US History Chapter 25

Terms in this set (14)

A rebate is a deduction from an amount to be paid, or money back. Rockefeller, oil king, employed spies to find the rebates of railroads and forced the railroads to pay him the rebates on the bills of his competitors.

Vertical Integration

It was pioneered by tycoon Andrew Carnegie. It is when you combine into one organization all phases of manufacturing from mining to marketing. This makes supplies more reliable and improved efficiency. It controlled the quality of the product at all stages of production.

Horizontal Integration

A technique used by John D. Rockefeller. Horizontal integration is an act of joining or consolidating with ones competitors to create a monopoly. Rockefeller was excellent with using this technique to monopolize certain markets. It is responsible for the majority of his wealth.

A trust is an economic tool devised late in the 1800's. It was pioneered by men such as Andrew Carnegie of the steel industry and John Rockefeller of the oil industry. The purpose of a trust is to eliminate competition in business. One powerful company will have control of the stocks of many smaller companies in the same line of business, creating a monopoly. The monopoly allows price-fixing and benefits all companies involved. Trusts were outlawed in the early 1900's.

John D. Rockefeller

Rockefeller was a man who started from meager beginnings and eventually created an oil empire. In Ohio in 1870 he organized the Standard Oil Company. By 1877 he controlled 95% of all of the refineries in the United States. It achieved important economies both home and abroad by it's large scale methods of production and distribution. He also organized the trust and started the Horizontal Merger.

J. Pierpont Morgan

He was a banker who financed the reorganization of railroads, insurance companies, and banks. He bought out Carnegie and in 1901 he started the United States Steel Corporation.

Terence V. Powderly

Terence V. Powderly was an Irish-American leader of the Knights who won many strikes for the eight-hour work day. Powderly led the Knights to become a major power in gaining rights for the workers in factories.

Samuel Gompers is responsible for the formation of one of the first labor unions. The American Federation of Labor worked on getting people better hours and better wages. The formation of this triggered the formation of various others that would come later.

A pool is an informal agreement between a group of people or leaders of a company to keep their prices high and to keep competition low. The Interstate Commerce Act in 1887 made railroads publicly publish their prices and it outlawed the pool.

Collis P. Huntington

R.R Baron of the Central Pacific. One of the "Big Four" (four men that funded railroads around the late 1860's. He was an adept lobbyist.

He was a successful railroad builder, and was considered as the best. In the 1890's he created the Great Northern, which ran from Deluth to Seattle. He knew that the success of the railroad would depend on the prosperity of those who used it. His enterprise was so financially secure, that when financial storms came his enterprise was not fazed.

Cornelius Vanderbilt

He founded Vanderbilt University in Tenn. He was a big man with little education but he established a shipping-land transit across Nicaragua after the gold rush. He built a railway that connected New York to Chicago in 1873. He offered superior service at low rates and was extremely successful.

A deaf Edison invented the phonograph and by 1900 it was used in over 150,000 homes. His invention made going to the symphony obsolete. He also invented the light bulb. This invention changed the way of life for thousands of Americans.

Andrew Carnegie

steel king; integrated every phase of his steel-making operation. Ships, railroads, etc. pioneered "Vertical Integration" ; his goal was to improve efficiency by making supplies more reliable controlling the quality of the product at all stages of production and eliminating the middle man

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