Gilded Age Review
1. Graft – using one’s job to gain profit
2. Steerage – method of travel across the Atlantic to America for most immigrants, area under the ship’s deck, poor accommodations
3. Ghetto – Area in which one ethnic or racial group dominates
4. Tenement – crowded apartment building with poor sanitation, safety and comfort…Slums
5. Blue laws – regulations that prohibit certain private activities such as drinking on Sunday
6. Popular sports – baseball, basketball, horseracing, bicycling, boxing
7. Popular amusements – nickelodeons, trolley parks, theatres, were inexpensive and readily available to large numbers of people
8. Republican key positions – gold standard, high tariffs, and limits on immigration, government should aid business
9. Democratic key positions – increased money supply, free silver, lower tariffs, and higher farm prices, the government should not aid business
10. Political Machines – helped provide immigrants with jobs and housing in exchange for votes, Immigrants supported them for jobs, unofficial city organization designed to keep a particular party in power
11. Reasons for urbanizations – rapid expansion of urban areas was a major result of both immigration and the increased productivity of factory jobs, farm machines and factory-made goods reduced the need for farm labor
12. Roles/effects of public schools – helped immigrant children assimilate, led to Americanization, by 1910, 60% of children were enrolled in school because many states required school attendance by law, wealthy white males were most likely to attend college
13. Niagara Movement – called for the full civil liberties for African Americans
14. African American higher education – most African Americans that went to college attending segregated African American schools.
15. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) – example of how African Americans used the court system to fight discrimination
16. Plessy Vs. Ferguson – established the “separate – but – equal doctrine”, upholding segregation
17. Lynching – seizure and execution of a person by a mob
18. Ports of entry – majority of immigrants in the late 1800s came through New York City,
19. Nativists – main objective was to restrict immigration,
20. Social Gospel Movements – main goal to improve living conditions for the poor
21. Settlement House Movement – offered poor city dwellers social services
22. Prohibitionists – goal of improving the personal behavior of individuals, sought to rid society of behavior they thought to be immoral
23. Purity crusaders – goal of improving the personal behavior of individuals, sought to rid society of behavior they thought to be immoral
24. Pendleton Civil Service Act – was passed to end the spoils system, required an examination to prove fitness for government jobs, created the Civil Service Commission
25. Coxey’s Army – marched on Washington with the demand that the government create jobs for the unemployed
26. Women’s Issues – worked mainly in education, health care, and social work, participation in volunteer organizations helped many women take their first steps toward public life, Young single women were most likely to work outside the home
27. “New Woman” – promoted the idea that women should adopt more convenient hair and dress styles, household chores were reduced because of technological advances
28. Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907 – President Roosevelt’s goal was to slow the immigration of Japanese laborers
29. W.E.B. Dubois – argued that African American should educate themselves so they could provide leadership in the fight for civil rights.
30. Booker T. Washington – believed African Americans should learn a vocation and become economically stable to win respect
31. Madam C.J. Walker – Is remembered for overcoming discrimination to become a self-made millionaire
32. William “Boss” Tweed – took control of Tammany Hall in New York City and embezzled a great deal of money from the city
33. Jacob Riis – book “How the Other Half Lives” documented the plight of the poor with pictures
34. Thomas Nast – political cartoonist that helped expose “Boss” Tweed’s corruption
Additional Topics to Know:
35. Business Regulation – government was forced to regulate businesses due to unfair business practices that hurt the economy
36. Asian Immigrants – were attracted to the United States in the late 1800s for jobs on the railroad, immigration laws discriminated most against Asians,
37. Immigration Patterns – shifted dramatically during this period with most immigrants coming from southern and eastern European countries
38. Assimilation – the process by which people of one culture become part of another culture