Gilded Age Terms, Concepts, Names, and Essay Questions
The Age of the City
New Immigrants
“Immigrant ghettoes”
Tenement
How the Other Half Lives
“Leisure”
National Pastime
Louis Sullivan
Salvation Army
Urban Machine
Political Boss
Patronage
“Honest graft”
William M. Tweed
Frederick Jackson Turner
Free Public Education
Carlisle Indian Industrial
School
Coney Island
Jane Addams
Industrial Supremacy
Alexander Graham Bell
Thomas Edison
Bessemer Process
Standard Oil
Henry Ford
“Taylorism”
Assembly Line
Cornelius Vanderbilt
“Limited Liability”
Andrew Carnegie
J. Pierpont Morgan
Horizontal Integration
Vertical Integration
John D. Rockefeller
Monopoly
Trust
Pool Arrangements
Social Darwinism
Herbert Spencer
Adam Smith
Gospel of Wealth
Acres of Diamonds
Horatio Alger
Looking Backward
Chinese Exclusion Act
“Molly Maguires”
Great RR Strike
Knights of Labor
Terence Powderly
AFL
Samuel Gompers
Haymarket Square
Homestead Strike
Pullman Strike
Eugene V. Debs
Yellow Dog Contracts
From Stalemate to Crisis
Half Breeds
Stalwarts
Roscoe Conkling
James A. Garfield
Chester A. Arthur
Pendleton Act
James G. Blaine
Mugwumps
Rum, Romanism, Rebellion
Sherman Anti-trust Act
McKinley Tariff
James B. Weaver
Wilson Gorman Tariff
Granger Laws
Interstate Commerce Act
Populism
The Grange
Oliver H. Kelley
Farmers’ Alliance
Mary E. Lease
“Free Silver”
Ignatius Donnelly
Omaha Platform
Panic of 1893
Coxey’s Army
Bi-metallism
Crime of ‘73
Sherman Silver Purchase Act
William Jennings Bryan
Cross of Gold Speech
Front-Porch Campaign
Gold Standard Act 1900
The New South
Economic Growth
James B. Duke
Sharecropper
Tenant Farmer
Poll Tax
Literacy Test
Grandfather Clause
Jim Crow Laws
Booker T. Washington
W.E.B. Dubois
Tuskegee Institute
Atlanta Compromise
Plessy v. Ferguson 1896
Lynchings
Ida B. Well
Rise of Progressivism
Muckrakers
Ida Tarbell
Lincoln Steffens
“Social Gospel”
Women’s Suffrage
19th Amendment
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
National American Suffrage
Association
Equal Rights Amendment
Commission Plan
City-Manager Plan
Initiative, Referendum,
Direct Primary, Recall
Woodrow Wilson
Robert M. LaFollette
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
Booker T. Washington
W.E.B. Dubois
Niagara Movement
Women’s Christian
Temperance Union
Anti-Saloon League
Eighteenth Amendment
Eugenics
Eugene V. Debs
I.W.W.
Louis B. Brandeis
Settlement House
Discuss how interpretations of western settlement include issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and culture
A number of writers and reformers in the period 1865-1914 discussed the growing gap between
wealth and poverty in the United States. Compare and contrast THREE of the following authors’
explanations for this condition and their proposals for dealing with it.
a. Henry George, Progress and Poverty
b. Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward
c. Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth
d. William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other
e. Upton Sinclair, The Jungle
The size, character, and effectiveness of the organized labor movement changed significantly during
1870 to 1915
Andrew Carnegie has been viewed by some historians as the “prime representative of the industrial
age” and by others as “an industrial leader atypical of the period.” Assess the validity of each of these
views.
“Although the economic growth of the United States between 1860 and 1900 has been attributed to a
governmental policy of Laissez-faire, it was in fact encouraged and sustained by direct governmental
intervention.” Assess the validity of this statement.
“The reorganization and consolidation of business structures was more responsible for later
nineteenth-century American industrialization than was the development of new technologies.”
Assess the validity of this statement with specific reference to business structures and technology
between 1865-1900.
Compare and contrast the attitudes of Three of the following toward the wealth that was created in the
United States during the late nineteenth century:
Andrew Carnegie
Booker T. Washington
Eugene Debs
Ida M. Tarbell
Horatio Alger
What key changes did urbanization bring to America? What was city life like environmentally,
politically, and culturally?
Why were cities more effective in assimilating immigrants into mass culture than rural America? What
are some examples of assimilation and exclusion in this era? How did some migrants and immigrants
fare in their new urban American surroundings politically, socially, economically, and emotionally?
How did both the rich and the poor express their urban culture? Analyze the conflicts
Analyze what factors and individuals shaped the American city. In what ways was America becoming a
consumer and leisure society?
In What ways were the late-nineteenth-century Populists the heirs of the Jacksonian Democrats with
respect to overall objectives AND specific proposals for reform?
Analyze the reasons for the emergence of the Populist Movement in the late nineteenth century?
Discuss the development and effectiveness of the Pendleton Civil Service Act, the Interstate Commerce
Act, and the Sherman Silver Purchasing Act.
Account for the high level of political participation in the Gilded Age Despite the apparent lack of
difference between the two political parties.