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Immigration of the Gilded Age
the action of coming to live permanently in a foreign country.Immigrants were not only integral to the construction of the transcontinental railroads that facilitated western expansion, but they also used the railroad to migrate west and to form new immigrant settlements in western states and territories. -
The growth of the railroads
The development of railroads were one of the most important phenomena of the Industrial Revolution. With their formation, construction and operation, they brought profound social, economic and political change to a country only 50 years old. Over the next 50 years, America would come to see magnificent bridges and other structures on which trains would run, awesome depots, ruthless rail magnates and the majesty of rail locomotives crossing the country.Railroads remained the primary form of land -
Boss Tweed
William Magear Tweed was known as “Boss Tweed”. It was a Democratic New York Politician. He led the Tammy Hall. He was the third largest landowner. He owned banks, hotels, printing companies, and railroads. -
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) was a industrialist. He was the owner of the Carnegie Steel Company, and a major philanthropist. He epitomized the Gilded Age ideal of the self-made man, rising from poverty to become one of the wealthiest individuals in the history of the world. He worked as a bobbin boy and a telegraph messenger before taking a job with the Pennsylvania Railroad at the age of eighteen. By the Civil War, he held an administrative position with the railroad. At the war's end, Carnegie -
John D. Rockefeller
John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) was an industrialist and the founder of Standard Oil. Born in New York, he was trained as a bookkeeper but entered the oil business shortly after the discovery of oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859. In 1869, he formed the Standard Oil Company within fifteen years. Standard Oil had acquired near-monopoly control over the American petroleum industry, refining 90% of the nation's oil. Rockefeller used his firm's superior size to negotiate preferential rates from -
Manifest Destiny
the 19th-century doctrine or belief that the expansion of the US throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable. -
Teddy Roosevelt
Was the 26th President of the United States (1901–1909). He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" personal and robust masculinity. He was a leader of the Republican Party and founder of the first incarnation of the short-lived Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party of 1912. -
Eugene V. Debs
Eugene Debs (1855-1926) was the president of the American Railway Union and a founding member of the Social Democratic Party of America. He dropped out of high school and went to work for the Terre Haute & Indianapolis Railroad at the age of fourteen. He later became active in the local Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. In 1893, he helped organize the American Railway Union and became its first president. During the Pullman strike Debs instructed members of the ARU to support Pullman employees -
Plolitical Machines
William Marcy Tweed, the Tammany Hall political machine of the late 1860s and early 1870s. Many machine bosses, including Boss Tweed, amassed fortunes as a result of kickbacks and bribes. Some of the cities money also went for such laudable, though unauthorized, uses as support for widows, orphans, the poor, the aged, the sick, and the unemployed. Tammany supporters cited these diversions of public funds as benefits to society that worked to redistribute some of the wealth that big businesses re -
The Homestead act
An area of public land in the West (usually 160 acres) granted to any US citizen willing to settle on and farm the land for at least five years. -
Assembly Line
The moving assembly line impacted factory production in several ways of factories production brought affordable products into homes. -
Labor Unions
The first large-scale U.S. union was the National Labor Union, founded in 1866 it was to organize skilled and unskilled laborers, farmers, and factory workers. Blacks and women, were not allowed to join the union.The National Labor Union was not affiliated with any particular political party, it generally supported any candidate who would fight for shorter workdays, higher wages, and better working conditions. The National Labor Union existed for only six years. When the Depression of 1873 hit, -
Assimilation (of Native Americans)
people of different backgrounds come to see themselves as part of a larger national family. People (Native Americans for an Example) are being forced to leave their families. -
Industrialization of the Gilded Age
Build more railroads and increased demand for a variety of manufactured goods. The forward-looking Congress of authorized construction of the first transcontinental railroad, connecting the Pacific and Atlantic lines -
Political Coruption in the Gilded Age
The corruption usually reduced to a tale of corruption and scandal. There were plenty of both to go around, at all levels of public life. The administration of President Ulysses S. Grant was a cesspool of graft and abuse. Treasury Department officers demanded bribes from importers if they wanted their goods to be processed efficiently. The Naval Department awarded contracts on the basis of favoritism rather than competitive bidding. The Secretary of War accepted bribes from merchants interested -
Federal Indian Policy
Federal Indian Policy refers the relationship between the United States Government and the Indian Tribes that exist within its borders. Federal Indian Policy contains several eras in which the way the U.S. Government dealt with the Indians constantly changed. -
Barbed Wire and the invention of Automobiles
The invented barbed wire allowed a farmer to protect his land and his crops so that wild herds would not trample the property. They can fence in the property more cheaply. -
Trust & Ant trusts
Trust: Powerful Tycoons formed a giant trust in monopolies the production of goods that were high in demand. Anti-Trust: Congress passed the Sherman Anti-Trust to help break up monopolistic business combinations, and the interstate commerce to regulate railroad rates. -
Upton Sinclair
The novel "Jungle" produced an immediate and powerful effect on Americans and on federal policy. Helped create laws to improve working conditions for women in the garment industry. He also exposed the corruption of the cities governments and documented his findings in a book called “The Shame of the Cities”. -
Urbanization of the Gilded age
No laws in working area, child labor,bad working industry, crowded cities. -
New Inventions of the Gilded Age
1881: Alexander Graham Bell invents the first crude metal detector. David Houston patents the roll film for cameras. Edward Leveaux patents the automatic player piano. 1884: George Eastman patents paper-strip photographic film. Frenchmen, H. de Chardonnet invents rayon. Lewis Edson Waterman invents the first practical fountain pen. James Ritty invents the first working, mechanical cash register. Charles Parson patents the steam turbine. 1885: Harim Maxim invents the machine gun. Karl Benz invent -
The Factory system
Horrific labor violence, as industrialists and workers literally fought over control of the workplace. Workers organized the first large American labor unions during the Gilded Age Employers were generally just as determined to stop unionization as workers were to organize unions, leading to frequent conflict Constant strikes and violence eventually caused the middle class to become fed up with both union and businessmen. -
Bessemer Process
the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass-production of steel from molten pig iron prior to the open hearth furnace. The process is named after its inventor, Henry Bessemer, who took out a patent on the process in 1855. -
The invention of the automobile
The growth of the automobile industry caused an economic revolution across the United States. Dozens of spin-off industries blossomed. Of course the demand for vulcanized rubber skyrocketed. Road construction created thousands of new jobs, as state and local governments began funding highway design. The technology for the automobile existed in the 19th century. Henery Ford used the idea of the assembly line for automobile manufacturing. He paid his workers an unprecedented $5 a day when most lab -
The Dawes Act
A federal law intended to turn Native Americans into farmers and landowners by providing cooperating families with 160 acres of reservation land for farming or 320 acres for grazing. In the eyes of supporters, this law would “civilize” the Indians by weaning them from their nomadic life, by treating them as individuals rather than as members of their tribes, and by readying them for citizenship. -
Nativism
the policy of protecting the interests of native-born or established inhabitants against those of immigrants. Not wanting unamerican citizens in their countries. -
Batlle of Wounded Knee (Wounded knee massacre)
Wounded Knee, located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwestern South Dakota, was the site of two conflicts between North American Indians and representatives of the U.S. government. An 1890 massacre left some 150 Native Americans dead, in what was the final clash between federal troops and the Sioux. In 1973, members of the American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee for 71 days to protest conditions on the reservation. -
Pure food and Drug Act
A piece of Progressive Era legislation, signed by President Theodore Roosevelt on the same day as the Federal Meat Inspection Act. The Meat Inspection Act was assigned to what is now known as the Food Safety and Inspection Service that remains in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The first federal law regulating foods and drugs was limited to foods and drugs moving in interstate commerce. Although the law drew upon many precedents, provisions, and legal experiments pioneered in individual stat -
Americanization
assimilation into American culture Assimilation- people of different backgrounds come to see themselves as part of a larger national family. -
The American dream
The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States, a set of ideals in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, and an upward social mobility achieved through hard work. The idea of the American Dream is rooted in the United States Declaration of Independence that is proclaimed that “all men are created equal” and that they are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights “including” Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
