APUSH Unit 6 Reading 4

Laissez-faire

A "hands-off" approach to the economy, allowing markets to regulate themselves—this term literally means "let do" in French.

JP Morgan

A Wall Street financier and business leader during the era of industrialization, in 1901 he bought Carnegie Steel and established the world's first billion-dollar corporation, U. S. Steel Corporation.

Vertical integration

A business tactic developed by Andrew Carnegie in steel production, a business-owner single-handedly controls every aspect of the production process for a product in order to achieve maximum efficiency and lower prices to outsell the competition (from the mining of the resources to the distribution of the final product to the customer).

Horizontal integration

A business tactic that is a form of monopoly, occurring when one person/company gains control of one aspect of an entire industry, and was developed by John D. Rockefeller in relation to refining oil.

Telephone

A huge leap in communication technology, this allowed people to speak directly to each other instantaneously, allowing the coordination of industrial processes over great distances.

Andrew Carnegie

A poor Scottish immigrant who eventually became an investor, entrepreneur, industrialist and founded Carnegie Steel (at the time the world's largest corporation), and later donated more than $300 million to charity during his lifetime.

Electric Power

Allowed cities to power factories and homes that allowed for safery and greater productivity (lighting could be had in factories 24/7 which allowed for more work shifts instead of depending on the sun).

Lighting

Allowed people in homes and factories to use a safer (instead of candles) and more dependable lighting source, allowing for everything from more hours in factories to more social time after work.

William Graham Sumner/Survival of the Fittest

An American social Darwinist at Yale University, he argued that help for the poor was misguided because it interfered with the laws of nature and would only weaken the evolution of the species by preserving the unfit.

George Westinghouse

An inventor that created many useful products at the end of the 19th century, including the air break and alternating current electrical power, both of which became the standard technology.

Protestant Work Ethic

Based upon the Calvanist emphasis on the necessity of hard work to demonstrate that a person had been saved, some Protestants worked tirelessly in order to demonstrate (to themselves and others) they had received salvation.

Concentration of wealth

By the 1890s, the richest 10 percent of the US population controlled nine-tenths of the nation's wealth.

Transatlantic Cable

Cyrus W. Field's invention of an improved communication in 1866 suddenly made it possible to send messages across the seas in an instant's time and by 1900 cables linked all continents of the world in an electronic network of instantaneous, global communication.

Adam Smith

Economist who argued that business should be regulated, but not by government, instead by the "invisible hand" of the law of supply and demand.

Eastman's Kodak camera

In 1888 George Eastman created this device which allowed people to take pictures and freeze a moment in time forever (not perfected until selfies developed in the 2000s).

Gustavus Swift

In the 1800s he enlarged fresh meat markets through branch slaughterhouses and refrigerated railroad cars, and was successful in nearly monopolizing the meat industry.

Thomas Edison

Inventor in the late 19th century, he invented the phonograph, motion picture, and incandescent light bulb which demonstrated America's budding innovation and improved the standard of living in America.

Alexander Graham Bell

Inventor most famous for the telephone, he also was an innovator in optical telecommunications, hydrofoils, and aeronautics and later became a founding member of the National Geographic Society, demonstrating the period of creativity and invention which characterized this time period in US History.

Gospel of Wealth

Justification for the growing gap between rich and poor during the Industrial Revolution, this philosophy centered on the claim that anyone could become wealthy with enough hard work and determination which writers like Horatio Alger incorporated into their novels.

Standard Oil Trust

Led by John D. Rockefeller, this company grew to control nearly all of the United States' oil production and distribution and demonstrated the consolidation of businesses into larger, nationally based units of production.

Mail order—Sears

Mail-order companies like this one used the improved rail system to ship to rural customers everything from hats to houses ordered from their thick catalogs, which were known to millions of Americans as the "wish book."

John D. Rockefeller

One of the richest men in American history, he was Chairman of the Standard Oil Trust, which grew to control nearly all of the United States' oil production and distribution and formulated the horizontal integration business tactic.

Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890

Passed in 1890 with the intention of breaking up business monopolies, this outlawed "every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy in the restraint of trade" but was initially used to break up union strikes in the 1890s but by the early 1900s the government launched an aggressive antitrust campaign.

US v E.C. Knight

The Supreme Court ruled that the Sherman Antitrust Act could be applied only to commerce, not to manufacturing which resulted in few convictions until the law was strengthened during the Progressive era

US Steel

The country's first billion dollar corporation created by J.P. Morgan, it is still headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and remains one of the world's top producers in steel.

Social Darwinism

Theories of evolution and survival of the fittest applied to human societies (where the least affluent members were deserving of their status because of their genetic inferiority), which Andrew Carnegie and others cited to justify the widening gap between the rich and the poor during the era of industrialization.

Advertising

This new marketing technique not only promoted a consumer economy but also created a consumer culture in which "going shopping" became a favorite pastime.

Bessemer Process

This process removed air pockets from iron allowing steel to be made cheaply, which opened up mass production possibilities in the construction of railroad tracks, skyscrapers, advancements in shipping.

Menlo Park

Thomas Edison's research laboratory, located in New Jersey, where he invented many different items including the light bulb.