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Political Machines
A political machine is a political organization in which an authoritative boss or small group commands the support of a corps of supporters and businesses (usually campaign workers), who receive rewards for their efforts. -
Industrialization
Industrialization is the process by which an economy is transformed from primarily agricultural to one based on the manufacturing of goods. Individual manual labor is often replaced by mechanized mass production, and craftsmen are replaced by assembly lines. -
Muckraker
Meaning "one who inquires into and publishes scandal and allegations of corruption among political and business leaders," popularized 1906 in speech by President Theodore Roosevelt, in reference to "man ... with a Muckrake in his hand" in Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" (1684) who seeks worldly gain by raking filth. -
Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine was important because it stated that the newly independent United States would not tolerate European powers interfering with the nations in the Western Hemisphere, and if the European powers did interfere, then the United States would retaliate with war. -
Indian Removal
The Indian Removal Act was a law that was signed by Pres. Andrew Jackson in 1830. It is significant because it led to the eviction of Native Americans from their lands in the Southeast. It also led to them being forced to go to what is now Oklahoma in a movement known as the "Trail of Tears." -
Manifest Destiny
Manifest was significant to the expansion of the United States in the 19th century. It was the primary force that caused the United States to expand west across North America. To Americans, expansion offered self-advancement, self-sufficiency, income and freedom. -
Bessemer Process
The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass-production of steel from molten pig iron before the development of the open hearth furnace. The key principle is removal of impurities from the iron by oxidation with air being blown through the molten iron. -
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt became the 26th US President (1901-1909) after the assassination of President William McKinley. He was one of the most popular and important Presidents ever to serve in the Chief Executive Office. -
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) was an American industrialist who amassed a fortune in the steel industry then became a major philanthropist. He worked in a Pittsburgh cotton factory as a boy before rising to the position of division superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1859. -
Homestead Act
The Homestead Act of 1862 was one of the most significant and enduring events in the westward expansion of the United States. By granting 160 acres of free land to claimants, it allowed nearly any man or woman a "fair chance." -
Eugene V Debbs
Eugene V Debbs (1855–1926), Socialist, presidential candidate, war opponent. Born of French immigrant parents in Terre Haute, Indiana, Debs became active in the labor movement in the 1870s and created the American Railway Union (ARU), an industrial union, in 1893. -
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882
on May 6, 1882 the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States was repealed. In the spring of 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Chester A. Arthur. This act provided an absolute 10-year moratorium on Chinese labor immigration. -
Haymarket Riot
On May 4th, 1886 a labor protest rally near Chicago's Haymarket Square turned into a riot after someone threw a bomb at police. At least eight people died as a result of the violence that day. -
Gilded Age
The gilded age is the time between the Civil War and World War I during which the U.S. population and economy grew quickly, there was a lot of political corruption and corporate financial misdealing and many wealthy people lived very fancy lives. -
Dawes Act
The Dawes Act is a
federal law intended to turn Native Americans into farmers and landowners by providing cooperating families with 160 acres of reservation land for farming or 320 acres for grazing. -
Robber Barons (Captains of industry)
It described industrialists who also benefitted society. Nineteenth-century robber barons included J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Andrew W. Mellon, and John D. Rockefeller. -
Ida B. Wells
Ida B Wells was a daughter of slaves, she was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on July 16, 1862. A journalist, Wells led an anti-lynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s, and went on to found and become integral in groups striving for African-American justice. She died in 1931 in Chicago, Illinois -
William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan was born in Illinois, (1860-1925) he became a Nebraska congressman in 1890. He starred at the 1896 Democratic convention with his Cross of Gold speech that favored free silver, but was defeated in his bid to become U.S. president by William McKinley. -
Klondike Gold Rush
In August 1896 when Skookum Jim Mason, Dawson Charlie and George Washington Carmack found gold in a tributary of the Klondike River in Canada's Yukon Territory, they had no idea they they would set off one of the greatest gold rushes in history. -
Initiative, Referendum, and Recall
In political terminology, the initiative is a process that enables citizens to bypass their state legislature by placing proposed statutes and, in some states, constitutional amendments on the ballot. The first state to adopt the initiative was South Dakota in 1898. -
Immigration & the American Dream
The American dream has many different meanings. U.S.-born citizens usually associate it with such themes as wealth, financial security, freedom and even family. Immigrants in the U.S., however, are more likely to define the American dream as the pursuit of opportunity, a good job, owning a home and in many cases, safety from war or persecution. -
Social Gospel
Social Gospel is a movement led by a group of liberal Protestant progressives in response to the social problems raised by the rapid industrialization, urbanization, and increasing immigration of the Gilded Age. -
Nativism
Nativism in America refers to the preference for established US residents, as opposed to foreigners or "others" considered to be outsiders and the opposition to immigration. The belief in Nativism was a prejudicial attitude towards immigrants based on their national origin, their ethnic background, their race or religion. -
Pure food and Drug Act
Pure Food and Drug Act is to prevent the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors, and for regulating traffic therein, and for other purposes. -
Dollar Diplomacy
Dollar Diplomacy of the United States—particularly during President William Howard Taft's term— was a form against American foreign policy to further its aims in Latin America and East Asia through use of its economic power by guaranteeing loans made to foreign countries. ( from 1909-1913) -
16th Amendment
16th Amendment, allows the federal (United States) government to levy (collect) an income tax from all Americans. Income tax allows for the federal government to keep an army, build roads and bridges, enforce laws and carry out other important duties.
it was passed by Congress on July 2, 1909, and ratified February 3, 1913, the 16th amendment established Congress's right to impose a Federal income tax. -
17th amendment
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislatures. -
Federal Reserve Act
Is an Act of Congress that created and established the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States, and which created the authority to issue Federal Reserve -
18th Amendment
The 18th Amendment, which began the Prohibition era with the outlawing of alcohol, opened the doors to organized crime during the 1920s, overwhelming law enforcement prior to the amendment's repeal in 1933. This was the only American constitutional amendment to be repealed in its entirety. -
Susan B Anthony
Susan B Anthony was raised in a Quaker household and went on to work as a teacher before becoming a leading figure in the abolitionist and women's voting rights movement. She partnered with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and would eventually lead the National American Woman Suffrage Association. -
Urbanization
Urbanization occurs when people move from rural to urban areas, so that the proportion of people living in cities increases while the proportion of people living in rural areas diminishes. In the last century, the world's population has urbanized quickly. -
19th Amendment
The United States Constitution prohibits any United States citizen from being denied the right to vote on the basis of sex. It was ratified on August 18, 1920. Until the 1910s, most states disenfranchised women. -
Clarence Darrow
In 1925,Clarence Darrow volunteered to defend John Scopes' right to teach evolution, he had already reached the top of his profession. The year before, in a sensational trial in Chicago, he saved the child-killers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb from the death penalty. -
Yellow Journalism
Yellow Journalism is a term first coined during the famous newspaper wars between William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer II. Pulitzer's paper the New York World and Hearst's New York Journal changed the content of newspapers adding more sensationalized stories and increasing the use of drawings and cartoons. -
Tea Pot Dome Scandal
In U.S. history, oil reserve scandal that began during the administration of President Harding. In 1921, by executive order of the President, control of naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyo., and at Elk Hills, Calif., was transferred from the Navy Dept. to the Dept. of the Interior. -
Upton Sinclair
American novelist and political writer, was one of the most important muckrakers (writers who search out and reveal improper conduct in politics and business) of the 1900s. His novel The Jungle helped improve working conditions in the meat-packing industry. -
Jane Addams
Born on September 6, 1860, in Cedarville, Illinois, Jane Addams co-founded one of the first settlements in the United States, the Hull House in Chicago, Illinois, in 1889, and was named a co-winner of the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize, she then died in May 21,1935 in Chicago.
