Gilded Age

The Gilded Age was a period of rapid industrialization, economic growth, and political corruption in the United States, roughly spanning the 1870s through 1900.

Second Industrial Revolution: A wave of technological innovation and industrial expansion that transformed economies from the late nineteenth into the early twentieth century. Its new technologies and industries powered the era’s rapid economic growth.
Progressive Era: A period of reform in the United States, roughly from the 1890s to the 1920s, addressing industrial, political, and social problems. Progressive reformers targeted conditions and abuses associated with the Gilded Age.
Andrew Carnegie: A Scottish American industrialist who built a dominant steel business and later became a major philanthropist. His steel empire and philanthropy illustrate the era’s fortunes and debates over wealth.
Homestead Strike: An 1892 violent labor conflict at Carnegie Steel’s Homestead works in Pennsylvania. The strike dramatized the clash between steelworkers, management, and private force.
Railroad: A transport system in which trains run on tracks, enabling large-scale movement of people and goods. Railroad expansion connected markets and helped create national corporations.
Sherman Antitrust Act: A United States federal law enacted in 1890 to prohibit certain restraints of trade and monopolization. It marked an early federal response to concentrated corporate power.
John D. Rockefeller: An American industrialist who built Standard Oil into a dominant oil company. His business methods made him a central symbol of corporate consolidation.
Pullman Company: An American manufacturer of railroad cars that also operated a company town near Chicago. Its wage cuts and company-town rules helped trigger the 1894 strike.
Trust (business): A business arrangement that combines control of multiple companies to limit competition and consolidate economic power. Trusts exemplified the industrial concentration that drew public opposition.
Haymarket affair: A deadly 1886 confrontation in Chicago after a labor meeting protesting police violence and the eight-hour workday. The affair intensified conflict over labor activism, policing, and radical politics.

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