Gilded Age

Question 1

What is conspicuous consumption?

Answer 1

Doing something that shows people you have a lot of money.

Question 2

What is social mobility?

Answer 2

The ability to move up and down between social classes, rich to poor, poor to rich, etc

Question 3

What is meritocracy?

Answer 3

The government and leaders will be elected and kept in office through their skill. Also refers to regular citizens who should be getting ahead based on how smart they are or how talented they are.

Question 4

What is philanthropy?

Answer 4

large donations by private citizens to charitable causes. often given to universities, the arts, libraries, medical schools or advancements, etc. does not include regular charity, such as donating $100 to an organization.

Question 5

What are strikebreakers?

Answer 5

workers, typically new immigrants, who are brought in by factory owners to “break” a strike by workers who are protesting for higher wages or better working conditions. these strikebreakers often worked for even lower wages than those who were on strike and were often targeted by the workers who were fired.

Question 6

What does it mean to be blacklisted?

Answer 6

If you were a worker fighting for higher wages or better working conditions, you might be targeted as a troublemaker. If the factory owner targeted you as “blacklisted” it would mean that owner would call other factory owners to make sure you weren’t hired.

Question 7

Andrew Carnegie: Robber Baron or Captain of Industry?

Answer 7

Carnegie could be looked at as a robber baron because you could argue he exploited his workers and therefore “robbed” them of fair wages to enrich himself. You could also argue he was simply earning as much money as the system allowed and he was following all laws but created a monopoly as a captain of the steel industry.

Question 8

Social Darwinism

Answer 8

ideology that twisted Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest to apply to humans. those who followed this philosophy believed that the weakest members of our society, or those who were “unfit” should be left to die off so the human race would be stronger.

Question 9

Boss Tweed/Tammany Hall

Answer 9

Boss tweed was a New York City politician who ran a political machine (symbolic, not an actual machine) called Tammany Hall. He oversaw a lot of people who carried out his wishes. For example, as new immigrants came into Ellis Island, he would often send Tammany officials to the docks to offer them a job or some place to stay. In return, they were expected to vote for Tammany officials during elections. Tweed then used taxpayer money to engage in fraud by pocketing extra cash. For example, construction workers tied to Tammany might charge the city $400 per window in a new government building, when it actually cost them $200. They would then funnel the money back to Tammany. In practice, a lot of immigrants benefited from Tammany, but they were also taken advantage of.

Question 10

Unions

Answer 10

when workers organized themselves as a group for better working conditions so one troublemaker couldn’t be fired

Question 11

Andrew Carnegie

Answer 11

Was born in Scotland and was one of the few examples of someone working their way from poverty to the top class. He claimed he had respect for his workers but really just wanted to make money.

Question 12

Cornelius Vanderbilt

Answer 12

railroad tycoon -where he made his money. extremely wealthy; example of conspicuous consumption

Question 13

John Rockefeller

Answer 13

monopolized the oil industry

Question 14

John Roebling

Answer 14

built Brooklyn Bridge; shows the incredible feats and innovation during the Gilded Age

Question 15

Thomas Alva Edison

Answer 15

electricity, inventor, light bulb; again, incredible ingenuity and innovation of the Gilded Age

Question 16

Alexander Graham Bell

Answer 16

telegraph; telephone

Question 17

Andrew Mellon and J.P. Morgan

Answer 17

bankers who monopolized the banking industry and came up with ingenious new methods of banking

Question 18

Why was the era in American History at the end of the 19th century called the Gilded Age?

Answer 18

It was called the gilded age because it looked good on the outside but really was a mess on the inside or fools gold.

Question 19

Income inequality

Answer 19

also known as the income gap, it means how far away the rich are from the poor. During the Gilded Age, there was a huge gap between rich and poor. That gap had been much smaller prior to the Civil War. For the past 30 years, the income gap had continued to widen again, approaching the Gilded Age income inequality. we watched a video on income inequality in class (I just posted the link on the calendar for today, 3/3, so you can watch it again if you need to) that describes the myth in America today. Most Americans think that wealth distribution is more fair than it actually is and actually want the wealth to be more fairly distributed. the top 1% controls 40% of all the wealth in America and some other statistics show how much income inequality there is between the rich and the poor. income inequality was also terrible during the Gilded Age and would eventually contribute to the Great depression

Question 20

Homestead Strike & Pinkertons

Answer 20

Carnegie’s manager, Henry Frick, wanted to cut wages and break up the steel union. The workers went on strike. Frick tried to stop the strike by hiring strikebreakers so he wouldn’t have to give into the demands of the union and hired a private army (Pinkertons) to protect the strikebreakers from being assaulted by the workers who Frick was trying to get rid of. In a confrontation between the Pinkertons and striking workers, someone opened fire and people on both sides were killed. The governor sent the militia to maintain order and the workers, after 4 months, went back to work at the lower wage.

Question 21

George Eastman

Answer 21

3rd largest philanthropist after Carnegie and Rockefeller. Created the Eastman Kodak company, which became the largest photography company in the world. Started from nothing, so is a rags to riches story like Carnegie and Rockefeller. Different from them in that he gave away his money anonymously and insisted on giving most of it away while he was alive.

Question 22

Russell Conwell

Answer 22

believed that if a person worked hard, they could go from rags to riches (lectured about this idea all over America). significant because he used God and religion to make people believe that God was punishing poor people and that the rich were honest, good men who achieved wealth because God wanted it that way; mixture of social darwinism and America’s longstanding Puritan values

Question 23

Thomas Nast

Answer 23

Nast was the political cartoonist that we saw in the video on NY. He was a journalist who published cartoons that were critical of Boss Tweed and wanted to uncover the ugliness underneath the Gilded Age. Tweed was angry because his constituents (voters) often couldn’t read, but they understood what was happening from the cartoons.

Question 24

Social class

Answer 24

We will use the definition the NY Times used which is that 1) education, 2) job, 3) income and 4) wealth are used to determine which social class you fall into (rich, upper middle, lower class, etc)

Question 25

Rags to riches

Answer 25

A few men from the Gilded Age went from being very rich to very poor (Carnegie, Rockefeller) but most wealthy men during the Gilded Age came from money. There is discussion about whether the term rags to riches is a myth that is perpetuated to keep poor Americans working hard

Question 26

wealth

Answer 26

all the money and assets (homes, cars, investments) you have acquired over time

Question 27

income, salary, wages

Answer 27

income is what you make in one year. some people earn a salary (i.e. $65,000/year) meaning that no matter how many hours they work, that is what they get paid. others earn wages, meaning they get paid per hour (i.e. $15/hour) and their income is based on the number of hours they work. many people in the lower class earn wages while those in the upper class typically earn a salary. if you sell stock during the year and make a profit, that also counts as “income”

Question 28

strike

Answer 28

when workers refuse to work and protest to try to gain higher wages or better working conditions. a strike stops production, which is bad for the company.

Question 29

Herbert Spencer

Answer 29

English philosopher who came up with the term Social Darwinism and survival of the fittest. applied Darwin’s theory to people. admired by Carnegie

Question 30

Eugenics

Answer 30

carrying out social darwinism’s theory into practice by sterilizing people who were considered “unfit”, sometimes against their will. The American Eugenics society promoted this practice, which was widely discredited after the Holocaust.

Question 31

Carrie Buck

Answer 31

An American woman who was institutionalized for being mentally handicapped and then sterilized against her will after she had an illegitimate child who was also deemed mentally handicapped. her case went to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the state of Virginia was allowed to sterilize her against her will for the good of society. You can see Social Darwinism theory in their majority opinion.

Question 32

Populism

Answer 32

A political party and movement made up of mostly farmers in the 1890s that we would consider today as part of the “left” side of the political spectrum. The platform insisted that big business be regulated and railroads be nationalized. It tried to speak for the common people against big business.

Question 33

Mary Lease

Answer 33

A reformer who was critical of Wall Street and supported the Populist movement

Question 34

nationalization

Answer 34

when the government takes over a private business. in this example, the Populists wanted the US government to take over railroads and therefore assume the profits and regulate the industry. this would have taken Vanderbilt’s railroad empire away from him.

Question 35

left and right on political spectrum

Answer 35

remember that we’ve discussed all year that left (today that means liberal, Democratic Party) usually means people want to make changes and does not mind departing from tradition where the right (today that means conservative, Republican Party) usually wants to stick with tradition.

Question 36

skyscrapers and the elevator

Answer 36

also innovations of the Gilded Age. skyscrapers could not have been built without steel and the invention of the passenger elevator.