Chapter 18 Flashcards
Federal and state politicians actively encouraged
The growth of business by imposing high tariffs on foreign imports as a means of blunting competition and by providing land and cash to finance railroads and other transportation improvements
What are the factors that helped accelerate economic growth in the Civil War?
Nation’s unparalleled resources, rapidly expanding population, inventors and business owners developed more efficient, labor saving techniques, and innovative bold leadership as many entrepreneurs took advantage of fertile business opportunities
What Was the Homestead Act of 1862?
The distribution of 160 acre homesteads to citizens
Equally important to helping the economic boom was
That it did not regulate the activities of other corporations
Business leaders usually got what they wanted from
Congress and state legislators. Bribery was common
What was also booming in the late 1800s?
The agricultural sector
By often sending their products to factories, the agricultural sector
Stimulated the industrial sector
The industrial transformation also benefited from
An abundance of cheap power sources (water, wood, electricity, etc.)
What was the 2nd Industrial Revolution spurred by?
Creation of interconnected transportation and communication networks, widespread application of electrical power, and the systematic application of scientific research to the industrial process.
What connected the United Stares and Europe?
Steamships and the underwater telegraph line
What did electricity make grow?
Steel and chemical industry and urban growth
What symbolized the urban-industrial revolution?
Railroads
When did the railroads especially grow?
the 25 years after the Civil War
What was a major cause of the panic of 1893?
Railroads were expensive to manage
What were problems with railroads?
Often created shoddy working conditions, they were often poorly managed which led many companies to bankruptcy, and many executives often “lobbied” and had a dangerous degree of influence
Pacific Railway Act?
Authorized the construction of a rail line along a north central route by the Union Pacific Railroad westward from Omaha and Central Pacific Railroads eastward from Sacramento
Many railroad comoanies
Bribed legislators, manipulated accounts, used federal troops to suppress Indians
The Union Pacific Railroads workers were mostly
Past Civil War soldiers, former slaves, and Irish and German immigrants.
The Central Pacific Crew was mostly
Chinese
What delayed the finishing of the transcontinental railroad?
Iron prices spiked, broken treaties,prompted Indian raids, blizzards, and adverse conditions
The railroad met in
Promontory Utah
Alexander Graham Bell invented the
Telephone, founded the Bell Telephone Company, which was surpassed by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company
What did Thomas Edison invent?
Storage battery, Dictaphone, mimeograph, light bulb, phonograph, electric motor, electric transmission, and motion picture camera
The Edison Electric Illuminating Company
Began the great electric utility industry
The railroad and shipping connections made Cleveland a strategic location for
Servicing the booming oil fields of western Penn.
Where was the first oil well?
Titusville, Pennsylvania
How did Rockefeller weed out his competition to raise prices?
Bought out his Cleveland competitors, and those who resisted were forced our
What Is vertical integration?
Where a company produces whatever it needs. In addition, it also keeps large amounts of cash reserves to make it independent of banks
With Standard Oil owning much of the pipelines leading to the railroads, plus railroad rank cars and the oil storage facilities, it
Was able to dissuade the railroads from serving its eastern competitors
What was the Standard Oil Trust?
All 37 stockholders conveyed their stock to nine trustees, receiving trust certificates, which paid them annual dividends from the company’s earnings
