Unit 4-The Progressive Era (1890-1920) Vocabulary (19-20)
17th Amendment
It established direct election of United States Senators by popular vote (senators used to be elected by state legislatures).
time and motion study
A business efficiency technique combining the Time Study work of Frederick Winslow Taylor. It is a major part of scientific management (Taylorism).
assembly line manufacturing
A manufacturing process in which parts are added to a product in a sequential manner to create a finished product much faster than with handcrafting-type methods.
"melting pot"
A metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, the different elements "melting together" used to describe the assimilation of immigrants to the United States.
initiative
A procedure enabling a specified number of voters by petition to propose a law
mass transit
A shared passenger transport service which is available for use by the general public.
The Clayton Anti-Trust Act of 1914
Add further substance to the U.S. ANTI-TRUST law regime by seeking to prevent anticompetitive practices in their incipiency.
Booker T. Washington
African-American educator. In 1895 his Atlanta compromise called for avoiding confrontation over segregation. Tuskegee University
Ida B. Wells
African-American journalist,who documented lynching in the United States, showing how it was often a way to control or punish blacks who competed with whites.
William Randolph Hearst
American newspaper publisher who built the nation's largest newspaper chain. He acquired The New York Journal and engaged in a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer's New York World that led to the creation of yellow journalism
John Dewey
American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform.
George Washington Carver
American scientist, botanist, educator, and inventor who promoted alternative crops to cotton, such as peanuts. He wanted poor farmers to grow alternative crops
Lewis Hine
American sociologist and photographer. He used his camera as a tool for social reform. His photographs were instrumental in changing child labor laws in the United States.
The Federal Reserve Act of 1913
Created and set up the central banking system of the U.S.A., and granted it the legal authority to issue Federal Reserve Notes (now commonly known as the U.S. Dollar)
18th Amendment
Established the prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the U.S. by declaring the production, transport and sale of alcohol illegal.
The Mann-Elkins Act
Extended the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to regulate the TELECOMMUNICATIONS industry, and designated telephone, telegraph and wireless companies as common carriers.
Upton Sinclair
Fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle (1906). It exposed conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.
The Adamson Act
Federal law passed in 1916 that established an EIGHT-HOUR WORKDAY, with additional pay for overtime work, for interstate railroad workers.
The Hepburn Act
Federal law that gave the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) the power to set maximum RAILROAD RATES.
Henry Ford
Founder of the Ford Motor Company who developed the assembly line technique of mass production. He did not invent the automobile, but he developed and manufactured the first automobile (Model T) that many middle class Americans could afford to buy.
Robert M. La Follette
He was a progressive politician & U.S. Senator from Wisconsin. He is best remembered as a proponent of progressivism and a vocal opponent of railroad trusts, bossism.
Joseph Pulitzer
Hungarian-American Jewish newspaper publisher of the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the New York World. Pulitzer introduced the techniques of "new journalism" to the newspapers he acquired in the 1880s. He crusaded against big business and corruption.
16th Amendment
It allows the Congress to levy an income tax
The Birth of A Nation
It is a 1915 American silent drama film directed by D. W. Griffith. Controversial owing to its portrayal of African-American men (played by white actors in blackface) as unintelligent and sexually aggressive towards white women, and the portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan (whose original founding is dramatized) as a heroic force.
NAACP
It is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination".
The National Park Service
It is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments.
Square Deal
It was President Theodore Roosevelt's domestic program formed upon three basic ideas: conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection.
The Great Migration
It was the movement of 6 million African Americans (between 1910 and 1970) out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West.
Marcus Garvey
Jamaican political leader who was a staunch proponent of the Black nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements. He founded the Black Star Line, part of the Back-to-Africa movement, which promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands.
yellow journalism
Journalism that presents little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers.
Jacob Riis
Known for using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City through the book How the Other Half Lives
W. E. B. Du Bois
One of the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. Author of The Souls of Black Folk.
muckrakers
People who search out and publicly expose real or apparent misconduct of prominent individuals or businesses.
Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party
Political party. It was formed by former President Theodore Roosevelt, after a split in the Republican Party between himself and President William Howard Taft.
Meat Inspection Act of 1906
Prevented adulterated or misbranded meat and meat products from being sold as food and to ensure that meat and meat products are slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions.
Federal Trade Commission
Principal mission is the promotion of CONSUMER PROTECTION and the elimination and prevention of anti-competitive business practices, such as coercive monopoly.
19th Amendment
Prohibits any U.S. citizen from being denied the right to vote on the basis of sex.
The Revenue Act of 1913
Re-imposed the federal income tax following the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment and lowered basic tariff rates from 40% to 25%.
John Muir
Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of PRESERVATION of wilderness in the United States. His activism helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park and other wilderness areas.
Jane Addams
Social worker (founder of Hull House—designed to help immigrants and the urban poor)
referendum
Submitting to popular vote a measure passed on or proposed by a legislative body or by popular initiative.
Ida Tarbell
The History of the Standard Oil Company. She depicted John D. Rockefeller as crabbed, miserly, money-grabbing, and viciously effective at monopolizing the oil trade.
Lincoln Steffens
The Shame of the Cities. He is remembered for investigating corruption in municipal government in American cities and for his early support for the Soviet Union.
The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906
The law was principally a "truth in labeling" law designed to raise standards in the food and drug industries and protect the reputations and pocketbooks of honest businessmen.
naturalization
The legal process through which a foreign citizen or national can become a U.S. citizen.
Americanization
The process of acculturation by immigrants or annexated populations to American customs and values.
Women's Christian Temperance Union
The purpose of this group was to create a "sober and pure world" by abstinence, purity and evangelical Christianity.
recall
The right or procedure by which an official may be removed by vote of the people.
reform
To improve (someone or something) by removing or correcting faults, problems, etc.
lynching
To punish (a person) without legal process or authority, especially by hanging