US History Chapter 16

  • Robber Barons

    • Derogatory name referring to capitalists who built industries and acquired great wealth. 

    • Were aggressive, cost-and efficiency-conscious businessmen

  • Cornelius Vanderbilt

    • Pioneered in shipping through a ferry business

    • Controlled much of New York’s waterborne shipping

      • Later controlled waterborne shipping in much of Northeast and West

    • Started poor and became successful through hard work

  • James J. Hill

    • Built the Great Northern Railroad without any special privileges or finances fro the government

    • Market entrepreneur

  • Andrew Carnegie

    • Was a superintendent of the Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania Railroad

    • Began investing in steel

    • Founded Carnegie Steel and controlled every aspect of steel production from mine to markets

      • Became the largest steel company in the world

    • He was also a great philanthropist

  • Vertical Integration

    • When a company controls part of all segments of production of a good from raw material to finished product

  • John D. Rockefeller

    • America’s first billionaire and founder of Standard Oil Company

    • He was an honest administrator and was very efficient

    • Counter to popular belief he was very generous

  • Trust

    • Legal device by which a board of trustees was empowered to make decisions and control the operations of a whole group of companies

  • Horizontal Integration

    • Consolidation of all of one entire segment of an industry

  • New South

    • An economically revitalized south that developers, promoters, and businessmen hoped would revive the South and make it match the North as an economic force. 

    • Would be built on the two T’s: tobacco and textiles

  • John Peirpont Morgan

    • Leading investment banker in America during the Gilded Age

    • Symbolized power and prestige at the top of America’s industrial pyramid

    • Pioneered in finance

      • Bought and sold stocks on a grand scale

      • Bought and consolidated many businesses

      • His biggest deal was the consolidation of much of the steel industry

    • Founded the United States Steel Corporation

  • United States Steel Corporation

    • Founded by John Peirpont Morgan

    • First billion dollar corporation

  • H.J. Heinz

    • Unbendingly honest food producer in Pittsburgh

    • Devout Methodist

    • Pioneered much of modern billboard and newspaper advertising, but refused for his products to be advertised on Sunday

    • Leader in producing bottled and canned foods

    • One of the only food producers to sell 100% pure products in clear bottles

    • Treated his employees very well

      • The H.J. Heinz Company never had a single strike during Heinz’s life

  • Alexander Graham Bell

    • Invented the telephone in 1876

    • Scottish immigrant who taught deaf people

  • Thomas Alva Edison

    • America’s most prolific inventor

    • Responsible for more than a thousand inventions in his life

      • Invented the phonograph, the motion-picture projector, and the incandescent light bulb

  • Roscoe Conkling

    • Controlled a notorious New York Republican political machine similar to Tammany Hall. 

      • Controlled New York’s tariff-collecting agency, the Customs House, where New York politicians manipulated records and siphoned off money ballooning to the federal government

  • Stalwarts

    • Republicans that favored high tariffs, hard money, and the spoils system

  • Half-Breeds 

    • Moderate Republicans that were dissatisfied with Grant, Radical Republicans, and Reconstruction

    • Tended to favor reform

  • James A. Garfield

    • A half-breed nominated for president for 1881 election

    • Won this election against Winfield S. Hancock

    • Was assassinated a few months after inauguration on July 2, 1881 by Charles J. Guiteau

  • Chester A. Arthur

    • Stalwart nominated for vice president for 1881 election

    • Won with Garfield in 1881 election

    • Became president after Garfield’s assassination

  • Mongrel Tariff

    • Reduced tariff from 20% to 25%

    • Many amendments from Congressman

    • Mixture of inharmonious policies

    • Failed to reform tariff

    • Clarified party positions on tariff issue

  • Pendleton Act

    • Established an independent Civil Service Commission and eliminated much of the spoils system

  • Civil Service Commission

    • Responsible for seeing that only men who scored will on examinations held offices

  • Grover Cleveland

    • Democratic presidential candidate for election of 1884

    • Opponent of Tammany Hall known for is honesty

    • Many Republicans known as Mugwumps supported him

    • Won a narrow victory against James G. Blaine

  • Interstate Commerce Act

    • Directed that railroad rates must be reasonable and just

    • Required that railroad companies publish all rates and make financial reports

    • Provided for the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), an independent regulatory agency, to investigate and stop alleged abuse

  • Benjamin Harrison

    • Republican candidate for election of 1888

    • Grandson of William Henry Harriosn

    • Won the election against Cleveland

    • Weak president

    • President during the Billion Dollar Congress because of liberal spending

  • Sherman Antitrust Act

    • Made the monopolizing of businesses illegal

    • Relatively ineffective until the passage of tougher federal regulations in the twentieth century

  • McKinley Tariff

    • Imposed higher duties on manufactured and agricultural imports than had any previous tariff in history, protecting American inefficiency

    • The high tariff lowered revenue and radically decreased trade

    • Reduced the Treasury’s reserves alarmingly

    • Voters demonstrated their anger at the tariff in the congressional election of 1890 giving the Democrats advantage in the House

  • Knights of Labor

    • Earliest significant labor union

    • Formed in 1869 as a secret society of skilled and unskilled workers from various occupations

    • Emerged as an effective force under the leadership of Terrance V. Powderly

    • Advocated 8 hour work days, laws prohibiting child labor, and equal pay for men and women 

    • More conservative than the radical unions of Europe

  • American Federation of Labor (AFL)

    • Most enduring achievement of the AFL was the acceptance of the eight hour work day as a standard

    • Splinter group from the Knights of Labor

    • Formed craft unions for skilled laborers

    • Supported higher wages, shorter working hours, safer and cleaner working conditions, and elimination of child labors

    • Unions in the AFL did not oppose cold labor 

  • Samuel Gompers

    • Led the American Federation of labor

  • Haymarket Riot

    • Most famous example of labor violence

    • Factory workers in Chicago agitated by anarchists went on strike and demanded an 8 hour work day

    • Bomb thrown into the crowd and killed seven policemen and four civilians 

    • Discredited the Knights of Labor and ended the 8 hour movement for the time being 

  • Homestead Strike

    • Strike that occurred after Carnegie’s assistant, Henry C. Frick proposed lowering the workers’ wages because of the use of new labor-saving machinery

    • After 5 months of striking the workers agreed to Frick’s proposal 

  • Eugene V. Debs

    • Founder of the American Railway Union

    • Presidential candidate on the Socialist ticket

    • Led the Pullman Strike

  • The Pullman Strike

    • Precipitated by five successive wage reductions, totaling 25% in 1894. Though the reductions were due to the depression, rent on company houses and goods in company stores remained the same price

    • Workers retaliated by striking and the company withdrew the strikers credit from the company stores

    • Workers appealed to Debs’s American Railway Union

    • Boycott resulted in destroyed engines, cars, and equipment

    • Federal courts issued an injunction

  • Injunction

    • A court order 

  • Socialism

    • Advocates government regulation or ownership of the means of production

    • Eugene V. Debs was a socialist

  • The Grange

    • Organization of protesting farmers 

    • Began to be used as a means of confronting railroads

    • Made state regulations of railroads its chief goal and gained much support

    • As a result, several midwestern states passed Granger Laws (legislation regulating railroads) 

    • Lacked organizational strength and declined in influence 

  • Farmers’ Alliance

    • Agricultural reforms surged in the 1880s with this organization

    • United farm cooperatives across the country and looked to politics to meet demands such as railroad regulation, favorable currency policies, and antitrust laws

  • Populist Party

    • Formed from independent grassroots organizations that sprang up throughout the Midwest and eventually merged through the politics of discontent

    • Polled more than a million votes with their presidential candidate James B. Weaver in 1892

    • Issue that dominated the movement was currency policy

      • Wanted to make both silver and gold the dual standard for American currency

  • Free silver

    • The unlimited coinage of silver

  • William McKinley

    • Republican nominee of the election of 1896

    • Was a friend of the industrialists, a fitting candidate for the gold-standard, pro-tariff, and had a big business platform of the Republicans

    • Campaign

      • Stayed home and ran a front porch campaign 

      • train loads of select audiences were given all-expense paid trips to see McKinley talk

      • Hundreds of speakers fanned out across the country to promote him

    • Won the election

  • William Jennings Bryan 

    • Democratic candidate of the election of 1896

    • Called the “Great Commoner” because of his genuine sympathy for the common man

    • Was a remarkable political figure and fervent Christian

    • Campaign

      • Went on a whirlwind tour of the country

      • Make hundreds of stops and was seen by 5 million people

    • Lost the election 

  • Urbanization

    • Many farmers moved to the city because the boom in manufacturing and service industries provided jobs for both the influx of immigrants and the farmers

    • Was filled with slum squalor, high crime, and dangerous diseases

  • New Immigration

    • A wave of immigrants different from those in the past

    • Many came from eastern European countries

  • Charles Darwin

    • Wrote the Origin of Species and created the theory of natural selection- Darwinism

      • Natural selection- a process through which all current species including man have supposedly struggled and evolved

        • The survival, development, and improvement of species depend on their ability to adapt to the changes of the world

  • Darwinism 

    • Name given to the evolutionary theory that involves ‘natural selection’

    • Social Darwinism- the application of the evolutionary theory to social institutions

      • Chief proponent was Herbert Spencer

      • White supremacy 

    • Reform Darwinism- human progress was best achieved through cooperation rather than competition

      • Chief proponent was Lester Frank Ward

      • Believed that man was inherently good  

  • Mark Twain

    • Samuel Langhorne Clemens

    • Realism author

    • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Life on the Mississippi

  • Realism

    • Contrasted the emotional, exotic character of romanticism

    • Drew a picture of simple, ordinary life

  • Naturalism

    • Emphasized man’s helplessness and struggle with the world 

  • Stephen Crane

    • Used the Darwinism style of writing his his works, A Girl of the Streets and The Red Badge of Courage

    • Naturalist writer

  • Jack London

    • Wrote the Call of the Wild

    • Wrote from the naturalism perspective and portrayed the triumph of brute force over the cruel world

  • Materialism

    • The desire for worldly possessions and the belief that they can bring true happiness

    • Mass production and labor saving machinery provided more people with more things and more time to enjoy them

    • Became the philosophy of many Americans 

  • Urban evangelism

    • The conducting of large, citywide campaigns in huge auditoriums or large churches in major cities

  • Dwight L. Moody

    • Leader of the urban evangelism movement

    • Method of speaking influenced by the business world

      • Was able to combine business practices and evangelism

    • Had informal, but orderly services that were carefully planned and organized

  • Fanny Crosby

    • The most prolific hymn writer in history

  • Sam Jones

    • “The Moody of the South”

    • Methodist preacher that spoke in a direct and blunt manner