Factory floor

The Turn of the Century

By Kara Collier

  • John D. Rockefeller starts Standard Oil

    John D, Rockefeller borrowed some money from his partners to start up standard oil. He was the founder if the standard oil. His oil controlled 90% of the United States pipelines and refineries. At the time kerosene was getting a bad name. So he opened more refineries. Near the end of his life he had been broken up into 30 different companies.

  • Alaska is purchased from Russia

  • Completion of Transcontinental Railroad

  • Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone

  • Thomas Edison brings light to the world with the light bulb

    Thomas Edison began his research in 1878. He didn't get his patent until later that year. Through out his life time Edison worked on many improvements to what we know today as the light bulb. The use of the light bulb became easy and cheap to use. And much safer than any gas or oil lamps.

  • Samuel Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL)

  • Chinese Exclusion Act

  • Carnegie Steel’s Homestead Strike

  • Sherman Anti-trust Act

  • Ellis Island opens

  • The U.S. declares war on Spain

  • Hawaii is annexed

  • Rudyard Kipling published “The White Man’s Burden” in The New York Sun

  • The start of the Boxer Rebellion

  • Pres. McKinley is assassinated and Progressive Theodore Roosevelt becomes President

  • Tenement Act

  • The Philippine Insurrection comes to an end

  • The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe doctrine declares the U.S. right to intervene in the Wesern Hem

  • Creation of the NAACP

  • Upton Sinclair releases “The Jungle”

  • Peak year of immigration through Ellis Island

  • Henry Ford produces his first Model T (car)

  • The Triangle Shirt waste Fire

  • The Assassination on Austria’s archduke Franz Ferdinand starts WWI

  • The Panama Canal is completed and opened for traffic

  • The United States enters WWI

  • Ratification of the 18th Amendment - Prohibition

  • Women got the right to vote.