Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Unit 1 and 2 (Semester 2)

Pacific Railroad Act (1862)

1862 - Called for the building of the Transcontinental Railroad to stretch across America connecting California and the rest of America.

Homestead Act (1862)

1862 law that authorized Congress to grant 160 acres of public land to a western settler, who had to live on the land for five years to establish title.

Laissez-faire

Theory that opposes governmental interference in economic affairs beyond what is necessary to protect life and property.

Tariffs

Taxes on imported goods - These were set high durin the Gilded Age

Gilded Age

1865-1900; phrase coined by Mark Twain; America emerged as an industrial power; profits became increasingly centralized in the hands of fewer people

Social Darwinism

The belief that only the fittest survive in human political and economic struggle; used by the wealthy to justify the economic status-quo; William Graham Sumner was the leading American exponent of this theory

Horizontal Integration (Trusts)

Type of monopoly where a company buys out all of its competition. Ex. Rockefeller

Vertical Integration

An approach typical of traditional mass production in which a company controls all phases of a highly complex production process.

Tenements

Poorly built, overcrowded housing where many immigrants lived

Social Darwinism

The belief that only the fittest survive in human political and economic struggle.

New Immigration

after 1890; immigrants from South and East Europe; caused alarm for many Americans and led to a resurgence of Nativism

Old Immigration

before 1890, people who came from northern and western Europe to settle in North America

Chinese Exclusion Act

1882 law that barred Chinese laborers from entering the United States

Liberty of Contract

A judicial concept of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries whereby the courts overturned laws regulating labor conditions as violations of the economic freedom of both employers and employees.

Homestead Strike (1892)

Labor dispute at a Carnegie Steel Mill that ended with the Governor of PA sending in the state militia to end the strike.

Pullman Strike (1894)

Railroad strike that started when the Pullman Palace Car Company cut wages while maintaining high rents; led by Eugene V. Debs amd the American Railway Union; federal courts issued injunctions against strikers; strike ended when President Grover Cleveland called in federal troops.

Populist Party

U.S. political party formed in 1892 representing mainly farmers, favoring free coinage of silver and government control of railroads and other monopolies

1896 election

William Jennings Bryan lost to McKinley w/ the "silver issue" dominating the campaign; McKinley won, the Populists disappeared, the GOP became the party who represented the interests of the corporations and the wealthy, and a realignment occurred

Progressives

A group of reformers who worked to solve problems caused by the rapid industrial urban growth of the late 1800s. They were urban, middle class, college educated and NOT united.

Muckrakers

Journalists who wrote about wrongdoing in business, politics and society. Reforms usually followed their articles / books.

Woodrow Wilson

Democratic Progressive president…known for creating the Federal Reserve, Federal Trade Commission, Clayton Antitrust Act, progressive income tax, lower tariffs

Underwood Tariff

Lowered tariffs on imported goods and established a graduated income tax

Federal Reserve Act

a 1913 law that set up a system of federal banks and gave government the power to control the money supply

Clayton Antitrust Act

1914 law that strengthened the Sherman Antitrust Act; certain activities previously committed by big businesses, such as not allowing unions in factories and not allowing strikes, were declared illegal.

Triple Wall of Privilege

The banks, trusts, and tariffs that Wilson pledged to topple were collectively known as this

Arbitration

the process or act of resolving a dispute -- TR used this to solve the 1902 Coal strike - he had a neutral board arbitrate a deal between striking coal miners and the owners of the big coal mining companies