U.S. - Ch. 3 - Creating a Modern America

Thomas Edison

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

John D. Rockefeller

Who built a monopoly and owned Standard Oil?

Andrew Carnegie

Who built a monopoly in the steel industry and owned U.S. steel?

Cornelius Vanderbilt

United States financier who accumulated great wealth from railroad and shipping businesses (1794-1877)

George Pullman

Who made his fortune by designing and building sleeper cars that made long distance rail travel more comfortable? Built a company town near Chicago for his employees.

Wright Brothers

Who developed the first successful motorized air plane in 1903?

Alexander Graham Bell

Who invented the telephone?

Samuel Morse

Who invented the telegraph and the code used with it?

Charles Darwin

Who published "On the Origin of Species" about the concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest?

Trust

When competing companies merged to form this. A board of trustees ran the companies like a single corporation.

Monopoly

When a corporation has no competition and can raise prices or lower quality at will.

Corporation

When a business is owned by the people who buy stock, or shares in the company

political machine

When corrupt organization takes over the political control of a city

Party Boss

The title given to the person who runs a political machine

entrepreneur

A person who starts up and takes on the risk of a business

Gilded Age

A time when businesses grew ever larger, some corporate leaders amassed staggering fortunes

Sherman Anti-Trust Act

This act made it illegal for corporations to form trusts that interfered with fee trade.

Ellis Island

What was the name of the nation's busiest immigrant inspection station in New York Harbor?

Americanization

What is the name of the program to assimilate immigrants into the American culture?

Social Gospel

What is the name of the religious movement with the idea that religious faith should be expressed through good works?

Settlement House

A center in an underprivileged area that provides community services and taught english

Jim Crow Laws

Laws designed to enforce segregation of blacks from whites

NAACP

What is the organization which fights for the rights of African Americans through the legal system?

Social Darwinism

How did people explain the inequalities in American society during the late 1800'S?

Nativists

Americans who feared that immigrants would take jobs and impose their Roman Catholic beliefs on society

Industrial Revolution

the transformation from an agricultural to an industrial nation

Immigration

What was the biggest reason for the increase in population in the US during this period?

George Westinghouse

Who invented the alternating current to distribute electricity using transformers and generators?

Cyrus Field

American businessman who laid the first telegraph wire across the Atlantic.

Laissez-faire

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

Transcontinental Railroad

Completed in 1869 at Promontory, Utah, it linked the eastern railroad system with California's railroad system, revolutionizing transportation in the west

Union Pacific and Central Pacific

What two railroad companies built the transcontinental railroad?

Robber Barons

What did they call the industrialists or big business owners who gained huge profits by paying their employees extremely low wages and who drove their competitors out of business by selling their products cheaper than it cost to produce it?

Credit Mobilier Scandal

What was the government scandal where the Union Pacific Railroad formed a construction company that sold members of Congress shares of stock below the market value in return for more land grants for the railroads?

James J. Hill

Who built the Great Northern Railroad?

Bessemer Process

A cheap and efficient process for making steel, developed around 1850

J. P. Morgan

Who was the banker who buys out Carnegie Steel and created an enormous holding company called U.S. Steel?

holding company

What is a company that is created to buy and possess the shares of other companies, which it then controls?

John Wanamaker

Who opened the country's first department store in Philadelphia called the Grand Depot?

Richard Sears

Who created the largest mail-order catalog retail company in the US?

Lockout

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

Blacklist

A list of persons who were not hired because they were union leaders who were seen as troublemakers

The Great Railroad Strike

July, 1877 - A large number of railroad workers went on strike because of wage cuts. After a month of strikes, President Hayes sent troops to stop the rioting. The worst railroad violence was in Pittsburgh, with over 40 people killed by militia men.

Knights of Labor

labor union that sought to organize all workers and focused on broad social reforms

Pullman Strike

A violent 1894 railway workers' strike which began outside of Chicago and spread nationwide

closed shop

an agreement in which a company agrees to hire only union members

Mother Jones

Labor activist who was a member of the Knights of Labor union and who used publicity techniques to create awareness of the plight of mine workers and child laborers.

Jane Addams

Is best known for founding Hull House in Chicago.

Grange

Originally a social organization between farmers, it developed into a political movement for government ownership of railroads

People's Party

Another name for the Populists. The platform included an unlimited coinage of silver, regulation of railroads, and the graduated income tax

Ida B. Wells

African-American journalist who led the fight against lynching