Gilded Age & Progressive Era Quiz

The California gold rush began in 1848 when gold was found by James W. Marshall in Coloma, California. Approximately 300,000 people from the rest of the country flocked to California with the hope of finding gold. By the late 1800s large companies dominated the mining industry, and many previously-independent miners had to take jobs as wage laborers. Silver, gold, copper, lead, zinc, and iron were mined in many states including Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico.

The First Transcontinental Railroad was a 1,912-mile railroad line that was built between 1863 and 1869. It connected the eastern railroad network to San Francisco. It was built by 3 private companies over public lands provided by large government land grants. The companies were also granted tracts of land that ran alongside the railway which which were developed and sold to help finance the construction of the railroad.

The expansion of the American railroad networks made it possible for southern cattle ranchers to get their herds to the most profitable markets. “Cow towns” sprung up as places where ranchers could drive their cattle in order to get them onto trains bound for the North and East. As a result, there were over five million cattle transported by train in the two decades following the Civil War.

The Homestead Act gave many Americans, especially immigrants, their first opportunity to own land. One progressive component of the act was that it allowed widowed or unmarried women to file for property the same way men could. Freed slaves were also eligible after the passage of the 14th Amendment.

While there were ways to make farming work on the Great Plains with new technologies and techniques, most homestead farmers did not have the means to be able to take advantage of them. As a result, many of the homesteaders lost their farms due to a lack of production and unpaid debt.

The Dawes Act was an effort to assimilate Native Americans by dividing their reservation lands into privately owned parcels, with the hope of breaking up tribes and making households the primary social structure. It also opened up millions of acres of “excess” reservation land for purchase and settlement by white settlers.

While the idea of strength in numbers certainly had its merits, farmers were too divided on key organizational and economic issues to successfully mount a stand against the much stronger banks and railroads. Efforts like The Grange and the Farmers’ Alliances quickly crumbled, leaving thousands of farmers in the same dire straits as before.

Bryan, a Democrat, advocated for populist reforms like the direct election of senators, limits on the length of the work day, and a federal income tax. Despite losing to Republican William McKinley, these particular populist reforms would go on to become law largely due to Bryan’s ability to stir up public interest for them during his campaign.

The railroad barons successfully linked and standardized the American railways providing direct lines between most major destinations. Combined with other technological advancements like refrigeration, safety improvements, and simplified methods of linking train cars, railroad travel became highly efficient and reliable.

Rockefeller used a strategy known as horizontal integration to bring the majority of America’s oil industry under the control of Standard Oil. He then funneled profits into controlling the entire infrastructure necessary for extracting, containing, and distributing oil. These successful moves generated such high profits for Standard Oil that prices could be lowered to levels no other oil company could match.

Carnegie’s business savvy made it possible to revolutionize the American steel market while, at the same time, become one of the wealthiest and most powerful Americans of his day. Andrew Carnegie’s Carnegie Steel Company would be the first billion-dollar corporation in America.

Congress was concerned that monopolies — single corporate entities that controlled a particular industry or service — were becoming the new normal in American business. These monopolies, Congress felt, could potentially lead to unfair practices, like price gouging, that would harm the average American consumer.

At its height in the mid-1880s, the Knights of Labor had nearly three-quarters of a million members including women, minorities, and unskilled laborers. Ultimately, public opinion soured on the Knights of Labor after the group carried out a series of strikes in the 1890s.

In the late 1800s, the nation’s companies and corporations had more support from the federal government than the labor unions did. As a result, strikes against unfair pay cuts and unsafe working conditions seldom resulted in any impactful changes for workers.

Because new immigrants were arriving from locales in eastern and southern Europe that were unfamiliar to many Americans, new immigrants stood out in society more so than the immigrants arriving from Western Europe. These differences made it much harder for the new wave of American immigrants to assimilate into the American culture. Rising feelings of racism and nativism amongst American-born citizens made life difficult for immigrants in the late 1800s.

Laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Immigration Act of 1917 made it much more difficult for immigrants to enter the United States. By restricting immigrants based on their nationalities and abilities to perform tasks like reading and writing in English, the federal government was aiming to cultivate an immigrant population that was more palatable to the growing nativist population of voters.

The contrast between America’s highest and lowest economic classes was undeniable at the turn of the century. America was home to some of the wealthiest individuals in the nation’s history and, at the same time, some of the poorest and most economically marginalized citizens. This dichotomy was unsettling and would eventually pave the way for one of the most progressive eras in American history.

The progressive platform was focused on the notion that the income inequality between the wealthiest Americans and poorest Americans was not beneficial to the nation as a whole. Progressive politicians pushed for reforms to help vulnerable Americans, workers, women, and minorities gain access to rights and improved lives.

President Teddy Roosevelt was known a “trust-buster” for his efforts in breaking up major monopolies including the railroad, beef, tobacco, and oil industries. Ironically, Roosevelt did identify some trusts as “good trusts” if they benefitted issues of public well-being.

Roosevelt’s actions to bring the mine workers and mine owners to the negotiation table were unprecedented. No president had ever threatened the use of the military to try to promote an agreement in a labor dispute. In the end, the strike ended when an outside arbitrator ruled to give the mine workers shorter work day and higher pay.

The Panama Canal was an amazing engineering accomplishment. The canal made it easier for trade and military vessels to traverse the Western Hemisphere by eliminating nearly 7,000 miles of sea travel that had long been required without it. America would own and control the canal until the year 2000 when control was given to Panama.

Roosevelt is responsible for the first wildlife sanctuaries in the United States. He also created organizations like the U.S. Forest Service and the National Conservation Commission to survey and protect America’s wealth of natural resources.

Prior to the Sixteenth Amendment, tariffs were one of the main sources of revenue for the federal government. By adding another significant revenue stream, tariffs could be lowered which would, in turn, reduce the prices paid by consumers. Progressives were hopeful that this new federal tax system would help solve issues of income inequality.

Wilson would prove to be a very economically progressive president. He was able to put tools in place for the government to use moving forward to try and reign in big business. Besides the new regulations, Wilson was also able to push the progressive aim of tariff reform through Congress.