Upgrade to remove ads
Only $2.99/month

Industrial Age Vocab

Terms in this set (20)

Edwin L. Drake
Successfully used a steam engine to drill for oil near Titusville, PA. Started an oil boom across Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Texas
Bessemer process
A way to manufacture steel quickly and cheaply by blasting hot air through melted iron to quickly remove impurities.
Thomas Alva Edison
This scientist received more than 1,300 patents for a range of items including the automatic telegraph machine, the phonograph, improvements to the light bulb, a modernized telephone and motion picture equipment.
Christopher Sholes
Invented the typewriter
Alexander Graham Bell
1876 - Invented the telephone.
transcontinental railroad
Railroad connecting the west and east coasts of the continental US
George M. Pullman
Built manufacturing sleepers and other railroad cars on the prairie miles from the center of Chicago.
Credit Mobiller
a construction co. formed in 1864 by members of the Union Pacific Railroad, who used it fraudulently to skim profits for themselves
Munn v. Illinois
1877 - The Supreme Court ruled that an Illinois law that put a ceiling on warehousing rates for grain was a constitutional exercise of the state's power to regulate business. It said that the Interstate Commerce Commission could regulate prices.
Interstate Commerce Act
1887 law passed to regulate railroad and other interstate businesses
Andrew Carnegie
A Scottish-born American industrialist and philanthropist who founded the Carnegie Steel Company in 1892. By 1901, his company dominated the American steel industry.
Vertical and Horizontal integration
Vertical integration means that a company owns several steps in a process of a product. While horizontal integration is more the company specializes in a certain steps and expand through buying other companies that focus on that one step as well.
Social Darwinism
The application of ideas about evolution and "survival of the fittest" to human societies - particularly as a justification for their imperialist expansion.
John D. Rockefeller
Established the Standard Oil Company, the greatest, wisest, and meanest monopoly known in history
Sherman Antitrust Act
1890 - A federal law that committed the American government to opposing monopolies, it prohibits contracts, combinations and conspiracies in restraint of trade.
Samuel Gompers
He was the creator of the American Federation of Labor. He provided a stable and unified union for skilled workers.
American Federation of Labor
1886 founded by Samuel Gompers; sought better wages, hrs, working conditions; skilled laborers, willing to let unskilled fend for themselves, small minority
Eugene V. Debs
Leader of the American Railway Union, he voted to aid workers in the Pullman strike. He was jailed for six months for disobeying a court order after the strike was over.
Industrial Workers of the world
Founded in 1905, this radical union, also known as the Wobblies aimed to unite the American working class into one union to promote labor's interests. It worked to organize unskilled and foreign-born laborers, advocated social revolution, and led several major strikes. Stressed solidarity.
Mary Harris Jones
Labor organizer, known as Mother Jones. She fought for coal workers' rights by speaking in Appalachian mining towns, encouraging them to join unions. She also faught for child labor laws.
THIS SET IS OFTEN IN FOLDERS WITH...