Gilded Age and Industrialization Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering historical terms, figures, inventions, and concepts from the Gilded Age and American industrial growth.

Gilded Age

Mark Twain used this term to describe the period in America when many social problems were masked by a thin layer of gold that made things look better than they actually were

Melting pot

The blending together of cultures in America due to high immigration numbers in the late 19th century

Nativism

Anti-immigrant movement during a period of high immigration in the late 19th century

Ellis Island

Processing center for incoming European immigrants arriving in New York

Horizontal integration

Business strategy where a company grows by merging with or buying other companies that make the same product

Vertical integration

Business strategy where a company owns or controls multiple stages of its supply chain

Urbanization

Growth of cities

John D Rockefeller

Associated with Standard Oil

Exodusters

Blacks that left North Carolina and South to the Great Plains: mainly Kansas in the 1870s

Homestead Act

Gave settlers up to $160 acres of land in the West, required settlers to improve land and live on it for 5 years, signed into law by President Lincoln

Chinese immigrants

Came to the US to work on the railroad

Promontory Point

Place where eastern and western parts of transcontinental railroad met

Henry Bessemer

Advanced steel process invention

James Hargreaves

Spinning Jenny invention

Eli Whitney

Cotton gin invention

James Watt

Steam engine invention

Edward Jenner

Smallpox vaccine invention

Henry Ford

Model T automobile invention

Gugliemo Marconi

Radio invention

Thomas Edison

Phonograph/record player invention

Wright Brothers

Invented first functional airplane

Monopoly

Business where one single company supplies all the products

Laissez-Fair

Few government regulations on industry

Robber barons

Squashed all competition, paid very low wages, exploited their workers, and used influences to manipulate government policies

Andrew Carnegie

Gave away millions of dollars to the poor, schools, and other social programs

Cornelius Vanderbilt

Known for controlling shipping and railroads

Jacob Riis

Photographed homeless children and people living in tenements

Upton Sinclair

wrote the “jungle” and worked in meat packing plant to observe unsafe conditions and unhealthy meat

Cities

Expanded with the development of subways, skyscrapers and suspension bridges

Tenements

Purpose was to provide single family homes for working class families

Skyscrapers

Made possible by the invention of the Bessemer process and elevators