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American dream
The American dream was to build a nation based on religious freedom. Contributing to the process and working for freedom was what every American wanted. -
Assembly Line
The assembly line was first introduced by Eli Whitney to create muskets for the U.S. Government. Henry Ford later introduced the moving assembly line at the Highland Park Ford Plant to cut manufacturing costs and deliver a cheaper product. -
Americanization
Assimilation into American culture. In 1800, everyday life had changed little since the year 1000. By 1900, the Industrial Revolution had transformed the world's economy. To see the whole picture, we encourage users to browse all the way through these decades -
Factory System
The factory system was a new way of organizing labor made necessary by the development of machines which were too large to house in a worker's cottage. Furthermore, the efficient use of the new machines required that many of them be installed together where they could all be driven by the
same power source. -
Political Corruption
Political machines in the late 1800s were corrupt in many different ways. One of the ways was influencing votes through so-called charitable acts. Another way was that they would protect certain criminals in return for monetary support. -
Social Darwinism
the theory that individuals, groups, and peoples are subject to the same Darwinian laws of natural selection as plants and animals. Now largely discredited, social Darwinism was advocated by Herbert Spencer and others in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was used to justify political conservatism, imperialism, and racism and to discourage intervention and reform. -
Bessemer Process
A method for making steel by blasting compressed air through molten iron to burn out excess carbon and impurities -
Manifest destiny
The 19th-century doctrine or belief that the expansion of the US throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable -
Settlement of the west
The years following the War of 1812 saw a massive migration of white settlers into the Old Northwest, the Old Southwest and the Far West. Between the years 1800 and 1820 the American population nearly doubled and by 1830 a quarter of the people lived west of the Appalachians. -
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century -
John D. Rockefeller
John Davison Rockefeller was an American industrialist and philanthropist. He was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust. -
Eugene V. Debbs
Eugene Victor "Gene" Debs was an American union leader, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and several times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States -
Teddy Roosevelt
Theodore "T.R." Roosevelt, Jr. was the 26th President of the United States. He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement -
Assimilation
The state of being assimilated; people of different backgrounds come to see themselves as part of a larger national family -
The homestead act
The Homestead Acts were several United States federal laws that gave an applicant ownership of land, typically called a homestead, at little or no cost. -
Labor Unions
The labor movement of 1865-1919 was initiated by strikes that began because of wage cuts, the new inventions of machinery, and the depersonalization of workers. The first of these strikes began in 1892 with workers at the Carnegie Steel Company at Homestead, Pennsylvania. -
Growth of Railroads
The development of Railroads was one of the most important phenomena of the Industrial Revolution. With their formation, construction and operation, they brought profound social, economic and political change to a country only 50 years old -
Immigration
Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, as well as Ireland, flocked to the United States, and Chicago became one of their favorite destinations. The American economy had begun to show signs of revival, and the city's meatpacking establishments, rail yards and factories offered plentiful jobs to unskilled laborers. -
Barbed Wire
Barbed wire is a fencing material consisting of a metal cable with regularly spaced sharp projections. The cable usually consists of two wires twisted around each other to add strength and to allow the cable to expand and contract with temperature changes without breaking. The sharp points, called barbs, usually consist of short pieces of wire twisted around one or both of the cable wires. -
Political Machines
During the 1870s and 1880s, the U.S. economy rose at the fastest rate in its history, with real wages, wealth, GDP, and capital formation all increasing rapidly. -
Urbanization and industrialization in the gilded age
The Gilded Age and the first years of the twentieth century were a time of great social change and economic growth in the United States. Gilded Age saw rapid industrialization, urbanization, the construction of great transcontinental railroads, innovations in science and technology, and the rise of big business. Progressives passed legislation to rein in big business, combat corruption, free the government from special interests, and protect the rights of consumers, workers, immigrants, and the -
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr., was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century -
Boss Tweed in the Gilded Age
William Magear Tweed, popularly known as "Boss Tweed", was a Democratic New York politician during the nineteenth century. He was a very successful politician, and led Tammany Hall, a Democratic section of New York politicians. -
Eugenics
The term eugenics comes from the Greek roots for "good" and "generation" or "origin" and was first used to refer to the "science" of heredity and good breeding in about 1883 -
Vertical Intergration
Vertical integration is the process in which several steps in the production and/or distribution of a product or service are controlled by a single company or entity. -
Horizontal Integration
Horizontal integration simply means a strategy to increase your market share by taking over a similar company. -
Haymarket Riot
a labor protest rally near Chicago’s Haymarket Square turned into a riot after someone threw a bomb at police. At least eight people died as a result of the violence that day. The Haymarket Riot was viewed a setback for the organized labor movement in America, which was fighting for such rights as the eight-hour workday. At the same time, the men convicted in connection with the riot were viewed by many in the labor movement as martyrs. -
Federal indian policy
Federal Indian Policy refers the relationship between the United States Government and the Indian Tribes that exist within its borders. Federal Indian Policy contains several eras in which the way the U.S. Government dealt with the Indians constantly changed. -
The dawes act
An Act to Provide for the Allotment of Lands in Severalty to Indians on the Various Reservations, -
Nativism
Advocating the perpetuation of native societies; "the old nativist prejudice against the foreign businessman"; "the nativistic faith preaches the old values". -
Trusts & Anti-Trusts
Because of fears during the late 1800s that monopolies dominated America's free market economy, Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890 to combat anticompetitive practices, reduce market domination by individual corporations, and preserve unfettered competition as the rule of trade. The Sherman Antitrust Act forms the foundation and the basis for most federal antitrust litigation. -
Battle of wounded knee
The Wounded Knee Massacre occurred on December 29, 1890, near Wounded Knee Creek on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, USA. It was the last battle of the American Indian Wars. On the day before, a detachment of the U.S. -
New inventions
By definition, the 19th century lasted from 1801 through 1900 according to the Gregorian calendar. It is also referred to as the "1800s." The invention of useable electricity, steel, and petroleum products during the 19th century lead to a second industrial revolution (1865–1900), that featured the growth of railways and steam ships, faster and wider means of communication, and inventions with names we all know today. -
Pure food
The pure food and drug act of june 30, 1906, is a united states federal law that provided the federal inspection of meat products and forbade the manufacture, sale, or transportation of poisonous patent medicines. -
invention of the Automobile
Although Henry Ford is mythologically credited for the invention of the automobile, what he actually developed was the characteristic light, low-cost, high-quality, mass-produced American automobile.
