AP US History: Topic 6.10 - Development of the Middle Class

Vocabulary flashcards covering Topic 6.10: Development of the Middle Class, focusing on socioeconomic changes, consumer and leisure culture, spectator sports, and the Gospel of Wealth during the Gilded Age.

Managerial Positions

Corporate roles established in industrial factories to ensure human capital worked efficiently to increase company profits.

Clerical Workers

Office personnel whose positions grew to support managerial staff; women increasingly filled these roles but were paid significantly less than their male counterparts.

Chain Stores

Retail networks that emerged in the late 19th century, offering a wider variety of goods at lower prices than small local competitors.

F.W. Woolworth

An American entrepreneur who established a nationwide chain of retail dry goods stores.

The Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P)

A retail business that began building a national network of grocery stores during the 1870s.

Department Stores

Large urban retail establishments designed to make shopping glamorous and alluring for the growing consumer class.

Marshall Field

A Chicago merchant who created one of the first American department stores.

Factory Workweek Decline (1860–1900)

The reduction of average weekly industrial working hours from nearly $70$ hours in $1860$ to under $60$ hours by $1900$, expanding leisure time for workers.

Cincinnati Red Stockings

The first fully salaried professional baseball team, organized in $1869$.

Chicago Unions and Cuban Giants

Early Gilded Age baseball teams that formed the foundation and roots of the Negro leagues.

1903 World Series

The first modern Major League Baseball championship series, in which the American League's Boston Red Sox defeated the National League's Pittsburgh Pirates.

Dr. James A. Naismith

The physical educator who invented the sport of basketball in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Vaudeville

A popular American theatrical entertainment genre featuring a sequence of diverse acts, including musicians, comedians, magicians, and jugglers.

Lincoln Perry (Stepin Fetchit)

A performer originating in vaudeville who became the first Black movie star and the first Black actor to become a millionaire.

The Birth of a Nation (1915)

A controversial silent epic film directed by D.W. Griffith that marked the arrival of a new era in American feature cinema.

The Gospel of Wealth

An ideology and $1889$ essay by Andrew Carnegie asserting that riches were God's will and that the wealthy held a moral duty to distribute their fortunes to improve society.

Andrew Carnegie's Philanthropy

The charitable distribution of over \text{\\$500 million} to construct public libraries, fund cultural institutions, establish universities, and advance world peace.

John D. Rockefeller's Philanthropy

The large-scale donation of oil wealth primarily targeted toward funding advances in scientific medicine and higher education.