Period 6: 1865-1898

Question 1

Transcontinental Railroads

Answer 1

Railroads that stretch from the east to the West

Question 2

Homestead Act

Answer 2

Offered 160 acres of free-land to settlers who stayed for 5 years, 500k families took advantage of this but 2.5m had to but their won land since the best public lands were in the possession of railroad companies and speculators

Question 3

Cash Crops

Answer 3

A crop produced for commercial purposes instead of consumption

Question 4

Deflation

Answer 4

Since the money supply wasn’t going as fast as the economy, the dollar became worth more, putting downward pressure on price

Question 5

National Grange Movement

Answer 5

Social and educational organization for farmers and their families

Question 6

Frederick Jackson Turner

Answer 6

Wrote “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893)

Question 7

“The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893)

Answer 7

Argued that the closing of the frontier was more a cause for concern than celebration because it meant there was no more westward expansion to release American discontent

Question 8

Little Big Horn (1876)

Answer 8

When the Sioux ambushed and destroyed Colonel George Cluster’s command at Little Big Horn in 1876

Question 9

Ghost Dance Movement

Answer 9

Developed by Indian prophet Wavoka that if Natives participated in this ritualistic dance the ghosts of their ancestors would return and drive the white men from their land

Question 10

Helen Hunt Jackson

Answer 10

Wrote “A Centruy of Dishonor”, creating sympathy for Natives especially in the east

Question 11

Dawes Act of 1887

Answer 11

Government officially abandoned the reservation system and divided reservation lands into 160-acre plots to be farmed by Natives & allowed them to become citizens on the condition they assimilated

Question 12

Indian Reorganization Act (1934)

Answer 12

Promoted the reestablishment of tribal organization and culture

Question 13

“New South”

Answer 13

A post-civil war South with economic diversity, industrial growth, and laissez-faire capitalism

Question 14

Sharecroppers

Answer 14

People without enough money to buy/rent their won land could sign on to work the fields of a plantation on the condition that a portion of that harver was shared with the owner

Question 15

Tuskegee Insititue

Answer 15

Institute led by Booker T. Washington

Question 16

Plessy v. Ferguson

Answer 16

Homer PLessy was 7/8th white & 1/8th black, making him balc under Louisiana law. PLessy challenged this law by sitting in a white-only passenger car and refused and was arrested when asked to leave. Supreme Court ruled segregation is constitutional as long as the separate facilities were equal in kind and quality

Question 17

Jim Crow Laws

Answer 17

Segregated almost very facet of society

Question 18

Poll Taxes

Answer 18

Tax required for someone to pay before they are allowed to vote

Question 19

Ida B. Wells

Answer 19

Editor of a southern black newspaper & spoke out against lynching and jim crow laws in it, she received many death threats and had her persses destroyed by a mob, and later continued her crusade after moving to the North

Question 20

Booker T. Washington

Answer 20

Though Black people didn’t need to fight for equality on a political level and instead needed to become self sufficient economically, leading to power in the voting booth

Question 21

W. E. B Du Bois

Answer 21

NAACP director of publicity and research

Question 22

International Migration Society (1894)

Answer 22

Facilitated the migration of Black Americans to Africa, specifically Liberia, was not a sustainable venture since Liberian inhabitants often lacked economic opportunity and suffered from African diseases often

Question 23

Transatlantic Cable

Answer 23

Undersea cables running under the Atlantic Ocean for telegraph communications

Question 24

Telephone (1876)

Answer 24

Invented by Alexander Graham Bell,

Question 25

Alexander Graham Bell

Answer 25

Invented the telephone, founded the Bell telephone Company within a year, with ~50k telephones in America

Question 26

Henry Bessemer

Answer 26

Patented a process for making steel of a much stronger quality

Question 27

Thomas Edison

Answer 27

Invented the electric lightbulb, as well as the motion picture camera

Question 28

Consumer Economy

Answer 28

Economy driven by consumer spending as a percent of its GDP

Question 29

Cornelius Vanderbilt

Answer 29

railroad owner who built a railway connecting Chicago and New York.

Question 30

Andrew Carnegie

Answer 30

A Scottish-American industrialist who led the expansion of teh American steel industry. His article “The Gospel of Wealth” called for the rich to use their wealth to improve society and it started a wave of philanthropy

Question 31

John D. Rockefeller

Answer 31

Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust.

Question 32

Monopoly

Answer 32

When a business owns all of their competition and their business because they were able to buy out the competitors

Question 33

Standard Oil

Answer 33

By the early 1890s, Standard Oil controlled about 90% of the oil refineries in the United States and controlled prices for oil products. Rockefeller’s success in the oil industry had a significant impact on American industrialism

Question 34

Trust

Answer 34

A mechanism by which one company grants control over its operations, through ownership of its stock, to another company

Question 35

Horizontal Intergration

Answer 35

Controlling all competition in a particular industry

Question 36

Vertical Integration

Answer 36

Bought out and controlled all aspects of an industry

Question 37

Laissez-Faire

Answer 37

The American government intervened very rarely in the economic operations of businesses, so without many regulations these businesses (the rich) flourished

Question 38

Adam Smith

Answer 38

The Scottish “Father of Modern Economics,” that frontally attacked mercantilism in 1776. He influenced the founding fathers of the United States, and convinced the advocate of free trade

Question 39

Social Darwinism

Answer 39

The belief that only the fittest survive in human political and economic struggle. A belief held by many that stated that the rich were rich and the poor were poor due to natural selection in society.

Question 40

Concentration of Wealth

Answer 40

The richest 10 percent of the US populations controlled 90% of the nations wealth

Question 41

Horatio Alger

Answer 41

Popular novelist during the Industrial Revolution who wrote “rags to riches” books praising the values of hard work

Question 42

Wage Earners

Answer 42

Wages were determined by the laws of supply and demand. Because of the large supply of immigrants competing for factory jobs, wages were barely above the level needed for bare subsistence

Question 43

Collective Bargaining

Answer 43

The process by which management and union representatives negotiate the employment conditions for a particular bargaining unit for a designated period of time. This was a new innovation that gave workers some say in the condition of their workplace.

Question 44

Knights of Labor (1881)

Answer 44

Opened membership to anyone who wanted to join, & their main goals were the destruction of trusts and monopolies, as well as the abolition of child labor

Question 45

National Labor Union

Answer 45

Founded by William Sylvis (1866); supported 8-hour workday, convict labor, the federal department of labor, banking reform, immigration restrictions to increase wages, women; excluded blacks.

Question 46

Haymarket Bombing

Answer 46

A bombing in which 7 police officers were killed with a bomb and caused many Americans to lose support for the Knights of Labor

Question 47

American Federation of Labor

Answer 47

1886; founded by Samuel Gompers; sought better wages, hrs, and working conditions; skilled laborers, arose out of dissatisfaction with the Knights of Labor, rejected socialist and communist ideas, non-violent.

Question 48

Samuel Gompers

Answer 48

An English-born American labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. He founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and served as its president for nearly four decades, from 1886 to 1924

Question 49

Homestead Strike

Answer 49

The workers at a steel plant in Pennsylvania went on strike, forcing the owner to close down. Armed guards were hired to protect the building. The strikers attacked for five months, then gave in to peace demands.

Question 50

Pullman Strike

Answer 50

Pullman companies manufactured sleeping cars for trains & when the Panic of 1893 hit George Pullman decided the best way to save money was to cut the wages of his workers.
When the union workers came to bargain with him, he went ahead and fired all of them, so the rest of the workers went on strike
Another union leader Eugene V. Debs directed the members of his union not to work on any trains that had Pullman cars in them
The owners of railroads and train cars are very closely tied and the railroad owners were on Pullman’s side.
They came up with a plan to hook up Pullman cars to trains carrying federal mail which meant if the workers interfered with the trains, then they had to answer to the government, and they were eventually jailed for this

Question 51

Eugene V. Debs

Answer 51

Leader of the American Railway Union, he voted to aid workers in the Pullman strike. He was jailed for six months for disobeying a court order after the strike was over.

Question 52

“Old” Immigrants

Answer 52

Immigrants who came to the United States primarily before the 1890s, mostly from Northern and Western Europe. They were largely Protestant and included many Irish and German immigrants

Question 53

“New” Immigrants

Answer 53

Immigrants who came to the United States primarily after the 1890s, mostly from Southern and Eastern Europe . They were often poor, uneducated, and members of non-Protestant religions, such as Catholicism and Judaism

Question 54

Chinese Exclusion Act

Answer 54

1882

Question 55

Tenement Apartments

Answer 55

Multi-family housing in big cities

Question 56

Political Machines

Answer 56

A party organization that recruits its members by the use of tangible incentives—money, political jobs—and that is characterized by a high degree of leadership control over member activity

Question 57

Tammany Hall

Answer 57

Powerful New York political organization. It drew support from immigrants. The immigrants relied on Tammany Hall patronage, particularly for social services. In return, they asked for ppl’s votes on election day

Question 58

Jane Addams

Answer 58

A social reformer and activist who co-founded the Hull House in Chicago, one of the first settlement houses in the United States.

Question 59

Settlement Houses

Answer 59

A house where immigrants came to live upon entering the U.S. At Settlement Houses, instruction was given in English and how to get a job, among other things. The first Settlement House was the Hull House, which was opened by Jane Addams in Chicago in 1889

Question 60

White-Collar Workers

Answer 60

Never got their hands dirty with manual labor (managers, etc.)

Question 61

“Gospel of Wealth”

Answer 61

Duty of the rich to give money to help community for a better future, reduce societal distance between the rich and the poor. Money for opportunities, not handouts (libraries, universities, concert halls, etc.)

Question 62

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Answer 62

A famous justice of the Supreme Court during the early 1900s. Called the “Great Dissenter” because he spoke out against the inposition of national regulations and standards, and supported the states’ rights to experiment with social legislation.

Question 63

Social Gospel

Answer 63

Christian principles should be applied not only to one’s self but to solve the problems of society as well

Question 64

WCTU

Answer 64

Women’s organization was founded by reformer Frances Willard and others to oppose alcohol consumption.

Question 65

Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890

Answer 65

Prohibited any “contract, combination, in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce”

Question 66

Pendleton Act of 1881

Answer 66

Essentially would replace the patronage system with a competitive exam

Question 67

Civil Service Commission

Answer 67

government agency under the Pendleton Act of 1883 that oversaw the administration of the exam in order to fulfill jobs

Question 68

“Soft Money”

Answer 68

Paper money and unlimited minting of silver coins, backed by debtors, farmers and start-up businesses because it would enable them to borrow money at lower interest rates and pay off their loans more easily with inflated dollars

Question 69

“Hard Money”

Answer 69

Currency backed by gold stored in government vaults, supporters were bankers, creditors, investors and established businesses

Question 70

High Tariffs

Answer 70

Republican Congress raised tariffs, after the war some Democrats objected because the taxes raised prices for consumers

Question 71

Reformers

Answer 71

Typically voted for Lincoln due to an anti-slavery past

Question 72

Temperance

Answer 72

Established in 1826

Question 73

Big-City Political Machines & Immigrant Voters

Answer 73

Strengths of the Democratic party

Question 74

States’ Rights

Answer 74

Part of what Gilded Age Democrats argued for along with limited federal power

Question 75

Rise of the Populists

Answer 75

Sought to work for the people and correct the gross concentration of economic power held by elite banks and trusts
Omaha Platform
- Direct election of senators
- Use of initiatives & referendums which allowed the people to propose and vote on legislation
- Unlimited coinage of silver
graduated income tax
8hr work day

Question 76

Panic of 1893

Answer 76

When the stock market crashed due to over speculation and dozens of railroad companies went into bankruptcy because of overbuilding. Unemployment reached 20% and it continued for almost 4 years