The Gilded Age

• Transcontinental Railroad

The Union Pacific and Central Pacific companies began in Omaha and

Sacramento and met in Promontory Point in Utah to build this.

• Advantages of railroads

more direct routes, greater speed, greater safety and comfort, more dependable

schedules, a larger volume of traffic, and year-round service

• Four Great Trunk Lines

Baltimore and Ohio, Erie Railroad, New York Central Railroad, and Pennsylvania

Railroad

• Bessemer Process

Created by Henry Bessemer, it made increased steel production possible by

blasting air through molten iron.

• Vertical Integration

A single company owns and controls the entire process from raw materials to the

manufacture and sale of the finished product

• Andrew Carnegie

A Scottish immigrant who grew to monopolize the steel industry through vertical integration, but eventually sold

out to JP Morgan

• The Gospel of Wealth

Carnegie justified monopolies through social Darwinism and argued that the wealthy had a God-given responsibility to carry out projects of civil philanthropy for the benefit of society

• Monopoly

When a single company achieves control of an entire market

• Trusts

A legal concept that allows one person, called a trustee, to manage another

person's property.

• Mergers

The joining together of two or more companies or organizations to form one

larger one

• Holding Company

A company that owns the stock of companies that produce goods, but

doesn't actually produce anything itself

• Horizontal Integration

The combining of many firms engaged in the same type of business into one large

corporation

• John D. Rockefeller

Created the Standard Oil Company through the use of trusts/horizontal integration, vertical integration, hiring scientists, and

being thorough and ruthless.

• George Eastman

Invented the Kodak Camera and the process for coating gelatin on

photographic dry plates

• Alexander Graham Bell

Invented the telephone

• Thomas Alva Edison

Inventor of the light bulb, phonograph, etc. and owner of the most patents

• Knights of Labor

Established by Uriah S. Stephens, platform included an 8 hour work day and

abolition of child labor; taken over by Powderly

• American Federation of Labor

Loose alliance of national craft unions calling for higher wages, shorter hours,

and better working conditions; established by Samuel Gompers

• Iron Law of Wages

Employers believed supply and demand, not the welfare of workers, dictated

wages.

• In re Debs Court Injunction

Forbade workers to interfere with their employers' business and upheld by this

court decision

• Lochner v. New York

Court struck down a law limiting bakery workers to a 60 hour week and 10 hour

day because baking was safer than mining.

• Haymarket Square Riot

Workers campaigning for the 8 hour work day in Chicago called for a protest and police

intervention led to a bomb being thrown. Americans feared the labor movement and

anarchism

• Homestead Strike

Henry Clay Frick cut wages of steel workers 20% causing AFL affiliates to strike.

• Tactics for defeating unions

Lockouts, blacklists, yellow dog contracts (agreement not to join unions), private

guards/state militias, and court injunctions.