Urbanization
These overcrowded and unsanitary apartment buildings were home to most working-class families.
What are tenements?
This 1862 law gave land grants to help build the Transcontinental Railroad.
What was the Pacific Railroad Act?
This silver strike in Nevada created one of the West’s most famous boomtowns.
What was the Comstock Lode?
Founded in 1867, this farmer organization fought railroad corruption and price abuses.
What was the Grange?
This 1883 law replaced the spoils system with competitive exams for certain federal jobs.
What was the Pendleton Act?
DAILY DOUBLE
The construction of these transformed the skyline of American cities by encouraging people to build upward.
What are skyscrapers?
On May 10, 1869, this ceremonial event in Utah marked the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad.
What was the Golden Spike at Promontory Summit?
When mines closed, many towns were abandoned and became known by this name.
What are ghost towns?
This 1886 Supreme Court case declared that states could not regulate interstate commerce.
What was Wabash v. Illinois?
This 1890 tariff law raised prices on many goods, sparking farmer anger.
What was the McKinley Tariff?
In New York City, some poor residents paid for these cheapest nightly housing options where people slept packed together.
What are “5 cents a spot” rooms?
DAILY DOUBLE
This fuel source, first drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859, boomed in demand due to kerosene lamps.
What is petroleum (oil)?
This cheap invention ended the era of the open range by letting farmers fence off land.
What is barbed wire?
DAILY DOUBLE
This 1890 law gave the federal government the power to break up monopolies.
What was the Sherman Antitrust Act?
Andrew Carnegie used this strategy, while John D. Rockefeller used horizontal integration.
What is vertical integration?
This cartoonist’s drawings helped bring down Boss Tweed’s Tammany Hall political machine
Who was Thomas Nast?
He invented both the phonograph and the electric light bulb.
Who was Thomas Edison?
This environmental disaster in the winter of 1886–87 froze and starved thousands of cattle, ending the open range system.
What was the harsh winter blizzard?
In 1877, railroad workers’ wages were cut three times, leading to this nationwide strike known as the “Great Upheaval.”
What was the Great Railroad Strike of 1877?
This business model allowed Rockefeller to control competing companies under one management system.
What was a trust?
Between 1880 and 1900, this violent crime statistic rose from 25 per million to over 100 per million people.
What is the murder rate?
By 1900, the United States had this many miles of railroad track.
What is more than 200,000 miles?
DAILY DOUBLE
This form of mining used high-pressure water jets, causing flooding and erosion in farmland.
What is hydraulic mining?
This contract forced employees to promise never to join a union.
What was a Yellow-Dog Contract?
DAILY DOUBLE
This powerful financier created U.S. Steel by buying out Carnegie and merging other companies.
Who was J.P. Morgan?