ch.17 apush vocab – Flashcards

setting the standard so that all railways are the same size so that any train can travel on any track

Refers to the industrialists or big business owners who gained huge profits by paying their employees extremely low wages. They also drove their competitors out of business by selling their products cheaper than it cost to produce it. Then when they controlled the market, they hiked prices high above original price.

A full-time, three-member paid commission elected by the people to regulate oil and gas and some transportation entities

(1877) United States Supreme Court Case that ended up allowing states to regulate business within their borders, including railroads

created by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, which was signed into law by President Grover Cleveland;regulate railroads (and later trucking) to ensure fair rates, to eliminate rate discrimination, and to regulate other aspects of common carriers.

Was an American industrialist and philanthropist. Revolutionized the petroleum industry and defined the structure of modern philanthropy.

Firms or corporations that combine for the purpose of reducing competition and controlling prices (establishing a monopoly). There are anti-trust laws to prevent these monopolies.

A Scottish-born American industrialist and philanthropist who founded the Carnegie Steel Company in 1892. By 1901, his company dominated the American steel industry.

Practice where a single entity controls the entire process of a product, from the raw materials to distribution

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.

1st effort to create National union. Open to everyone but lawyers and bankers. Vague program, no clear goals, weak leadership and organization. Failed

1886 incident that made unions, particularly the Knights of Labor, look violent because a bomb exploded during a protest of striking workers.

1886 founded by Samuel Gompers; sought better wages, hrs, working conditions; skilled laborers, willing to let unskilled fend for themselves, small minority

Popular novelist during the Industrial Revolution who wrote "rags to riches" books praising the values of hard work

An act that removed Indian land from tribal possesion, redivided it, and distributed it among individual Indian families. Designed to break tribal mentalities and promote individualism.

Act that allowed a settler to acquire as much as 160 acres of land by living on it for 5 years, improving it, and paying a nominal fee of about $30 - instead of public land being sold primarily for revenue, it was now being given away to encourage a rapid filling of empty spaces and to provide a stimulus to the family farm, turned out to be a cruel hoax because the land given to the settlers usually had terrible soil and the weather included no precipitation, many farms were repo'd or failed until "dry farming" took root on the plains , then wheat, then massive irrigation projects

Invented barbed wire. This allowed a farmer to protect his land and his crops so that wild herds would not trample the property. They can fence in the property more cheaply, and the production of barbed wire went up dramatically in 1874.

Largely former slave owners who were the bitterest opponents of the Republican program in the South. Staged a major counterrevolution to "redeem" the south by taking back southern state governments. Their foundation rested on the idea of racism and white supremacy. Redeemer governments waged and agressive assault on African Americans.

Not all white southerners revered the lost cause. Many looked to the future rather tha the past. They attempted to modernize the South's economy and to disversify southern agriculture. They encouraged northern investment and the building of new railroads to tie the south into national and internaltional markets. Rather than a lost cause, these southerners looked to a new south

A person who works fields rented from a landowner and pays the rent and repays loans by turning over to the landowner a share of the crops.

Pharmacist/inventor of Coca-Cola

Known as Mark Twain, the best of the local colorists, and the first great American writer born and raised west of the Appalachians; books included Innocents Abroad (1869), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Life on the Mississippi (1883), and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).

a tax on imported goods that raises the price of imports so people will buy domestic goods

Passed in 1883, an Act that created a federal civil service so that hiring and promotion would be based on merit rather than patronage.

united Republican Party -lower tariffs to cut taxes -assert American economic and strategic interest in Latin America. he was also shot