Apush Chapter 17

Gilded age

Coined by Mark Twain to describe the tremendous increase in wealth caused by the industrial age and the ostentatious lifestyles it allowed the very rich. The great industrial success of the U.S. and the fabulous lifestyles of the wealthy hid the many social problems of the time, including a high poverty rate, a high crime rate, and corruption in the government.

Bessemer process

A process for converting iron into the much more durable and versatile steel; process consisted of blowing air through molten iron to burn out the impurities. This made possible the production of steel in great quantities and large dimensions, for use in manufacture of locomotives, steel rails, and girders for the construction of tall buildings.

George Bissell

Pennsylvania businessman who showed the petroleum could be burned in lamps and also yield such products as paraffin, naphtha, and lubricating oil. He began raising money for drilling and became very rich.

Otto

He created gas powered "four stroke" engine and he developed the petrol industry by creating a crude oil and internal combustion engine.

Daimler

An employee of Nicolaus Otto that later perfected an engine that could be used in automobiles.

Ford

He was partially responsible for making the automobile industry into a major force in the American industry. He is also responsible for mass production through his creation of the assembly line.

Wright Brothers

These brothers were bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio who built and flew the first plane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903, which flew for 12 seconds over a distance of 120 feet.

Taylorism

This production technique urged employers to reorganize the production process by subdividing tasks. This sped up production and reduced the need for highly trained skilled workers.

Assembly Line

Created by Henry Ford, this technique cut the time for assembling a chassis from 12 1/2 hours to 1 1/2. It led to higher wages and lower prices.

Slaughterhouses

Chicago was the central location for this food creating process due to it being the principal railroad hub of the central US and because it was the place where railroads brought livestock.

Standard Time

In 1883, Railroad companies established four time zones across the continent, with each having a one hour difference than their neighboring zones.

Carnegie

He was known as the steel king. He integrated himself into every phase of his steel-making operation. His goal was to improve efficiency by making supplies more reliable by controlling the quality of the product at all stages of production and eliminating the middleman.

Limited Liability

A form of business ownership in which the owners are liable only up to the amount of their individual investments.

Morgan

He was a businessman who refinanced railroads during the depression of 1893. He built an intersystem alliance by buying stock in competing railroads.

Horizontal Articulation

The combining of a number of firms engaged in the same enterprise into a large corporation (i.e. railroads)

Vertical articulation

Taking over all the different businesses on which a company relied on for its primary function.

Rockefeller

He was a man who started from meager beginnings and eventually created an oil empire. In Ohio in 1870 he organized the Standard Oil Company. By 1877 he controlled 95% of all of the refineries in the United States. It achieved important economies both home and abroad by its large scale methods of production and distribution. He also organized the trust and started the Horizontal Merger.

Trusts

An economic tool pioneered by men such as Andrew Carnegie of the steel industry and John Rockefeller of the oil industry. Their purpose is to eliminate competition in business. One powerful company will have control of the stocks of many smaller companies in the same line of business, creating a monopoly. The monopoly allows price-fixing and benefits all companies involved.

Myth of the self made man

Rugged individualism that served to justify capitalism by claiming that the industrial economy was not reducing but expanding opportunities for all individuals to succeed and become wealthy through hard work.

Social darwinism

This was a belief held by many that stated that the rich were rich and the poor were poor due to natural selection in society. This was the basis of many people who promoted a laissez faire style of economy.

Law of supply and demand

As demand increases for a product, the price goes up.

Gospel of Wealth

An essay written by Andrew Carnegie that promoted Social Darwinism, said that wealth among the few was the natural and most efficient result of capitalism and that great wealth brought responsibility.

Conwell

A preacher who became rich by delivering his lecture "Acres of Diamonds." In it he said, "There is not a poor person in the U.S. who was not made poor by his own shortcomings."

Alger

A popular novelist during the Industrial Revolution who wrote that virtue, honesty and industry would be rewarded with success, wealth and honor.

George

He was a journalist-author and an original thinker. He saw poverty at its worst in India and wrote the classic Progress and Poverty. This book in 1879 broke into the best-seller lists. He believed that the pressure of a growing population with a fixed supply of land pushed up property values.

Bellamy

He envisioned a utopian socialist society where the government owned the means of production and distribute wealth equally among all citizens. Competition was irrelevant. The book inspired the creation of hundreds of Bellamy discussion clubs.

Molly Maguires

An Irish miner's union that was established in Pennsylvania during the 1860s and 1870s; tens of thousands of Irish were forced to flee their homeland during the potato famine, but were not welcomed in America, who regarded them as a social menace and competition for jobs which forced them to fend for themselves, so they banded together to improve their social, financial, and political situation.

The Great Railroad Strike

A group of railroad workers on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad rose up and began to strike due to wage cuts. This spread up and down the railroad line across the nation. Railroad roundhouse were torched. President Rutherford B. Hayes sent in troops to stop the strike. 100 people died in the strike

Knights of Labor

This was the first group that tried to organize unskilled workers all together. They had a great deal of people because the had open enrollment to women, men, and blacks (also some immigrants but not all).

American Federation of Labor

This group was led by Samuel Gompers; it was an alliance of skilled workers in craft unions; it concentrated on bread-and-butter issues such as higher wages, shorter hours, and better working conditions.

Gompers

He is responsible for the formation of one of the first labor unions; The American Federation of Labor; that worked on getting people better hours and better wages. The formation of this triggered the formation of various others that would come later.

Haymarket Square

100,000 workers rioted in Chicago. After the police fired into the crowd, the workers met and rallied in here to protest police brutality. A bomb exploded, killing or injuring many of the police. The Chicago workers and the man who set the bomb were immigrants, so the incident promoted anti-immigrant feelings.

Homestead Strike

Steelworker strike near Pittsburgh against the Carnegie Steel Company. Ten workers were killed in a riot when pickertons were brought in to force an end to the strike.

Pinkertons

Well-known strikebreakers, & their mere presence was often enough to incite workers to violence. They approached a plant on barges while strikers prepared for them by pouring oil on the water & setting it on fire, and met the guards at docks with guns & dynamite. 3 guards & 10 strikers were killed & others injured after a battle. This group surrendered & were escorted roughly out of town

Frick

Carnegie's chief lieutenant at the Homestead plant near Pittsburgh; he decided the Amalgamated had to go & repeatedly cut wages at Homestead for next 2 years. At one point, he announced another wage cut & gave union 2 days to accept it; so Amalgamated called for a strike. He abruptly shut down plant & called in 300 guards from the Pinkerton Detective Agency to enable the company to hire nonunion workers.

Amalgamated

This group was made up of mostly skilled workers and had a hand hold in the Homestead plant. They played a big part in the Homestead Strike and disbanded after they lost it.

Pullman Strike

When the national economy fell into a depression, a car company cut wages while maintaining rents and prices in a company town where 12,000 workers lived; it halted a substantial portion of American railroad commerce; ended when President Cleveland ordered federal troops to Chicago, supposedly to protect rail-carried mail, but in reality, to crush the strike.

Altgeld

He refused to call out the militia to protect employers. Railroad operators bypassed him and appealed to the federal government where Grover Cleveland sent troops to be sure mail was not disrupted. Federal court issued injunction forbidding continued strike, when Debs defied it they were arrested and imprisoned. Strike quickly collapsed.

Debs

He was the head of the American Railway Union and director of the Pullman strike; he was imprisoned along with his associates for ignoring a federal court injunction to stop striking. While in prison, he read Socialist literature and emerged as a Socialist leader in America.

Socialist Labor Party

This party was dedicated to the welfare of the working class. The platform called for more radical reforms such as public ownership of railroads, utilities, and even of major industries such as oil and steel.