Wild, Wild, West
This 1862 law encouraged westward settlement by granting 160 acres of land to settlers willing to farm it for five years.
The Homestead Act
Aimed at curbing monopolies, prohibited combinations or trusts that restrained trade, but weak enforcement and corporate loopholes limited its early effectiveness.
Sherman Antitrust Act
In 1877, after repeated wage cuts during a national economic depression, workers across multiple states went on strike sparking violent clashes with state militias and federal troops; this event became the first major nationwide labor conflict in the U.S. and highlighted the growing tensions between industrial workers and business owners in the Gilded Age.
Great Railroad Strike of 1877
Between 1865 and 1900, millions of Americans left rural farms and small towns to work in rapidly expanding urban centers, fueling the growth of cities such as Chicago, Pittsburgh, and New York, transforming social structures, creating new housing and sanitation challenges, and reshaping the American economy.
Urbanization
This practice allowed elected officials to reward loyal supporters with government jobs, often leading to corruption and inefficiency, and was famously criticized by reformers who pushed for merit-based hiring instead.
Patronage / Spoils system
This 1890 massacre in South Dakota symbolized the violent end of Native American resistance in the American West.
Battle of Wounded Knee
Described the belief that wealthy Americans were divinely obligated to use their fortunes for social good, often used to justify large-scale philanthropy by Gilded Age industrialists.
The Gospel of Wealth
During strikes in the Gilded Age, employers often used this set of tactics to maintain control over their workplaces and break worker resistance, calling in private security or militia to intimidate strikers, and obtaining court injunctions to legally prevent picketing or other forms of protest, highlighting the intense power struggle between labor and management.
Strikebreaking
This describes the technological innovations such as the Bessemer steel process, mechanized farming equipment, and assembly-line production drove the United States’ shift from a largely agrarian society to an industrial powerhouse, enabling mass production, urban growth, and the rise of national markets, while also displacing traditional farm laborers and changing the nature of work.
Industrialization
This called for reforms including the direct election of senators, a graduated income tax, government control of railroads and telegraphs, the free coinage of silver to increase money supply, and other policies aimed at helping struggling farmers and laborers.
This 1887 law was designed to force Native Americans to adopt white American farming practices by dividing tribal lands into individual family plots, weakening tribal authority and opening “surplus” land to white settlers.
The Dawes Act
By controlling every step from raw materials to finished products, this strategy allowed certain industrialists to out-compete smaller rivals, dictate prices, and exert influence over related markets, but also drew criticism for creating monopolistic power that would later inspire federal antitrust legislation.
Vertical integration
In 1894, during one of the worst economic depressions of the Gilded Age, a group of unemployed workers led a march from Ohio to Washington, D.C., demanding that the federal government create jobs and provide economic relief; this protest, which became known as a symbol of the growing discontent among laborers and the poor, highlighted both the desperation of working-class Americans and the limits of government response to economic crises at the time.
Coxey's Army
Beginning in the 1860s, this movement organized Midwestern farmers into local groups to fight against high railroad rates and grain storage fees, advocate for cooperative buying and selling, and push for state regulation of railroads and warehouses, highlighting the growing tensions between rural agricultural communities and industrial corporations during America’s rapid transition from farm to factory.
The Grange / Granger Movement
Advocates of this policy wanted U.S. currency to be backed by both gold and silver, believing it would inflate the money supply, make it easier for farmers and debtors to pay loans, and challenge the economic power of creditors and big banks.
Bimetallism
This argument claimed that the existence of free land and the experience of westward expansion shaped American democracy, individualism, and national identity, and warned that these traits might weaken now that the frontier was closed.
Frederick Turner's Frontier Thesis
This company used a combination of horizontal and vertical integration, along with secret railroad rebates and aggressive buyouts of competitors, to dominate the oil industry, becoming a symbol of monopolistic power.
Standard Oil
In 1894, workers went on strike after wage cuts without a corresponding decrease in rents and prices in the company-owned town, prompting the American Railway Union to support the strike nationwide; the strike escalated into violent clashes with federal troops, disrupted rail traffic across the country.
Pullman Strike
Name four major problems that farmers in the late 19th century had to deal with.
Debt, falling crop prices, high railroad rates, droughts, mechanization, lack of currency in circulation, laissez-faire, high tariffs, railroad creation through farmland
Who spoke these words?
"We stand against those who would make the currency scarce, favoring the wealthy few while the farmers and laborers struggle under crushing debt and low prices. If we do not act, the common people will be left to suffer in silence."
William Jennings Bryan (Cross of Gold Speech)
Sought to assimilate Native American children by removing them from their families and enforcing English language use, Christianity, and American cultural norms.
Indian boarding schools (e.g. Carlisle Indian Industrial School)
Popular among some Gilded Age industrialists, this philosophy applies ideas about “survival of the fittest” to society and the economy, justifying wealth accumulation, limited government regulation, and the vast inequality between rich and poor.
Social Darwinism
Founded in the late 1860s, this organization sought to unite workers of all trades—skilled and unskilled, men and women, and even African Americans—into a single union that could push for reforms like the eight-hour workday, the abolition of child labor, and equal pay; it reached its peak in the 1880s but declined after the violent Haymarket Affair and internal disagreements over whether to prioritize political action or strikes.
Knights of Labor
After the Civil War, this term described a version of the region after it's shift away from plantation agriculture toward industrial growth, railroads, and diversified crops; though in practice the region often remained tied to poverty, sharecropping, and racial segregation.
Passed in response to growing outrage over political corruption and the assassination of a president, this 1883 law required that many federal jobs be awarded based on competitive exams rather than political connections, laying the foundation for a professional civil service.
The Pendleton Act / Civil Service Act