Q1 Exam Terms: Big Business, Labor & the American West. Flashcards
Long Drive
The moving of cattle over trails to a shipping center
Homestead Act
Allowed any citizen or immigrant intending to become a citizen to recieve 160 acres of land by paying a small fee, living on the land for 5 years and making a few improvements
Turner’s Frontier Thesis
**Not on test
American historian who said that humanity would continue to progress as long as there was new land to move into. The American frontier was the line of most rapid “ameircanization” and the place where democracy flourished. He also concluded that the “American frontier” had closed.
Nez Perce
Native American tribe that U.S. took land from
Dakota Sioux
Tribe from South Dakota. War between tribe and miners in 1875.
Led by Crazy Horse
Lakota
Group of Native Americans who were continually pushed out of their lands.
Chief Joseph
Chief of the Nez Perce Native Americans
Chief Joseph fought for his people’s return to eastern Oregon’s Wallowa Valley
Tribe was promised a land reservation in Idaho, but were sent to Oklahoma and 1/2 the tribe died from disease on the way there
Dawes Act
Law enacted in 1887 that intended to “Americanize” Native Americans by distributing reservation land to individual owners
If a Native American adopted white clothing and ways, was responsible for his own farm, dropped his “Indian-ness” and assimilated to the population
Assimilation
a minority’ group’s adoption of tge beliefs and ways of life of the dominant culture
Laissez-faire
Hand-off government
Believers of a laissez-faire government believed that the government should not interfere with the economy other than to protect private property rights and maintain peace
Believed that if the government regulated the economy it would increase costs and eventually hurt society more than help it
Free market economy
When the government does not regulate economy
Standardization
?
Corporation
A company whose owners and investors have legal protection against being sued and can sell stock
Stock
a share of ownership in the company
Economies of scale
Business tactics, making quickest, cheapest products
Vertical integration
Company taking over its suppliers and distributors and transportation systems to gain total control over the quality and cost of its product
Horizontal integration
The merging of companies that make similar products (buying out competing businesses in order to control the market)
Monopoly
Complete control over an industry’s production, wages, and prices
Trust
Participants in a trust turn their stock over to a group of trustees (people who ran the separate companies as one large corporation) In return, the companies were entitled to dividends on profits earned by the trusts
Union
People who wanted better treatment from big business
Blacklist
Business owners prevented strikers from getting jobs at other companies
Lockout
Business owners close doors during strike so workers are desperate for money
John D. Rockefeller
Head of Standard Oil Company
Controlled 90% of oil business
Andrew Carnegie
One of the first industrial moguls to make his own fortune
Created Carnegie Steel Company
Nativism
the belief of keeping America for the Americans
American Federation of Labor
an alliance of trade and craft unions formed in 1886
Strikebreakers
People who break up strikes
Strikes
Organized protests by workers who were treated unfairly by business owners
