Unit 2 Test: Industrialization, Urbanization and Immigration

Vocabulary terms and definitions covering industrialization, urbanization, immigration, labor unions, and key historical figures.

Entrepreneur

A person who starts up and takes on the risk of a business.

Free enterprise

Economic system in which individuals and businesses are allowed to compete for profit with a minimum of government interference.

Laissez-faire

Idea that government should play as small a role as possible in economic affairs.

Patent

Exclusive rights over an invention; copyright.

Bessemer Process

A way to manufacture steel quickly and cheaply by blasting hot air through melted iron to quickly remove impurities.

Suspension bridge

Bridge that has a roadway suspended by cables.

Time zones

24 hour zones that are 1,000 miles apart from the other, each one is an hour before or after the one next to it; helps to differentiate between the different times from one point on the Earth to another point.

Mass production

Process of making large quantities of a product quickly and cheaply.

Cash crop

A crop produced for its commercial value rather than for use by the grower.

Corporation

A business owned by stockholders who share in its profits.

Monopoly

Complete control of a product or business by one person or group, company.

Cartel

A formal organization of producers that agree to coordinate prices and production.

John D. Rockefeller

Established the Standard Oil Company, the largest monopoly in US history.

Horizontal Integration

System of consolidating many firms in the same business.

Vertical Integration

Practice where a single entity controls many different business types in order to control the entire process of a product, from the raw materials to distribution.

Trust

A group of corporations run by a single board of directors, often with monopolistic practices.

Andrew Carnegie

A Scottish-born American industrialist and philanthropist who founded the Carnegie Steel Company in 1892. By 1901, his company dominated the American steel industry.

Social Darwinism

The application of ideas about evolution and "survival of the fittest" to human societies - particularly as a justification for extreme wealth inequality.

Interstate Commerce Commission

An agency that sets the laws for all the companies that do business across state lines.

Sherman Antitrust Act

First federal action against monopolies, signed into law by Harrison and extensively used by Theodore Roosevelt for trust-busting; initially misused against labor unions.

Sweatshops

Places where workers, mainly women, labored long hours under poor conditions for low wages, often at machines making mass-produced products.

Company town

Community owned by the business and rented out to employees, where residents rely upon one company for jobs, housing, and shopping.

Collective bargaining

Process by which a union representing a group of workers negotiates with management for a contract.

Socialism

A political and economic theory of social organization that favors public, instead of private, control of property and income, asserting that society should control a nation's wealth rather than private individuals.

Knights of Labor

Labor union made up of all workers of any trade, skilled and unskilled, which included women and African Americans; focused on broad social reforms, participated in failed strikes, and largely disappeared by 1890.

Samuel Gompers

Creator of the American Federation of Labor who provided a stable and unified union for skilled workers.

American Federation of Labor (AFL)

Formed in 1886 as a combination of national craft unions representing labor interests in wages, hours, and safety; focused on "pure and simple unionism" for a better working life with Samuel Gompers as its first president.

Haymarket Riot

1886 labor-related protest in Chicago which ended in deadly violence and led to the end of the Knights of Labor union.

Homestead Strike

1892 steelworker strike near Pittsburgh against the Carnegie Steel Company where ten workers were killed in a riot when "scab" labor was brought in.

Eugene V. Debs

Leader of the American Railway Union who voted to aid workers in the Pullman strike and was jailed for six months for disobeying a court order after the strike ended.

Pullman Strike

Violent 1894 railway workers' strike that began outside Chicago and spread nationwide after Pullman cut wages but refused to lower rents in the company town; ended by the federal government.

"New" immigrants

Immigrants who came to the US from 1840 to 1920, initially from Germany and Ireland, and after 1880 primarily from southern and eastern Europe.

Ellis Island

Immigration processing center that opened in New York Harbor in 1892, where most immigrants were quickly processed and allowed into New York.

Angel Island

West coast immigration station at San Francisco Bay where Asian immigrants, mostly Chinese, were processed under much harsher conditions and questioning than Ellis Island.

Americanization

Belief that assimilating immigrants into American society would make them more loyal citizens.

Urbanization

An increase in the percentage and in the number of people living in urban settlements.

Elisha Otis

Inventor who developed the first safety elevator in 1852.

Salad Bowl Theory

Belief that immigrants to a new country keep their language, customs and culture, acculturation.

IWW (Industrial Workers of the World)

A labor organization for unskilled workers formed by radical unionists and socialists in 1905, sometimes called Wobblies.

Thomas Edison

American inventor and entrepreneur best known for inventing the electric light bulb and founding General Electric.

Jacob Riis

Early 1900s photographer and journalist who exposed the poor living conditions in NYC and Hell's Kitchen tenements in his book "How The Other Half Lives".

Melting Pot Theory

Theory stating that people from other cultures assimilate to the point where their original identities and culture disappear, creating a uniform culture.

Terence Powderly

Union leader of the Knights of Labor.