INDUSTRIAL GIANTS
This businessman built a massive oil empire through Standard Oil.
Who is John D. Rockefeller?
This invention allowed messages to travel rapidly across long distances.
What is the telegraph?
Workers formed these organizations to improve wages, hours, and working conditions.
What are labor unions?
The rapid growth of cities as people moved from rural areas and other countries is called this.
What is urbanization?
This New York City political organization became famous for political corruption and patronage.
What is Tammany Hall?
This industrialist became one of America's most famous steel magnates.
Who is Andrew Carnegie?
This transportation system connected markets across the United States and helped accelerate western settlement.
What are the railroads?
This 1886 event in Chicago began as a labor demonstration but ended in violence.
What is the Haymarket Affair?
These crowded apartment buildings housed many working-class immigrant families.
What are tenements?
This political practice involved giving government jobs to supporters.
What is patronage?
These large business organizations attempted to control an entire industry and reduce competition.
What are trusts?
This inventor became famous for developing practical applications of electricity, including an improved incandescent light bulb.
Who is Thomas Edison?
This famous 1892 labor conflict occurred at Carnegie's steel plant in Pennsylvania.
What is the Homestead Strike?
This photographer and journalist documented the terrible living conditions of New York City's poor.
Who is Jacob Riis?
This 1890 law attempted to prevent businesses from creating monopolies and restraining trade.
What is the Sherman Antitrust Act?
This term describes a company that has nearly complete control over the production and sale of a particular product.
What is a monopoly?
Why were railroads so important to the growth of American capitalism?
They connected producers, consumers, cities, farms, and factories, allowing goods and people to move quickly across a national market.
This 1894 strike involving railroad workers disrupted transportation and led to federal intervention.
What is the Pullman Strike?
This belief applied "survival of the fittest" to competition among people and businesses.
What is Social Darwinism?
This movement represented farmers who wanted government action on issues such as railroad rates, currency, and debt.
What is Populism?
Explain why historians disagree about whether industrialists such as Carnegie and Rockefeller were "Robber Barons" or "Captains of Industry."
They created jobs, expanded industries, and helped build the economy, but critics argued that they exploited workers, eliminated competition, and accumulated excessive wealth and power.
A railroad company lowers shipping costs and connects a western farm to an eastern city. Explain how this could affect both the farmer and the national economy
The farmer could reach larger markets and potentially sell more goods, while the national economy benefited from increased trade and economic integration.
Why did many industrial workers join labor unions during the Gilded Age?
Workers sought higher wages, shorter hours, safer working conditions, job security, and greater bargaining power against powerful employers.
How did immigration contribute to industrialization while also creating challenges for American cities?
Immigrants provided a large industrial workforce and helped cities grow, but rapid population growth also contributed to overcrowding, poverty, poor housing, and strained city services
Why did government regulation of big business become increasingly important during the Gilded Age?
Powerful corporations could eliminate competition, influence politics, and exploit workers and consumers, leading many Americans to demand government protection and regulation.