Gilded+Age

During the late 1800's the United States had:

1. Plentiful natural resources.

2. Improved transportation.

3. Growing population - 1860-1900 pop. grew from 31.5 to 76 million

4. High immigration - 1860-1900 14 million immigrants to U.S.

5. New inventions.

6. Investment capital.

The U.S. railroads changed the way people lived:

1.Linked the economies of West and East 2.Helped people settle the West 3.Weakened the Native American hold on the West. 4.Gave people more control of the environment.

To solve the problem of solar time the railroad companies set up standard time dividing the U.S. into 4 time zones.

The transcontinental railroad spanned the entire continent. The Central Pacific railroad started in Sacramento, CA and built east. The Union Pacific railroad started in Omaha, NB and built west. They met at Promontory, Utah in 1869. To built the railway tens of thousands of employees were hired, many of them Chinese.

__//Vocabulary words://__ petroleum - An oily flammable liquid.

patent - A government document giving an inventor the exclusive right to make and sell his or her invention for a specific number of years.

business cycles - A pattern of good and bad economic times.

Bessemer steel process - used 7X less coal / the production of steel increased 500X using this process

generator -A machine that produces electric current.

Centennial Exhibition - 1876 =- 100 yr. anniversary of the country. Alexander Graham Bell exhibited the telephone here.

standard time - A system that divided the U.S. into four time zones.

robber baron - A business leader who became wealthy through dishonest methods.

corporation - A business owned by investors who buy part of the company through shares of stock.

monopoly - A company that wipes out its competitors and controls an industry.

trust - A legal body created to hold stock in many companies.

philanthropist - People who give large sums of money to charities.

Gilded Age - name given by Mark Twain to the era.

sweatshop - Places where workers labor long hours under poor conditions for low wages.

Knights of Labor - A loose federation of workers from all different trades.

socialism - An economic system in which all members of a society are equal owners of all businesses.

Haymarket Affair - A conflict in Chicago in 1886 between union members and the McCormick Harvester Company.

Pullman strike - A strike which spread throughout the rail industry in 1894.