Industrialization & Big Business
A market condition where a single company or corporation controls almost all of an industry, eliminating competition.
What is a Monopoly?
Negotiation between organized workers and an employer to agree on wages, working hours, and workplace conditions.
What is Collective Bargaining?
French term describing a hands-off government economic policy with minimal regulation or intervention in business.
What is Laissez-Faire?
The rapid growth of cities and the shifting of populations from rural areas into urban centers.
What is Urbanization?
Crusading journalists and investigative reporters who exposed corruption, poverty, and corporate abuses during the Progressive Era.
Who were the Muckrakers?
The 19th-century territorial expansion of the United States from the Atlantic coast toward the Pacific Ocean.
What was Westward Expansion?
Business strategy of buying up companies at the same level of the production process, such as acquiring competing refineries.
What is Horizontal Integration?
1886 Chicago labor protest that turned violent after a bomb was thrown at police, severely damaging the reputation of labor unions.
What was the Haymarket Riot?
1887 federal legislation that established the ICC to regulate railroad rates and prevent unfair pricing practices.
What was the Interstate Commerce Act?
1887 federal legislation that established the ICC to regulate railroad rates and prevent unfair pricing practices.
What is a Tenement?
Community centers established in poor urban neighborhoods (like Jane Addams' Hull House) offering education, childcare, and healthcare services.
What are Settlement Houses?
1862 law offering 160 acres of free western land to any citizen willing to settle and cultivate it for 5 years.
What was the Homestead Act?
Strategy where a single business owns every stage of production, from raw materials to manufacturing and distribution.
What is Vertical Integration?
1894 strike that paralyzed national rail traffic after workers protested wage cuts at a luxury train car manufacturing company.
What was the Pullman Strike?
1890 landmark federal law that made monopolies and combinations in restraint of trade illegal.
What was the Sherman Antitrust Act?
Policy or attitude favoring native-born citizens over immigrants, often fueled by fear or xenophobia.
What is Nativism?
Application of biological evolutionary theory to human society, arguing that extreme wealth was a result of natural "survival of the fittest."
What is Social Darwinism?
A designated block of government land granted to railroads or states, often used to fund land-grant agricultural colleges.
What is a Land Grant (or Morrill Land Grant)?
Bold, inventive business leaders who built major industries while donating millions back to society through philanthropy.
Who are Captains of Industry?
Federal act that banned child labor products from interstate commerce, though it was later declared unconstitutional.
What was the Keating-Owen Act?
System where non-military government job appointments are based on merit and exam scores rather than political patronage.
What is Civil Service?
1882 law that banned Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States for a period of ten years.
What was the Chinese Exclusion Act?
Political movement representing farmers and factory workers demanding free silver, rail regulation, and a direct voice in government.
What is Populism? (or the Grange)
1887 law aiming to assimilate Native Americans by breaking up tribal lands into individual family farming allotments.
What was the Dawes Act? (or the Reservation System)
An official government-issued document giving an inventor exclusive rights to make, use, or sell an invention for a period of time.
What is a Patent?
The practice of using government regulations and legal action to break up powerful monopolies and corporate trusts.
What is Trust Busting?
Monetary system where a nation's currency is backed directly by, and convertible into, a fixed amount of gold.
What is the Gold Standard?
A residential community located on the outskirts of a city, connected to the urban center by streetcars or railways.
What is a Suburb?
Famous speech delivered by William Jennings Bryan advocating for bimetallism ("free silver") over the rigid gold standard.
What was the "Cross of Gold" speech?
Southern laws designed to disenfranchise Black voters by exempting individuals whose ancestors could vote prior to 1867.
What was the Grandfather Clause?