Iron Horses and Steel Rails
To prevent dangerous scheduling errors and train crashes across local towns, this uniform time system was created across the nation in the late 1800s
What are Standard Time Zones?
Andrew Carnegie dominated the steel industry by controlling every step of production—from raw iron mines to shipping barges and furnaces—using this strategy
What is vertical integration?
Blowing cool air over molten red-hot iron to burn off impurities describes this game-changing process that made steel cheap and abundant
What is the Bessemer Process?
Andrew Carnegie championed this philosophy, arguing that wealthy industrialists held a moral responsibility to give their fortunes back to society through philanthropy
What is the Gospel of Wealth?
Illustrated by artist Charles Dana Gibson, this athletic and independent figure became the popular cultural ideal of the "new woman" entering society
This corrupt scandal involved Union Pacific Railroad insiders forming a fake construction company to bill the federal government double and bribe members of Congress
What is the Crédit Mobilier scandal?
John D. Rockefeller controlled roughly 90% to 95% of all American oil refining through this company
What is Standard Oil?
Dubbed the "Wizard of Menlo Park," this famous inventor gave the world the incandescent light bulb and electrical distribution systems
Who is Thomas Edison?
In this landmark 1886 case, the Supreme Court ruled that individual states could not regulate interstate commerce, placing rail regulation strictly on Congress
What is the Wabash case?
This 1886 Chicago bombing incident ruined the reputation of the Knights of Labor after the public unfairly associated the union with anarchist violence
What is the Haymarket Square Incident?
Cornelius Vanderbilt expanded his rail network by purchasing smaller independent rail lines and combining them under his New York Central company, a process known by this term
What is railroad consolidation?
To control rival oil and railroad businesses without purchasing them outright, titans placed their own trusted executives onto competing boards of directors, creating these
What are interlocking directorates?
This vast Minnesota region provided the massive deposits of iron ore that powered the nation's new steel furnaces
What is the Mesabi Range?
Corporate attorneys shielded big monopolies from state regulation by arguing that this constitutional amendment granted corporations full legal rights as "persons"
What is the 14th Amendment?
Founded by Samuel Gompers in 1886, this labor group admitted only skilled craftsmen and fought for practical goals like higher wages and shorter hours
What is the American Federation of Labor (or AF of L)?
The first Transcontinental Railroad was authorized to be built through this geographic region because Southern states had seceded during the Civil War
What is the North?
After buying out Andrew Carnegie's steel business for $400 million, financier J.P. Morgan transformed it into the world's first $1 billion corporation under this name
What is the U.S. Steel Corporation?
Alexander Graham Bell revolutionized national communication by inventing this hobby-project device while teaching deaf students
What is the telephone?
Passed by Congress in 1890, this early federal law sought to outlaw monopolies and combinations in restraint of trade, though courts initially rendered it ineffective
What is the Sherman Anti-Trust Act?
To keep workers trapped in debt, some industrial employers paid their workers in non-cash company store currency known by this name
What is scrip?
To fund Western rail expansion, the federal government granted railroad companies millions of acres of public land structured in this pattern alongside the tracks
What is a checkerboard pattern?
This ruthless business tactic used by Rockefeller involved temporarily dropping oil prices below market value to drive smaller competitors out of business
What is undercutting?
This office invention, alongside the telephone switchboard, brought thousands of women into the corporate and clerical workforce
What is the typewriter?
Promoted by thinkers like Rev. Russell Conwell in his Acres of Diamonds lecture, this theory applied biological "survival of the fittest" ideas to social class and wealth
What is Social Darwinism?
Factory owners forced newly hired workers to sign these strict agreements promising that they would never join a labor union
What are "yellow-dog contracts" (or ironclad oaths)?