7: gilded age Flashcards
1882 Chinese Exclusion Act
Act passed by the federal government that outlawed any new Chinese immigrants from coming to the US for 10 years and denied citizenship to Chinese people who had already been living there
Chisholm Trail
Trail for cowboys to transport cattle from Texas ranches to Kansas railroads (Abilene)
Concentration Policy
Federal government’s actions in 1851 to establish specific Native American reservations for different Great Plains tribes
Sand Creek Massacre
Massacre of the Great Plains Indians (particularly the Cheyenne and Arapaho people of Colorado) in 1864 by US troops for resisting Westward migration
Battle of Little Bighorn (1876)
Battle between the 7th Cavalry and the Dakota Sioux tribe (who resisted American migration onto their lands); resulted in a victory for the Sioux
Dawes Severalty Act
Act that forced indigenous people onto Western reservations and granted citizenship to them if they adopted a “civilized culture”
American Federation of Labor
Led by Samuel Gompers;
labor union concerned with “bread and butter” issues; they wanted immediate wage raises and only accepted skilled, white laborers.
Edward Bellamy
Wrote “Looking Backward,” a book that envisioned a future utopian society in which wealth was distributed evenly among everyone (socialist/communist ideas)
Eugene V. Debs
President of the American Railroad Union (ARU) who led the Pullman Strike; also established the Socialist Party and ran several times for Presidential election, although he was never elected
Henry George
Economist in the Gilded Age who wrote many works portraying the issues with industrial capitalism (mainly increased poverty), as well as advocating for the single tax: the idea that the government should get rid of all taxes except the one on unimproved land (without buildings, crops, development, etc.) and fund all of their expenses this way, incentivizing economic development because people would want to improve the land to avoid paying high taxes.
Horizontal Integration
Business practice in which a company bought other companies who produced the same good/service in order to obtain a monopoly and control the market
Vertical integration
Business practice in which a company controlled all the industries that went into manufacturing their product in order to have a monopoly on it and control the market
Homestead Strike
Workers’ strike in which Carnegie’s employees at his steel company rebelled against their working conditions; a violent conflict that was put down by the Pinkertons Detective Group (a police group who claimed to investigate crime but mostly acted as strikebreakers for wealthy industrialists) and with aid from the federal government
Great Railroad Strike of 1877
First major railroad strike; was put down by state militias under President Hayes’ orders and collapsed because the federal army was persistent in breaking the strike and the strikes were not organized uprisings, but spontaneous ones.
Pullman Strike (1894)
Railroad workers of the Pullman Palace Car Company stopped working due to wage cuts, causing delays throughout the country. The strike was put down by the government, who issued an injunction against the union, ordering them to return to work. President Cleveland also ordered federal troops to enforce the injunction.
Decline of the cattle industry
Many people didn’t want to be cowboys anymore because of the harsh way of life, and many weren’t needed anymore because railroads had expanded throughout Texas, so there was no need to herd the cattle from Texas to Kansas to be transported on the railroad.
Farmer population in the Gilded Age
By 1900, there were more farms (incentivized by westward migration and the Homestead Act) but fewer farmers (as more farmers became industrial workers)
Farmers’ grievances
- Deflation (wheat and corn lost their value due to increased crop production in the US, Latin America, Canada, and more)
- Farmers needed to produce more crops in order to pay off loans, leading to lower prices, causing a cycle of debt
- Disliked middlemen
- Taxed land (from farmers) but didn’t tax income from stocks or bonds (farmers saw government siding with the industrialists)
-> Because of this, many small farmers became sharecroppers / tenant farmers
National Grange Movement
Established the National Grange, an organization who defended farmers against middlemen, trusts, and railroad monopolies by establishing cooperatives (businesses owned and run by farmers to eliminate midlemen) and Granger Laws, which illegalized pools and rebates
Methods of farmers fighting back
- Farmers’ alliances made economic and political action and comprised of both poor Blacks and poor whites
- The Ocala Platform, a convention in which farmers demanded more money circulation (inflation, leading to higher crop value), lower tariffs, income tax proportional to income, and direct election of Senators
Pacific Railway Act (1862)
Provided funding for the Transcontinental Railroad, to connect the country from the Pacific to the Atlantic
Adam Smith
Argued for laissez-faire capitalism in his book The Wealth of Nations, stating that the invisible hand (flow of supply and demand) will move the free market economy rather than needing government interference
Knights of Labor
Labor union led by Terrence Powderly and accepted all members (skilled/unskilled, agrarian/industrial, women, African-Americans) and became associated with radicalism
Industrial corruption
Occurred through watering stock (increasing value of company’s stocks before selling to the public), rebates (discounts to favored customers/large companies, high prices for small farmer), and pools. Also interlocking directorates, in which the same person owned multiple rival companies.
Rockefeller Standard Oil
Practiced horizontal integration
Carngie Steel
Practiced vertical integration and understood importance of technological advancements
Large iron ore deposits found in __
Ohio and Pennsylvania
