Key Terms

• Pacific Railway Act


  Government subsidies (money and land) for the construction of a transcontinental road
• Transcontinental Railroad


  Completed in 1869, it connected the East and West and spurred the Second Industrial Revolution in the U.S.
• John D. Rockefeller 


  Used the principle of “horizontal integration” to ruthlessly incorporate or destroy competitors in creating Standard Oil
• Andrew Carnegie


  Used “vertical integration” which combined all phases of industry from raw material to manufacturing into a single unit, to have a monopoly on steel
• U.S. Steel


  First billion-dollar corporation organized when J.P. Morgan bought out Andrew Carnegie
• Robber Barons


  Term for industrialists who gained huge profits by making their employees work long hours for low wages in poor working conditions
• Gilded Age


  Mark Twain’s sarcastic name for the post-Civil War era, which emphasized its atmosphere of greed and corruption
• Credit Mobilier


  Corrupt construction company whose bribes and payoffs to congressmen and others created a major Grant administration scandal
• Knights of Labor


  Founded by Terrence Powderly, group advocated for the 8-hour workday, and its reputation hurt during the Haymarket Affair
• Homestead Strike


  Labor dispute at Carnegie Steel in 1892 that helped the Populists gain support from industrial workers
• Pullman Strike


  Bitter labor dispute in Chicago that involved railroad workers, led by Eugene Debs
• American Federation of Labor


  Founded by Samuel Gompers, this group represented skilled laborers focusing mainly on hours, wages, and conditions
• Social Darwinism


  Justification that the success of those at the top of the socioeconomic structure was both appropriate and inevitable
• Pendleton Act


  Established the Civil Service Commission to make appointments to federal jobs
• Political Machines

  Corrupt organizations that controlled local and state governments in the late 1800s
• Wabash Case


  Supreme Court case of 1886 that prevented states from regulating railroads or other forms of interstate commerce
• Interstate Commerce Act


  First federal law (1887) that controlled the Railroads and established the ICC
• Sherman Antitrust Act


  First federal law (1890) to control “combinations in restraint of trade”
• Gospel of Wealth


  Philosophy of philanthropy that justified earning great wealth but carried with it a social responsibility to the community
• Populist Party


  Organization that gained widespread support among farmers in the 1890s and called for a stronger governmental role in regulating the economy
• New South


  Some Southern leaders called for this attempt to industrialize the Southern economy, although the South mainly continued with sharecropping and tenant farming
• Plessy v. Ferguson

  Supreme Court case of 1896 upholding racial segregation in public facilities
• Homestead Act


  Federal law that offered generous land opportunities to poor farmers but also provided the unscrupulous with opportunities for hoaxes and fraud
• Exodusters


  African Americans who migrated to Kansas for land and freedom after the Civil War
• Silver Standard


  Currency should be redeemable by both gold and silver
• The Grange


  Organized by Oliver Kelly to enhance the lives of isolated farmers and then had political success regulating the railroads
• Cowboy


  Symbolized the West and American freedom
• Boomtowns

  Mining camps that grew rapidly into cities
• Fort Laramie


  1851 treaty at this location designated specific reservations for Native Americans in the West
• Little Big Horn


  Site of a major U.S. Army defeat in the Sioux War of 1876-1877
• Chief Joseph


  Leader of the Nez Perce tribe who conducted unsuccessful military campaign in 1877
• Dawes Act


  Federal law that attempted to dissolve tribal Indian landholding and outlawed tribal dances
• Carlisle Indian School


  Where Native American children, separated from their parents, were taught English and inculcated with white values and customs
• Americanization


  Process designed to assimilate people of wide-ranging cultures in the dominant culture
• Wounded Knee Massacre


  Site of an Indian massacre by militia forces when the Sioux were caught doing a Ghost Dance
• A Century of Dishonor


  Chronicled the shameful record of government ruthlessness in dealing with Native-American Indians
• New Immigrants


  Groups that came to the United States from Asia and Southern and Eastern Europe
• American Protective Society


  Nativist organization that attacked “New Immigrants“ and Roman Catholicism in the 1880s and 1890s
• Chinese Exclusion Act


  First major legal restriction on immigration is U.S. history
• Hull House


  Settlement house founded by Jane Addams in the Chicago slums that became a model for women’s involvement in urban social reform