APUSH Unit 6: The Gilded Age and the Progressive Era

The "Gilded Age"

A title of a Mark Twain novel from the 1870s, this derogatory term has been adopted by historians as a name for the last few decades of the 19th century. As opposed to a "golden age", "Gilded" means covered with a layer of gold. The name suggests that beneath the impressive economic growth and innovation of the Second Industrial Revolution, there is also corruption and oppressive treatment of those left behind in the scramble for wealth.

Keating-Owen Act, 1916

A law enacted by President Wilson, this outlawed child labor in the manufacture of goods sold in interstate commerce (the Supreme Court would later declare it unconstitutional).

Social legislation

A term originating in Germany that referred to governmental action to address urban problems and the insecurities of working-class life.

Emma Goldman

A Lithuania-born immigrant radical thinker known for her writings and speeches on topics ranging from anarchism, to patriotism, feminism, to birth control, to homosexuality.

Coxey's Army, 1894

A band of several hundred unemployed men led by Ohio businessman Jacob Coxey demanding economic relief. The group was dispersed by soldiers deployed by the federal government, which was a typical response in the 1890s.

Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)

A book by a Norwegian-American economist and social historian that offered a devastating critique of the upper-class culture focused on "conspicuous consumption"--that is, spending money not on needed or even desired goods, but simply to demonstrate the possession of wealth.

Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives (1890)

A book that offered a shocking account of living conditions among the urban poor, complete with photographs of an apartment in dark, airless, overcrowded tenement houses.

William Graham Sumner's What Social Classes Owe Each Other (1883)

A classic book promoting the philosophy of social Darwinism​. As Sumner wrote, "A drunk in the gutter is exactly where he ought to be."

The Populist Platform of 1892

A classic document of American reform, it spoke of a nation "brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin" by political corruption and economic inequality. The platform put forth a long list of proposals to restore democracy and economic opportunity, many of which would be adopted during the next half-century: the direct election of U.S. senators, government control of the currency, a graduated income tax, a system of low-cost public financing to enable farmers to market their crops, public ownership of railroads, and recognition of the right of workers to form unions.

The Philippine War, 1899-1903

A conflict between the U.S., which was trying to establish control of the former Spanish colony, the Philippines, and the Filipino independence movement, led by Emilio Aguinaldo, between 1899-1903. Perhaps the least remembered of all U.S. wars today, at the time it was widely debated and cost the lives of more than 100,000 Filipinos and 4,200 Americans. Press reports of atrocities committed by American troops--the burning of villages, torture of prisoners of war, and rape and execution of civilians--tarnished the nation's self-image as liberators.

Spanish American War, 1898

A conflict fought between Spain and the United States in 1898. Hostilities began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of the USS Maine in Cuba leading to United States intervention in the Cuban War of Independence. Teddy Roosevelt made a name for himself with his "Rough Riders" in the battle of San Juan Hill. As a result of America's victory over Spain, America gained influence over Cuba, acquired Puerto Rico and Spain's Pacific possessions (Guam, the Philippines), and got involved in the bloody Philippine-American War. This was illustrates how the U.S. became an empire during the Age of Imperialism.

New York's "Boss" Tweed Ring

A corrupt urban political machine reached into every New York City neighborhood and won support from the city's immigrant poor by fashioning a kind of private welfare system that provided food, fuel, and jobs in hard times while also plundering the city of tens of millions of dollars

Mark Twain and the Anti-Imperialist League

A diverse union of writers (including the famous author, Mark Twain), businessmen, and social reformers opposed to American imperialism, and particularly the annexation of the Philippines, because they either believed that imperialism ran counter to our key values as a nation (freedom, equality, democracy), or that American energies should be directed at home, or a that it would be too expensive to maintain overseas outposts, or they were racists who did not wish to bring non-white populations into the United States.

The Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882

A federal law barring immigrants from China from entering the U.S.. The law was first a temporary ban, but it was extended and made permanent in 1902. Although non-whites had long been barred from becoming naturalized U.S. citizens, this was the first time race was used to exclude an entire group of people from entering the U.S.. This law was created at a time of widespread discrimination against and violence towards Chinese Americans, particularly on the West Coast, where about 105,000 Chinese Americans lived, and it also reflected the slow contraction of the boundaries of nationhood occurring during the Gilded Age.

Immigration Restriction League

A group that called for the reduction of immigration by barring the illiterate from entering the United States.

Urbanization

A large shift of the American population from rural to urban areas during the Second Industrial Revolution. Between 1870 and 1920, almost 11 million Americans moved from farm to city.

The Foraker Act, 1900

A law that declared Puerto Rico was an "insular territory," different from previous territories in the West which would enter the union on an equal basis as states. Puerto Rico's one million inhabitants were defined as citizens of Puerto Rico, not the U.S., and denied a future path to statehood. (Congress would later extend U.S. citizenship, but not statehood, to Puerto Ricans in 1917. Puerto Rico remains "the world's oldest colony," poised on the brink of statehood or independence. It elects its own government but lacks a voice in the U.S. Congress.)

Frederick Jackson Turner's "Frontier Thesis"

A lecture given by Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 arguing that the western frontier had forged the distinctive qualities of American culture: individual freedom, political democracy, and economic mobility. Turner seemed to portray the West as an empty space ("free land") before the coming of white settlers, for this reason and others, his argument has been widely rejected by modern historians.

The Kansas Exodus, 1879-80

A migration by some 40,000-60,000 blacks to Kansas to escape the oppressive environment of the New South.

Alfred T. Mahan's The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890)

A naval officer who argued that no nation could prosper without a large fleet of ships engaged in international trade, protected by a powerful navy operating from overseas bases. The argument offered strategic considerations that were used to justify U.S. imperialistic expansion during the era.

The Progressive Era

A periodization concept used by historians to refer to the era from 1900-1914, roughly spanning the Presidential administrations of Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and William McKinley (until the outbreak of World War One), during which the Progressive Movement sought to find political solutions to many of the problems created by the Second Industrial Revolution.

"The Age of Imperialism"

A periodization concept, used by historians, describing the last quarter of the nineteenth century in world history, when European empires carved up large portions of the world among themselves. The justification was to bring "civilization," by which they meant Western values, labor practices, and Christianity, and the process generally resulted in the economic exploitation of the colonized people and areas. U.S. foreign policy was influenced by, and in some ways came to resemble, other that of other European empires during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Social Darwinism

A popular Gilded Age concept that celebrated the "survival of the fittest" to justify class distinctions and to explain poverty. In their misapplication of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection to society, Social Darwinists believed that some people were more "fit" than others, and this inequality in individual fitness explains the maldistribution in wealth in modern capitalist societies. For government or private individuals to assist the poor would be to interfere in a natural process by which the unfit are weeded out so that society can progress.

Frederick W. Taylor's "scientific management," or "Taylorism"

A program that sought to streamline production and boost profits by systematically controlling costs and work practices. The "one best way" of producing goods could be determined, and workers must obey these detailed instructions from supervisors. Not surprisingly, many skilled workers saw this as a loss of freedom.

The Second Industrial Revolution

A rapid and profound economic revolution lastly roughly from the end of the Civil War into the early twentieth century. The period was characterized by industrialization, urbanization, immigration, increasing reliance on fossil fuels, and enormous economic productivity and output. It had numerous causes, including abundant natural resources, a growing supply of labor, an expanding market for manufactured goods, the availability of capital for investment, and a federal government that actively promoted economic and agricultural development ("pro-big business laissez-faire").

Margaret Sanger and the birth control movement

A reform movement espousing the idea that right to control of one's body included the ability to enjoy an active sexual life without necessarily bearing children. Margaret Sanger was most prominent activist associated with this movement. Sanger, one of eleven children, challenged laws banning contraceptive Information and devices by openly advertising birth control devices in her journal, The Call, and distributing them in her clinic in Brooklyn.

The Ghost Dance

A religious revitalization campaign reminiscent of the pan-Indian movements lead by earlier prophets; leaders foretold a day when whites disappear, the buffalo would return, and Indians could once again practice their ancestral customs; this movement was attacked and destroyed militarily by the government

"Bread and Roses"

A slogan of the labor movement that first emerged in the Lawrence, Massachusetts strike of 1912. "We want bread and roses two" was a declaration that workers sought not only higher wages but also the opportunity to enjoy the finer things in life.

Consumer freedom and mass-consumption

A social and economic ideal that encouraged the purchase of consumer goods as a way to realize freedom. It was during the Progressive Era that the promise of mass consumption became the foundation for this new understanding of freedom as access to the cornucopia of goods made available by modern capitalism. Large, downtown department stores, chain stores in urban neighborhood, and retail mail-order houses for farmers and small-town residents made available to consumers throughout the country the vast array of goods now pouring from the nation's factories. Leisure activities too took on the the characteristics of mass consumptions: amusement parks, dance halls, and theaters attracted large crowds.

The Pullman Strike, 1894

A strike by the American Railway Union's 150,000 members, who effectively shut down the nation's rail service when they refused to handle Pullman sleeping cars to protest the reduction of wages at the Pullman company. In response, President Cleveland obtained a federal court injunction ordering strikers back to work, and federal troops and U.S. marshals soon occupied railroad centers like Chicago and Sacramento, which ended the strike.

Convict-lease system

A system of state laws in the South, developed under the Redeemers, that 1) allowed for the arrest of virtually anyone without employment and increased penalties for petty crimes, and 2)rented out the state's convicted criminals (most of them black) to perform involuntary labor to private businesses for the profit of the state. This system effectively exploited the loophole in the Thirteenth Amendment and allowed a form of black slavery to continue in the South long after Reconstruction.

Ida B. Wells

African American journalist and the nation's leading anti-lynching activist. She reported on lynchings and documented the fact that the charges against victims of lynching were often untrue.

The Uprising of 20,000

After 200 of Triangle's workers tried to join the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), the owners responded by firing them. This incident helped to spark a general walkout of female garment workers in 1909. Among the strikers' demands was better safety in clothing factories. By the time the walkout ended early in 1911, the ILGWU had won union contracts with more than 300 firms, though the Triangle Shirtwaist Company was not among them.

Annexation of Hawaii, 1898

Although independent, Hawaii already had close economic ties with the U.S. in the late 19th century, and it's economy was dominated by American-owned sugar plantations that employed native islanders and Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino laborers. In 1893, a group of American planters organized a rebellion that overthrew the Hawaii government of Queen Liliuokalani, and in 1898, the U.S. annexed the Hawaiian island, reflecting its growing empire during the Age of Imperialism.

"Open door" Policy with China

American territorial possessions in the Pacific (Guam, Philippines, Hawaii) during the Age of Imperialism had more to do with trade than with large-scale American settlement. In 1899, shortly after the Spanish American War, the U.S. demanded, in this policy, that European powers that had recently divided China into commercial spheres of influence grant equal access to American exports.

Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Speech, 1895 (the "Atlanta Compromise")

An 1895 speech in which Booker T. Washington repudiated the abolitionist tradition that stressed ceaseless agitation for full equality, urging blacks not to try to combat segregation. He advocated industrial education and economic self-help (gain practical skills and vocational training in order to acquire some power in the economy). He said, "In all things purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress."

Mountain Meadows Massacre, 1857

An attack by a group of Mormons on a wagon train of non-Morman settlers, killing over 100 adults and older children. The event came out of a period of tension between the federal government and the Mormons, who had been led by Brigham Young to the Great Salt Lake Valley of Utah in the 1840s, and whose practice of polygamy and close connection between church and state, put them at odds with the political and cultural practices of the United States.

"Lost Cause" ideology

An ideology that romanticized slavery, the Old South, and the Confederate experience.

The Ludlow Massacre, 1914

An unsuccessful labor strike against the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. When the walkout began in 1913, mine owners evicted 11,000 strikers and their families from company housing. They moved into tent colonies, which armed militia units soon surrounded. In 1914, the militia attacked the largest tent city, at Ludlow, and burned it to the ground, killing an estimated twenty to thirty men, women, and children. This was one of a series of mass strikes among immigrant workers during the Progressive Era that placed labor's demand for the right to bargain collectively at the center of the reform agenda.

Maternalist Reform

Arising from the conviction that the state had an obligation to protect women and children, female reformers during the Progressive Era called for government action to improve the living standards of poor mothers and children by enacting policies such as mothers' pensions (state aid to mothers of young children who lacked male support.) and laws limiting the hours of labor of female workers.

The Conservation Movement

As opposed to preservationism, the philosophy of keeping natural areas "wild" and off limits to development, this movement proposes "wise use" of natural resources at a sustainable rate through the National Forest System. Both the Conservation and Preservation Movements took off during the Presidency of Teddy Roosevelt, who relying on advice from Gifford Pinchot, the first Head of the U.S. Forests Service, ordered millions of acres of land to be set aside as wildlife preserves and encouraged Congress to create new national parks.

The Subjugation of the Plains Indians

As white settlers flooded onto the Great Plains in the Gilded Age, they came into conflict with the native populations. A series of dramatic battles and massacres occurred (including the Sand Creek Massacre in 1964, the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, and the Nez Pierce War in 1877), often between Native peoples trying to continue their traditional ways of life and U.S. soldiers with orders to remove them onto reservation lands.

State level Progressives

Because of the decentralized nature of American government, state and local governments enacted most of the Progressive Era's reforms measures. In cities, Progressives worked to reform the structure of government to reduce the power of political bosses, establish public control over "natural monopolies" like gas and water works, and improve public transportation. They raised property taxes in order to spend more money on schools, parks, and other facilities. Important progressive reformers working at the state and local levels included Hazen Pingree, Samuel "Golden Rule" Jones, Hiram Johnson, and Robert LaFollette.

The Woman Suffrage Movement

Beginning in 1848, at the Seneca Falls Convention, and completing its mission in 1920 with the passage of the 19th Amendment, this movement aimed to give women the right to vote. Mostly an movement of white elites in the 1890s, after 1900 it engaged a broad coalition and became a mass movement for the first time.

The "new immigration"

Between 1870 and 1920, almost 25 million immigrants arrived from overseas. Increasingly, immigrants arrived not from Ireland, England, Germany, or Scandinavia (the traditional sources of immigration), but instead from southern and eastern Europe, especially from Italy and the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, and many were Catholic or Jewish. They were widely described by native-born Americans as members of distinct "races" whose lower level of civilization posed a threat to the dominance of WASPS (white, anglo-saxon, protestants) in the U.S.. Limited economic opportunity and political turmoil were often among the numerous "push factors" causing immigrants to leave their homeland, and expectations of greater economic opportunity (often jobs in new industrial factories or on farms in newly opened western lands) as well as social, cultural, and political freedoms were likewise among the common "pull factors" attracting migrants to the U.S..

Black Disenfranchisement

Between 1890 and 1906, every southern state enacted laws or constitutional provisions designed to eliminate the black vote: poll taxes, literacy tests, "understanding" clauses, and "grandfather clauses."

Collective bargaining

By using strength in numbers, this is the process whereby group of employees organizes together as a union in order to negotiate with their employer. Unions generally aimed to secure higher wages, shorter hours, and better working conditions through these negotiations with their employer.

Carnegie's "Gospel of Wealth"

Carnegie's philosophy that the wealthy had a moral obligation to promote the advancement of society by creating "ladders of opportunity" upon which the aspiring poor can climb. He denounced the "worship of money" and distributed much of his wealthy to various philanthropies, especially to the creation of public libraries.

"segregation" vs. "white domination"

In reference to the Jim Crow era, the term "segregation" is really a euphemism for a system that might be better described as one of "white domination." Each component of the system--disenfranchisement, unequal economic status, inferior education, the convict-lease system, the "separate but equal" doctrine--reinforced the others, and the point was not so much to keep the races apart as it was to ensure that when they came into contact with one another, whites held the upper hand.

Cowboys, "rugged individualism," and the corporate west

Cowboys have long been part of the reality and mythology of the West, but while their spirit of sturdy independence is celebrated, it's also true that the development of the West depended in large part of the assistance of the federal government for the construction of railroads, the destruction of Indian Nations, the financing of irrigation systems and dams. And while large numbers of family farms dominated the West in the Gilded Age, Bonanza farms also emerged that covered thousands of acres and employed large numbers of agricultural wage workers.

Civil Service Act (1883)

Created a merit-based system for federal employees, with appointment via competitive examinations rather than political influence. It replaced the "spoils system" that Andrew Jackson began in the 1830s. This is one of the positive developments in politics during the Gilded Age.

Plessy v. Ferguson, (1896)

In one of the most significant rulings in American history, the U.S. Supreme Court supported the legality of Jim Crow laws that permitted or required "separate but equal" facilities for blacks and whites. In reaction to the Plessy decision, States across the South passed laws mandating racial segregation in every aspect of Southern life, from schools to hospitals, waiting rooms, toilets, and cemetaries. Despite the phrase "separate but equal," facilities for blacks were either nonexistent or markedly inferior. The doctrine of separate but equal would not be struck down by the Supreme Court until the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.

The Platt Amendment, 1901

Despite having passed the Teller Amendment at the beginning of the Spanish American War (which said the U.S. had no intention of annexing or dominating the island), in 1901, President McKinley forced Cuba's new government to insert this amendment in the Cuban constitution, which authorize the U.S. to intervene militarily in Cuba whenever it saw fit and gave the U.S. permanent naval stations in Cuba, including what is now Guantanamo Bay. This amendment illustrates how the U.S. was becoming an empire during the Age of Imperialism.

"new immigrants"

During the Gilded age and the Progressive Era, this term refers to Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe who were described by native-born Americans as belonging to distinct, inferior races.

The "working woman"

During the Progressive Era, more and more women were working for wages. For native-born white women, the kinds of jobs available expanded enormously. Despite continued wage discrimination and exclusion from many jobs, the working woman--immigrant and native, working class and professional--became a symbol of female emancipation.

Reforms to the democratic process: primary election, initiative, referendum, recall

During the Progressive Era, several states, including California under Hiram Johnson, adopted the initiative and referendum (the former allowed voters to propose legislation, the latter to vote directly on it) and the recall, by which officials could be removed from office by popular vote. The primary election allowed Parties to select candidates for office in a more democratic fashion.

The New Feminism

During the Progressive Era, the word "feminisms" first entered the political vocabulary. Women's emancipation movement in the social, economic, cultural, and sexual spheres.

Trusts and monopolies

Economic growth during the Second Industrial Revolution was dramatic but highly volatile., so companies tried to bring order to the chaotic marketplace. "Trusts" were legal devices whereby the affairs of several rival companies were managed by a single director in order to limit competition between them. "Monopolies" developed, often through cutthroat competition, when one company came to dominate an entire industry, which resulted in limited competition and higher prices for consumers.

Herbert Croly and The New Republic

Editor of one of the most influential progressive journals, TNR, founded in 1914. As editor, his magazine justified a vision of progressive government as a new synthesis of American political traditions. To achieve "Jeffersonian ends" of democratic self-determination and individual freedom, he insisted, the country need to employ "Hamiltonian ends" of government intervention.

16th Amendment (Graduated Income Tax), 1913

Established the federal income tax.

19th Amendment (woman suffrage), 1920

Extended the right to vote to women in federal or state elections.

Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890)

First law to restrict monopolistic trusts and business combinations; extended by the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914.

The Clayton Act, 1914

Following through on his vision of New Freedom, Wilson enacted this law that exempted labor unions from antitrust laws and barred courts from issuing injunctions curtailing their right to strike.

Destruction of the Buffalo

For the past several hundred years, Indians on the Great Plains had developed a whole cultural, spiritual, and economic way of life that was centered on the enormous buffalo herds that used to graze on the Great Plans. As railroad and wagon trains brought settlers onto the Plains, hunters seeking buffalo hides brought the vast herds to the brink of extinction. The wars of the late 19th century on the Great Plains were often fought by starving Indians.

The Knights of Labor

Founded in 1869, the first national union lasted, under the leadership of Terence V. Powderly, only into the 1890s; it was later supplanted by the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The Knights were the first group to try to organize unskilled workers as well as skilled, women alongside men, and blacks as well as whites, and they had ambitious and wide-ranging goals from the eight-hour day, to public employment in hard times, to socialism, to the creation of a "cooperative commonwealth."

The American Federation of Labor (AFL)

Founded in 1881 and growing to become the most prominent federation of labor union in the 1890s, it adopted more limited goals (higher wages and better working conditions) than the Knights of Labor had, and composed itself mostly of skilled, white, native-born workers (less inclusive than the Knights of Labor). Its long-term president was Samuel Gompers.

The Society of American Indians and Carlos Montezuma

Founded in 1911, the group was a reform organization (critical of of federal indian policy) that brought together Indian intellectuals to promote discussion of the plight of Native Americans in the hope that public exposure would be the first step toward remedying injustice. Member of S.A.I came from many different Indian tribes, but because many had been been educated in government boarding schools, they were able to create one of the first pan-Indian organizations independent of white control. Carlos Montezuma, a founder of S.A.I., established the newsletter Wassaja, which called for greater Indian self-determination and independence from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Edward Bellamy's Looking Backwards (1888)

I very novel that popularized socialist ideas in which the main character falls asleep in the late nineteenth century only to awaken in the year 2000, in a world where cooperation has replaced class strife, "excessive individualism," and cutthroat competition. Inequality had been banished and with it the idea of liberty as a condition to be achieved through individual striving free of governmental restraint. Freedom, Bellamy' novel suggested, was a social condition, resting on interdependence, not autonomy.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, 1911

In 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York City. Inside, some 500 workers, mostly young Jewish and Italian immigrant women, toiled at sewing machines, earning as little as three dollars per week. Those who tried to escape the blaze discovered that the doors to the stairwell had been locked--the owner's way of discouraging theft and unauthorized bathroom breaks. The fire department rushed to the scene with water hoses, but their ladder could only reach the sixth floor. As the fire raged, girls leapt from the upper stories. By the time the blaze was put out, 46 bodies lay on the street and 100 more were found inside the building. This event led to accelerated efforts to organize the city's workers and the passing of state legislation for new factory inspection laws and fire safety codes. It became a became a classic example of why government needed to regulate industry.

Government by expert

In general, Progressive had faith in expertise; they believed that government could best exercise intelligent control over society through a democracy run by impartial experts who were in many respects unaccountable to the citizenry.

Mary "Mother" Jones and the IWW free speech fights

In the Progressive Era, state courts regularly issued inunctions prohibiting strikers from speaking, picketing, or distributing literature during labor disputes. Like the abolitionists before them, the labor movement, in the name of freedom, demanded the right to assemble, organized, and spread their views. So the IWW, and the fiery eighty-three year old organizer, relied on song, street theater, impromptu meetings, and street corner gatherings, which were often met mass arrest. Yet the struggles of workers for the right to strike and of labor radicals against restraints on open-air speaking made free speech a significant public issue in the early twentieth century and laid the foundation for the rise of civil liberties as a central component of freedom in the twentieth century.

Child Labor

In the early twentieth century, more than two million children under the age of fifteen worked for wages.

The Great Railroad Strike of 1877

In the first national labor walkout, railway workers protesting a pay cut paralyzed rail traffic in much of the country. Militia united trying to force workers back to work fired on strikers in Pittsburg, killing twenty, igniting an outbreak of violence and general strikes in several major cities. In the aftermath of the strike, the federal government constructed armories in major cities to ensure that troops would be on hand in the event of further labor difficulties. Henceforth, national power would be used to protect the rights of property against the labor movement.

Indian Reservation system

In the late 1800s, the federal government set aside areas of land in the West Indian nations were to live. These reservations tended to be on lands that were the least desireable to white settlers (usually unsuitable for farming or resource extraction). The reservations represent only a tiny fraction of Western land that Indian nations controlled a century prior.

Andrew Carnegie, Carnegie Steel, vertical integration

In the quintessential "rags to riches" story, Carnegie immigrated to the U.S. from Scotland as a boy and worked his way up to become one of the richest men in the world. He built the Carnegie Steel Company through "vertical integration"--that is, controlling every phase of the business from raw materials to transportation, manufacturing, and distribution. His steel factories at Homestead (the site of a major labor battle during the Gilded Age) were the most technologically advanced in the world. He opposed unionization for his employees but promoted philanthropy with his "Gospel of Wealth."

Muller v. Oregon, 1908

In this case, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the constitutionality of an Oregon law that had set maximum working hours for women. Upholding this law ran counter to the Court's prevailing doctrine of liberty of contract (as expressed in Lochner v. New York, 1905) because the beneficiaries of the state regulation in this case were women. The future Supreme Court justice, Louis Brandeis, filed a famous brief citing scientific and sociological studies to demonstrate that because they had less strength and endurance than men, long hours of labor were dangerous for women, while their unique ability to bear children gave the government a legitimate interest in their working conditions. Brandeis's brief and the Court's opinion solidified the view of women workers as weak, dependent, and incapable of enjoying the same economic rights as men. Many state enacted maximum hours laws for female workers, and many women derived great benefit from these laws; however, other saw them as an infringement on their freedom.

The Progressive Party, 1912 (TR's "Bull-Moose Party")

Launched by Teddy Roosevelt to begin his independent campaign for the 1912 election

The Dawes Act, 1887

Law passed in 1887 meant to encourage adoption of white norms among Indians; broke up tribal holdings (reservations) into small farms for Indian families, with the remainder sold to white purchasers. The policy proved to be a disaster, leading to the loss of much tribal land and the erosion of Indian cultural traditions.

Workers compensation laws

Laws enacted to benefit workers, male or female, injured on the job. These laws reflected the concept of "economic citizenship," that government assistance derived from citizenship itself, not from some special service to the nation (as in the case of mothers) or upstanding character (which had long differentiated the "deserving" from the "undeserving" poor).

"Yellow Press"

Mass-circulation newspapers (so called by their critics after the color in which a popular comic strip was printed) that mixed sensational accounts of crime and political corruption with aggressive appeals to nationalistic, patriotic sentiments. They contributed the public's support of imperialistic expansion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Federal Trade Commission, 1914

One of President Wilson's major acts against trusts, this agency was set up to investigate and prohibit unfair business activities such as price-fixing and monopolistic practices. Like the Federal Reserve System, it was welcomed by business leaders as a means of restoring order, but it reflected an expanding federal role in the economy during the Progressive Era.

Jane Addams's Hull House, settlement houses

One of the Progressive era's most prominent female reformers, she founded Hull House in Chicago in 1899, a "settlement house" devoted to improving the lives of the immigrant poor. They built kindergartens and playgrounds for children, established employment bureaus and health clinics, and showed female victims of domestic abuse how to gain legal protection. By 1910, inspired by the Hull House model, more than 400 settlement houses had been established in cities throughout the country.

Carlisle Indian School

One of the boarding schools established by the Bureau of Indian Affairs where Indian children were taken to be stripped of the "negative" influence of their parents and tribes, dressed in non-Indian clothes, given new names, and educated in white ways.

Explosion of The U.S.S. Maine, 1898

One of the causes of U.S. entrance into the Spanish-American War. This was a U.S. battleship that exploded in Havana Harbor in 1898, resulting in 266 deaths; the American public, assuming that the Spanish had mined the ship, clamored for war (popular slogan: "Remember the Maine, and to hell with Spain!"), and the Spanish-American War was declared two months later.

"captains of industry" or "robber barons"

Opposing viewpoints that industrial leaders were either beneficial for the economy or wielded power without any accountability in an unregulated market.

Muckrakers

Originally a term of disparagement coined by Teddy Roosevelt, this term came to refer to writers who exposed corruption and abuses in politics, business, meatpacking, child labor, and more, primarily in the first decade of the twentieth century; their popular books and magazine articles spurred public interest in reform. They include the following people and books: Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives (1890), Lincoln Steffens' The Shame of the Cities (1904), Ida Tarbell's The History of the Standard Oil Company (1904), and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906).

18th Amendment (Prohibition), 1919

Outlawed the manufacture, sale, and transportation (but not consumption) of alcoholic beverages.

Rerum Novarum, 1894

Pope Leo XIII's powerful statement of 1894 that criticized the divorce of economic life from ethical considerations, endorsed the right of workers to form unions, and repudiated competitive individualism in favor of a more cooperative vision of the good society.

The Election of 1896

Populists joined with the Democrats to support William Jennings Bryan, who embraced the Social Gospel and called for free coinage of silver (or the unrestricted minting of silver money), which farmers believed would increase the amount of money in circulation, raise crop prices, and make it easier for farmers to pay off debts. The Republicans nominated William McKinley and defended the Gold Standard. The election of 1896 is often called the "first modern political campaign" because of the huge amount of money spent by the Republicans and the efficiency of their national organization. The results revealed a nation divided on regional lines: Bryan and the Democrats carried the South and the West. McKinley and the Republicans swept the more populous industrial states of the North. Industrial America, from financier and managers to workers, no voted Republican; McKinley's victory shattered the political stalemate that had persisted since 1876 and created one of the most enduring political majorities in American History.

Lynching

Practice, particularly widespread in the South between 1890 and 1940, in which persons (usually black) accused of a crime were murdered by mobs before standing trial. Lynchings often took place before large crowds, with law enforcement authorities not intervening.

The Social Gospel

Preached by liberal Protestant clergymen in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; advocated the application of Christian principles to social problems generated by industrialization.

Carrie Chapman Catt and the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

President of the NAWSA, which has been created in 1890 to reunite the rival suffrage organizations formed after the Civil War), she reflected the era's narrowed definition of nationhood by suggesting that the native-born, middle-class women who dominated the suffrage movement deserved the vote as members of a superior race and that educational and other voting qualifications did not conflict with the movement's aims, so long as they applied equally to men and women.

Meat Inspection Act, 1906

Progressive Era law, signed by TR, created largely in reaction to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, the law set strict standards of cleanliness in the meatpacking industry.

Hepburn Act, 1906

Progressive Era law, signed by TR, that Imposed stricter control over railroads and expanded powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission, including giving the ICC the power to set maximum rates, which was a significant step in the development of federal intervention in the corporate economy.

Pure Food and Drug Act, 1906

Progressive Era law, signed by TR, the first law to regulate manufacturing of food and medicines; prohibited dangerous additives and inaccurate labeling.

17th Amendment (Direct Election of Senators), 1913

Progressive reform that required U.S. senators to be elected directly by voters; previously, senators were chosen by state legislatures.

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and William "Big Bill" Haywood

Radical union organized in Chicago in 1905 and nicknamed "the Wobblies." Part trade union, part advocate of a workers' revolution that would seize the means of production and abolish the state, the Wobblies rejected the AFL's exclusionary policies and made "solidarity" its guiding principle, extending "a fraternal hand to every wage-worker, no matter what his religion, fatherland, or trade." Big Bill Haywood was the IWW's most prominent leader. IWW organizers also participated in many of the "free speech fights" of the era, and its opposition to World War I led to its destruction by the federal government under the Espionage Act.

Interstate Commerce Commission (1887)

Reacting to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Wabash Railroad v. Illinois (1886), Congress established the ICC to curb abuses in the railroad industry by regulating rates.

Ellis Island and Angel Island

Reception center in New York Harbor through which most European immigrants to America were processed from 1892 to 1954. Angel Island in San Francisco Bay--the "ellis Island of the West"--served as the main entry point for immigrants from Asia.

Wabash v. Illinois (1886)

Reversing its position from nine years earlier in Munn v. Illinois, the Supreme Court struck down an Illinois regulation by ruling that only the federal government, not the states, could regulate railroads engaged in interstate commerces. This was a pro-big business ruling, and it inspired Congress to pass the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887.

John Muir, Preservation, the Sierra Club, and Hetch Hetchy

Scottish-American preservationist who organized the Sierra Club in 1892 (the first organization devoted to environmental preservation) to help preserve forests in their "natural" state by making them off limits to logging by timber companies. Muir's love of nature stemmed from deep religious feelings; he believed people could experience God's presence directly through nature. A proposal to dam Hetch Hetchy Valley (a beautiful area just north of Yosemite Valley in California) to provide water for the city of San Francisco lead to the first great environmental political battle in U.S. history between Sierra Club preservationists (opposed to building the dam) and "wise-use" conservationists resource managers (who supported the dam). Muir and the Sierra Club lost the debate, and the dam was built.

The Insular Cases, 1901-1904

Series of cases between 1901 and 1904 in which the Supreme Court ruled that constitutional protection of individual rights did not fully apply to residents of territories acquired by the United States in the Spanish-American War, such as Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

Minimum wage, maximum hours, and worker's compensation laws

Several of the main legislative goals of the labor movement during the Progressive Era. While nearly half the states enacted worker's compensation laws during the era, the dominant ideology of "liberty of contract" meant that very few state-level minimum wage and maximum hour laws were enacted, and those that were only applied to female workers (a result of the maternalist reform movement).

American socialism

Socialism in the U.S. reached its greatest influence during the Progressive Era. The American Socialist Party, founded in 1901, called for free college education, legislation to improve conditions of laborers, and, as an ultimate goal, democratic control over the economy through public ownership of railroads and factories. By 1912, the Socialist Party claimed over 150,00 dues-paying members, published hundreds of newspapers--including Appeal to Reason, the largest weekly newspaper in the country--, enjoyed substantial support in the AFL, and had elected scores of officials to local governments.

The People's Party, or Populists

Spoke for all "producing classes" and embarked on a remarkable effort of community organization and education. Founded in the early 1890s, and growing out of the Farmer's Alliance of the 1770s and 80s, they established over 1,000 local newspapers, promoted traveling speakers like Tom Watson and Mary Elizabeth Lease, and held great gatherings across the Western Plains.

Munn v. Illinois (1877)

Supreme Court case in which the court upheld the constitutionality of an Illinois law that established a state board empowered to eliminate railroad rate discrimination and set maximum charges. In this case, the Supreme Court seemed willing to accept laws regulating enterprises that represented a significant "public interest."

Elk v. Wilkins, 1884

Supreme Court ruling that rule that the citizenship rights of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments did not apply to Indians. (The exclusion of Indians from citizenship was eventually eliminated by the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.)

TR and the 1902 Anthracite Coal Strike

Teddy Roosevelt also believed that the president should be an "honest broker" in labor disputes, rather than automatically siding with the employers as his predecessors had usually done. When a strike paralyzed the West Virginia and Pennsylvania coalfields in 1902, he summoned union and management leaders to the White House. By threatening a federal takeover of the mines, he persuaded the owners to allow the dispute to be settled by a commission he himself would appoint. TR's insistence on negotiations between unions and management signaled a transition away from PBBLF and a shift towards the growing influence and power of organized labor.

The breakup of J.P. Morgan's Northern Securities, 1904

Teddy Roosevelt shocked the corporate world by announcing his intention to prosecute under the Sherman Antitrust Act the Northern Securities Company. Created by financier JP Morgan, this "holding company" owned the stock and directed the affairs of three major western railroads. It monopolized transportation between the Great Lakes and the Pacific. In 1904, the Supreme Court ordered Northern Securities dissolved, a major victory for the antitrust movement. A symbol of the shift away from pro-big business laissez faire policies of the Gilded Age.

The Civil Rights Cases of 1883

The Supreme Court invalidated the Civil Rights act of 1875, which had outlawed racial discrimination by hotels, theaters, railroads, and other public facilities. The Fourteenth Amendment, the Court insisted, prohibited unequal treatment by state authorities, not by private businesses.

United States. v. E.C. Knight Co. (1895)

The Supreme Court ruled that the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which prohibited combinations in restraint of trade (like trusts and monopolies), could NOT be used to break up a sugar refining monopoly since the Constitution empowered Congress to regulate commerce, but not manufacturing. This was a pro-big business ruling.

Lochner v. New York (1905); "Lochnerism"

The Supreme Court, in this case, voided a state law establishing ten hours per day, or sixty per week, as the maximum hour of work for bakers. The New York Law, wrote one justice, "interfered with the right of contract between employer and employee."

National Parks, including Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier

The United States led the world in environmental preservation, creating a National Park system that applied the preservationist philosophy of setting aside great areas of land for wilderness, personal growth, and recreation, rather than for resource extraction or agriculture. The National Park Service was created in 1916 to manage all the National Parks. In contrast to the National Park system, the National Forest system applies the philosophy of conservation ("wise use") by allowing regulated resource extraction.

Eugene Debs

The best known socialist in the U.S., no one was more important in spreading the socialist message or linking it to ideals of equality, self-government, and freedom. A champion of the downtrodden, he was one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States; director of the Pullman strike; he was imprisoned along with his associates for ignoring a federal court injunction to stop striking.

"Industrial Freedom" and "Industrial democracy"

The central demands of workers in the Progressive Era, these terms referred to empowering workers to participate in the economic decision making via strong unions. They were considered to be the solution to the "labor problem" by many in the Progressive Era. Throughout the Gilded Age, workers had experienced a loss of freedom in the workplace and an undermining of their personal autonomy because of developments like Taylorism, the growth of white-collar work, and the declining odds of one day managing one's own business.

Redeemers

The coalition of merchants, planters, and business entrepreneurs who dominated the South's politics after 1877 who moved to undo as much as possible of Reconstruction (claiming to to have redeemed the South from the alleged horrors and misgovernment of "black rule").

Theodore Roosevelt (TR) and the Square Deal, 1901-1909

The first of the three Progressive Era Presidents , and the term that refers to his legislative agenda while President.

Henry Ford and "Fordism"

The founder of Ford Motor Company, who in the early twentieth-century exemplified the new consumer society by pioneering a business plan based on mass production and mass consumption. More specifically, Ford's system produced standardized, simple "Model T" automobiles (with nothing handmade or expensive to produce) targeted to not to the elite consumer, but to the common man. He mass produced them on the moving assembly line so as to greatly expand output by reducing the time it took to produce each car. He aggressively opposed unions among his employees. And yet he paid much higher wages than other employers, enabling him to attract a steady stream of skilled workers, and enabling his workers to buy purchase what they made.

The Election of 1912: Taft, TR, Wilson, Debs

The four-way contest between Taft, Roosevelt, Wilson, and Debs became a national debate on the relationship between political and economic freedom in the age of big business. Taft stressed that economic individualism could remain the foundation of the social order so long as government and private entrepreneurs cooperated in addressing social ills. Debs emphasized abolishing the "capitalistic system" and also demanded including public ownership of the railroads and banking system, government aid to the unemployed, and laws establishing shorter working hours and a minimum wage. However, it was the battle between Wilson's New Freedom and Roosevelt's New Nationalism over the role of federal government in securing economic freedom that galvanized public attention in 1912. In the end, Wilson was elected.

Liberty of Contract

The freedom for workers to negotiate the substance of their contract with their employers. In reality, given how much more powerful large employers were than their relatively interchangeable workers, this liberty was far more advantageous to employers than to workers. Nevertheless, in theory, liberty of contract was the idea that contracts reconciled freedom and authority in the workplace.

"The White Man's Burden"

The idea, popularized by a 1899 poem by Rudyard Kipling, suggested that white imperialism contributed to the progress of civilization. In this poem, Kipling urged the U.S. to take up the "burden" of empire, as had Britain and other European nations. The poem coincided with the beginning of the Philippine-American War and U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty that placed Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines under American control. The racialized notion of the "White Man's burden" became a euphemism for imperialism.

The Farmer's Alliance

The largest citizen's movement of the nineteenth century, founded in Texas in the late 1970s, farmers in forty-three states united to try to remedy their sense of increasing economic insecurity, which they blamed on high freight rates charged by railroads, excessive interest rates for loans from merchants and bankers, and the fiscal policies of the federal government.

Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

The largest female organization of the late 19th century, it expanded its platform from simply prohibiting alcoholic beverages (blamed for leading men to squander their wages on drink and treat their wives abusively) to a comprehensive program of economic and political reform, including the right to vote.

John D. Rockefeller, horizontal integration, and Standard Oil Company

The leading figure in the U.S. oil industry and one of the richest people in the world, Rockefeller used "horizontal integration" (buying up all his competitor" and later "vertical integration" (controlling the drilling, refining, storage, and distribution of oil) to build his company, Standard Oil, which controlled ninety percent of the nation's oil industry. Like Carnegie, Rockefeller fought unionization but gave much of his fortune away, establishing foundations to promote education and medical research.

"American standard of living"

The maturation of the consumer economy gave rise to new concepts that offered a new language for criticizing the inequalities of wealth and power in Progressive America. The popularity of the idea reflected, in part, the emergence of a mass-consumption society during the Progressive Era.

Crédit Mobilier Scandal, 1867

The most notorious example of corruption in federal politics during the Gilded Age in which lawmakers supported bills aiding companies in which they had invested money or from which they receive stock or salaries. In this case, the Crédit Mobilier construction company charged the (government-assisted) Union-Pacific Railroad exorbitant rates to build the eastern half of the first transcontinental railroad line, then they paid the lawmakers to look the other way.

The Homestead Strike, 1892

The nineteenth century's most widely publicized confrontation between capital and labor. A major strike of workers at Andrew Carnegie's Homestead Steel plant in Pennsylvania after Carnegie decided to operate the plant on a non-union basis.. After the workers initially beat back hired policemen from the Pinkerton Detective Agency in a battle that left a number dead, the PA governor sent in the national guard to reopen the plant on Carnegie's terms. The strikers nevertheless won national sympathy, but the strike was ultimately a failure for the workers, and it demonstrated the enormous power of large corporations during the Gilded Age.

Railroads, the national market, and time zones

The railroad made the Second Industrial Revolution possible. They were spurred by private investment and massive grants of land and money by federal, state, and local governments, and the miles of railroad track in the U.S. exploded between the Civil War and 1920, opening up vast new areas for commercial farming and creating a national market for manufactured goods. The railroad reorganized time itself; in 1883, the major companies divided the nation into four time zones still in use today.

Wilson's New Freedom, TR's New Nationalism

The respective slogans of the Democratic Party's and Progressive Party's candidates for POTUS in 1912. They represented competing strands of Progressivism; both believed government action necessary to preserve individual freedom, but they differed over the dangers of increasing the government's power and the inevitability of economic concentration. Wilson's New Freedom envisioned the federal government staying relatively small but strengthening antitrust laws, protecting the right of workers to unionize, and actively encouraging small businesses--creating, in other words, the conditions of the renewal of economic competition in industrial capitalism without increasing government regulation of the economy. On the other hand, Roosevelt's New Nationalism envisioned a big powerful federal government to match the huge size of the new industrial corporations in order to curb their abuses through heavy taxation on personal and corporate fortunes and federal regulation of industries, including railroads, mining, and oil.

William Howard Taft and "trust-busting"

The second Progressive Era President of the United States; Taft pursued antitrust policy even more aggressively than TR. he persuade the Supreme Court in 1911 to declare John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and to order it breakup into separate marketing, producing, and refining companies.

The Progressive Movement

The term "Progressive" came into common use around 1910 as a way of describe a broad, loosely defined political movement of individuals and groups who hoped to bring about significant change in American social and political life. This movement included forward-looking businessmen who realized that workers must be accorded a voice in economic decision making, labor activists bent on empowering industrial workers, female reform organizations who hoped to protect women and children from exploitation, social scientists who believed that academic research would help to solve social problems, and members of an anxious middle class who feared that their status was threatened by the rise of big-business.

Woodrow Wilson

Third Progressive Era President of the United States; academic and progressive Democrat who was elected President of the United States in 1912 and again in 1916; his first term was concerned with domestic progressive reforms, but his second term was caught up in World War I and his efforts on behalf of the Versailles Treaty.

Walter Lippmann's Drift and Mastery (1914)

This influential book reflected the Progressive's faith in expertise. In it, Lippman argued that the new generation of educated professionals could be trusted more fully than ordinary citizens to solve America's deep social problems. Political freedom was less a matter of direct participation in government than of qualified persons devising the best public policies.

Pro-big business laissez faire

This is the term historians use to describe the role of the national government in the economy during Gilded Age. The government was actively involved in the economy in ways that promoted big business (subsidizing railroads, canals, roads; subsidizing mail; subsidizing research and development; forcing Native Americans onto reservations, putting down labor strikes, surveying Western lands and giving it to settlers; pursuing an imperialistic foreign policy for natural resources and markets, establishing protective tariffs, attracting immigrant labor, etc.). But the government was very limited, or "hands-off," (Laissez Faire) in its efforts to protect the interests of workers, consumers, or the environment.

Federal Reserve System, 1913

This powerful public agency (more consistent with TR's New Nationalism than Wilson's New Freedom) consisted of twelve regional banks. They were overseen by a central board appointed by the president and empowered to handle the issuance of currency, aid banks in danger of failing, and influence interest rates so as to promote economic growth. It was welcomed by business leaders as a means of restoring order, but it reflected an expanding federal role in the economy during the Progressive Era.

"The Women's Era"

Three decades starting from the 1890s, during which women, although still denied the vote, enjoyed larger opportunities than in the past for economic independence (with nearly every state abolishing its coverture laws) and greater roles in public life through a network of women's clubs, temperance associations, and social reform organizations.

Wounded Knee Massacre, 1890

U.S. soldiers opened fire on Ghost Dancers encamped near Wounded Knee in South Dakota, killing between 150 and 200 Indians, mostly women and children. The massacre at Wounded Knee marked the end of four centuries of armed conflict between the continent's native population and European settlers and their descendants. Estimated to be well over several million on the eve of contact, the Indian population within the United States had fallen to 250,000 by the 1900 census.

Thomas Edison, "The Wizard of Menlo Park"

Widely considered the greatest inventor of the Second Industrial Revolution, Edison and his team of researchers at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey developed inventions that transformed private life, public entertainment, and economic activity, including the phonograph, light bulb, motion picture, and a system for generating electric power.

The Haymarket Affair, 1886

Workers were rallying in Haymarket Square, in Chicago, protesting the police killings of three workers the day before who were shot while trying to prevent strikebreakers from entering the McCormick factory plant. During the rally, an unknowing person threw a bomb into a crowd killing a policeman. Panicked police opened fire, killing several, and afterward raiding the office of labor and radical groups and arresting their leaders. The Haymarket Affair gave employers an opportunity to paint the labor movement as a dangerous and un-American force.