| A | B |
|---|
| American Federation of Labor | The most important labor union by the late 1800s. Led by Samuel Gompers, this union believed in a "pure and simple" approach. Pure, because its members were ONLY skilled workers of various trades. And simple, because they focused on small attainable goals |
| Anarchism | A radical political belief (usually brought over from Europe). Its adherents believe that ALL governments should be overthrown |
| American Railway Union | A union, led by Eugene Debs, that led the Great Pullman boycott |
| Bessemer Process | Brought to the US by Andrew Carngie, this method allowed steel to be produced cheaply |
| Andrew Carnegie | He pioneered the development of the steel industry in the US (bessemer process, vertical integration) |
| Capital Goods | Machines that produce machines that add to the productive capacity of the nation |
| Collective Bargaining | A process of negotiation between labor unions and employers, particularly favored by the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Led by Samuel Gompers, the AFL accepted the new industrial order, but fought for a bigger share for the profits for the workers. |
| Closed Shop | Workplace in which a job seeker had to be a union member to gain employment. In the nineteenth century, the closed shop was favored by craft unions as a method of keeping out incompetent and lower-wage workers and of strengthening the unions' bargaining position with employers. |
| Credit Mobilier Scandal | During the building of the nation's first transcontinental railroad, this scndal emerged. Union Pacific officials had created a fake construction company that overcharged the Union Pacific company for construction materials. Union Pacific company big wigs got handsome profits while Union Pacific investors lost big time |
| Eugene Debs | Union leader who was imprisoned during the Pullman Strike after a court injuntion forbade him from speaking. He emerged from his prison sentence a radicalized man, who became the spokesperson fro American socialism from 1900 to 1920 |
| General Strike | A strike that draws in all the workers in a society, with the intention of shutting the entire system down. Radical groups like the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), in the early twentieth century, saw the general strike as the means for initiating a social revolution. |
| Samuel Gompers | Leader of the AFL -- believed in "pure and simple" unionism |
| Jay Gould | Infamous railroad owner who inflated and deflated railroad stocks for his own personal gain |
| Great deflation | Prices fell from 1865 to 1900 even as the economy of the US expanded |
| Great railroad Strike of 1877 | A violent railroad strike that symbolized a shift in the attentions of the nation...the nation moved away from being concerned with race relations in the South; now the nation struggled with the virtual class warfare caused by clashes between railroad workers and company bosses |
| Big Bill Heyward | Leader of the IWW (the Wobblies) who favored a Marxists type class struggle against mine owners |
| Rutherford B Hayes | Became president after the infamous Compromise of 1877. Reconstruction was ended in return for federal troops being removed from the South |
| Haymarket Square Riot | Occurred after a bomb caused chaos at a rally for an 8 hour day. Americans viewed the violence with suspicion, and that caused the Knights of Labor to lose much of their support |
| Homestead Strike | Carnegie successfully got rid of the union in his Homestead Steel Mill after this violent strike that was finally ended by the PA state guard |
| IWW | Radical wetsren mining union that often engaged in violent struggles against mine owners |
| Knights of Labor | Popular early union that wanted broad societal change, but did very little to achieve it. Lost support after the violent Haymarket Square riot in 1885 |
| Liberty of Contract | 19th century belief that workers and employers should be free to work for whomever and whatever hours...the ideology did not favor government or unions trying to change stuff in the workplace |
| Limited Liability | These laws protect investors (who if a company fails only lose their investment) and encourage investment in corporations |
| Mass Production | Enabled by increasing use of division of labor and the assembly line |
| Montgomery Ward | A mail order catalogue that allowed rural customers to purchase manufactured goods |
| New South | Trumpeted by writers like Henry O'Grady, this was the belief that the South should embrace industry and catch up with the North. Some progress was made, but by 1900 the South remained a backwater with an economy still based on Agriculture |
| New Immigration | In the late 1800s more and more immigrants came from Southern and Easter Europe (after 1890) |
| Old Immgration | Before 1890 most immgrants came from Northern and Western Europe |
| Yellow Dog Contracts | After the Haymarket Square Riot, companies forced workers to sign contracts where they pledged NOT to join unions |
| Pullman Strike | Railroad strike of 1894 where the ARU led a secondary labor boycott against the Pullman Company. Court injunctions were used to end the strike |
| Terence Powderly | Leader of the Knights of Labor, who believed in education for workers and a society where EVERYONE would be a producer |
| Scientific Management | A system of organizing work, developed by Frederick W. Taylor in the late nineteenth century, designed to get the maximum output from the individual worker and reduce the cost of production, using methods such as the time-and-motion study to determine how factory work should be organized. The system was never applied in its totality in any industry, but it contributed to the rise of the "efficiency expert" and the field of industrial psychology. |
| Sears Roebuck | A mail order catalogue company that supplied rural customers with consumers |
| Socialists | Political group who believed that government should assume ownership of businesses in order to provide a more just society |
| JD Rockefeller | Pioneered horizontal integration in the oil industry |
| Standard Oil | Gained monopolistic control over the oil refining industry |
| Syndicalism | A revolutionary movement that, like socialism, believed in the Marxist principle of class struggle and advocated the organization of society on the basis of industrial unionism. This approach was advocated by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) at the start of the twentieth century. |
| Trade Unionism | Unions organized into groups by their occupations...the AFL was a collection of trade unions |
| Cornelius Vanderbilt | Railway owner who merged various companies in the late 1800s |
| Vertical Integration | The process of making an industry more efficient by controlling every step of the manufacturing process |
| White Collar Jobs | Middle-class professionals who are salaried workers as opposed to business owners or wage laborers; they first appeared in large numbers during the industrial expansion in the late nineteenth century. Their ranks were composed of lawyers, engineers, and chemists, as well as salesmen, accountants, and advertising managers. |
