US History 1877 to Present Midterm – Flashcards

Application of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection to society; used the concept of the "survival of the fittest" to justify class distinctions and to explain poverty.

In 1870, he founded the standard Oil Company of Ohio, which was his first step in creating his vast oil empire. Eventually, he perfected the idea of a holding company: a company by holding all or at least a majority of their stock. During his lifetime, he donated $500 million in charitable contributions.

American author and socialist, most famous for his utopian novel, Looking Backward, set in the year 2000. He was a very influential writer during the Gilded Age of United States history.

Product of the late nineteenth-century movement to offer a broad array of social services in urban immigrant neighborhoods; Chicago's Hull House was one of hundreds of settlement houses that operated by the early twentieth century.

These were immigrants that were recently arriving into America. These were unskilled laborers that filled the jobs no one else wanted.

Strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company in the company town of Pullman, Illinois, on May 11, 1894, by the American Railway Union under Eugene V. Debs; the strike was crushed by court injunctions and federal troops two months later.

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Political success of Farmer's Alliance candidates encouraged the formation of 1892 of the People's party (later renamed the Populist Party); active until 1912, it advocated a variety of reform issues, including free coinage of silver, income tax, postal savings, regulation of railroads, and direct election of U.S. senators.

He founded a leading college for African Americans in Tuskegee, Alabama, and became the foremost black educator in America by the 1890's. He believed that the African American community should establish an economic base for its advancement before striving for social equality. His critics charged that his philosophy sacrificed educational and civil rights for dubious social acceptance and economic opportunities.

In the New South, these laws mandated the seperation of races in various public places that served as a way for the ruling whites to impose their will on all areas of black life.

As the leader of one of the best known settlement houses, she rejected the "do-goodism" spirit of religious reformers. Instead, she focused on solving the practical problems of the poor and tried to avoid the assumption that she and other social workers knew what was best for poor immigrants. She established child care for working mothers, health clinics, job training, and other social programs. She was also active in the peace movement and was awarded the Noble Peace Prize in 1931 for her work on its behalf.

Established the Civil Service Commission in 1883 and marked the end of the spoils system.

Writers who exposed corruption and abuses in politics, business, meat-packing, child labor, and more, primarily in the first decade of the twentieth century; their popular books and magazine articles spurred public interest in progressive reform.

The Philippine-American War was a war between the armed forces of the United States and the Philippines from 1899 through 1913. In December 1898, the U.S. purchased the Philippines and other territories from Spain at the Treaty of Paris for the sum of 20 million United States dollars, after the U.S. defeated Spain in the Spanish-American War. The U.S. government made plans to make the Philippines an American colony. However, the Filipinos, fighting for their independence from Spain since 1896, had already declared their independence on June 12. On August 14, 11,000 ground troops were sent to occupy the Philippines. On January 1, 1899, Emilio Aguinaldo was declared the first President. He later organized a Congress at Malolos, Bulacan to draft a constitution. Tensions between the Filipinos and the American soldiers on the islands existed because of the conflicting movements for independence and colonization, aggravated by the feelings of betrayal on the part of the Filipinos by their former allies, the Americans. Hostilities started on February 4, 1899 when an American soldier named Robert William Grayson shot a Filipino soldier who was crossing a bridge into American-occupied territory in San Juan del Monte, an incident historians now consider to be the start of the war. Eventually the US grew tired of the war. In 1916 the United States granted the Philippines self-government and promised eventual independence. It was finally granted in 1946.

Passed in 1890, the first law to restrict monopolistic trusts and business combinations; extended by the Clayton Anti-Trust Act of 1914.

Proposal for railroad regulation enacted in 1906 that extended the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) and gave it the power to set maximum freight rates.

A strike by the United Mine Workers of America in the anthracite coal fields of eastern Pennsylvania. The strike threatened to shut down the winter fuel supply to all major cities. President Theodore Roosevelt became involved and set up a fact-finding commission that suspended the strike. The strike never resumed, as the miners received more pay for fewer hours; the owners got a higher price for coal, and did not recognize the trade union as a bargaining agent. It was the first labor episode in which the federal government intervened as a neutral arbitrator.

A giant conglomerate of railroads that had a monopoly over the Great Northern and Northern Pacific lines; President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the company broken up in 1902, and it was dissolved by the Supreme Court in 1904.

Governor of Wisconsin who promoted the principle of government by experts, advocated progressivism, and established a legislative Reference Bureau to provide research, advice, and help in the drafting of legislation.

Tariff of 1913 which, in addition to lowering and even eliminating some tariffs, included provisions for the first federal income tax, made legal the same year by the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment.

The proclamation by Germany that it would sink all ships, without warning, that entered a large war zone off the coasts of Allied nations. Germany realized that it might draw the United States into WWI. Germany believed that cutting allied supplies would allow Germany to win the war before a sizeable response by America. America broke diplomatic relation with Germany.

Organization of nations to mediate disputes and avoid war established after World War I as part of the Treaty of Versailles; President Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points'' speech to Congress in 1918 proposed the formation of the league.

Legalized the federal income tax.

Progressive reform from 1913 that required U.S. senators to be elected directly by voters; previously, senators were chosen by state legislatures.

Prohibition amendment of 1919 that made illegal the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic beverages.

Granted women the right to vote.

Preached by liberal Protestant clergymen in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; advocated the application of Christian principles to social problems generated by industrialization.

He was a steel magnate who believed that the general public benefited from big business even if these companies employed harsh business practices. This philosophy became deeply ingrained in the conventional wisdom of some Americans. After retiring, he devoted himself to philanthropy in hopes of promoting social welfare and world peace.

A California printer, journalist, and influential activist whose ideas about taxes and reform, expressed in Progress and Poverty (1879), were widely propagated.

The practice of farmers working land owned by others in return for supplies and a share of the crop, generally about half.

He delivered the pro-silver "cross of gold" speech at the 1896 Democratic Convention and won his party's nomination for president. Disappointed pro-gold Democrats chose to walk out of the convention and nominated their own candidate, which split the Democratic party and cost them the White House. Byran's loss also crippled the populist movement that had endorsed him.

Henry Frick, Chairman of the Board of Carnegie Steel and plant manager at Carnegie's Homestead steel plant, shuts down the factory and locks out its employees when negotiations with representatives from the Amalgamated Association of Steel and Iron Workers break down

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The Spanish-American War; it ends with the U.S. acquiring the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii

DuBois argued strenuously with Booker T. Washington regarding the best way for African-Americans to progress. Du Bois urged blacks to fight segregation and win political rights, not accept defeat and concentrate on economic improvement, as Washington advocated.

Homer Plessy, who had one-eighth black ancestry, was arrested and convicted for refusing to leave a railroad car designated for white passengers only, in violation of the Louisiana law. His appeal rose to the Supreme Court, which decided in 1896 that segregation laws were within the rights of the states.

Authorized the President of the United States to survey Indian tribal land and divide the land into allotments for individual Indians. The Act was named for its sponsor, Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts. The Dawes Act was amended in 1891 and again in 1906 by the Burke Act. The stated objective of the Dawes Act was to stimulate assimilation of Indians into American society. Individual ownership of land was seen as an essential step. The act also provided that the government would purchase Indian land excess to that needed for allotment and open it up for settlement by Whites.

Sensationalism in newspaper publishing that reached a peak in the circulation war between Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal in the 1890s; the papers' accounts of events in Havana Harbor in 1898 led directly to the Spanish-American War.

Maine had been sent to Havana, Cuba to protect U.S. interests during the Cuban revolt against Spain. On the evening of 15 February 1898, she suddenly exploded, and swiftly sank, killing nearly three quarters of her crew.

Treaty signed by the United States and Spain on December 10, 1898, ending the Spanish American War but leaving the question of Philippine independence open.

Amendment that disclaimed any American designs on Cuban territory; added in the Senate to a joint resolution by Congress in 1898 that declared Cuba independent and demanded withdrawal of Spanish forces.

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Republican whose administrative posts, serving as civil governor of the Philippines under President McKinley and secretary of war under President Theodore Roosevelt, led to the White House; he was uncomfortable during his presidency from 1909 to 1913 and much preferred the law, which played itself out when he was later appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by President Harding.

Called for thorough reforms including the following: • Initiative (laws implemented by the people directly at the ballot box) • Referendum (laws overturned by the people directly at the ballot box) • Recall • Recall of judicial decisions • Workman's compensation • Minimum wage for women • Women's suffrage • Child labor legislation • Creation of a federal trade and tariff commission to regulate business

Glass-Owen Federal Reserve Act of 1913 created a Federal Reserve System of regional banks and a Federal Reserve Board to stabilize the economy by regulating the supply of currency and controlling credit.

President Theodore Roosevelt announced in 1904, in what was essentially a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, that the United States could intervene militarily to prevent interference from European powers in the Western Hemisphere.

President Woodrow Wilson's 1918 plan for peace after World War I; at the Versailles peace conference, however, he failed to incorporate all of the points into the treaty.

Staunch Republican and reservationist who, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, opposed the American membership in the League of Nations and effectively blocked it in the Senate.

One of the country's first scientific foresters, appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1881 as the chief of the newly created Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture; worked to develop programs and public interest in conservation, but was fired in 1910 by President William Howard Taft after exposing a supposed scandal involving western conservation land in what came to be known as the Ballinger-Pinchot affair.