Gilded Age, Capital, and Labor Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards testing key historical terms, business concepts, labor events, political movements, and influential people from Chapter 16 (Capital and Labor / The Gilded Age).

Gilded Age

The period from roughly the 1870s to 1900 marked by rapid industrial growth, urbanization, immigration, corporate expansion, political corruption, and severe inequality.

Industrialization

The transformation from smaller-scale agricultural and craft production to machine-powered factory production.

Robber Baron

A critical label for a wealthy industrialist accused of using ruthless, exploitative, anticompetitive, or corrupt methods to build a fortune.

Captain of Industry

A favorable label for an industrialist seen as creating jobs, expanding production, advancing technology, strengthening the economy, and giving wealth to public causes.

Mass Production

The manufacture of large quantities of standardized goods, usually with machines, interchangeable parts, and workers assigned to specialized tasks.

Bessemer Process

A method that made steel much faster and cheaper to produce by removing impurities from molten iron.

Taylorism (Scientific Management)

Frederick Winslow Taylor's system for increasing efficiency by dividing work into small tasks, timing and measuring performance, eliminating unnecessary motion, and standardizing methods.

Deskilling

The reduction of the skill and judgment required for a job when production is divided into simple, repetitive tasks.

Economies of Scale

The reduction in the average cost of each unit as a business produces more units.

Corporation

A business legally recognized as an entity separate from its owners that can raise large amounts of capital from investors and protect shareholders through limited liability.

Limited Liability

A legal protection that limits a shareholder's possible loss to the amount invested rather than placing personal property at risk for corporate debts.

Monopoly

Control of nearly all of a market or industry by one company, leaving little meaningful competition.

Trust

A business arrangement used to place multiple companies under centralized control to coordinate production and reduce competition.

Finance Capitalism

An economic system in which bankers, investment firms, credit, and financial markets play a central role in organizing corporations, mergers, and industrial expansion.

Social Darwinism

The claim popularized by Herbert Spencer that relentless social and economic competition naturally produces progress and that wealth and power demonstrate 'fitness.'

Eugenics

A discredited movement coined by Francis Galton that sought to improve the population by controlling human reproduction.

Knights of Labor

A broad labor organization that welcomed skilled and unskilled workers, including women and Black workers, seeking workplace improvements and sweeping social reform.

American Federation of Labor (AFL)

A federation led by Samuel Gompers that primarily organized skilled workers and focused on practical goals such as higher wages, shorter hours, and better conditions.

Collective Bargaining

Negotiation between workers acting as a group and an employer over wages, hours, benefits, and working conditions.

Lockout

A management tactic that prevents employees from entering or working until they accept the employer's terms.

Strikebreaker

A replacement worker hired by employers to keep a business operating during a strike.

Blacklist

A list shared among employers to identify and deny employment to workers considered union organizers, activists, or troublemakers.

Court Injunction

A judicial order requiring or prohibiting an action, frequently used by employers and government to order workers to end strikes or boycotts.

Pinkerton Agents

Members of a private security and detective agency hired by employers to protect property, escort replacement workers, and confront strikers.

Great Railroad Strike of 1877

A nationwide railroad uprising triggered by wage cuts during an economic depression, which shut down rail traffic and was suppressed by state militias and federal troops.

Haymarket Affair (1886)

A Chicago labor conflict where a bomb and gunfire caused deaths, leading public opinion to associate labor activism with radical violence and anarchism.

Homestead Lockout (1892)

A labor conflict at Carnegie Steel where manager Henry Clay Frick locked out workers and hired Pinkertons, culminating in state militia intervention and a major union defeat.

Pullman Strike (1894)

A strike triggered by wage cuts without rent reductions in George Pullman's company town, crushed by a court injunction and federal troops.

Populism

A political movement that grew mainly from farmers and rural producers fighting railroads, banks, monopolies, debt, and the gold-based currency system.

People's Party (Populist Party)

A third political party created from the farmers' movement that advocated railroad regulation, free silver, a graduated income tax, and direct election of senators.

Progressivism

A broad reform movement seeking efficient government, less corruption, regulation of business, and solutions to urban and social problems.

Gold Standard

A monetary system in which currency is backed and redeemable in gold only, limiting the money supply and favoring creditors and bankers.

Free Silver

The demand for the government to freely coin silver as well as gold to expand the money supply, produce inflation, and help debtors and farmers repay fixed debts.

Bimetallism

A monetary system using both gold and silver as the basis of currency.

Subtreasury Plan

A Populist proposal for federally managed warehouses to store crops and provide government loans to farmers.

Socialism

A political and economic theory calling for major means of production to be owned or regulated by the community as a whole rather than controlled solely for private profit.

Socialist Party of America

A political party founded in 1901 that advocated worker protections and public ownership or regulation of major industries.

Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

A radical union founded in 1905, nicknamed the Wobblies, that sought to organize all workers across skill, race, and gender into one movement.

Frederick Winslow Taylor

Developer of scientific management (Taylorism), which sought to increase efficiency by dividing, timing, and standardizing tasks.

Cyrus McCormick

Industrialist associated with the mechanical reaper and mass production using interchangeable parts.

J. P. Morgan

A powerful financier who arranged corporate mergers and combined Carnegie Steel with other firms to form U.S. Steel in 1901.

Andrew Carnegie

Steel industrialist who articulated the Gospel of Wealth, arguing that the rich have a duty to administer surplus fortunes for public benefit.

Gospel of Wealth

Andrew Carnegie's argument that wealthy individuals had a responsibility to administer surplus fortunes for the public good through philanthropy.

John D. Rockefeller

Founder of Standard Oil who controlled about 90 percent of U.S. oil refining by 1890 through trusts, consolidation, and transportation advantages.

George Pullman

Manufacturer of railroad sleeping cars and owner of a company town whose decision to cut wages while maintaining rents provoked the Pullman Strike.

Jay Gould

Railroad financier and stock speculator known for ruthless business methods and strikebreaking during the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886.

Herbert Spencer

English thinker who popularized 'survival of the fittest' and applied evolutionary ideas to human society as Social Darwinism.

Francis Galton

Cousin of Charles Darwin who coined the term 'eugenics' and promoted selective human reproduction.

Samuel Gompers

Longtime leader of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) who focused on practical workplace goals for skilled workers.

Henry Clay Frick

Carnegie Steel manager who initiated a lockout at Homestead in 1892 and hired Pinkerton agents to break the union.

Eugene V. Debs

Railway union leader jailed during the Pullman Strike who became a prominent Socialist leader and five-time presidential candidate.

William Jennings Bryan

Democratic presidential nominee in 1896 who delivered the 'Cross of Gold' speech in support of Free Silver and bimetallism.

William McKinley

Republican presidential candidate who won the Election of 1896 on a platform defending the Gold Standard and signed the Gold Standard Act in 1900.

Gold Standard Act (1900)

The federal law signed by President William McKinley that officially established gold as the sole standard for redeeming paper money.