18: Industrialization in the Gilded Age

Haymarket Affair

The rally and subsequent riot in which several policemen were killed when a bomb was thrown at a peaceful workers' rights rally in Chicago in 1886 (distrust in labor unions)

Horizontal Integration

A method of growth wherein a company grows through mergers and acquisitions of similar companies.

Monopoly

The ownership or control of all enterprises comprising an entire industry.

Knights of Labor

A significant labor organization advocating for 8-hour work days, equal pay, no convict labor, and great cooperative enterprises. 'One Big Union'.

Samuel Gompers

Led the American Federation of Labor (AFL), focusing on economic gains. He settled disputes between unions, using the AFL to represent many craft unions, excluding factory workers.

Robber Barons

A negative term for the big businessmen who made their fortunes in the massive railroad boom of the late nineteenth century.

Scientific Management

Mechanical engineer Fredrick Taylor's management style, also called 'stop-watch management,' which divided manufacturing tasks into short, repetitive segments and encouraged factory owners to seek efficiency and profitability over any benefits of personal interaction.

Social Darwinism

Herbert Spencer's theory, based upon Charles Darwin's scientific theory, which held that society developed much like plant or animal life through a process of evolution in which the most fit and capable enjoyed the greatest material and social success.

Vertical Integration

A method of growth where a company acquires other companies that include all aspects of a product's lifecycle from the creation of the raw materials through the production process to the delivery of the final product.

Bessemer Process

Allowed for the creation of furnaces large enough and hot enough to melt iron to produce large quantities of steel. Led the country into a new industrialized age.

Gustavas Swift

Used vertical integration to dominate U.S. meatpacking industry in the late 19th century.

John D. Rockefeller

Pioneered in horizontal integration of the oil industry, focusing on refining oil. Believed monopoly was the way of the future.

J. P. Morgan

Investment banker who started a firm buying and selling stock. Bought out Andrew Carnegie in 1901.

Andrew Carnegie

Pioneered in the centralization of the steel industry, author of Gospel of Wealth

Cornelius Vanderbilt

A robber baron who consolidated small railroad lines (trunk lines) to create the New York Central Railroad Company, one of the largest corporations at the time.