Vocab Flashcards
Patent
Document giving inventors sole rights to make and sell their products
Petroleum
Oily flammable liquid used in making kerosene
Business Cycle
Patterns of good and bad economic times
Bessemer steel process
Technique that produced steel more cheaply
Generator
Machine that produced electric current
Thomas Edison
Inventor who developed a practical lightbulb and found the most ways to use electricity
Alexander Graham Bell
Inventor who developed the first telephone
Centennial Exhibition
A public fair celebrating America’s hundredth birthday
Transcontinental Railroad
A railroad that spanned the entire continent
Standard time
System that divided the country to four time zones
Robber Baron
Business person who became wealthy through dishonest methods
Corporation
Business owned by investors who bought stock in the company
John D. Rockefeller
Leader of the oil industry
Andrew Carnegie
Leader of the steel industry
Monopoly
Company that has sole control of industry
Trust
A legal body created to hold stock in many companies
Philanthropist
A person who gives away large sums of money to charities
Gilded Age
Term used to describe a time of both show tremendous wealth and poverty in the late 1800s
Sweatshop
Place where workers labored long hours for little pay
Knights of labor
Prominent workers union
Socialism
Economic system in which all members of society are equal owners of all businesses
Haymarket affair
A conflict between police and union members in Chicago in May 1886
Pullman strike
1894 strike that spread throughout the rail industry
Eugene V Debs
American Railway Union Pres.
Samuel Gompers
US labor leader
American Federation of labor
National organization of union that Gompers helped to found
Frontier
The sparsely settled area in the west
Great Plains
Area from Missouri River to Rocky Mountains
Boomtown
Town that experiences economic or population boom
Long drive
Cattle drive to Cow towns
Vaquero
One of the early cowhands who came to the southwest from Mexico
Vigilante
Citizen who took the law into his or her hands
Reservation
Land set aside for Native American tribes
Sand Creek massacre
A deadly attack on a peaceful Cheyenne village by Colorado militia
Sitting bull
Sioux Cheif
George A Custer
US cavalry commander
Battle of the Little Big Horn
Famous battle between US troops and Native Americans
Wounded knee massacre
Mass killing of Native Americans by US troops
Dawns Act
Plan to give Native Americans land to farm
Homestead
A piece of land and the house on it
Mexicano
Spanish-speaking Southwestener
William Buffalo Bill Cody
Buffalo hunter who promoted life in the west
Buffalo soldier
Name given to an African-American serving in the US Army in the west
Homestead act
Law that offered land to anyone who agreed to settle it
Exoduster
An African-American who migrated to the west
Sodbuster
A farmer on the Great Plains
Grange
Group that helped farmers
Cooperative
Farm organization owned and run by its members
Populist party
National political party formed by farm groups
Gold standard
System in which government backed every dollar with a certain amount of gold
William Jennings Bryan
Presidential candidates supported by populist and Democrats
