U.S History

Social Darwinism

The belief that only the fittest survive in human political and economic struggle.

Patents

exclusive rights to make or sell inventions

Entrepreneur

A person who organizes, manages, and takes on the risks of a business in order to make a profit.

Laissez-faire

Idea that government should play as small a role as possible in economic affairs.

Monopoly

Complete control of a product or business by one person or group

Ellis Island

Immigration processing center that open in New York Harbor in 1892

Angel Island

The immigration station on the west coast where Asian immigrants, mostly Chinese gained admission to the U.S. at San Francisco Bay. Between 1910 and 1940 50k Chinese immigrants entered through Angel Island. Questioning and conditions at Angel Island were much harsher than Ellis Island in New York.

Assimilation

the social process of absorbing one cultural group into harmony with another

sweatshop

A shop or factory where workers work long hours at low wages under unhealthy conditions

Company towns/ Mill towns

where an individual company owned all the buildings and businesses. In some situations, company towns developed out of a paternalistic effort to create a utopian worker's village.

Nativism

A policy of favoring native-born individuals over foreign-born ones

Melting Pot Theory

American culture is a blend of many different cultures

Effect of government regulations on industry and labor in the Guilded Age.

Very little impact.

Andrew Carnegie

A Scottish-born American industrialist and philanthropist who founded the Carnegie Steel Company in 1892. By 1901, his company dominated the American steel industry.

J.P. Morgan

A highly successful banker who bought out Carnegie. With Carnegie's holdings and some others, he launched U.S Steel and made it the first billion dollar corporation.

JD Rockefeller

owner of the Standard Oil monopoly and trust

Impact of Strikes in Guilded Age

Violent strikes turn public against organized labor.

Knights of Labor

Led by Terence V. Powderly; open-membership policy extending to unskilled, semiskilled, women, African-Americans, immigrants; goal was to create a cooperative society between in which labors owned the industries in which they worked

skyscraper

a very tall building with many stories

Tenement

A building in which several families rent rooms or apartments, often with little sanitation or safety

Socialism

a political theory advocating state ownership of industry and leadership by workers

American Federation of Labor

1886; founded by Samuel Gompers; sought better wages, hrs, working conditions; skilled laborers, arose out of dissatisfaction with the Knights of Labor, rejected socialist and communist ideas, non-violent.

International Workers of the World

Ancarchist, radical labor union with little success, attempted to organize a broad set of workers accross many occupation

Child Labor in Gilded Age

Children were viewed as laborers throughout the 19th century. Many children worked on farms, small businesses, mills and factories instead of going to school.

Techniques used to maximize profit

Trusts, Cartels, and Monopolies

Relationship between workers and capital

Oppositional, but they must cooperate and find compromise.

Gilded Age Immigration

began to see an influx of Eastern and Southern Europeans, such as Italians, Poles, and Jews, and less Northern and Western Europeans; approximately 10 million immigrants entered during this time; many were poor and unskilled

Impact of Gilded Age Immigration

Helped America becomee a world power with their labor.

Improvemens of City Life In Gilded Age

Skyscrapers, mass transit, urban planning

Causes of growth of cities in Gilded Age

Internation migration, crop failure, and rural to urban migration

Homestead Act

1862 - Provided free land in the West to anyone willing to settle there and develop it. Encouraged westward migration.

mass production

Process of making large quantities of a product quickly and cheaply; major driver of industrial growth in Gilded Age

Euegene V. Debs

Head of the American Railway Union and director of the Pullman strike; jailed for ignoring court order. Becomes leader of socialist party and IWW

Horizontal integration

Type of monopoly where a company buys out all of its competition. Ex. Rockefeller

Vertical Integration

Practice where a single entity controls the entire process of a product, from the raw materials to distribution

Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

law that suspended Chinese immigration into America; in effect until WWII. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first significant law that restricted immigration into the United States of an ethnic group. Extreme example of nativism of period

Push Factors of Immigration

reasons people emigrate and leave their homes such as economic troubles, overcrowding, poverty, and more

Pull Factors of Immigration

jobs, greater freedom, land

Transcontinental Railroad

Railroad connecting the west and east coasts of the continental US; much of the labor done by Chinese immigrants

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