Chapter 17 & 18 Vocabulary

  1. Pullman Strike - A 1894 railroad strike that escalated to twenty-seven states and territories, ultimately broken by federal troops and resulting in management’s victory


  1. Haymarket Bombing - In a clash between striking laborers and police in Chicago on May 1, 1886, an unknown person threw a bomb into a crowd killing seven police and injuring nearly seventy others


  1. Homestead Act - Federal legislation permitting any citizen or prospective citizen, including feed slaves, to purchase 160 acres of public land in the Western United States for a small fee after living on it for five years


  1. Chinese Exclusion Act - The federal law of 1882 that blocked Chinese immigration and prevented those Chinese already living in America from becoming citizens for ten years


  1. John D Rockefeller - Founder of Standard Oil, famous for horizontal and vertical integration, and the wealthiest man of the Gilded Age


  1. Jacob Riis - New York newspaper photographer who wrote How the Other Half Lives, which used photos and words to expose the harshness of tenement life


  1.  Andrew Carnegie  - Scottish immigrant who became a steel magnate and then philanthropist during the Gilded Age


  1. Henry Ford - Early leader of the automobile industry who stressed the standardization of parts and assembly lines


  1. Horatio Alger - Author of Gilded Age books whose hardworking heroes go from “rags to riches”


  1. Samuel Gompers - Union organizer under whose leadership the American Federation of Labor (AFL) grew by combining similar skilled unions together


  1.  Eugene Debbs - Leader of the American Railway Union in the Pullman strike of 1894; presidential candidate for the Socialist Party


  1. Tenements - By the late nineteenth century, this was a descriptor used for slum dwellings


  1. Gospel of Wealth - Term popularized by Andrew Carnegie to argue that those with immense wealth carry a greater burden to use that wealth for social progress


  1. Monopoly - A business entity that controls an industry or market sector without competition


  1. Knights of Labor - Short-lived early national labor union that championed eight-hour workdays and the end of child labor, open to almost all workers


  1. American Federation of Labor - Union of skilled workers, formed in 1881 and led by Samuel Gompers, that used strikes to gain concessions from management


  1. Horizontal integration - A corporate combination where a group of businesses that do the same thing are consolidated


  1. Vertical Integration - The arrangement by which a company takes ownership of businesses in various stages of production and distribution within the same industry


  1. Social Darwinism - The belief that societies are subject to the laws of natural selection and that some societies or peoples are innately superior to others


Tammany Hall - Urban machine led by famously corrupt city boss William M. Tweed