Chapter 16: Business & Labor in the Industrial Era

Captains of Industry

Someone who owns or manages a large, successful business or company.

Thomas Edison and his inventions

An American inventor and businessman. Developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures

Bell’s Telephone

Electric bell that rings to signal a call.

Menlo Park

Thomas A. Edison maintained his experimental laboratories from 1876 to 1886 and where he perfected many of his inventions.

Rock & Standard Oil

Corporations under the leadership of John D. Rockefeller attempted to dominate the entire oil industry through horizontal and vertical integration.

Monopoly 

Corporation so large that it effectively controls the entire market for its products or services.

Sears

Second Industrial Revolution

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, a wave of technological innovations, especially in iron and steel production, steam and electrical power, and telegraphic communications, all of which spurred industrial development and urban growth.

Andrew Carnegie

Corporation under the leadership of Andrew Carnegie that came to dominate the American steel industry.

JP Morgan

An investment bank under the leadership of J. Pierpont Morgan that bought or merged unrelated American companies, often using capital acquired from European investors.

Gospel of Wealth

Extremely wealthy Americans like himself had a responsibility to spend their money in order to benefit the greater good.

Gilded Age 

US. a period of U.S. history in the 1870s noted for political corruption, financial speculation, and the opulent lives of wealthy industrialists and financiers.

**Child Labor**

The use of children in industry or business, especially when illegal or considered __inhumane__.

Coal Mining boys

Offered low wages, forcing many poor families in coal country to send children to work, some as young as 8 years old, nimbly remove slate, rocks, and other impurities from the coal as it came down a chute or conveyor belt.

Molly Maguires

A secret society whose goal was to protect its members from oppressive mine owners.

Great Railroad Strike

Triggered after the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad cut wages for the third time in a year. The country's first major rail strike and witnessed the first general strike in the nation's history

Haymarket Riot

Violent uprising in Haymarket Square, Chicago, where police clashed with labor demonstrators in the aftermath of a bombing.

Homestead Steel Strike

Labor conflict at the Homestead steel mill near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, culminating in a battle between strikers and private security agents hired by the factory’s management.

Eugene Debs

American Socialist leader and five time presidential candidate. In 1897 he created the Social Democratic Party of America. Praise socialism and blame capitalism for war.

Vertical Integration

A business expands by acquiring another company that operates before or after them in the supply chain

Horizontal Integration

A business grows by acquiring a similar company in their industry at the same point of the supply chain

Work of Giants

12,000 Chinese workers labored on this tremendous task and yet were not recognized or included in the celebration, when the Central Pacific and Union Pacific rails were joined today on May 10

Transcontinental Railroad

A train route across the United States that was finished in 1869. The route connected the east and west regions of the U.S. by rail for the first time

Union Pacific & Central Pacific

In 1862, Congress hastily passed the Pacific Railroad Act. This act led to the creation of the Union Pacific, which would lay rails west from Omaha, and the Central Pacific, which would start in Sacramento and build east.

Promontory, Utah Golden Spike

Commemorates the completion of the first Transcontinental Railroad where the Central Pacific Railroad and the first Union Pacific Railroad met on May 10, 1869.

Chinese Workers

Mostly between 1848 and 1880. Fleeing their poverty-stricken land, Chinese people immigrated across the Pacific, mainly to California. They were seen as a hard-working, valuable class. However, Americans felt as if they were threatening their job opportunities s they became racist toward them.

Bessemer Process

Reduces molten pig iron in so-called bessemer converters. Revolutionized steel manufacture by decreasing its cost

Laissez Faire

An economic doctrine holding that businesses and individuals should be able to pursue their economic interests without government interference.