Gilded Age and Progressive Era Key Terms

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering key historical figures, movements, concepts, and events of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era based on the provided notes.

Alice Hamilton

A physician who pioneered reform in occupational health by studying working conditions and industrial poisons (such as lead, carbon monoxide, and mercury), leading to early workplace safety laws through U.S. Bureau of Labor Reports.

Armory Show

The 1913 first large-scale exhibition of modern European and American art in the United States, which introduced styles of European modernism—such as Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase—and inspired artists to move away from traditional realism.

Ashcan School

An artistic movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that depicted the dramatic realism of urbanization, focusing on the working class, immigration, and economic disparities using dark color palettes and quick brush strokes.

Assimilation

The process in which immigrant groups or Native Americans were absorbed through force, pressure, or freewill into the American mainstream, often forcing them to abandon native languages, customs, religions, and traditions.

Boss Rule

A system of political control where authoritative leaders maintained command over local government using a network of bribery and corruption known as a political machine.

"City Beautiful" Movement

An urban planning and architectural movement that sought to improve American cities from overcrowding, disease, crime, and pollution by constructing grand boulevards, public parks, and civic buildings.

Social Darwinism

The application of Charles Darwin's biological theory of evolution (survival of the fittest) to human societies, business, and wealth, asserting that economic competition was a natural law.

Edward Hopper

An American realist painter who focused on intense solitude, isolation, and alienation in modern urban and rural American life, famous for works such as Nighthawks.

Henry James

A Gilded Age literary realist author who wrote about the psychological tensions and cultural clash between upper-class Americans and European society in novels like Daisy Miller and The Portrait of a Lady.

Jacob Riis

A famous photojournalist and muckraker who exposed the squalid, overcrowded living conditions of poor immigrants in New York City's tenement housing in his 1890 book How the Other Half Lives.

Kate Chopin

An early feminist author known for her realist fiction novels, such as The Awakening (1899), which challenged traditional gender norms and social expectations placed on women.

National Consumer League

An official league formed by Jane Addams, Josephine Shaw Lowell, and Florence Kelley that organized consumer boycotts to press industrial factories into improving working conditions for women and children.

Social Realism

An artistic, literary, and photojournalistic movement of the late Gilded Age and Progressive Era that sought to portray the harsh realities of urban industrial life, working-class struggles, and slum conditions.

Stephan Crane

An influential Gilded Age author and journalist who pioneered literary realism and naturalism in American literature, best known for his vivid depictions of war, poverty, and urban life.

Tenements

Multi-story, highly congested urban apartment buildings designed to house large numbers of low-income working-class families and newly arrived immigrants.

Theodore Dreiser

A prominent Gilded Age and Progressive Era novelist and journalist who led the American literary naturalism movement, known for writing unvarnished critiques of industrial capitalism and urban morality.

Upton Sinclair

An author and famous muckraker whose 1906 investigative novel The Jungle exposed corporate corruption, exploited labor, and unsanitary conditions in Chicago slaughterhouses, triggering federal reforms.

William James

An intellectual and Harvard professor widely regarded as the "Father of American Psychology" who co-founded Pragmatism and established the first psychology laboratory.

Modernism

A cultural and artistic movement (1890s–1940s) in which artists, writers, and intellectuals deliberately rejected traditional Victorian moral codes and conventional art styles to reflect rapid industrial society.

Pragmatism

A philosophical movement co-founded by William James holding that the "truth" of ideas and theories is determined by their practical success and ability to solve real-world problems.

William M. Tweed

The leader of the Tammany Hall political machine in New York City who siphoned off millions in taxpayer funds while controlling municipal jobs, police appointments, and city contracts.

Tammany Hall

The New York City Democratic political machine that maintained political dominance by exchanging social support, housing, and legal help with newly arrived immigrants for their votes.

Walter Rauschenbusch

A Baptist minister and leading theologian of the Social Gospel movement who argued in Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907) that Christian ethics must be applied to societal problems and economic injustice.

Homestead Strike 1892

A violent industrial lockout and strike at Carnegie's Homestead Steel Works where manager Henry Clay Frick hired private Pinkerton guards to suppress workers, resulting in 16 deaths.

Knights of Labor

A national labor union founded in 1869 that accepted all workers (skilled, unskilled, women, and African Americans) and campaigned for an 8-hour workday, equal pay, and the abolition of child labor.

Marshall Field

A merchant who founded Marshall Field & Company in Chicago, transforming shopping into a luxurious consumer experience and pioneering modern department store standards like "Give the Lady What She Wants."

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A sociologist and feminist author of Women and Economics (1898) and "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892) who argued that women's financial dependence on men forced them into domestic servitude.

Social Gospel

A Protestant Christian activist movement that argued Christians had a moral duty to apply Christian ethics to overcome urban poverty, inequality, and industrial injustice.

Gospel of Wealth

An 1889 essay by Andrew Carnegie arguing that wealth inequality was an inevitable result of free-market capitalism, but that the rich had a moral obligation to distribute their wealth for public benefit during their lifetime.

AFL (American Federation of Labor)

A national labor union founded in 1886 by Samuel Gompers that comprised skilled workers and focused pragmatically on immediate economic gains like higher wages and shorter hours.

Political Machine

An unofficial, highly disciplined political organization that controlled municipal government through bribery, political patronage, and granting jobs or aid in exchange for votes.

Cross of Gold

A famous 1896 address delivered by William Jennings Bryan at the Democratic National Convention attacking the gold standard and championing bimetallism ("free silver").

Mass Transportation

Public transit networks—such as electric streetcars, cable cars, elevated trains ("els"), and subways—developed in late-19th-century American cities to transport urban populations.

WTUL

An organization founded in 1903 that brought together working-class female laborers and well-off reformers to help women organize into unions and lobby for protective workplace legislation.

Louis Sullivan

An American architect known as the "Father of Skyscrapers" and "Father of Modernism" who pioneered steel-framed commercial buildings and coined the phrase "Form follows function."

Frederic Law Olmsted

The premier 19th-century landscape architect and conservationist who championed the City Beautiful Movement and designed major urban public parks like New York City's Central Park.

Urbanization

The mass movement of populations from rural areas to urban centers, transforming the United States from an agrarian society into an industrial, city-dominated nation.

Samuel Gompers

The long-time president of the AFL who championed "pure and simple" or "bread and butter" unionism, focusing strictly on practical economic gains through collective bargaining and strikes.

Populist Party

A political party formed in 1892 primarily by agrarian workers and labor activists to combat corporate government bias and fight falling crop prices through reforms like bimetallism.

Omaha Platform (1892)

The 1892 founding platform of the Populist Party that advocated for free silver (bimetallism), government ownership of public infrastructure, and economic protection for farmers.

Joseph Pulitzer

Newspaper publisher of the New York World who revolutionized journalism by introducing human-interest stories, dramatic headlines, colorful comics, and yellow journalism for working-class readers.

Chinese Exclusion Act

A 1882 federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur that banned Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States and denied existing Chinese residents a pathway to citizenship.

W.E.B. Du Bois

An African American sociologist, author of The Souls of Black Folk, and co-founder of the Niagara Movement and NAACP who demanded immediate political, social, and civil equality for Black citizens.

William Randolph Hearst

Publisher of the New York Journal who utilized yellow journalism to expose social disparities and sensationalized events to stoke anti-Spanish sentiment before the Spanish-American War.

Megalopolis

A massive, continuous urban region formed when multiple metropolitan areas expand and merge into a single sprawling urban corridor linked by infrastructure and transportation.

Emily Dickinson

A famous poet whose posthumously published poetry focused inward on death, immortality, nature, and faith, contrasting with the dominant Gilded Age trends of industrial realism.

Booker T. Washington

An influential civil rights leader who advocated for "accommodationism" in his Atlanta Compromise speech, encouraging Black Americans to accept temporary segregation in exchange for vocational education.

Atlanta Compromise (1895)

A speech delivered by Booker T. Washington proposing that Black Americans temporarily submit to segregation and disenfranchisement in exchange for basic education and economic opportunities.

George Inness

An American landscape painter whose work shifted from the Hudson River School style to Tonalism, reflecting the cultural transition from natural beauty to industrial transformation.

John Dewey

An influential philosopher and educator who advocated for Pragmatism and Progressive Education centered on experimental, hands-on learning over rote memorization.

Comstock Law

A Gilded Age federal law that banned sending "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" materials through the mail, effectively criminalizing the distribution of birth control and abortion information nationwide.

Central Park

A massive public park in New York City designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux under the "Greensward Plan" to serve as an urban refuge from industrialization.

Daniel Burnham

A prominent architect and urban planner who served as Director of Works for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition ("The White City") and spearheaded the City Beautiful Movement.

Winslow Homer

A celebrated Gilded Age Realist landscape painter and printmaker best known for his depictions of nature, rural American life, and dramatic marine scenes.

Naturalism

A literary style influenced by Social Darwinism that portrayed human beings as helpless victims controlled by biological instincts, economic forces, and social environments rather than free will.

Vaudeville

The most popular commercial mass entertainment of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, featuring fast-paced variety shows with musicians, comedians, acrobats, and trained animals.

Salvation Army

A Christian charitable organization imported from England in 1880 that provided food, shelter, and religious preaching directly to the urban poor in slum districts.

Mary Cassatt

An American impressionist painter renowned for her realistic, sensitive portraits capturing the private domestic lives and experiences of women and children with dignity.

Henry George

A political economist and author of Progress and Poverty (1879) who proposed a 100% "Single Tax" on the unearned increase of land values to eradicate wealth inequality and speculation.