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America Industrializes; Working People Organize

Robber Barons

Robber Barons

A negative term applied to late nineteenth-century industrialists and capitalists who became very rich by dominating large industries

Corporation

A form of business ownership in which the liability of shareholders in a company is limited to their individual investments. The Formation of corporations greatly stimulated investment in the industry.

Trust

Business monopolies formed through mergers and consolidation that inhabited competition and controlled the market.

Sherman Antitrust Act

1890 act outlawing monopolies that prevented free competition in interstate commerce.

Scientific Manegment

Also known as Taylorism, a management style by Fredrick W. Taylor that aimed to constantly improve the efficiency of employees by reducing the manual labor to its simplest components-thus increasing productivity while decreasing cost.

Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie was in steel production and used vertical integration. Engaged in ruthless practices that would lead some to name the new industrialists robber barons.

Alexander Graham Bell

Invented the telephone which revolutionized communications.

Henry Bessemer

British inventor who designed a furnace that burned the impurities out of melted iron and converted it into steel.

Thomas Edison

Invented the first ever light bulb.

John Rockefeller

Founder of the Standard Oil Company who specialized in the technique known as horizontal integration.

JP Morgan

A banker who played a huge role in engineering industrial consolidation. Channeled funds from Britain to support the construction of railroads. Was a wall street pioneer who created interlocking directories, and created world's largest industrial corporation in US steel.

Jay Gould

Wall Street tycoon who set out to require the western union. Obtained control of the Union Pacific Railway and financial companies to compete for with the grant telegraph.

Fredrick Taylor

Philadephia engineer and businessman who developed the principles of scientific management.

Unions

Group of workers seeking rights and benefits from their employers through their collective efforts.

Knights of Labor

Founded in 1869, a labor federation that aimed to unite all workers in one national union and challenge the power of corporate capitalism.

Haymarket Riot

1866 rally in Haymarket square that resulted in violence. In its aftermath, the union movement in the United States went into temporary decline.

American Federation of Labor

Trade union federation was founded in 1886. Led by its first president Samuel Gompers, the AFL sought to organize skilled workers into specific unions.

Homestrad Strike

1892 lockout strike by steelworkers at Andrew Carnegie's Homestead Steel factory. The strike collapsed after a failed assassination attempt on Carnegie's plant manager, Henry Clay Frick.

Pinkertons

A company of private investigators and security guards is sometimes used as a corporation to break up strikes and labor disputes.

Pullman Strike

1894 strike by workers against Pullman railcar company. When the strike disrupted rail service nationwide, threatening mail delivery, President Grover Clevland ordered federal troops to get the railroads moving again.

Industrial Workers of the Wolds

Organizations that grew out of the activities of the Western Federation of Miners in the 1890s and formed by Eugene V. Debs. Known as Wobblies, the IWW attempted to unite all skilled and unskilled workers in an effort to overthrow capitalism.