The Gilded Age

Carnegie

Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist who worked in the steel industry.

Vanderbilt

US entrepreneur and key figure in the 1800s who amassed his wealth in shipping and railroads.

Rockefeller

An American businessman and philanthropist who worked in the oil industry.

JP Morgan

Prominent American financier who made JP Morgan Chase & Co.

Ellis Island

Immigrant inspection and processing station in the United States.

Angel Island

A facility on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay that took in immigrants arriving on the West Coast, mostly from Asia.

Political Machines

Organized political party, led by a powerful boss or a small group, that commands enough votes to maintain political and administrative control of an area.

Boss Tweed

An American politician that was the political boss of Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party's political machine that played a major role in the politics.

Nativism

The policy of protecting the interests of native-born or established inhabitants against those of immigrants.

Thomas Nast

American caricaturist and editorial cartoonist, he was a sharp critic of 'Boss' Tweed and the Tammany Hall Democratic Party political machine.

Unions

An organized association of workers formed to protect and further their rights and interests; a labor union.

Haymarket Square Riot

The aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on May 4, 1886 at Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois.

Marxism/Communism

Political and economic theory developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, while communism is the classless, stateless, and moneyless society that Marxism projects as the final stage of history.

Industry

Economic activity concerned with the processing of raw materials and manufacture of goods in factories.

Bessemer Process

A steel-making process, now largely superseded, in which carbon, silicon, and other impurities are removed from molten pig iron by oxidation in a blast of air in a special tilting retort.

Homestead Riot

An industrial lockout and strike in 1892 at Carnegie's Steel Plant in Homestead, Pennsylvania, which started a battle in which strikers defeated private security agents.

Muckrakers

A journalist or writer who investigates and exposes corruption, wrongdoing, and social injustices in an established institution, especially in politics or business.

Progressives

A diverse group of reformers who, from the 1890s to the 1920s, sought to address the social, economic, and political problems created by rapid industrialization and urbanization.

Jacob Riis

Danish-American journalist and social reformer best known for his pioneering use of photography and writing to expose the deplorable living and working conditions in New York City's slums during the late 19th century.

Upton Sinclair

A pioneering 'muckraking' journalist and novelist best known for his 1906 novel, The Jungle, which exposed the horrific, unsanitary conditions in the meatpacking industry.

Ida B Wells

A pioneering investigative journalist, an early civil rights leader, and a suffragist who fearlessly exposed racial injustice and fought for equal rights, particularly against lynching and segregation, using journalism and activism to advocate for African Americans and women.

Booker T Washington

Former slave, a leading African American educator, orator, and advisor to presidents in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, best known for founding the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

WEB DuBois

Born free, a pivotal sociologist, historian, activist, and author who co-founded the NAACP, edited The Crisis magazine, and wrote the influential work The Souls of Black Folk.

Mother Jones

A prominent Irish-born labor organizer, activist, and political agitator who became a national figure for her work with the working class.

Hull House

The first and most famous American settlement house, founded in Chicago in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr.

Chinese Exclusion Act

A 1882 U.S. federal law that banned Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States and prevented Chinese nationals from becoming citizens.

Thomas Edison

American inventor and businessman known for developing the electric light bulb, the phonograph, and the motion picture camera.

Lewis Latimer

Pioneering African American inventor, engineer, and draftsman.

Alexander Graham Bell

A foundational figure of the Second Industrial Revolution, best known for inventing the telephone in 1876 and establishing the Bell Telephone Company.

Teddy Roosevelt_ Trust Buster

The 26th President of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909. A central figure of the Progressive Era, he is known for expanding the power of the presidency and using the federal government to regulate big business, conserve natural resources, and protect consumers.

Monopolies

A market structure where a single company or entity has exclusive control over the supply and price of a good or service, leading to an unreasonable restraint of competition, higher prices, and less consumer choice.

NAACP

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Founded in 1909, it is the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the United States, working to ensure that all people of color have equal political, educational, social, and economic opportunities through advocacy and legal action.

The Gilded Age

term coined by Mark Twain and a period of serious problems masked by economic growth

laissez-faire

businesses operate without gov’t interference (HANDS OFF!)

Alexander Graham Bell

invented telephone, 1876, revolutionized communication, and created jobs for women (secretaries).

George Westinghouse

developed technology to send electricity over long distances and was used in homes and factories.

trusts

a way of merging businesses together: one person still controls.

Horizontal integration

gaining control of many businesses that make the same product. 

Vertical Integration

gaining control of businesses that make up all parts of a product’s development.

Robber Barons

term used to describe business men that formed monopolies and trusts.

Captains of Industry

 term applied to same businessmen because they served the nation positively.

Social Darwinism

survival of the fittest” applied to humans.

Labor union 

organized group of workers to protect and further their rights.

Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

prohibited immigration of Chinese laborers.

tenement housing

low-cost, designed to fit as many families as possible.

Tammany Hall

Democratic headquarters in NY, known as the political machine of NYC.

Jane Addams

Addams is best known for founding Hull House in Chicago in 1889, a progressive settlement house that offered education and social services to working-class immigrants and laborers to help reduce poverty. 

Ida Tarbell

American investigative journalist, writer, biographer, and lecturer who became a prominent figure in Progressive Era reform and muckraking. Tarbell is best known for her 19-part series in McClure's Magazine that exposed John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company, which contributed to the company's prosecution under anti-trust laws.