Gilded Age Timeline

  • Homestead Act

    Homestead Act

    Congress passed the Homestead Act, which allowed anyone including former slaves, women, and immigrants to claim up to 160 acres on the Great Plains for a $10 filing fee.
  • Standard Oil Company

    Standard Oil Company

    John D. Rockefeller formed the standard oil company with his brother and business partners. The success of this business made Rockefeller one of the world's first billionaires.
  • Carnegie Steel

    Carnegie Steel

    Carnegie left the railroad business and turned his attention to steel production. He opened his first steel mill, the "J. Edgar Thomson Steel Works" in 1875 in Braddock, Pennsylvania.
  • Panic of 1873

    Panic of 1873

    Blamed for setting off the economic depression that lasted from 1873 to 1879. This period was called the Great Depression. Started with a problem in Europe, when the stock market crashed.
  • Dawes Act

    Gave the president power to divide Indian reservations into privately owned homesteads.
  • Great Railroad Strike

    Great Railroad Strike

    Workers at the B&O station responded to the announcement of 10 percent wage cuts for the 3rd time in a year, by uncoupling the locomotives in the station, confining them in the roundhouse, and declaring that no trains would leave Martinsburg unless the cut was eliminated
  • Chinese Exclusion Act

    Chinese Exclusion Act

    Prohibited Chinese laborers from entering the country. This act was not lifted until 1943 during WWII
  • Pendleton Service Act

    Pendleton Service Act

    President Chester Arthur signs the act that provided that federal government jobs be awarded on the basis of merit and that government employees be selected through competitive exams.
  • Haymarket Riot

    Haymarket Riot

    Violent confrontation between police and labour protesters in Chicago that dramatized the labour movement's struggle for recognition.
  • Homestead Steel Strike

    Homestead Steel Strike

    An industrial lockout and strike that began on July 1, 1892, culminating in a battle in which strikers defeated private security agents