Key Terms and People
- Big business- the rise of the big businesses revolutionized the world economy and brought large scale commercial agriculture to many parts of the globe.
- Transcontinental railroad- It connected the east and west parts of the United States. It was originally meant to supply jobs and money
- Time zones- allowed for standardization of the railroad’s schedules
- Vertical integration- a practice where a single entity controls the entire process of a product, from the raw materials to distribution
- Andrew Carnegie- he founded Carnegie steel and used vertical integration
- John D. Rockefeller- founded oil refinery and cut the prices of standard oil
- JP Morgan- a banker that took control of bankrupt railroads and consolidated with them. He was one of the powerful men that dominated the boards of competing railroad corporations.
- Thomas Edison- a telephone operator and in 1869 he invented a machine to record votes.
- Advertising- businesses began producing billboards and other forms of advertisement to promote the goods that they produced
- Samuel Gompers- He was the creator of the American Federation of Labor, which provided a stable and unified union for skilled workers
- Laissez- faire- the belief that the government regulation of business was alien to the prevailing economic and scientific beliefs
- Social Darwinism- the belief that Darwin’s ideas of natural selection and the survival of the fittest should be applied
- Gospel of Wealth- was used to justify their riches and through this they had a God-given responsibility to make the society better through universities, libraries, and other public institutions
- Polls taxes- a tax on polls to keep blacks from voting
- Booker T. Washington- a black American who was born into slavery and believed that racism would end once blacks acquired useful labor skills and proved their economic value in society
- Frederick Jackson Turner- an American historian in the early 20th century who was best known for his essay in which he argued that the spirit and success of the United States was directly tied to the country’s westward expansion.
- Immigration- people from all over the world were coming to the United States to live permanently
- Ethnic neighborhoods- a neighborhood typically placed in a larger city and comprised of a local culture
- Realism- a 19th century artistic movement in which writers and painters sought to show life as it is rather than life as it should be
- Populist Party- a third- party movement that drew support from disgruntled farmers. They were known for advocating the coinage of silver.