Period 6 Terms

Question 1

Transcontinental Railroad

Answer 1

The Transcontinental Railroad linked the U.S. from Atlantic to Pacific by both rail and telegraph. This railroad accelerated the development and eventual closure of the frontier

Question 2

Cornelius Vanderbilt

Answer 2

A business tycoon who amassed a fortune in the steamboat business and invested this fortune in the consolidation of many smaller rail lines under one company, the New York Central Railroad

Question 3

New York Central Railroad

Answer 3

A railroad company founded by Cornelius Vanderbilt. It consolidated many smaller rail companies, standardized gauges, and popularized steel rails. It linked major cities on the East Coast and in the Midwest.

Question 4

Robber barons

Answer 4

A pejorative name for investors who artificially inflated the value of their company’s stock, sold the stock to the public, and pocketed the profits. The company would then go bankrupt, leaving stockholders with nothing. Additionally, the fierce competition of the Gilded Age coupled with lack of federal regulation often led to dishonest business practices.

Question 5

Alexander Graham Bell

Answer 5

A Scottish-born scientist. He is best known for patenting the telephone in 1876. He also founded the Bell Telephone Company in 1879 and the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) in 1885.

Question 6

Bessemer process

Answer 6

Developed by an English inventor, this process revolutionized steel production by making it faster and cheaper. The increased availability and affordability of steel caused its use to increase in many industrial applications.

Question 7

Andrew Carnegie

Answer 7

A Scottish immigrant who became a titan of industry. He cornered the railroad business in the 1860s, focusing on innovation, investment in technology, operating at full capacity, and keeping costs (including wages) low. Authored “The Gospel of Wealth,” which asserted that wealth was a result of God’s will and that, in turn, the wealthy had an obligation to give money away to better society. In contrast to rival J. P. Morgan, Carnegie favored driving competitors out of business.

Question 8

Carnegie Steel Company

Answer 8

A company founded and owned by Andrew Carnegie. At its height, it supplied over half the world’s steel. Sold to J. P. Morgan to form U.S. Steel.

Question 9

Vertical integration

Answer 9

The process of controlling every aspect of the production process for a product, from the acquisition of raw materials to the distribution of the final product. A favored practice by Andrew Carnegie.

Question 10

J.P. Morgan

Answer 10

A notable investment banker who helped railroads and other major corporations raise capital. After purchasing Carnegie’s steel business, he consolidated the industry to form U.S. Steel, the first corporation with a capitalization of over one billion dollars. He essentially bailed out the U.S. economy during the Panic of 1893. In contrast to rival Andrew Carnegie, Morgan favored buying competitors out.

Question 11

U.S. Steel

Answer 11

The first corporation in history with a capitalization of over one billion dollars, at a time when the entire U.S. stock market was worth roughly nine billion dollars. It was formed by J. P. Morgan, who purchased Andrew Carnegie’s steel business and then went on to consolidate that whole industry.

Question 12

John D. Rockefeller

Answer 12

The richest American of all time, worth well over $300 billion when adjusted for inflation. He monopolized the oil industry with the Standard Oil Company. While an avowed Social Darwinist, in his later years he turned to philanthropy, such as by founding the University of Chicago among other schools.

Question 13

Standard Oil Company

Answer 13

An oil refining company owned by John D. Rockefeller. At its height, it controlled 95 percent of U.S. refineries through consolidation. This business strategy is called horizontal integration. In 1911, the Supreme Court ruled it an illegal monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act and split it into 34 companies.

Question 14

Horizontal integration

Answer 14

The process of merging companies that all compete in one aspect of a long production process, such as refinement in the oil industry, thereby creating either a monopoly (total control by one company) or an oligopoly (control by few companies).

Question 15

Trust

Answer 15

Also called a corporate trust, it was a common form of monopoly around the turn of the twentieth century. Essentially, the stockholders of several companies would sell their stock to the owner of a larger company in exchange for trust certificates, which entitled them to a share of the profits as silent partners. The several companies still technically existed but were now effectively one entity.

Question 16

Monopolies

Answer 16

The total or near-total domination of an industry by one business. Monopolies can artificially fix prices and stifle innovation, as a lack of competition means they have little reason to reinvest their profits in improving their products.

Question 17

Laissez-faire

Answer 17

First articulated by the economist Adam Smith in his treatise The Wealth of Nations, laissez-faire economics states that natural market forces, not government regulations or subsidies, should control the marketplace. However, the growth of monopolies during the Gilded Age prevented any natural competition from occurring, leading to antitrust laws. The term derives from the French for “let do,” or in essence “Let the economy run itself.”

Question 18

Great Railroad Strike of 1877

Answer 18

A nationwide strike that took place from July 14 to September 4, 1877. More than 100,000 railroad workers were ultimately involved, and the strike affected such cities as Baltimore, Newark, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Chicago. The state National Guardsmen were often called in, but most militia members (and local residents) were sympathetic to the strikers. Ultimately, President Rutherford B. Hayes authorized the use of federal troops to break the strike. More than 100 workers were killed in the crackdown, and the strikers gained nothing. However, it led to more organized unionizing efforts.

Question 19

Scabs

Answer 19

A type of strikebreaker. Specifically, someone who crosses a picket line of striking workers in order to take up a striking worker’s job.

Question 20

Blacklisting

Answer 20

A method of subverting labor organizing. “Difficult” workers were barred from being hired, or forced to knuckle under and sign a yellow-dog contract.

Question 21

Yellow-dog contract

Answer 21

A document that a prospective employee was forced to sign in order to secure a job. The worker agreed to not join a union

Question 22

National Labor Union

Answer 22

The first attempt to organize all workers nationwide. Founded in 1866, its goals included better working conditions, higher wages, an eight-hour workday, and equal rights for women and African Americans (but also the exclusion of Chinese-Americans). Members included skilled and unskilled workers as well as farmers; these groups had different, sometimes incompatible, needs. The Panic of 1873 contributed to its decline, as did the failure of Great Railroad Strike of 1877.

Question 23

Knights of Labor

Answer 23

Founded as a secret society in 1869, and elected Terence V. Powderly its leader the following year 1879. Under his leadership, the union announced itself in 1881. One of their strengths was that it was a broad industrial union: all wage workers (skilled, unskilled, women, and minorities) were invited to join. The Knights advocated for both economic and social reforms, such as the development of labor cooperatives, an eight-hour workday, and federal regulation of business. They preferred to use arbitration rather than violent strikes. Entered terminal decline after the Haymarket Square Riot.

Question 24

Haymarket Square Riot

Answer 24

On May 4, 1886, a rally in support of the eight-hour workday was held in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. When police began to break up what had been a peaceful public meeting, someone in the crowd threw a bomb at the police, and police fired into the crowd. Several dozens were killed. Rumors circulated that alleged the Knights of Labor were tried to the anarchist bombing, which fatally weakened the Knights. However, Haymarket Square ultimately became a global rallying point for the eight-hour workday. May Day began, in part, as an international commemoration for Haymarket Square.

Question 25

American Federation of Labor

Answer 25

Founded in 1886, the AFL was a federation of 20 craft unions (unions of skilled workers, each representing a particular trade). The AFL concentrated on what they considered to be basic economic issues, such as the eight-hour workday and higher wages, rather than social change. Because the AFL was made up of skilled rather than unskilled laborers, their workers could not be as easily replaced by scabs if a strike were called.

Question 26

Collective bargaining

Answer 26

The practice of negotiating between owners and a designation group of employees that represent all other employees.

Question 27

Strikebreaking

Answer 27

The process of breaking a strike to avoid making concessions to workers, either through violence or through the use of replacement workers. In the nineteenth century, the government often sided with businesses, and would authorize the use of the National Guard or U.S. Army troops on striking workers.

Question 28

Homestead Strike

Answer 28

A major strike in 1892 at the Carnegie Steel Company’s Homestead, Pennsylvania factory. After the workers went on strike, and the factory’s manager hired 300 private Pinkerton detectives to protect the plant and enable strikebreakers to enter and restart the steel operations. After an exchange of gunfire between the Pinkerton men and the workers, nine strikers and seven Pinkerton men were dead and many more people were wounded. Pennsylvania’s governor sent in 8,000 state militia to assist scabs to enter the mill. It was a major setback in unionizing the steel industry.

Question 29

Pullman Palace Car Company

Answer 29

A company that manufactured sleeping cars for the railroads. Its owners constructed a “model town” for its employees outside Chicago, where the company controlled everything, to the point of only renting rather than selling homes to residents. When management, affected by the Panic of 1893, terminated half the workers and announced a 25 percent wage cut, Pullman Car workers went on strike. The protests spread nationwide. President Cleveland eventually intervened to break the strike. The Labor Day holiday was created as a conciliatory gesture towards U.S. labor in the aftermath of Pullman and other strikes, as an alternative to the more radical May Day.

Question 30

Grover Cleveland

Answer 30

Twenty-second and twenty-fourth President. Only president to serve non-consecutive terms, in 1885–1889 and 1893–1897. The first Democratic Party president since before the Civil War. Supported the gold standard. His second term was defined by the Panic of 1983, which caused a severe depression. Sent federal troops in to break up the Pullman Strike. His resolution of the Venezuelan crisis of 1895 began the reconciliation between the United States and British Empire.

Question 31

In re Debs

Answer 31

A landmark 1895 Supreme Court case. It ruled that the use of court injunctions to break strikes was justified in the support of interstate commerce. In effect, the federal government had permitted employers to not deal with labor unions.

Question 32

Turner’s “Frontier Thesis”

Answer 32

An idea articulated by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893. He argued that the frontier’s existence shaped the American character: a propensity for democracy, egalitarianism, individualism, and violence, as well as a disinterest in high culture. However, by 1890 the U.S. had no unsettled lands left. The Frontier Thesis partly reflects a then-budding romanticization of the American West, leading to the preservation of wilderness by conservationist and such things as the name for Kennedy’s “New Frontier” agenda.

Question 33

Forty-Niners

Answer 33

Nickname for an influx of immigrants to California in 1849 seeking riches in the gold rush. A number of immigrants were Chinese.

Question 34

Greenback Party

Answer 34

A third party formed in 1874 and disbanded in 1889. It existed alongside the Farmers’ Alliance. Its elements later merged into the Populist Party.

Question 35

Homestead Act of 1862

Answer 35

A law that provided a settler with 160 acres of land if he promised to live on it and work it for at least five years. About 500,000 families took advantage of the Homestead Act, while many more bought land from private purveyors. Unfortunately, the parcels of land on the Great Plains were difficult to farm, owing to lack of rain and hard-packed soil. Many homesteaders left the land behind and returned home.

Question 36

Sodbusters

Answer 36

A nickname for homesteaders on the Great Plains. Life was difficult there; drought was always a problem, and plagues of insects were a constant nuisance. About two-thirds of the original homesteaders left the Great Plains, draining the region of half of its population by the turn of the twentieth century

Question 37

National Grange Movement

Answer 37

Founded in 1867 by Oliver H. Kelley, it was a kind of fraternity of farmers and their families. The Grange sought to break the hold of railroad owners and middlemen who kept raising the cost of farming by charging exorbitant prices for shipping and storage. The Grangers gained cultivated significant political power, and they played an important part in the rise of the Populist Party.

Question 38

Populist Party

Answer 38

Also known as the People’s Party. Their 1892 policy platform advocated for a silver standard, a graduated income tax, direct election of U.S. senators, and ownership of railroads, telegraph, and telephone lines. While the Populists won five Western states in the 1892 election, the Democrats absorbed their policies thanks to William Jennings Bryan.

Question 39

Munn v. Illinois

Answer 39

Supreme Court ruling (1877) that held a state had the right to regulate the practices of a business if that business served the public interest. Because railroad transportation was very much in the public’s interest, according to the Court, state regulation of rates was appropriate. Despite these successes on the state level, federal laws still protected interstate commerce and allowed railroad companies to raise their long-haul rates in order to offset the losses on short hauls. See: Interstate Commerce Act, Interstate Commerce Commission.

Question 40

Interstate Commerce Act

Answer 40

An 1887 law that which would regulate and investigate railroad companies that participated in interstate rail trafficking. The first example of the federal government regulating private industry in U.S. history.

Question 41

Interstate Commerce Commission

Answer 41

Authorized under the Interstate Commerce Act, the ICC originally investigated railroad companies in order to ensure fair rates. However, in its early years the ICC lacked enforcement powers. Farmers did not gain much from its formation, as they lost most of the cases brought before it. In later decades, the ICC also regulated other sectors of interstate commerce, such as busing, telegraphs, and telephones. Dissolved in 1996.

Question 42

Ghost Dance movement

Answer 42

A Dakota Sioux movement that began in 1870. It intended to bring about a rebirth of native tradition and a repulsion of white incursion. As part of the U.S. government’s efforts to suppress it, the respected Sioux leader Sitting Bull, was killed.

Question 43

Battle of Wounded Knee

Answer 43

A massacre of over 200 American Indian men, women, and children that took place in December 1890 in South Dakota. Over 20 soldiers involved were awarded the Medal of Honor.

Question 44

Dawes Severalty Act

Answer 44

An 1887 act which stripped tribes of their official federal recognition and land rights and would only grant individual families land and citizenship in 25 years if they properly assimilated. Former reservation land was sold, and the proceeds funded “civilizing” ventures for natives, such as so-called Indian Schools which were rampant with abuse and neglect. This forced-assimilation policy remained the federal government’s way of dealing with American Indians until 1934.