Vocab Unit 6

Pendleton Act

a legislation passed in 1883 aimed to reform the federal government by making it so that a merit-based system was put in place for hiring people into government positions and promoting civil servants.

Homestead Strike

a violent strike in 1892 at Homestead Works in Pittsburgh, PA over a lock out after the company decided to cut wages by almost 20%. It ended with the destruction of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers

J.P. Morgan

helped finance the reorganization of insurance companies, banks, and railroads and became one of the most powerful bankers of his time. He bought out Carnegie and started the United States Steel Corporation in 1901.

Social Darwinists

a theory that only the fittest survive in human political and economic struggles; it was typically connected to a laissez-faire style of economy.

Sherman Anti-Trust Act

the first federal law that limited the concentration of power that was deemed harmful to competition and trade; it authorized the federal government to institute proceedings against trusts to dissolve them

Knights of Labor

a secret society of garnet workers in Philadelphia, but they later emerged as a nation movement by 1878. They became the first major labor organization in the United States; they organised unskilled and skilled workers to campaign for eight hour work days.

Vertical Integration

a company's control of all aspects of a product's life-cycle

Horizontal Integration

the idea that a company controls the majority of one stage of the production of a good

Andrew Carnegie

an American industrialist and philanthropist, born in Scotland, who founded the Carnegie Steel Company in 1892. By 1901 he was able to lead his company to dominate the American steel industry; after retiring he donated his money toward educational, scientific, and technological institutions.

Samuel Gompers

a labor leader and the founder of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which became a very prominent labor organization in the United States during the Gilded Ages.

Closed Shop

a term used for union-organizing that refers to the practice of allowing only unionized workers to work for a certain company. The AFL became widely known for negotiating closed shop agreements with many employers.

Settlement houses

places where immigrants went to live after entering the United States. There they would learn English and how to find employment, among many other things.

Yellow journalism

journalism that exploits, distorts or exaggerates the news in their writing in order to sensationalize it and attract readers

Woman's Christian Temperance Union

a prominent women's organization that called for the prohibition of alcohol to protect families and all of society, founded in 1874. It promoted the use of a Christian lens to create social reform and was very influential and supported the 18th amendment.

Jane Addams

a pioneering activist and social reformer known for creating Hull House in Chicago, one of the first settlement houses in the United States and fighting for the poor by campaigning for worker's compensation, housing laws, and ending child labor. She was internationally respected for peace activity and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

Booker T. Washington

a former slave who encouraged blacks to keep going with their usual tasks and focus on surviving and not to focus on uprisings. He thought that building a strong economy was the best way to fight for equal rights.

W.E.B. Dubois

a prominent African American scholar and civil rights activist who co-founded the NAACP. He was known for his advocacy for racial equality and his criticizing the injustices faced by African Americans.

Mark Twain

an American author and a renowned platform lecturer who lived from 1835 to 1910. He used a "romantic" type literary approach with some comedy to entertain his readers. His most known works were The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Gilded Age.

Realism

a 19th-century artistic movement where writers and painters wanted to show life as it is and not as it should be or as they want it to be.

Battle of the Little Bighorn

a battle between Americans and Native Americans where the Lakota and Cheyenne had a momentary victory as Custer and his troop died. This battle served as a rallying point for Americans to increase their efforts to force native peoples onto reservations.

Battle of Wounded Knee

the last major armed conflict between the Lakota Sioux and the United States. United States soldiers killed over 250 native men, women, and children at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota, prompting General Nelson A. Miles to describe it as a massacre.

Dawes Severalty Act

an act that broke up Native reservations and distributed land to individual households, selling any leftover land for money to fund the US government. It was meant to civilize Native American, however the second goal was to break them up and cause division among them.

Pullman Strike

a strike by railroad workers upset by wage cuts, lead by Eugene Debs, a socialist, but it was not supported by the American Federation of Labor. Eventually President Grover Cleveland intervened and ordered federal troops to force an end to the strike.

Frederick Jackson Turner

an American historian who made the frontier thesis. He was known for saying that humanity would continue to move as long there was a place for them to move too. He thought that the frontier provided a place for the homeless and solved social problems.

Muckrakers

popular journalists who used publicity to expose corruption and abuses of power in business and government. Their work influenced the passage of key legislations that strengthened the protections of workers and consumers.

Initiative

a political process that allows people to propose new legislation and constitutional amendment though gathering signatures on a petition

Referendum

a direct vote in which the whole electorate, all who are able to vote, is able to vote on a particular proposal and can result in the adoption of that law, policy, or legislation.

Recall

a political process where the people can petition and vote to have an elected official removed from office.

Pure Food and Drug Act

an act that forbade the manufacture or sale of mislabeled or adulterated, making something poorer by adding another substance, food or drugs

Ida Tarbell

a pioneering investigative journalist and one of the leading muckrakers of the Progressive Era

Jacob Riis

a Danish-American journalist who was known for using photographs in order to document the living conditions of the poor conditions of many communities in the early 20th century

Meat Inspection Act

an act that made it required for meat packers to use strict cleanliness standards and to be inspected by a new federal program

Social Gospel

a reform movement led by Protestant ministers attempting to demand better housing and living conditions for the poor in large cities by using religious doctrine