The Gilded Age Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, inventions, economic concepts, and major figures from the Gilded Age lecture transcript.

Gilded Age (~1865-1905)

Tremendous economic growth following the Civil War and lasting until the early 1900s, in which American life was transformed or modernized by urbanization, industrialization, immigration, and new inventions, characterized by the extreme wealth of robber barons and extreme poverty of the urban working class.

Rural

Countryside where less people live, with more open farms and nature.

Urban

Cities where many people live densely.

Urbanization

When many people moved from rural areas to urban cities.

Industrialization

When factories and machines produce goods on a large scale supply goes up and cost goes down.

ROSE

The four things of the American Industrial Revolution that made the Gilded Age possible: Railroads, Oil, Steel, and Electricity.

Henry Ford

Gilded Age figure who transformed American life with the Moving Assembly Line.

Thomas Edison

Gilded Age figure who transformed American life with the Light Bulb.

Alexander Grand Bell

Gilded Age figure who transformed American life with the Telephone.

Wilbur and Orville Wright

Gilded Age figures who transformed American life with the Airplane.

Capitalism

An economic system characterized by private ownership in which the free market alone controls the production of goods and services.

Robber Baron

A business leader who uses ruthless business tactics to gain wealth, often having monopolies, charging high prices, and paying employees low wages with long hours in dangerous working conditions.

Monopoly

An illegal situation where one company controls all of the supply of a product or service so that there is no competition, allowing them to raise prices.

John D. Rockefeller

A Robber Baron who monopolized the Oil industry.

Cornellius Vanderbilt

A Robber Baron who monopolized Railroads.

JP Morgan

A Robber Baron who monopolized Banking.

Andrew Carnegie

A Robber Baron who monopolized the Steel Industry.