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2nd Industrial Revolution
The Second Industrial Revolution was a period when advances in steel production, electricity and petroleum caused a series of innovations that changed society. With the production of cost effective steel, railroads were expanded and more industrial machines were built.Among the social effects that caused this revolution can include: Urbanization increased rapidly. The population moved into hastily built housing in cities to be nearer to the factories. -
Sand Creek Massacre
The causes were rooted in the long conflict for control of the Great Plains of eastern Colorado. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 guaranteed ownership of the area north of the Arkansas River to the Nebraska border to the Cheyenne and Arapahoe.The Sand Creek Massacre resulted in a heavy loss of life, mostly Cheyenne and Arapaho women and children. Hardest hit by the massacre were the Wutapai, Black Kettle's band. Half of the Hevhaitaniu were lost, including the chiefs Yellow Wolf and Big Man. -
Purchase of Alaska
It marked the end of Russian efforts to expand trade and settlements to the Pacific coast of North America, and became an important step in the United States rise as a great power in the Asia-Pacific region.Russia offered to sell Alaska to the United States in 1859, believing the United States would off-set the designs of Russia's greatest rival in the Pacific, Great Britain.This purchase ended Russia's presence in North America and ensured U.S. access to the Pacific northern rim. -
“crime of 1873”
The sixty-seven sections of the law constituted a virtual codification of the then extant laws relating to the mints and coinage.An Act establishing a Mint, and regulating the Coins of the United States. The Coinage Act or the Mint Act, passed by the United States Congress on April 2, 1792, created the United States dollar as the country's standard unit of money, established the United States Mint, and regulated the coinage of the United States. -
Grange movement
It demonstrated the effects that monopolies have on society. It subjugated these individuals to its whims, and then forced them to take action against it.The Grange, founded after the Civil War in 1867, is the oldest American agricultural advocacy group with a national scope. The Grange actively lobbied state legislatures and Congress for political goals, such as the Granger Laws to lower rates charged by railroads, and rural free mail delivery by the Post Office. -
tuskegee institute
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) was born into slavery and rose to become a leading African American intellectual of the 19 century, founding Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (Now Tuskegee University) in 1881 and the National Negro Business League two decades later. Washington came under pressure from critics who viewed him as an accommodationist because they felt he de-emphasized racism, racial violence against blacks, and discrimination. -
Chinese Exclusion Act
The exclusion laws had dramatic impacts on Chinese immigrants and communities. They significantly decreased the number of Chinese immigrants into the United States and forbade those who left to return.It was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States. In the spring of 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Chester A. Arthur. This act provided an absolute 10-year moratorium on Chinese labor immigration. -
Pendleton Act 1881
President Chester Arthur signed into law the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which established the principle that federal jobs should be awarded on the basis of merit rather than through political connections.The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act provided for selection of some government employees by competitive exams rather than ties to politicians, and made it illegal to fire or demote some government officials for political reasons. -
Haymarket bombing
The rally at Haymarket Square was organized by labor radicals to protest the killing and wounding of several workers by the Chicago police during a strike the day before at the McCormick Reaper Works.After the explosion and subsequent police gunfire, more than a dozen people lay dead or dying, and close to 100 were injured. The Haymarket Square Riot set off a national wave of xenophobia, as hundreds of foreign-born radicals and labor leaders were rounded up in Chicago and elsewhere. -
Interstate Commerce Act 1866
It is a federal law that was designed to regulate the railroad industry, particularly its monopolistic practices. It required that railroad rates be "reasonable and just," but didn't empower the government. It helped small farmers who were using the railways to send goods across state lines.The agency's original purpose was to regulate railroads to ensure fair rates, to eliminate rate discrimination, and to regulate other common carriers, including interstate bus lines and telephone companies. -
“Billion Dollar Congress”
The rules changes and unified government produced the “Billion Dollar Congress,” as the new majority passed generous military pensions and approved long-stalled naval expansion. New economic pressures also resulted in the Sherman Silver Purchase Act and the Sherman Antitrust Act. It was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, consisting of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. -
Ocala Platform 1890
The Omaha Platform suggested a federal loans system so that farmers could get the money they needed. The platform also called for the elimination of private banks. The platform required a system of federal storage facilities for the farmers' crops.Their ideology, embraced in the Omaha Platform, called for the use of federal power to protect farmers and rural Americans, introduced reforms to taxing and senatorial elections, and demanded the continued coinage of silver to gold at a ratio of 16:1 -
Sherman Anti-trust Act 1890
It was the first major legislation passed to address oppressive business practices associated with cartels and oppressive monopolies. The Sherman Antitrust Act is a federal law prohibiting any contract, trust, or conspiracy in restraint of interstate or foreign trade. It outlawed trusts monopolies and cartels to increase economic competitiveness. This prohibition applies to formal cartels and also to any agreement to fix prices, limit industrial output, share markets, or exclude competition. -
Ghost Dance Movement
The Ghost Dance was associated with Wovoka's prophecy of an end to white expansion while preaching goals of clean living, an honest life, and cross-cultural cooperation by Indians. Practice of the Ghost Dance movement was believed to have contributed to Lakota resistance to assimilation under the Dawes Act.The Ghost Dance War was an armed conflict in the United States between the Lakota Sioux and the United States government from 1890 until 1891. -
Forest Reserve Act 1891
The law preserves water resources until forested lands can be opened for settlement and exploitation, but is part of a growing conservation movement to preserve natural resources for future generations.It was passed by President Benjamin Brown Harrison on March 3. This act allows the President to set aside forested land for the purpose of preserving a timber supply for the future and restricts forests from commercial or industrial development -
Omaha Platform
The Omaha Platform suggested a federal loans system so that farmers could get the money they needed. The platform also called for the elimination of private banks. The platform required a system of federal storage facilities for the farmers' crops.Their ideology, embraced in the Omaha Platform, called for the use of federal power to protect farmers and rural Americans, introduced reforms to taxing and senatorial elections, and demanded the continued coinage of silver to gold at a ratio of 16:1. -
Panic of 1893
The Panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression in the United States that began in 1893 and ended in 1897. It deeply affected every sector of the economy, and produced political upheaval that led to the realigning election of 1896 and the presidency of William McKinley. -
Pullman strike
When the Pullman railroad car company laid off workers and slashed their wages, the American Railway Union led a national strike that shut down the country's railroad system. George Pullman called on the federal government to break the strike and get the trains running again.Things changed dramatically with the Panic of 1893, a severe financial depression that affected the American economy. Pullman cut the wages of workers by one third, but he refused to lower the rents in the company housing. -
“Cross of Gold” Speech
It was delivered by William Jennings Bryan at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and it advocated bimetallism. At the time, the Democratic Party wanted to standardize the value of the dollar to silver and opposed pegging the value of the United States dollar to a gold standard In the address, Bryan supported bimetallism or "free silver", which he believed would bring the nation prosperity. -
Standard Oil
It gained a monopoly in the oil industry by buying rival refineries and developing companies for distributing and marketing its products around the globe. In 1882, these companies were combined into the Standard Oil Trust, which would control some 90 percent of the nation's refineries and pipelines. It was an American company and corporate trust that was the industrial empire of John D. Rockefeller and associates, controlling almost all oil production, processing, marketing, and transportation.
