Industrial Growth in the 19th Century U.S.

Vocabulary and terminology from the 19th-century American industrial era, covering technology, key business figures, and labor conditions.

Charles Hires, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas A. Edison, and Elisha Otis

Inventors who created new modern technologies that helped industrialize the United States.

Bessemer steel

Along with the railroad, this was the century's most significant technical innovation.

Island communities

The relative isolation and self-sufficiency of these widely separated cities and villages were ended by the railroad.

Union Pacific Railroad Company

The company chartered by Congress to build westward from Nebraska to form the first transcontinental railroad.

Central Pacific Railroad Company

The company chartered by Congress to build eastward from California to form the first transcontinental railroad.

General Grenville M. Dodge

A tough Union Army veteran who served as the construction chief for the Union Pacific.

Charles Crocker

A former Sacramento dry-goods merchant who led the Central Pacific crews, including $6,000$ Chinese laborers.

Promontory, Utah

The location where the Union Pacific and Central Pacific lines met on $May\,10,\,1869$.

Rebates

Secret discounts below published rates offered by railroads to large shippers to win their business.

Pooling agreements

Arrangements where railroads shared traffic to control competition, though they rarely survived competitive pressures.

Panic of $1893$

An economic collapse and subsequent depression that led to the bankruptcy of a quarter of the nation's railroads by mid-$1894$.

Andrew Carnegie

A former divisional superintendent for Pennsylvania Railroad who entered the steel industry in $1872$ and built the world's largest industrial company.

John D. Rockefeller

The founder of the Standard Oil Company who triumphed in the oil industry by marketing high-quality products at the lowest unit cost and using consolidation.

Standard Oil Company

A corporate titan that, by $1879$, controlled $90\,\text{percent}$ of the country's oil-refining capacity.

Telephone and Electricity

The two most important innovations of the late $19th$ century.

Rotary press

An innovation from $1875$ that churned out newspapers and introduced a new era in newspaper advertising.

Department store

A national institution pioneered by R. H. Macy, John Wanamaker, and Marshall Field where people could browse and buy products.

Aaron Montgomery Ward

The entrepreneur who started the mail-order trend in $1872$ with a one-sheet price list to serve rural westerners.

$$600$$

The annual amount a family of four needed to live decently, compared to the average worker's earnings of $400$ to $500$.