Ch.5 Gilded Age Key Terms and People

Entrepreneur who owned 90% of the oil companies in the US

Someone who organizes a business, assumes the risk for it and keeps the profits

Idea or theory that the government should NOT interfere in the "Free Market" economy

a partial owner

Hiring small children to perform dangerous jobs

Invented in 1876, it allowed people to communicate across great distances

His company combined gas and metal filament to produce the first electric light bulb

In 1886, labor leaders were blamed when a bomb exploded during a strike in Chicago killing 7 policemen

Fed. Law requiring Railroad Co. to charge all businesses the same rate for the same distance

Who was Samuel Gompers?

Donating large sums of money to build universities, libraries, museum and scholarships

Method of making steel stronger and cheaper brought to the US

agreement between companies to cooperate & sell products at an agreed $

Total or exclusive control or possession of a business, service or product by a person

Union created by Samuel Gompers that only included skilled workers

Created by mass production of goods and a growing networks of transportation

Period when a few people in the US became very wealthy, while the majority struggled to survive

Formed in 1869, hoped to create a single national union of both skilled an unskilled workers

Entrepreneur who created a successful steel industry and wrote "The Gospel of Wealth"

Entrepreneurs who used ruthless tactics to destroy competition and paid their workers little

Entrepreneurs like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan, who created the modern industrial society

Written by Andrew Carnegie, it was about how the wealthy had a duty to serve, lead, and practice philanthropy

Law to prevent large corporations from using unfair practices to eliminate competition

People are free to produce and sell whatever they wish for any price they want

Completed in 1869 it allowed travel to the west and promoted trade from coast to coast

Group of people with common interest who join to bargain for better working conditions

a downturn in business

Invented a machine to communicate over long distance by transmitting voices or sound

Business that sold stock and was considered a "person" by a state charter

American industrialization accelerated in the decades after the Civil War