Industrialization / Gilded Age Key Concept Quiz

Policy that the government should leave the economy alone and companies should operate without government interference. French term for leave alone. This golden era of big business is known as The Gilded Age (1877-1898). Government encouraged the growth of big business.

• laissez-faire policy

• monopoly

• Bessemer process

• electricity

A business that has complete control of an industry. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company used this concept in the oil industry

• monopoly

• Bessemer process

• electricity

• telephone

Andrew Carnegie dominated the steel business by adapting his mills to use a new process for efficiently and cheaply making high-quality steel.

• Bessemer process

• electricity

• telephone

• expansion of railroads

Thomas Alva Edison invented the phonograph, the light bulb, the electric generator, the battery, and the motion picture. J.P. Morgan backed Edison's company called General Electric (GE)

• electricity

• telephone

• expansion of railroads

• mass production

Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson invented this in 1876.

• telephone

• expansion of railroads

• mass production

• assembly line

The railroad boom began when Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act in 1862. The transcontinental railroad was completed. The railroads stimulated the economy by spending extraordinary amounts of money on steel, coal, timber, and other necessities.

• expansion of railroads

• Railroad Efficiency

• Vanderbilt Expansion

• corporations

Product manufacturing usually done by machinery creates more supply and reduced consumer costs. This innovation reshaped the American economy. New urban factories provided jobs for the New Immigrants.

• mass production

• assembly line

• corporations

• horizontal integration

First adopted by car maker Henry Ford, it divided operations into simple tasks that unskilled workers could do and cut costs. This contributed to the mass production of automobiles in the early twentieth century and made cars affordable for the average American.

• assembly line

• corporations

• mass production

• escalated assembly

An organization owned by many people but treated by law as though it were a single person. Made big business possible it can own property, pay taxes, make contracts, and sue and be sued. Shares of ownership are called stocks.

• corporations

• monopoly

• cartel

• trusts

Combining many firms engaged in the same type of business into one large corporation. John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil bought out rival oil companies.

• horizontal integration

• vertical integration

• trusts

• Industrial Giants