ISSUES TO UNDERSTAND

After reading the chapter, you should be able to discuss the following:

1. How the railroads stimulated the growth of large industrial corporations

2. Why state and federal governments attempted to regulate railroad practices and why these attempts were unsuccessful

3. What caused the growth of huge industrial corporations, including trusts and monopolies, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

4. How government tried to stop the growth of trusts and monopolies and why its efforts failed

5. The benefits and problems industrialization and the growth of big business brought to the United States

6. Why the South lagged behind the North in industrialization and the unique characteristics that southern industry developed

7. The impact of industrialization on labor, including southerners, women, immigrants, and skilled and unskilled workers

8. The ways in which workers reacted to the unfavorable changes imposed on them by industrialization and the growth of big business

9. What the beliefs of the period were about hard work and success and how much validity there was in those beliefs

10. The attempts of labor to improve its condition through unionization and strikes and why those efforts had little success

11. Why labor favored immigration restriction and what, if anything, government did about it

12. How intellectuals, including conservative Social Darwinists and their opponents, responded to industrialization and its
problems

VOCABULARY

After reading Chapter 18, you should be able to explain each of the following:

“watering" stock- issuing stock certificates far in excess of the value of a corporation's assets;
stock in a company that has overissued in this manner is called "watered stock"

rebate- a return of part of an original amount paid for some service or merchandise

pool- an agreement among formerly competing companies to set uniform prices and divide the business among themselves according
to a predetermined formula; the purpose is to maximize profits by ending competition

vertical integration -organization of a single corporation to control all stages of manufacturing, from obtaining raw materials to marketing the finished product

horizontal integration - organization of a single corporation, through consolidation measures, to gain broad control over all manufacturing of a particular product

postbellum -after the war; usually meaning after the Civil War

entrepreneur -a person who invests in and develops new economic enterprises and employs productive labor

"bread-and-butter" unionism - also trade unionism-  the union practice of concentrating on issues of immediate concern to its members,
                                                 such as reducing hours and raising wages, rather than promoting broad social reforms

boycott -an organized refusal to buy or use products or services so as to put pressure on producers to change their behavior

yellow-dog contract- an agreement that employers forced employees to sign swearing that they would not join unions or strike

anarchist a person who advocates the overthrow of all established governments and of capitalist economic institutions

injunction- a court order requiring a person to do or not do a particular thing

laissez -faire - the doctrine that government should intervene as little as possible in economic affairs, such as regulating business
 
 
 

CH 18 IDENTIFICATIONS

After reading Chapter 18, you should be able to identify and explain the historical significance of each of the following:

Andrew Carnegie
John D. Rockefeller
Jay Gould
Interstate Commerce Act and Interstate Commerce Commission, 1887
J. Pierpont Morgan
Sherman Anti- Trust Act, 1890
United States v. E. C. Knight Co.
Thomas A. Edison
Henry W. Grady and the "New South Creed"
William H. Sylvis and the National Labor Union
Terence V. Powderly and the Knights of Labor
Mother Jones
Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882
Samuel Gompers and the Amencan Federation of Labor
Railroad stnkes of
Haymarket Square bombing
Homestead strike, 1892
Pullman strike, 1894
Eugene Debs
William Graham Sumner and conservative Social Darwinism
Lester Frank Ward
Henry George, Progress and Poverty
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward

 Return to Assignment page