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The Homestead Act
A federal law that gave settlers 160 acres of land for about $30 if they lived on it for five years and improved it by, for instance, building a house on it. The act helped make land accessible to hundreds of thousands of westward-moving settlers, but many people also found disappointment when their land was infertile or they saw speculators grabbing up the best land. -
National Labor Union (NLU)
This first national labor organization in U.S. history was founded in 1866 and gained 600,000 members from many parts of the workforce, although it limited the participation of Chinese, women, and blacks; the organization devoted much of its energy to fighting for an eight-hour workday before it dissolved in 1872. -
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The Standard Oil Company
John Rockefeller's company,formed in 1870,which came to symbolize the trusts and monopolies of the Gilded Age. by 1877 Standard Oil controlled 95% of the oil refineries in the U.S. It was also one of the first multinational corporations,and at times distributed more than half of the company's kerosene production outside the U.S.By the turn of the century it had become a target for trust-busting reformers, and in 1911 the Supreme Court ordered it to break up into several dozen smaller companies. -
Immigration Restriction Laws
The first major United States immigration law was the Chinese f Exclusion Act of 1882. It also charged a 50 cent tax on all immigrants landing on US ports for a government immigration fund. Also had several categories of immigrants not eligible for citizenship. -
Sherman Anitrust Act
A law that forbade trusts or combinations in business, this was landmark legislation because it was one of the first Congressional attempts to regulate big business for the public good; at first the law was mostly used to restrain trade unions as the courts tended to side with companies in legal cases; in 1914 the Act was revised so it could more effectively be used against monopolistic corporations. -
National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)
An organization founded in 1890 to demand the vote for women. NAWSA argued that women should be allowed to vote because their responsibilities in the home and family made them indispensable in the public decision-making process. During World War I, NAWSA supported the war effort and lauded women's role in the Allied victory, which helped to finally achieve nationwide woman suffrage in the Nineteenth Amendment.
