The Gilded Age US History Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, figures, legislation, and concepts from the Gilded Age US History study guide.

Industrialization

The development of industries for the machine production of goods.

Bessemer Process

A process created to produce large quantities of steel; the blasting of air through molten iron to produce high quality steel.

Transcontinental railroad

A train route across the United States, finished in 1869. It was the project of two railroad companies: the Union Pacific built from the east, and the Central Pacific built from the west. The two lines met in Utah.

Alexander Graham Bell

American inventor; his interest in electrical and mechanical devices to aid people with hearing impairments led to the development and patent of the telephone.

Thomas Edison

American inventor best known for inventing the electric light bulb, acoustic recording on wax cylinders, and motion pictures.

Free enterprise system

An economic system in which individuals depend on supply and demand to determine what to produce, how to produce, how much to produce, and for whom to produce.

Corporation

A business owned by stockholders who share in its profits but are not personally responsible for its debts.

Entrepreneur

A person who organizes, manages, and takes on the risks of a business.

Gilded Age

Name for the late 1800s, coined by Mark Twain to describe the tremendous increase in wealth caused by the industrial age and the extravagant lifestyles.

Captain of industry

Term used to describe people who do business in good way and served nation in positive way such as increasing products supply by building factory, raising production, & expanding markets. They also build libraries, universities, and other public services.

Robber baron

Refers to the 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.

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.

Philanthropy

Charity given during the Gilded Age, usually building colleges, libraries, or fine arts buildings.

John D. Rockefeller

An American industrialist and philanthropist. He was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business.

Monopoly

Complete control of a product or business by one person or group; a market in which there are many buyers but only one seller.

Interstate Commerce Act

1887 Act which required railroads to publish rates, forbade discrimination against shippers, and outlawed charging more for short haul than for a long one over the same line.

Sherman Anti-Trust Act

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.

Child labor

In the late 1800s a significant portion of the labor force was made up of children under the age of 15, some as young as 5 years old.

Laissez-Faire

Policy that government should interfere as little as possible in the nation's economy.

Union

A worker association that bargains with employers over wages, benefits, and working conditions.

Knights of Labor

1st effort to create National union. Open to everyone but lawyers and bankers.

Samuel Gompers

American labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history; founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL).

Pullman, Haymarket, Homestead riots

Major riots that came about due to labor strikes

Vertical Integration

Practice where a single entity controls the entire process of a product, from the raw materials to distribution.

Horizontal Integration

A technique used by John D. Rockefeller. An act of joining or consolidating with ones competitors to create a monopoly. Rockefeller was excellent with using this technique to monopolize certain markets.

Social Darwinism

19th century of belief that evolutionary ideas theorized by Charles Darwin could be applied to society.

Nativism

A policy of favoring native-born individuals over foreign-born ones.

Melting Pot

The mixing of cultures, ideas, and peoples that has changed the American nation.

Tammany Hall

A political organization within the Democratic Party in New York city (late 1800's and early 1900's) seeking political control by corruption and bossism

Patronage

Support given by an influential person and the power of a political official to control appointments to office

Graft

Illegal use of political influence for personal gain.

Political Machine

A party organization that recruits voter loyalty with tangible incentives and is characterized by a high degree of control over member activity.

Urbanization

An increase in the percentage and in the number of people living in urban settlements.

J.P. Morgan

An American financier and banker who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation in the United States of America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries

Cornelius Vanderbilt

An American business magnate and philanthropist who built his wealth in railroads and shipping.

Gospel of Wealth

An article written by Andrew Carnegie in June of 1889 that describes the responsibility of philanthropy by the new upper class of self-made rich.

Political Boss

A corrupt leader in a political party who controls votes and dictates appointments. Usually giving jobs or improving lives of immigrants in exchange for votes

Boss Tweed

Head of the Tammany Hall political machine, through which he stole millions of dollars of tax payers money meant to improve the city.

Tenement

Urban dwellings occupied by impoverished families (Immigrants). They are apartment houses that barely meet or fail to meet the minimum standards of safety, sanitation, and comfort.

New Immigrants

Post Civil War immigrants coming from South Eastern Europe and Russia

Old Immigrants

Pre-Civil War immigrants coming from North Western Europe

Plessy v. Ferguson

Supreme court decision that stated the racial segregation was legal. "Separate but Equal"

Chinese Exclusion Act

An act that prohibits all immigration of Chinese laborers into the United States

Social Gospel Movement

A religious movement to correct the social problems; such as economic inequality, poverty, slums, unclean environment, child labor, and poor schools during the Gilded Age.

Granger Movement

A farmers movement organized in the 1870s as a protest against railroad power over the farmers

16th Amendment

income tax

17th Amendment

Direct election of senators

Jim Crow Laws

Laws designed to enforce segregation of blacks from whites

Black Codes

Southern laws designed to restrict the rights of the newly freed black slaves and control employment

Trust

A group of corporations run by a single board of directors

Lockout

a company tool to fight union demands by refusing to allow employees to enter its facilities to work

Immigrant

a person who comes to a country where they were not born in order to settle there

Americanization

Belief that assimilating immigrants into American society would make them more loyal citizens

Inflation

a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money.

Poll taxes and literacy tests

These were 2 methods used by southern politicians to prevent African-Americans from voting

American Federation of Labor (AFL)

1886 *Combination of national craft unions representing labor interests in wages, hours, and safety *Individuals were members of their local unions. *First president was Samuel Gompers

Clayton Antitrust Act

Banning the practices of price discrimination and anti-competitive mergers, the new laws declared strikes, boycotts and unions legal.

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

Bimetallism

A monetary system in which the government would give citizens either gold or silver in exchange for paper currency or checks

William Jennings Bryan

United States lawyer and politician who advocated free silver and prosecuted John Scopes (1925) for teaching evolution in a Tennessee high school (1860-1925)

Cross of Gold Speech (1896)

William Jennings Bryan Supporting Bimetallism Gold Standard made trade with foreign nations easier, but tightened the money supply which hurt the lower class

Socialism

A system in which society, usually in the form of the government, owns and controls the means of production.