CHAP 1 GILDED AGE VOCAB

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Gilded Age

was a time of

• advanced technology

• economic growth

• prosperity only for the politicians/factory owners

middle class suffered

• poverty

• crime

• death

Urbanization

the rapid, massive shift of the American population from rural farming areas into growing industrial cities

Tenements

cheap, narrow, multi-family urban apartment buildings that housed massive waves of European immigrants and working-class families

new immigrants

young, male, catholic and Jewish

• spoke little to no English

• majority were unskilled agricultural laborers with little money or education

old immigrants

• had considerable skills

• high literacy

• mostly protestant

• tried to assimilate skills and high levels of literacy

Settlement House

a community center in a poor, urban neighborhood—usually staffed by educated, middle-class reformers who literally lived ("settled") among the working poor and recent immigrants

nativism

a political and social belief system that favored established, white, native-born Protestant Americans over new immigrants, viewing newcomers as a threat to the nation's culture, economy, and political stability

Americanization movement

• designed to assimilate people into the main culture

• schools, volunteer groups, teach citizenship skills

• English, American history, cooking etiquette

Chinse Exclusion Act (1882)

to ban immigration based on a specific race and nationality

Gentlemen’s Agreement (1907)

was an informal diplomatic understanding between the United States and Japan where Japan agreed to stop issuing emigration passports to laborers

Immigration Act of 1917

• was passed by the U.S. Congress on February 5, 1917

• to sharply restrict immigration into the United States

Laissez-faire Capitalism

• French for “leave alone companies operated without government interference

-an economic philosophy of minimal government interference in business and the free market

socialism

• an alternative laissez-faire industrial capitalism.

• It called for community or public ownership of the means of production (factories, railroads, and land) rather than private corporate control

trusts

a business arrangement where competing companies handed their stock over to a single group of people called trustees to manage them as one combined entity

holding company

• to buy all company shares to eliminate competition

• a corporation that did not make goods or offer services itself

corporations/stocks

• Were owned by people who bought stock, or shares, in a company and were led by a board of directors

• Corporations were considered a legal entity

robber barons

industrialists who took advantage of consumers and workers

Captains of Industry

wealthy and powerful business leaders whose work benefited the American economy

Vertical Integration

a business strategy where a single company controlled every step of the supply chain—from raw materials and manufacturing to shipping and distribution—rather than relying on outside vendors

Horizontal Integration

a business strategy where a company bought out or merged with its direct competitors operating at the same stage of production to dominate an industry

Andrew Carnegie (The steel king)

• an industrialist

• used vertical integration and the Bessemer process to build Carnegie into a multi- million dollar empire

• He built the Carnegie Steel Company in Pittsburgh, which used vertical integration to dominate U.S. steel production as the nation's railroads and cities rapidly expanded

• Despite his public image, his empire faced severe labor unrest, most notably the violent 1892 Homestead Strike at his steel mills

J.P Morgan

American financier and investment banker who dominated Wall Street and corporate consolidation during the Gilded Age.

• He took control of many bankrupt railroads and reorganized them to make a profit

• His monopoly was called “morganization”

John D. Rockefeller

• industrialist

• founder of the standard oil company of ohio

• 1882 formed the nation’s first great “trust” by joining with competing companies

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Cornelius Vanderbilt

• a self-made American business magnate and one of the defining figures of the Gilded Age

• building a massive transportation empire through shipping and railroads that made him one of the richest men in U.S. history

Social Darwinism

• the misapplication of Charles Darwin’s biological theory of natural selection and "survival of the fittest" to human society, economics, and politics

• Survival of the Fittest: Promoted by philosopher Herbert Spencer, the ideology argued that wealthy, powerful industrialists and nations rose to the top because they were naturally "fitter" than others.

• Opposition to Welfare: Adherents believed poverty was a sign of biological or moral weakness. They argued that government programs, charities, or labor unions interfered with natural evolution by trying to save the "unfit".

• Laissez-Faire Capitalism: It justified unbridled, cutthroat competition, corporate monopolies, and massive wealth disparities as natural and beneficial

lobbying

refers to the highly corrupt, unregulated practice of buying political influence that occurred in the United States between the late 1860s and 1900. During this period, powerful corporate monopolies—such as railroad, oil, and steel trusts—systematically used massive financial bribes, corporate stock, campaign payouts, and lavish entertainment to manipulate lawmakers, shape federal legislation, and secure lucrative government favors.

Industrial Working Conditions

Harsh, grueling, and often dangerous. As the nation shifted from an agrarian and artisan economy to large-scale corporate manufacturing, work became regimented, repetitive, and deeply exploitative

• long hours

• low and unstable wages

• dangerous environments

• child labor

• loss of control and Taylorism

• company towns and housing

Knights of Labor

• Under the direction of Terence Powderly, they welcomed unskilled laborers, including blacks, immigrants, and women (accepted all workers)

• 1869: first national labor organization

• Encouraged an 8-hour workday, equal pay for men and women, and used arbitration and collective bargaining first, and striking as a last resort

American Federation of Labor (AFL)

a national federation of trade and craft unions founded in 1886 by Samuel Gompers

• Craft Union (Most Skilled)

• represented skilled labor only; most effective & enduring union

• Main purpose was collective bargaining

• negotiated for better pay, fewer hours & safer conditions

International Workers of the World (IWW) (Wobblies)

was a radical international labor union

• The IWW aimed to unite all wage laborers into a single global union structured by industry rather than by separate craft or skill

American Railway Union

• founded in Chicago in February 1893

• Unlike traditional craft unions that only organized workers by specific trades (such as conductors or engineers), the ARU welcomed all railway workers regardless of their specific job or skill level

Great Railroad Strike of 1877

• the first major multi-state and nationwide general labor strike in United States history

• Caused

• Economic Depression

• Repeated Wage Cuts

• Deep Resentment

Haymarket Affair (1886)

a violent clash on May 4, 1886, in Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois, that marked a turning point for the American labor movement during the Gilded Age

• The Context: Workers across the United States launched a massive strike movement on May 1, 1886, to demand an eight-hour workday.

• The Spark: On May 3, Chicago police shot and killed striking workers at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant. Labor activists called a peaceful protest rally in Haymarket Square for the next evening.

• The Bombing: As the peaceful rally was wrapping up, police moved in to disperse the crowd. An unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at the officers.

• The Casualties: The blast and ensuing police gunfire killed seven police officers and at least four civilians, leaving dozens more wounded

Homestead Strike (1892)

a violent industrial lockout and strike at the Carnegie Steel Works in Homestead, Pennsylvania

Pullman Strike of 1894

a nationwide U.S. railroad strike and boycott that paralyzed midwestern and western rail traffic

coal strike 1902

a major labor dispute from May 12 to October 20, 1902, in which 147,000 members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) walked off the job in eastern Pennsylvania

Colorado Coal Strike 1913

a massive, violent labor uprising by southern Colorado coal miners against corporate mine owners, most notably the Rockefeller-controlled Colorado Fuel and Iron

yellow dog contract

an agreement between an employer and an employee in which the worker is forced to agree, as a condition of employment, not to join a labor union

Pinkertons

a private security and detective agency

injuction

judicial order issued by federal or state judges that forced unions to stop a strike, boycott, or picketing activity

strikebreakers

replacement workers hired by corporate management to keep factories, mines, and railroads running during labor strikes

Reservation System

federal policy that confined Native American tribes to designated, government-controlled tracts of land to clear the American West for white settlement, railroads, and industrial expansion

homestead act 1862

granted 160 acres of public land for a nominal filing fee to any adult citizen (or person intending to become a citizen) who agreed to live on and "improve" the land by farming it for five years

Dawes Act (1887)

• was a federal law signed by President Grover Cleveland that broke up communally held Native American tribal reservations into private individual land plots

Battle of Little Bighorn 1887

a major armed engagement on June 25–26, 1876, in the Montana Territory, where a coalition of Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors decisively defeated the U.S. Army's 7th Cavalry Regiment

wounded knee massacre

the slaughter of roughly 150 to 300 Lakota men, women, and children by the U.S. Army's 7th Cavalry near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota

American Indian boarding schools

“Kill the Indian, and save the Man”

Federal and church-run institutions designed to forcibly assimilate Native American children into Euro-American culture by erasing their indigenous languages, religions, and traditions

Cowboys

low-paid, hardworking wage laborers who drove and tended massive herds of cattle across the open range of the American West

Cattle trails/Railroad towns

connected cheap, abundant Texas longhorn cattle to high-demand urban markets in the eastern United States

open range

a massive system of publicly owned, unfenced grasslands across the American West where cattle roamed and grazed freely without property boundaries

Exodusters

African Americans who migrated from the post-Reconstruction South to the Great Plains—primarily Kansas, Colorado, and Oklahoma—in the late 1870s and 1880s

sharecropper

a landless farmer—frequently an emancipated African American or a poor white farmer in the American South—who worked a small plot of land owned by someone else

Grange Movement

a coalition of U.S. farmers founded in 1867 to combat rural isolation, falling crop prices, and exploitative monopoly rates charged by railroads and grain elevators

Farmers’ Alliances

Cooperatives: They built cooperative stores, grain elevators, and cotton gins to bypass monopolistic middlemen and lenders.

As mechanization, falling crop prices, high railroad shipping rates, and crushing debts drove rural families into poverty, farmers united to pool their economic and political power

Munn V. Illinois (1877)

as a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that ruled state governments have the constitutional power to regulate private businesses—specifically grain elevators and warehouses—when those businesses serve a public interest

Wabash v Illinois (1886)

that ruled individual states had no power to regulate interstate railroad rates, declaring that such authority belonged exclusively to the federal government under the Commerce Clause

Interstate Commerce Act 1887- February 4th 1887

made the railroad industry the first private enterprise subject to federal regulation

Populist Party

• (officially the People’s Party)

• was an agrarian-based American political party founded in 1891 during the Gilded Age to represent the interests of struggling farmers, laborers, and the working class against corporate and financial interests

Bimetallism/ Cheap money

was a monetary system that backed a nation’s currency with two metals—gold and silver—at a fixed ratio.

Cheap money was the political and economic push to dramatically expand the money supply by coining unlimited amounts of silver.

• Supporters believed this would cause mild inflation, raise crop prices, and make it easier for debt-ridden farmers and workers to pay off their loans

Cross of Gold Speech

A famous address delivered by William Jennings Bryan on July 9, 1896, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago

IDEAS

• Bryan argued for the unlimited coinage of silver alongside gold at a ratio of 16 to 1 to expand the nation's money supply. (Bimetallism)

Party Machines

tightly disciplined, hierarchical political organizations led by a powerful "boss" or a small inner circle that maintained control over major American cities and local governments

• The Exchange System: Machines operated on a system of reciprocal favors. Machine bosses and ward/precinct workers provided the urban poor and newly arrived immigrants with essential social services—such as jobs, housing, food, coal, legal help, and emergency aid—at a time when a formal government welfare state did not exist.

• The Return on Investment: In exchange for these concrete helps, constituents were expected to vote reliably and obediently for the machine's candidates on election day.

Boss William Marcy Tweed

was an American politician and the corrupt leader of Tammany Hall, the powerful Democratic Party political machine that dominated New York City politics during the Gilded Age

• Role and Power: As the head of Tammany Hall and leader of the "Tweed Ring," he controlled local elections, public appointments, police, and city contracts.

• Immigrant Support: He won the loyalty of poor Irish and other immigrant communities by providing them with jobs, housing, and essential welfare services in exchange for their votes.

• Graft and Embezzlement: He and his associates stole an estimated $30 million to $200 million from New York City taxpayers through inflated public works projects, such as the notorious New York County Courthouse.