HST 206 Study Guide for the midterm
Social Gospel
A religious movement led by a group of liberal Protestant progressives that arose in the United States in the late nineteenth century with the goal of making the Christian churches more responsive to social problems, raised by the rapid industrialization, urbanization, and increasing immigration of the Gilded Age, such as poverty and prostitution.
vertical integration
A single company owns and controls the entire process from raw materials to the manufacture and sale of the finished product
Atlanta Compromise
A speech in 1895 by Booker T. Washington that African-americans should not focus on civil rights or social equality but concentrate on economic self-improvement
Eugene Debs
Head of the American Railway Union and director of the Pullman strike; he was imprisoned along with his associates for ignoring a federal court injunction to stop striking
Industrial Workers of the World
radical union that aimed to unite the American working class into one union to promote labor's interests. It worked to organize unskilled and foreign-born laborers, advocated social revolution and led several major strikes.
Progressivism
term applied to a variety of responses to the economic and social problems rapid industrialization introduced to America; The Progressive Movement covered social reform issues relating to female suffrage, education, working conditions, unionization, the problems of urbanization, industrialization and child labor. The Progressive Movement called for political reforms attacking bribery and corruption, the political machines and the regulation of Big Business and corporations and reducing the power of the Robber Barons and unfair business practices.
Teapot Dome scandal
the secret leasing of federal oil reserves by the secretary of the interior, Albert Bacon Fall
Fourteen Points (Wilson)
the war aims outlined by President Wilson in 1918, which he believed would promote lasting peace; called for self-determination, open peace treaties, transportation along the seas, free trade, end to secret agreements, reduction of arms and a league of nations
scientific management
theory using efficiency experts to examine each work operations and find ways to minimize the time needed to complete it
settlement house
were important reform institutions with the goal of to establish them in poor urban areas, in which volunteer middle-class "settlement workers" would live, hoping to share knowledge and culture with their low-income neighbors, hoping to alleviate poverty, and to help to assimilate and ease the transition of immigrants into the labor force by teaching them middle-class American values
Sacco-Vanzetti case
controversial murder trial in Massachusetts that resulted in execution of the defendants; many people felt that the trial had been less than fair and that the defendants had been convicted for their radical anarchist beliefs rather than for the crime for which they had been tried.
American Civil Liberties Union
A nonprofit organization that works in the courts, legislatures and communities, with the goal to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country.
Progressive Reformers aimed to restore economic opportunity and correct injustice by these 4 Goals:
1) protecting social welfare 2) promoting moral improvement • Prohibition—banning of alcoholic drinks 3) creating economic reform `1893 panic prompts doubts about capitalism; many become socialists • Muckrakers— 4) fostering industrial Efficiency Henry Ford: Assembly lines speed up production, make people work like machines
Haymarket Affair
1886 incident that made unions, particularly the Knights of Labor, look violent because a bomb exploded during a protest of striking workers.
Muller v Oregon (1908)
1908 Louis D. Brandeis persuaded the Supreme Court to accept the constitutionality of laws protecting women workers by presenting evidence of the harmful effects of factory labor on women's weaker bodies.
Meyer v Nebraska (1923)
A supreme court case in 1923 that decided if a Nebraska State Law violated the 14th Amendment. Nebraska passed a law prohibiting the teaching of grade school children any language other than english. Meyer, a teacher at a Lutheran who taught German, was convicted under this law. The Supreme court declared that the Nebraska State Law unconstitutional, for it violated the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. The court stated that Liberty includes the right to teach German to a student.
Fourteenth Amendment
Anyone born in the US, or on its provinces, are under equal protection of the laws, and shouldn't have their rights or privileges as a citizen taken by the government without due process of law.
Dawes Act
Broke up previous land settlements given to native americans in the form of reservations, and separate them into smaller and single pieces of land to live on
Plessy v Ferguson (1896)
Confirmed "separate but equal" in an 1892 incident in which an African-American train passenger Plessy refused to sit in a car for blacks, which allowed state sponsored segregation: the Supreme Court ruled that a law that "implies merely a legal distinction" between whites and blacks was not unconstitutional.'"
Federal Trade Commission
Established in 1914 to preserve competition by preventing unfair business practices and investigate complaints against companies.
Civil Rights Cases (1883)
Explained that the 14th amendment included protection from the state on limiting rights of the people, but not against individual actions; thereby, allowing segregation and giving way to Jim Crow Laws; ruled the Civil Rights act of 1875 unconstitutional
Espionage Act
Federal law passed shortly after entrance into WWI, made it a crime for a person to mail or print information that inspired dissent against the American war effort or promoted its enemies.
Sherman Antitrust Act
First federal action against monopolies
Nineteenth Amendment
Gave women the right to vote
Chinese Exclusion Act
In 1882, a federal law that prohibited all immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years.
Adkins v Children's Hospital (1923)
In this court case, the Supreme Court reversed its own reasoning in Muller v. Oregon, on the grounds that women were now the legal equals of men (after the Nineteenth Amendment).
Muckraking
Nickname given to investigative journalists who were trying to make the public aware of problems that needed fixing; Known for investigative journalism that exposed the serious deficiencies of America's food and drug industries
Dollar Diplomacy
President Taft's plan to further US foreign policy through the US's economic power by guaranteeing loans to foreign countries (1909-1913). It would do this by encouraging american businesses to invest in foreign countries. Taft believed once the businesses did this, the countries would insure that those businesses stay successful. However, Dollar Diplomacy did not improve american prestige: businesses failed to supply loans, and countries around the globe didn't view highly of Dollar Diplomacy. Taft only lasted one term, replaced by Roosevelt
Coxey's Army
Protest march of Unemployed workers, protesting unemployment caused by the Panic of 1883; they pushed the government to create jobs which would involve building roads and other public works improvements
Smoot-Hawley Tariff
Signed by President Hoover, it raised tariff rates to an all-time high, which prompted retaliation from foreign governments, and caused many overseas banks to fail (1930)
"separate but equal"
Supreme Court doctrine that Allowed state-required racial segregation in places of public accommodation as long as the facilities were equal
Versailles Treaty
The compromise after WW1, settled land and freedom disputes. Germany had to take full blame for the war in order for the treaty to pass, among other things. The US Senate rejected it.
Social Darwinism
Term used to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology and politics; used to justify political conservatism, imperialism, and racism and to discourage intervention and reform in the late 19th and early 20th century
Pure Food and Drug Act
The first legislation in the country that sought to regulate pharmaceutical and food products by requiring truth-in-labeling on products, creating inspections on the drug and food manufacturing process (2006; effective 2007)
Great Migration
The movement of African Americans from the South to the industrial centers of the Northeast and the Midwest (1916-1970), which was caused by decreasing cotton prices, the lack of immigrant workers in the North, increased manufacturing as a result of the war, and the strengthening of the KKK; Migration led to higher wages, more educational opportunities, and better standards of life for some blacks.
robber barons
a person who has become rich through ruthless and unscrupulous business practices
Platt Amendment
a series of provisions that, in 1901, the United States insisted Cuba add to its new constitution, commanding Cuba to stay out of debt and giving the United States the right to intervene in the country and the right to buy or lease Cuban land for naval and fueling stations.
Sixteenth Amendment
allows the Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states or basing it on the United States Census
Committee on Public Information
an independent agency of the government of the United States created by Wilson to influence public opinion to support US participation in World War I, while publicising american war aims abroad.
Populists
believed that the federal government needed to play a more active role in the American economy by regulating various businesses, especially the railroads; the remnants of the group successfully raised awareness of the plight of workers and farmers, giving way to the first farm grants and encoded rights for workers
Harlem Renaissance
black artistic movement in New York City in the 1920s, to express feelings and experiences, especially about the injustices of Jim Crow; it helped illuminate the discourse concerning race and ethnicity in America; the significance is it marked a moment when white America started recognising the intellectual contributions of Blacks
Marcus Garvey
leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), urged blacks to return to Africa because, he reasoned, blacks would never be treated justly in countries ruled by whites
Wounded Knee Massacre
mass killing by U.S. soldiers of as many as 300 unarmed Sioux at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1890
Seventeenth Amendment
providing for the election of two U.S. senators from each state by popular vote and for a term of six years