This term describes a company that has total control over an entire industry, eliminating all competition.
Monopoly (or Trust)
Crowded, poorly built apartment buildings where many immigrant families lived in Gilded Age cities.
Tenements
The policy of extending a nation's power by gaining control over other territories or nations.
Imperialism
Journalists like Upton Sinclair and Ida Tarbell who exposed corruption and social problems in American society.
Muckrakers
A refusal to work organized by a labor union as a form of protest against an employer.
Strike
This transportation system linked the East and West coasts, sparking rapid industrial growth across the nation.
Transcontinental Railroad
Groups formed by factory workers to negotiate for better wages, shorter hours, and safer conditions.
Labor Unions
This 1898 conflict began after the explosion of the USS Maine and resulted in the U.S. gaining Guam and Puerto Rico.
The Spanish-American War
This 1920 constitutional amendment finally guaranteed that the right of citizens to vote shall not be denied on account of gender.
19th Amendment
This steel tycoon argued in his 'Gospel of Wealth' that the rich had a moral duty to use their fortunes for the improvement of society.
Andrew Carnegie
A critical nickname for powerful industrialists who built their wealth by underpaying workers and crushing rivals.
Robber Barons
The process of the population shifting from rural farms to modern, industrial cities.
Urbanization
The term for adding a territory to an existing country, such as the U.S. did with Hawaii in 1898.
Annexation
The movement or right of women to vote in political elections, championed by leaders like Susan B. Anthony.
Women's Suffrage
President Taft's policy of encouraging American businesses to invest in foreign countries to increase U.S. influence.
Dollar Diplomacy
The practice of donating large sums of money to build libraries or universities, often used by men like Andrew Carnegie.
Philanthropy
This 1882 law was the first major U.S. law to ban a specific ethnic group from immigrating to America.
The Chinese Exclusion Act
Theodore Roosevelt's foreign policy that used the threat of military force to achieve American goals.
Big Stick Policy
This 1906 law, passed after muckraking reports exposed dangerous additives and false labeling, required federal inspection of consumer products and banned the sale of adulterated goods.
The Pure Food and Drug Act
The right of a people or nation to decide their own form of government without outside influence.
Self-determination (or self-government)
This era's name suggests a thin layer of gold (wealth) covering up deep social problems and poverty.
Gilded Age
This 1911 industrial disaster killed 146 garment workers and led to the passage of strict new fire safety codes and workplace safety laws.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
This massive engineering project in Central America was built to create a shortcut for global trade and allow the U.S. Navy to move quickly between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Panama Canal
Ratified in 1919, this constitutional amendment established Prohibition by banning the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors.
The 18th Amendment
The gap between the extremely wealthy and the extremely poor that grew rapidly during the Gilded Age.
The wealth gap