Studied by 6 people
The Industrial Revolution spurred rapid economic growth and urbanization in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, leading to the rise of labor movements advocating for better working conditions, higher wages, and improved rights for workers.
Urbanization
An increase in the percentage and in the number of people living in urban settlements.
Vertical Integration
Practice where a single entity controls the entire process of a product, from the raw materials to distribution.
Horizontal Integration
Absorption into a single firm of several firms involved in the same level of production and sharing resources at that level.
Bessemer Process
A way to manufacture steel quickly and cheaply by blasting hot air through melted iron to quickly remove impurities.
Telegraph
Samuel Morse
A device for rapid, long-distance transmission of information over an electric wire. It was introduced in England and North America in the 1830s and 1840s.
Jan E. Matzeliger
Shoe Making Machine
Sarah E. Goode
Invented Cabinet bed.
First African-American woman to receive a patent in the United States.
Granville T. Woods
Invented a steam boiler furnace, automatic air brake, egg incubator.
Alexander Graham Bell
Invented the telephone.
Thomas Edison
American inventor best known for inventing the electric light bulb.
George Pullman
American inventor of the Pullman sleeping car and founder of Pullman, Illinois.
Henry Ford
1863-1947. American businessman, founder of Ford Motor Company, father of modern assembly lines, and inventor credited with 161 patents.
Orville and Wilbur Wright
These brothers were bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio who built and flew the first plane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903.
Elijah McCoy
Son of runaway slave, invented lubricating cup that oiled running machines.
Garrett Morgan
African American inventor whose inventions included the traffic light and the gas mask.
Madame C. J. Walker
Held the first national meeting for business women in America. Built her own salon, factory and training school in 1910; created hair products like the perm.
George Westinghouse.
An American entrepreneruer and engineer who invented the railroad and the air brake.
American Federation of Labor
1886; founded by Samuel Gompers; sought better wages, hrs, working conditions; skilled laborers, arose out of dissatisfaction with the Knights of Labor, rejected socialist and communist ideas, non-violent.
Labor Laws
Laws which regulated how workers could be paid and treated.
Knights of Labor
1st effort to create National union. Open to everyone but lawyers and bankers. Vague program, no clear goals, weak leadership and organization.
Labor Unions
An organization formed by workers to strive for better wages and working conditions.
Haymarket Riot (1886
A crowd of 3,000 workers protest police brutality at the McCormick Harvester Plant in Chicago. Anarchists threw a bomb at the police who were keeping order in the square. This event would discredit the labor union movement in the U.S.
Homestead Strike (1892)
Steelworker strike near Pittsburgh against the Carnegie Steel Company (US Steel). Ten workers were killed in a riot when "scab" labor was brought in to force an end to the strike.
Pullman Strike (1894),
Nonviolent strike (brought down the railway system in most of the West) at the Pullman Palace Car Co. over wages - President Grover Cleveland shut it down because it was interfering with mail delivery.
Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)
First federal action against monopolies, it was signed into law by Harrison and was extensively used by Theodore Roosevelt for trust-busting. However, it was initially misused against labor unions.
Florence Kelley
Reformer who worked to prohibit child labor and to improve conditions for female workers.
Samuel Morse
Invented the telegraph.
Eugene Debs
Leader of the American Railway Union, he voted to aid workers in the Pullman strike. He was jailed for six months for disobeying a court order after the strike was over.
Upton Sinclair
Muckraker who shocked the nation when he published The Jungle, a novel that revealed gruesome details about the meat packing industry in Chicago. The book was fiction but based on the things Sinclair had seen.
Transatlantic Cable
Is an undersea cable running under the Atlantic Ocean used for telegraph communications. The first was laid across the floor of the Atlantic.
Corporation
A business owned by stockholders who share in its profits but are not personally responsible for its debts.
Stocks
Securities that represent part ownership or equity in a corporation.
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.
John D. Rockefeller
Established the Standard Oil Company, the greatest, wisest, and meanest monopoly known in history.
J.P. Morgan
Banker who buys out Carnegie Steel and renames it to U.S. Steel. Was a philanthropist in a way; he gave all the money needed for WWI and was payed back. Was one of the "Robber barons"
Trusts
A group of corporations run by a single board of directors.
Monopoly
Complete control of a product or business by one person or group; having no competition.
Henry Flagler
One of the partners in Standard Oil; builder of Florida East Coast Railway; founded Palm Beach and "father" of Miami in 1890s
Samuel Gompers
He was the creator of the American Federation of Labor. He provided a stable and unified union for skilled workers.
Trust Busting
(law) Government activities seeking to dissolve corporate trusts and monopolies (especially under the United States antitrust laws)
Robber Barons
Industrialists or big business owners who gained huge profits by paying their employees extremely low wages. They also drove their competitors out of business by selling their products cheaper than it cost to produce it. Then when they controlled the market, they hiked prices high above original price.
