Ch 18 History

President James A. Garfield unwittingly helped the cause of civil service reform when he

was shot by Charles Guiteau, a disappointed office seeker.

What political purpose did the theory of social Darwinism serve in the late nineteenth century?

Social Darwinism justified economic inequality and curbed social reform.

Sherman Antitrust Act

1890 act that outlawed pools and trusts, ruling that businesses could no longer enter into agreements to restrict competition.

Gilded Age

A period of enormous economic growth during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Industrialization created a newly dominant group of rich entrepreneurs and an impoverished working class.

Social Darwinism

A social theory popularized in the late nineteenth century by Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner. Proponents believed only relentless competition could produce social progress and wealth was a sign of "fitness" and poverty a sign of "unfitness" for survival.

Trust

A system in which corporations give shares of their stock to trustees who hold the stocks "in trust" for their stockholders, ensure profits to the participating corporations and curb competition.

Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

All-women organization founded in 1874 to advocate for total abstinence from alcohol. The WCTU provided important political training for women, which many used in the suffrage movement.

What tactic did Democrats use in their efforts to undermine black male political power in the late nineteenth century?

Asserting that black political power would lead to racial mixing

What accounted for Andrew Carnegie's positive public image, in contrast to Jay Gould's reputation as "the most hated man in America"?

Carnegie rose from poverty to great wealth and gave away a lot of money to philanthropic causes.

Why did Democrats call themselves "the party of the fathers"?

Democrats traced their roots back to Thomas Jefferson.

civil service reform

Effort in the 1880s to end the spoils system and reduce government corruption.

Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)

Federal regulatory agency designed to oversee the railroad industry. Congress created it through the 1887 Interstate Commerce Act after the Supreme Court decision in Wabash v. Illinois (1886) effectively denied states the right to regulate railroads. The ICC proved weak and did not immediately pose a threat to the industry.

How was Andrew Carnegie able to increase the productivity of his workers?

He insisted on a twelve-hour day six days a week.

How did Morgan achieve his stunning reorganization and consolidation of businesses in the late nineteenth century?

He sometimes formed a community of interest comprised of a handful of directors.

Finance capitalism

Investment sponsored by banks and bankers that typified the American business scene at the end of the nineteenth century. After the panic of 1893, bankers stepped in and reorganized major industries to stabilize them, leaving power concentrated in the hands of a few influential capitalists.

What was the purpose of vertical integration, which was pioneered by Andrew Carnegie in the late nineteenth century?

It placed all aspects of the business, from mining raw materials to marketing and transporting finished products, under the control of the chief operating officer.

Why did textile mill owners abandon New England and establish businesses in the South?

Mill owners wanted to take advantage of cheaper labor and closer proximity to cotton crops.

Why did railroad owners set up "pools" (agreements) in the latter part of the nineteenth century?

Railroad operators were suffering from cut-throat competition.

Why did railroad owners set up "pools" in the latter part of the nineteenth century?

Railroad operators were suffering from cut-throat competition.

Which of the following big businesses came to dominate American life in the second half of the nineteenth century?

Railroading

What connection did William Graham Sumner, the foremost proponent of social Darwinism in the United States, make between wealth and success?

Sumner thought the wealthy were "the product of natural selection."

Spoils system

System in which politicians divide out government positions to their loyal supporters. This patronage system led to widespread corruption during the Gilded Age.

Jim Crow

System of racial segregation in the South lasting from after the Civil War into the twentieth century. Jim Crow laws segregated African Americans in public facilities such as trains and streetcars, curtailed their voting rights, and denied other basic civil rights.

free silver

Term used in the late nineteenth century by those who advocated minting silver dollars in addition to supporting the gold standard and the paper currency backed by gold. Western silver barons and poor farmers from the West and South hoped this would result in inflation, effectively providing them with debt relief.

How did Rockefeller's trust differ from Andrew Carnegie's empire in steel?

The Rockefeller trust practiced horizontal integration to control the refining process.

What happened to the crop lien system in the South as the region's industrial sector grew?

The crop lien system continued because most sharecroppers were too indebted to the planters.

What was evident in the call for a New South in the decades after Reconstruction?

The desire among some southerners to shift to an industrial economy

Why did the General Federation of Women's Clubs not admit black women's clubs?

The federation did not want to alienate southern women.

Gospel of Wealth

The idea that the financially successful should use their wisdom, experience, and wealth as stewards for the poor. Andrew Carnegie promoted this view in an 1889 essay in which he maintained that the wealthy should serve as stewards for society as a whole.

What was the larger significance of the creation of the Standard Oil trust?

The organization's monopoly over the oil industry sparked a public outcry and a push for regulation.

In what way did railroads epitomize the nexus of business and politics in the Gilded Age?

The railroads were privately owned but publicly financed.

How did American women respond to the denial of their right to vote in the late nineteenth century?

They participated in the political process though the antilynching, suffrage, and temperance movements

What did Ida B. Wells suggest was the real purpose of lynching in the South?

To use terrorism to rid the South of black men who were acquiring wealth and property

Andrew Carnegie's 1889 essay, "The Gospel of Wealth," gave what piece of advice to the rich about how they should live?

Undertake philanthropic projects to benefit the poor

The turn of the twentieth century saw individual entrepreneurship in the United States yield to

finance capitalism.

For Ida B. Wells, lynching was a problem of race as well as of

gender

The tariff posed a threat to America's prosperity in the 1880s because

it created a surplus that was not used to produce goods and services.

The Supreme Court's decision in Wabash v. Illinois (1886), which reversed its ruling in Munn v. Illinois (1877),

led to passage of the first federal law regulating the railroad industry.

The Pendleton Act of 1883 established the Civil Service Commission and

made it impossible to remove people in civil service jobs for political reasons.

The economic theory of laissez-faire gained political clout in the late nineteenth century because

the Supreme Court increasingly was reinterpreting the Constitution to protect business.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the Supreme Court's decisions reflected

the conservative views of justices whose decisions extended greater protection to businesses from taxation and regulation.

President Grover Cleveland hoped to increase the nation's flagging gold reserves during the economic depression in the winter of 1894-95

through making a deal with a private group of bankers who would buy government bonds with gold.