Unit 3 Flashcards
William “Boss” Tweed
(1823 – 1878) A powerful politician from New York who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He is best known for his leadership of the New York City Democratic Party, running the Tammany Hall political machine, and for being convicted of stealing millions of dollars of taxpayer money.
Cronyism
Awarding political positions to personal friends.
Nepotism
Awarding political positions to family members.
Patronage
Awarding positions to political supporters.
Tammany Hall
A Democratic political machine that dominated New York politics from the late 1840s to the early 1950s. Tammany Hall grew powerful through its support of Irish immigrants and the poor.
How the Other Half Lives
A book of photographs taken by Jacob Riis. It showed the terrible living and working conditions in the slums and tenements of New York City in the 1880s.
Grantism
A term invented in 1872 by Charles Sumner, a U.S. senator. It referred to all of the dishonorable things that happened during the term of President Grant.
Crédit Mobilier
A company formed by the Union Pacific Railroad to build railroads. Union Pacific gave stocks in Crédit Mobilier to congressional representatives to gain their support. This was against the law.
Wright Brothers
Orville and Wilbur. These men built the first working airplane, which successfully took flight in 1903.
Thomas Edison
(1847 – 1931) An important American inventor. He is most famous for improving the electric lightbulb and inventing the phonograph.
Samuel Morse
(1791 – 1872) An inventor who contributed to the development of the telegraph. He also helped invent a rhythmic code for communication, which became known as Morse code.
patents
The official right to use an invention given by the government.
Jane Addams
(1860 – 1935) A founder of the U.S. settlement house movement, in which wealthy people supported efforts to improve the lives and neighborhoods of poor people. She was against war and spoke against U.S. involvement in World War I. In 1931, she became the second woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Jacob Riis
(1849 – 1914) A Danish immigrant and reporter who used photography to show the poor living and working conditions of people who lived in the slums of New York City.
Henry Ford
(1863 – 1947) An industrialist who revolutionized the automobile industry by cheaply mass-producing cars and making them affordable for the general public. He raised workers’ wages so that they could afford the cars they were making.
assembly line
A manufacturing process of machines and workers in which a product passes from one operation to the next in a direct line until it is completed.
Alexander Graham Bell
(1847 – 1922) An inventor and innovator who patented the telephone in 1876. He and his supporters formed the world’s first telephone company in 1877. Later in his life, he also contributed to groundbreaking work in hydrofoils and aeronautics.
Slums
Parts of cities that suffer from poverty, poor housing, and overcrowding.
Ku Klux Klan
An organization formed in the South after the Civil War. The Klan used violence and fear, mostly against blacks, to uphold the belief that white people are better than other races. The Klan still exists today, and many people consider it to be a terrorist organization.
Industrial Revolution
The period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries when significant technological developments caused the economy to shift dramatically from being agricultural and artisan-based to relying more heavily on manufactured products.
Gentlemen’s Agreement
A set of agreements made between 1907 and 1908 with the government of Japan. Japan agreed not to allow its citizens to emigrate to the United States unless they or their relatives already had homes there. In return, the United States promised that the Japanese in America would be treated more equally. The purpose of the agreement was to slow immigration from Asia but remain on friendly terms with Japan because of the trade relationship between the two countries.
Emigrate
To move to a new country to live.
Chinese Exclusion Act
A federal law that allowed the U.S. government to stop Chinese people from immigrating to the United States.
Assimilation
The process by which a minority group becomes more like the majority group. American Indians and immigrants were encouraged, and sometimes forced, to give up their way of life to live as white Americans did. One of the ways immigrants and American Indians assimilated was by learning to speak English.
