Key Terms Research

  • 17th Amendment

    17th Amendment
    Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years… (every state will have two Senators, and they will serve six-year terms in Congress.)
  • 19th Amendment

    19th Amendment
    The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
  • 16th Amendment

    16th Amendment
    Allows the federal government to collect an income tax from all Americans
  • 18th Amendment

    18th Amendment
    prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors
  • Political Machine

    Political Machine
    group that controls the activities of a political party
  • Jane Addams

    Jane Addams
    Leader of settlement house movement for poor people living in crowded cities. Leader of woman suffrage movement.
  • Knights of Labor

    Knights of Labor
    he first important national labour organization in the United States, founded in 1869. Named the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor by its first leader, Uriah Smith Stephens, it originated as a secret organization meant to protect its members from employer retaliations.
  • The Gilded Age

    The Gilded Age
    period of transformation in the economy, technology, government, and social customs of America.
  • Industrialization

    Industrialization
    period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial society, involving the extensive re-organisation of an economy for the purpose of manufacturing.
  • Alexander Graham Bell

    Alexander Graham Bell
    American scientist best known as the inventor of the telephone, worked at a school for the deaf while attempting to invent a machine that would transmit sound by electricity.
  • Great Railroad Strike 1877

    Great Railroad Strike 1877
    series of violent rail strikes across the United States in 1877
  • Haymarket Riot

    Haymarket Riot
    a labor protest rally near Chicago's Haymarket Square turned into a riot after someone threw a bomb at police. At least eight people died as a result of the violence that day. Despite a lack of evidence against them, eight radical labor activists were convicted in connection with the bombing.Demands for an eight-hour working day became increasingly widespread among American laborers
  • Interstate Commerce Act 1887

    Interstate Commerce Act 1887
    federal law that was designed to regulate the railroad industry, particularly its monopolistic practices. The Act required that railroad rates be "reasonable and just," but did not empower the government to fix specific rates.
  • Sherman Antitrust Act

    Sherman Antitrust Act
    a law passed by Congress in 1890 that was designed to combat the monopolies that were running rampant in American business. ... Industrial giants were free to form monopolies that drove out competition.
  • Susan B. Anthony

    Susan B. Anthony
    Leader of Womans Suffrage Movement,
  • Jacob Riis

    Jacob Riis
    American newspaper reporter, social reformer, and photographer who, with his book How the Other Half Lives (1890), shocked the conscience of his readers with factual descriptions of slum conditions in New York City.
  • Andrew Carnegie

    Andrew Carnegie
    Worked his way up from penniless Scottish immigrant to one of America's richest and most powerful men. Invested in ironworks and built the steel mill. He led the expansion of the steel industry.
  • Homestead Strike 1892

    Homestead Strike 1892
    one of the most bitterly fought industrial disputes in the history of U.S. labor. The Homestead Steel Works, located southeast of Pittsburgh, was an important segment of ^Andrew Carnegie's empire. ... In fact, the Homestead strike was a total defeat for the workers and unionism as a whole.
  • Eugene V. Debbs

    Eugene V. Debbs
    president of American Railway Union, publicly opposed American intervention in the war, ran for president
  • Samuel Gompers

    Samuel Gompers
    is an English-born American labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL), and served as the organization's president from 1886 to 1894, and from 1895 until his death in 1924.
  • Pullman Strike 1894

    Pullman Strike 1894
    Many of the Pullman factory workers joined the American Railway Union (ARU), led by Eugene V. Debs, which supported their strike by launching a boycott in which ARU members refused to run trains containing Pullman cars.
  • William Jennings Bryan

    William Jennings Bryan
    Was nominated by Democratic Party for president an delivered the "Cross of Gold"speech which praised farmers and denounced bankers for crucifying mankind on a cross of gold.Won election
  • Klondike Gold Rush

    Klondike Gold Rush
    a migration by an estimated 100,000 prospectors to the Klondike region of the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1896 and 1899. Gold was discovered there by local miners on August 16, 1896 and, when news reached Seattle and San Francisco the following year, it triggered a stampede of would-be prospectors. Some became wealthy, but the majority went in vain. The Klondike Gold Rush ended in 1899 after gold was discovered in Nome, Alaska prompting an exodus from the Klondike
  • Bessemer Steel Production

    Bessemer Steel Production
    first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of steel from molten pig iron before the development of the open hearth furnace. The key principle is removal of impurities from the iron by oxidation with air being blown through the molten iron.
  • Ida B. Wells

    Ida B. Wells
    Leading voice in social reform movement, research on african Americans proved 728 of them were killed last decade
  • Muckraker

    Muckraker
    A person who intentionally seeks out and publishes the misdeeds, such as criminal acts or corruption, of a public individual for profit or gain in journalism
  • Settlement House

    Settlement House
    an institution in an inner-city area providing educational, recreational, and other social services to the community.
  • Populism and Progressivism

    Populism and Progressivism
    Populism aimed to reform the economic system, while Progressivism was focused on bringing the political reforms. ... Populism is a down-up-movement that began with farmers aligning against the economics system, while Progressivism is a top-to-bottom approach as it began with top tiers of urban middle class.
  • Initiative , Referendum, Recall

    Initiative , Referendum, Recall
    three powers reserved to enable the voters, by petition, to propose or repeal legislation or to remove an elected official from office. Proponents of an initiative, referendum, or recall effort must apply for an official petition serial number from the Town Clerk.
  • Robber Barons (Captains of Industry)

    Robber Barons (Captains of Industry)
    a person who has become rich through ruthless and unscrupulous business practices (originally with reference to prominent US businessmen in the late 19th century).
  • Social Gospel

    Social Gospel
    Many Americans were desperately poor around the turn of the 20th century. The Social Gospel movement emerged among Protestant Christians to improve the economic, moral and social conditions of the urban working class.
  • Theodore Roosevelt

    Theodore Roosevelt
    President of US, fought in war with Rough Riders, built up military , fought for equality and woman rights,
  • Tenement

    Tenement
    un-down and often overcrowded apartment house, especially in a poor section of a large city.
  • American Federation of Labor and Industrial Workers of the World

    American Federation of Labor and Industrial Workers of the World
    nder the leadership of Samuel Gompers, they organized themselves as the AFL, a loose federation that remained for half a century the sole unifying agency of the American labour movement. In its beginnings, the American Federation of Labor was dedicated to the principles of craft unionism.
  • Upton Sinclair

    Upton Sinclair
    Wrote the novel, The Jungle, that described unsanitary practices of the meat packing industry
  • Pure Food and Drug Act

    Pure Food and Drug Act
    preventing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors, and for regulating traffic therein, and for other purposes.
  • Dollar Diplomacy

    Dollar Diplomacy
    a form of American foreign policy to further its aims in Latin America and East Asia through use of its economic power by guaranteeing loans made to foreign countries.
  • Federal Reserve Act

    Federal Reserve Act
    sets the nation's monetary policy, supervises and regulates banking institutions, maintains the stability of the financial system and provides financial services to depository institutions, the U.S. government and foreign official institutions.”
  • Nativism

    Nativism
    the policy, generally around immigration but also dealing with social and economic aspects of daily life, that favors native-born or long-term resident individuals in the United States at the expense of immigrants.
  • Tea Pot Dome Scandal

    Tea Pot Dome Scandal
    a bribery incident which took place in the United States in 1922-1923, during the administration of President Warren G. Harding. Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome to private oil companies, without competitive bidding, at low rates. In 1922 and 1923, the leases became the subject of a sensational investigation. Fall was later convicted of accepting bribes from the oil companies
  • Clarence Darrow

    Clarence Darrow
    American lawyer, stunned the prosecution when he had his clients plead guilty in order to avoid a vengeance-minded jury and place the case before a judge, Scopes trial