I) Growth of Industries

A) railroadsAmerica’s 1st big business

Promontory Point, Utah

1) Transcontinental Railroad (1869)

America’s 1st “trust” (form of monopoly)

B) Standard Oil: John D. Rockefeller

C) US Steel: Andrew Carnegie

D) Thomas Edison

light bulb

movie camera

phonograph

II) Pro-Business Government (laissez-faire)

“leave alone”

A) Morrill Act

created A&M Colleges

B) Interstate Commerce Act

regulate business that crosses state lines

C) Sherman Antitrust Act

designed to break up monopolies

III) Indian Wars (1492-1868 (then) 1876-1890)

A) Little Big Horn (1876)

Sioux Indians, led by Crazy Horse & Sitting Bull, wiped out Custer’s cavalry

B) Wounded Knee (1890)

last “battle” of the Indian Wars

C) Bureau of Indian Affairsgovernment management of the reservations

(areas of poor land set aside for the Indians)

1) Dawes Act of 1887 (assimilation)

IV) The West

A) Cattle Ranching (Big Business of the West)

Blacks who settled in Nebraska in 1874

B) Settlement

1) Exodusters

gave away free land to encourage settlement

2) Homestead Act & Timber Culture Act

3) barbed wire, McCormick reaper, & steel plow

C) Frederick Jackson Turner’s “Turner Thesis”said that the American frontier acted like a safety valve and people could pack up and move West to start over in times of trouble. It eased the pressure on society.

John Deere

D) dime novels & wild west shows

E) conservation

preserving the environment

Buffalo Bill Cody

V) The Gilded Agea term coined by Mark Twain in which America looked good on the outside (rich & prosperous), but underneath it had many social problems

A) Social Darwinismapplied Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection, as written in his Origin of Species, to society in that those who were strong enough to do well would do so and all the others would fail— in other words, it’s the “survival of the fittest” in everyday life

B) conspicuous consumption

showing off one’s wealth

C) Political Corruption

1) Tweed Ring (Tammany Hall)controlled NY City politics

2) Grant Administration (1868-1876): Credit Mobilierrailroad bribery scandal

3) Assassination of James A. Garfieldby a man who wanted a government

job (led to the Pendleton Act)

4) Grover Clevelandonly President to serve two nonconsecutive terms

VI) “New” Immigrants

“New” = those who came to the US after the Civil War (“Old” = those who came before)“New” = Catholic & Jewish from S. & E. Europe (“Old” = Protestant from N. & W. Europe)

1) Ellis Islandfor immigrant processing

B) tenements

C) nativism

cramped housing for the poor in large cities

discrimination against those not born here

1) Chinese Exclusion Act & the Gentlemen’s Agreement

limited Asian immigration

D) sweatshopswhere people worked long hours for little pay

VII) Elections of 1896 & 1900: Williams Jennings Bryan (D) vs. William McKinley (R)

Gold Standard: the government could only print money that equaled the amount of gold they had.

A) Gold Standard vs. Silver Standard

With more silver available than gold, they could print more money & more people could have access to it. Supporters of this “bimetallism” included Midwest farmers who were part of the Grange Movement, Populist Party, & the former Greenback Party.

VIII) Spanish-American War (1898)

A) Imperialismtaking over someone else's country—imperialism is Social Darwinism in practice because the stronger country is taking over the weaker one

1) Open Door PolicyAmerica's answer to the Spheres of Influence in China where anyone could trade their instead of specific areas of foreign economic control

B) Yellow Journalism

1) William Randolph Hearst: “you provide the pictures, and I’ll provide the war”

sensationalizing a story to sell more papers

C) USS Maine

D) Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders: San Juan Hill (Cuba)

A) Social Gospel

IX) Reform

Christian ideals (opposite of Social Darwinism)

B) Settlement Houses: Hull House (Jane Addams)

where the poor learned to take care of themselves

C) Civil Service Act of 1883 (reformed government hiring practices)

because of the assassination of Garfield (Pendleton Act)

D) American Federation of Labor (1st large-scale union)

1) Samuel Gompers

2) collective bargainingnegotiations between a union & a business3) Pullman Strike

it’s a federal crime to interfere with the delivery of the mail

E) Muckrakers

1) Ida Tarbell (Standard Oil)

investigative journalists

2) Upton Sinclair (The Jungle)

exposed unsanitary conditions in the meatpacking industry

a) Pure Food & Drug Act

X) Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt: The Square Deal

A) “Big Stick” policies

progressives = those who want social change through government regulation

“speak softly & carry a big stick”

1) trust-busting

2) Dollar Diplomacy

breaking-up monopolies

(Sherman Antitrust Act)

using America’s wealth to influence foreign policy (Latin America)

3) Roosevelt Corollary

the United States would intervene in the affairs of Latin American countries as per the Monroe Doctrine

4) Panama Canal

US encouraged a Panamanian uprising to build canal—makes quicker passage between oceans

B) Election of 1912: Bull Moose

Progressive Party (third party)

XI) Presidency of Woodrow Wilson: New Freedom

A) Federal Reserve Act

the Federal Reserve is the government’s bank & handles America’s monetary policy

B) Progressive Amendments

1) 16th income tax

2) 17th direct election of Senators

3) 18th Prohibition

4) 19th women’s suffrage