The Wild West
What term best describes a town that grew rapidly in population and wealth due to the sudden discovery of gold or silver, then often declined just as quickly?
What 1862 law granted millions of acres of public land to railroad companies to construct the Transcontinental Railroad?
What is the Pacific Railroad Act?
What were the areas of federal land that Native Americans were forced to move to as white settlers moved west?
What are reservations?
What is the economic term for a market dominated by a single company that controls the entire industry and eliminates all competition?
What is a monopoly?
What is the name for the crowded, poorly lit, and unsafe multi-family apartment buildings where many poor immigrant workers lived in major cities?
What are tenements?
What was the "Long Drive"?
What was the herding of cattle from Texas to railroad hubs in the North/Midwest (like Kansas) for shipment to eastern markets?
What landmark 1862 law allowed American citizens (including former slaves and single women) to claim 160 acres of free public land in the West, provided they lived on it and improved it for five years?
What is the Homestead Act?
What was the primary cultural and social goal of Indian Boarding Schools established by the U.S. government?
What is assimilation (erasing Native American culture, languages, and traditions to adopt white American ways of life)?
What is the difference between calling an industrialist a "Robber Baron" versus a "Captain of Industry"?
What is:
Robber Baron: A negative term for using ruthless, unfair tactics to crush competition and exploit workers.
Captain of Industry: A positive term for building the national economy, inventing new technology, and giving money back to charity (philanthropy).
What tragic 1911 disaster in New York City claimed the lives of 146 garment workers, mostly young immigrant women, and sparked nationwide demands for workplace safety laws?
What was the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire?
What nickname was given to the farmers who settled on the Great Plains and had to cut through thick, root-bound soil to plant crops and build homes?
Who are sodbusters?
Where (geographic region) did the Homestead Act primarily apply to in the United States?
What is the Great Plains (West/Midwest)?
Describe two harsh conditions or changes that Native American children experienced at Indian Boarding Schools.
What are (any two): forced cutting of long hair, physical punishment for speaking tribal languages, being forced to use English names, wearing military-style uniforms, and forced conversion to Christianity?
Which Gilded Age industrialist built a massive monopoly in the steel industry and later wrote "The Gospel of Wealth," giving away most of his fortune to build public libraries?
Who is Andrew Carnegie?
What were the three primary goals of Gilded Age labor unions?
What were demanding: higher wages, shorter work hours, and safer working conditions?
In 19th-century American history, what did the term "frontier" refer to?
What is the outer edge of settled territory (the boundary dividing "civilized" settled areas from "untamed" wilderness)?
Name the two railroad companies that built the Transcontinental Railroad?
Who were the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific?
This law broke up communal Native American reservation lands into individual family plots in an effort to assimilate them into white American society.
What is the Dawes Act?
This individual consolidated the shipping and railroad industry in the northeast, notably constructing Grand Central Depot in New York City.
Who is Cornelius Vanderbilt?
Who founded Hull House in Chicago in 1889 to help poor immigrants adapt to urban life by providing education, daycare, and healthcare?
Who is Jane Addams?
Identify one major positive experience and one major negative experience faced by homesteaders on the Great Plains.
Positive: Opportunity for cheap land/home ownership, escaping eastern crowdedness, economic independence.
Negative: Extreme weather (blizzards, tornadoes), insect swarms (locusts), lack of timber for building, severe isolation.
Explain one way the Transcontinental Railroad influenced and accelerated Western Expansion in the United States.
What is by making travel and shipping significantly faster, safer, and cheaper, linking western natural resources to eastern markets, and/or enabling rapid population growth in western territories?
what was a major slogan associated with Indian Boarding Schools' philosophies?
What is "Kill the Indian, Save the Man"?
What industrialist founded the Standard Oil Company, controlled over 90 percent of the nation's oil refining, and was famously labeled both a Captain of Industry and a Robber Baron?
Who is John D. Rockefeller?
What was one reason why Gilded Age factory and business owners vehemently opposed labor unions?
What is because they believed unions would reduce business profits, decrease worker productivity, and interfere with an owner's control over their own business? (Any one)