This is vocabulary/important people of the Gilded Age.

1. Industrialization & Gilded Age
Vocabulary

2. Bessemer Process-A cheap and efficient process for
making steel, developed around 1850.
Transcontinental Railroad-the first railroad built that
crossed the nation from the Atlantic to the Pacific and
was finished in 1869 after being built for 6 years.
Alexander Graham Bell-The inventor of the phone
started a company called Bell telephone company

3. Telephone-a system that converts acoustic vibrations
to electrical signals in order to transmit sound,
typically voices, over a distance using wire or radio.
Thomas Edison-He invented the light bulb. This
invention changed the way of life for thousands of
Americans.
Free Enterprise System-An economic system in which
individuals depend on supply and demand and the
profit margin to determine what to produce, how to
produce, how much to produce, and for whom to
produce.

4. Day 2 Vocabulary

5. • National Market-the supply and demand for all
securities that are traded in a country. Each national
market is governed by the regulations of its own
country.
• Corporation-a business owned by stockholders who
share in its profits but are not personally
responsible for its debts
• Entrepreneur- is a term applied to a person who is
willing to help launch a new venture or enterprise
and accept full responsibility for the outcome.

6. • Gilded Age-1870s - 1900s; time period looked good on
the outside, despite the corrupt politics & growing gap
between the rich & poor.
• Captain of Industry-Owners and managers of large
industrial enterprises who wielded extraordinary
political and economic power.
• Robber Baron-Refers to the industrialists or big
business owners who gained huge profits by paying
their employees extremely low wages. They also drove
their competitors out of business by selling their
products cheaper than it cost to produce it. Then when
they controlled the market, they hiked prices high
above original price

7. Day 3 Vocabulary

8. • Andrew Carnegie- Scottish-American industrialist,
businessman who led the enormous expansion of
the American steel industry. He was also one of the
most important philanthropists of his era.
• Philanthropy-Voluntary promotion of human
welfare; love of humanity; charitable donations and
causes.
• John D. Rockefeller-Rockefeller was a man who
started from meager beginnings and eventually
created an oil empire. In Ohio in 1870 he organized
the Standard Oil Company. By 1877 he controlled
95% of all of the refineries in the United States.

9. • Monopoly-a market in which there are many buyers
but only one seller.
• Interstate Commerce Act-established the federal
government's right to oversee railroad activities and
required railroads to make public their rate
schedules and file them with the government
• Sherman Anti-Trust Act-law that banned the
formation of trusts and monopolies in the United
States.

10. Day 4 Vocabulary

11. • Child Labor-the employment of children at regular
and sustained labor.
• Laissez-Faire-an economic policy that advocates
government staying out of the business sector it is
also a theory that everything will even itself out in a
completely free market
• Labor Union-Group of workers who seek to improve
the economic and social well-being of its members
through group action.

12. • Knights of Labor-were idealists who believed they
could eliminate conflict between labor and
managements. Their goal was to create a
cooperative society in which laborers owned the
industries in which they worked.
• AFL (American Federation of Labor)-a union for
skilled laborers that fought for worker rights in a
non-violent way. It provided skilled laborers with a
union that was unified, large, and strong.
• Samuel Gompers-first president of American
Federation of Labor (AFL), the first enduring
national labor union