest.

Interstate Commerce Act

An 1887 law that reestablished the federal government's right to supervise railroad activities and created the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC).

Laissez-faire

A French term meaning 'to let do,' referring to an economic doctrine that permits companies to conduct business without government intervention or regulation.

Social Darwinism

A philosophy adapting Charles Darwin's natural selection theory to human society, arguing that unrestrained free competition ensures the survival and success of the fittest businesses and individuals.

Vertical Integration

A business strategy of buying out suppliers (such as coal fields, iron mines, and transport lines) to control all stages of the manufacturing process.

Horizontal Integration

A business consolidation process that joins together or merges companies producing similar products.

Trust

A business consolidation method where competing companies turn over control of their operations to a single group of trustees who run the separate entities as one corporation.

Monopoly

Complete control over an industry's production, wages, and prices, eliminating market competition.

Sherman Antitrust Act

An 1890 law passed by Congress that made it illegal to form a trust that interfered with free trade between states or with other countries.

Samuel Gompers

A prominent labor leader who led the Cigar Makers' International Union and served as president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL).

American Federation of Labor (AFL)

An alliance of trade and craft unions formed in 1886 that used collective bargaining and strikes to achieve higher wages and shorter workweeks for skilled workers.

Eugene V. Debs

A labor leader who organized the industrial American Railway Union (ARU) and later ran as the presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.

Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

A radical labor union organized in 1905 in Chicago, headed by William 'Big Bill' Haywood, that welcomed unskilled workers and African Americans into its ranks.