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The Gilded Age
In United States history, the Gilded Age is the period from about the late 1870s to the late 1890s, which occurred between the Reconstruction era and the Progressive Era. It was named by 1920s historians after Mark Twain's 1873 novel '' The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today''. Historians saw late 19th-century economic expansion as a time of materialistic excesses marked by widespread political corruption. It was a time of rapid economic growth, especially in the Northern and Western United States. As American wages grew much higher than those in Europe, especially for skilled workers, and industrialization demanded an increasingly skilled labor force, the period saw an influx of millions of European immigrants. The rapid expansion of industrialization led to real wage growth of 40% from 1860 to 1890 and spread across the increasing labor force. The average annual wage per industrial worker, including men, women, and children, rose from $380 in 1880 ($ in dollars) to $584 in 1890 ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Progressive Era
The Progressive Era (1890s–1920s) was a period in the United States characterized by multiple social and political reform efforts. Reformers during this era, known as progressivism in the United States, Progressives, sought to address issues they associated with rapid technological and industrial history of the United States, industrialization, urbanization in the United States, urbanization, immigration to the United States, immigration, and corruption in the United States, political corruption, as well as the concentration of industrial ownership in monopoly, monopolies. Reformers expressed concern about slums, poverty in the United States, poverty, and labor conditions. Multiple overlapping movements pursued social, political, and economic reforms by advocating changes in governance, scientific methods, and professionalism; regulating business; environmental protection, protecting the natural environment; and seeking to improve urban living and working conditions. Corru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reconstruction Era
The Reconstruction era was a period in History of the United States, US history that followed the American Civil War (1861-65) and was dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of the Abolitionism in the United States, abolition of slavery and reintegration of the former Confederate States of America, Confederate States into the United States. Reconstruction Amendments, Three amendments were added to the United States Constitution to grant citizenship and equal civil rights to the Freedmen, newly freed slaves. To circumvent these, former Confederate states imposed poll taxes and literacy tests and engaged in terrorism in the United States, terrorism to intimidate and control African Americans and discourage or prevent them from voting. Throughout the war, the Union was confronted with the issue of how to administer captured areas and handle slaves escaping to Union lines. The United States Army played a vital role in establishing a Labour economics, free lab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robber Baron (industrialist)
Robber baron is a term first applied by 19th century muckrakers and others as social criticism to certain wealthy, powerful, and unethical 19th-century American businessmen. The term appeared in that use as early as the August 1870 issue of ''The Atlantic Monthly'' magazine. By the late 19th century, the term was typically applied to businessmen who used exploitative practices to amass their wealth. Those practices included Exploitation of natural resources, unfettered consumption and destruction of natural resources, Crony capitalism, influencing high levels of government, wage slavery, Anti-competitive practices, squashing competition by acquiring their competitors, and to create Monopoly, monopolies and/or Trust (business), trusts that control Market (economics), the market. The term combines the sense of criminal ("robber") and illegitimate aristocracy (“baron”) in a republic.Worth Robert Miller, ''Populist cartoons: an illustrated history of the third-party movement in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." Twain's novels include ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' (1876) and its sequel, ''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." He also wrote ''A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court'' (1889) and ''Pudd'nhead Wilson'' (1894) and cowrote ''The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today'' (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner. The novelist Ernest Hemingway claimed that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called ''Huckleberry Finn''." Twain was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, which later provided the setting for both ''Tom Sawyer'' and ''Huckleberry Finn''. He served an apprenticeship with a printer early in his career, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
History Of The United States
The history of the present-day United States began in roughly 15,000 BC with the arrival of Peopling of the Americas, the first people in the Americas. In the late 15th century, European colonization of the Americas, European colonization began and wars and epidemics largely decimated Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous societies. By the 1760s, the Thirteen Colonies, then part of British America and the Kingdom of Great Britain, were established. The Southern Colonies built an agricultural system on Slavery in the United States, slave labor and Atlantic slave trade, enslaving millions from Africa. After the British victory over the Kingdom of France in the French and Indian Wars, Parliament of Great Britain, Parliament imposed a series of taxes and issued the Intolerable Acts on the colonies in 1773, which were designed to end self-governance. Tensions between the colonies and British authorities subsequently intensified, leading to the American Revolutionary War, Re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pullman Strike
The Pullman Strike comprised two interrelated strikes in 1894 that shaped national labor policy in the United States during a period of deep economic depression. First came a strike by the American Railway Union (ARU) against the Pullman Company's factory in Chicago in spring 1894. When it failed, the ARU launched a national boycott against all trains that carried Pullman passenger cars. The nationwide railroad boycott that lasted from May 11 to July 20, 1894, was a turning point for US labor law. It pitted the American Railway Union (ARU) against the Pullman Company, the main railroads, the main labor unions, and the federal government of the United States under President Grover Cleveland. The strike and boycott shut down much of the nation's freight and passenger traffic west of Detroit, Michigan. The conflict began in Chicago, on May 11 when nearly 4,000 factory employees of the Pullman Company began a wildcat strike in response to recent reductions in wages. Most of the factory ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sherman Antitrust Act Of 1890
The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 (, ) is a United States antitrust law which prescribes the rule of free competition among those engaged in commerce and consequently prohibits unfair monopolies. It was passed by Congress and is named for Senator John Sherman, its principal author. The Sherman Act broadly prohibits 1) anticompetitive agreements and 2) unilateral conduct that monopolizes or attempts to monopolize the relevant market. The Act authorizes the Department of Justice to bring suits to enjoin (i.e. prohibit) conduct violating the Act, and additionally authorizes private parties injured by conduct violating the Act to bring suits for treble damages (i.e. three times as much money in damages as the violation cost them). Over time, the federal courts have developed a body of law under the Sherman Act making certain types of anticompetitive conduct per se illegal, and subjecting other types of conduct to case-by-case analysis regarding whether the conduct unreasonab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Federation Of Labor
The American Federation of Labor (A.F. of L.) was a national federation of labor unions in the United States that continues today as the AFL-CIO. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions eager to provide mutual support and disappointed in the Knights of Labor. Samuel Gompers was elected the full-time president at its founding convention and was re-elected every year except one until his death in 1924. He became the major spokesperson for the union movement. The A.F. of L. was the largest union grouping, even after the creation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) by unions that were expelled by the A.F. of L. in 1935. The A.F. of L. was founded and dominated by craft unions, especially in the building trades. In the late 1930s, craft affiliates expanded by organizing on an industrial union basis to meet the challenge from the CIO. The A.F. of L. and the CIO competed bitterly in the late 1930s but then cooperated during World War ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Haymarket Affair
The Haymarket affair, also known as the Haymarket massacre, the Haymarket riot, the Haymarket Square riot, or the Haymarket Incident, was the aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on May 4, 1886 at Haymarket Square (Chicago), Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois. The rally began peacefully in support of workers striking for an eight-hour day, eight-hour work day; it was held the day after a May 3 rally at a McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant on the West Side, Chicago, West Side of Chicago, during which two demonstrators had been killed and many demonstrators and police had been injured. At the Haymarket Square rally on May 4, an unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at the police as they acted to disperse the meeting, and the bomb blast and ensuing retaliatory gunfire by the police caused the deaths of seven police officers and at least four civilians; dozens of others were wounded. Eight anarchists were charged with the bombing. They were conv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act
The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act is a United States federal law passed by the 47th United States Congress and signed into law by President Chester A. Arthur on January 16, 1883. The act mandates that most positions within the Federal government of the United States, federal government should be awarded on the basis of merit instead of political patronage. By the late 1820s, American politics operated on the spoils system, a political patronage practice in which officeholders awarded their allies with government jobs in return for financial and political support. Proponents of the spoils system were successful at blocking meaningful civil service reform until the Assassination of James A. Garfield, assassination of President James A. Garfield in 1881. The 47th Congress passed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act during its lame duck session and President Chester A. Arthur, himself a former spoilsman, signed the bill into law. The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act provid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Exclusion Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was a United States Code, United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years. The law made exceptions for travelers and diplomats. The Act also denied Chinese residents already in the US the ability to become citizens and Chinese people traveling in or out of the country were required to carry a certificate identifying their status or risk deportation. It was the first major US law implemented to prevent all members of a specific national group from immigrating to the United States, and therefore helped shape twentieth-century immigration policy. Passage of the law was preceded by growing Anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States, anti-Chinese sentiment and anti-Chinese violence, as well as various policies targeting Chinese migrants. The act followed the Angell Treaty of 1880, a set of revisions to the US–China Burlingame Treaty of 1868 that allowed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
