7: gilded age Flashcards
1882 Chinese Exclusion Act
Act passed by the federal government that outlawed any new Chinese immigrants from coming to the US for 10 years and denied citizenship to Chinese people who had already been living there
Chisholm Trail
Trail for cowboys to transport cattle from Texas ranches to Kansas railroads (Abilene)
Concentration Policy
Federal government’s actions in 1851 to establish specific Native American reservations for different Great Plains tribes
Sand Creek Massacre
Massacre of the Great Plains Indians (particularly the Cheyenne and Arapaho people of Colorado) in 1864 by US troops for resisting Westward migration
Battle of Little Bighorn (1876)
Battle between the 7th Cavalry and the Dakota Sioux tribe (who resisted American migration onto their lands); resulted in a victory for the Sioux
Dawes Severalty Act
Act that forced indigenous people onto Western reservations and granted citizenship to them if they adopted a “civilized culture”
American Federation of Labor
Led by Samuel Gompers;
labor union concerned with “bread and butter” issues; they wanted immediate wage raises and only accepted skilled, white laborers.
Edward Bellamy
Wrote “Looking Backward,” a book that envisioned a future utopian society in which wealth was distributed evenly among everyone (socialist/communist ideas)
Eugene V. Debs
President of the American Railroad Union (ARU) who led the Pullman Strike; also established the Socialist Party and ran several times for Presidential election, although he was never elected
Henry George
Economist in the Gilded Age who wrote many works portraying the issues with industrial capitalism (mainly increased poverty), as well as advocating for the single tax: the idea that the government should get rid of all taxes except the one on unimproved land (without buildings, crops, development, etc.) and fund all of their expenses this way, incentivizing economic development because people would want to improve the land to avoid paying high taxes.
Horizontal Integration
Business practice in which a company bought other companies who produced the same good/service in order to obtain a monopoly and control the market
Vertical integration
Business practice in which a company controlled all the industries that went into manufacturing their product in order to have a monopoly on it and control the market
Homestead Strike
Workers’ strike in which Carnegie’s employees at his steel company rebelled against their working conditions; a violent conflict that was put down by the Pinkertons Detective Group (a police group who claimed to investigate crime but mostly acted as strikebreakers for wealthy industrialists) and with aid from the federal government
Great Railroad Strike of 1877
First major railroad strike; was put down by state militias under President Hayes’ orders and collapsed because the federal army was persistent in breaking the strike and the strikes were not organized uprisings, but spontaneous ones.
Pullman Strike (1894)
Railroad workers of the Pullman Palace Car Company stopped working due to wage cuts, causing delays throughout the country. The strike was put down by the government, who issued an injunction against the union, ordering them to return to work. President Cleveland also ordered federal troops to enforce the injunction.
