Period 6

• With increased farm equipment, small, marginal farms were often driven out of business
• Increased production decreased the prices for wheat, cotton, and other crops - caused deflation
• United States Steel became the largest enterprise in the world

  • Steel more durable than iron
• Edison’s invention of the electric light bulb allowed for lighting cities, operating electric cars, subways, and machinery
• Packaged food, large department stores, and advertising created a consumer culture
• Overall, standard of living increased but with sharp economic divisions among classes
• Henry Grady coined the term “New South” and argued for economic diversity and laissez-faire capitalism
• Horizontal Integration: when a company acquires or merges with another company in the same industry that is operating at the same level in the value chain
• Vertical Integration: taking direct ownership of various stages of its production process
• Laissez-Faire Capitalism - government no involved in economy

  (Not accurate because the government usually sides with the most profitable side)
• Social Darwinism - belief that Darwin’s ideas of natural selection and survival of the fittest should be applied to business
• Sherman Antitrust Act: prohibited monopolies
• Gospel of Wealth - Carnegie argued that extremely wealthy Americans like himself had a responsibility to spend their money in order to benefit the greater good
• Management used strategies to defeat unions and put down strikes
• Great Railroad Strike - railroad companies cut wage and a strike spread across 11 states that was eventually put down by federal troops
• National Labor Union - first attempt to organize all workers

  • Social program for equal rights for women and blacks, monetary reform, and worker cooperatives. Victory was an 8 hour day
• Knights of Labor lost popularity after the anarchist bombing at Haymarket square
• Haymarket Square: A public square in Chicago, Illinois, USA, where a bomb was thrown during a labor protest in 1886
• American Federation of Labor focused on higher wages and improved working conditions
• Homestead Strike: A bloody confrontation between steel workers and security guards that led to death of 16 people. Major defeat for Union workers.
• Pullman Strike - Led to the supreme Court allowing court injections for the breaking up of unions
• National Grange Movement: to advance methods of agriculture, as well as to promote the social and economic needs of farmers in the United States.
• Wabash v. Illinois - individual states could not regulate interstate commerce
• Farmers alliances - purpose was to push forward the interests of farmers
• Populist Party: A political party that sought to reform the political system and protect the interests of the common people.
• Various political and legal devices were invented to prevent southern black people from voting (literacy tests, poll taxes, and political primaries for whites only)
• Plessy v. Ferguson - upheld “separate but equal accommodations”
• “New Immigrants” - from Greece, Italy, Russia - didn’t speak English, poor, & not accustomed to democracy
• Efforts to restrict immigration were supported by labor unions, a nativist society, and social darwinists
• Overcrowding in cities and filthy tenements helped spread disease
• Ethnic neighborhoods - each group could maintain its own language, culture, church, and social club
• As mines developed, skilled immigrant miners from Europe, Latin America, and China were employed
• Hostility to foreigners resulted in the Miner’s tax ($20 a month to foreign born miners)
• Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 - restricted immigration on the basis of race and nationality for the Chinese
• Boomtowns: A town that is built up due to the discovery of a valuable resource but later abandoned.
• Homestead Act - encouraged farming in the West by offering 160 acres of public free land to a family who settled on it for five years
• Reservation Policy: Restricted American Indians to their certain reservations. Created hostility and disagreements.
• Indian Appropriation Act of 1871 - ended recognition of tribes as independent nations and nullified previous treaties made with the tribes
• Ghost dance - last effort by Natives to resist government controls
• Massacre of Wounded Knee - more the 200 Natives killed by US army - marked end of the Indian Wars