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A growing gap between rich and poor began to form and a new Middle Class began to emerge. Standards of living greatly improved during this period. As production reached an all time high and the price of goods fell as a result. Consumerism became the new status quo for many Americans. The growth of corporations created a need for new jobs typically associated with the middle class, such as clerical workers. Both male and females experienced greater access to employment and opportunities for education. For most Americans, standards of living actually rose and many enjoyed more leisure time than ever before. Americans filled this leisure time in a variety of ways. Many middle class Americans would travel into cities to enjoy shopping in department stores. Another type of leisure activity that was introduced was bicycling.

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Native reservations were allotted land with designated boundaries to Native American tribes in the west, beginning in the 1850s and ending with the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887. Within these reservations, most land was used communally, rather than owned individually. The U.S. government encouraged and sometimes violently coerced Native Americans to stay on the reservations at all times.

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Social Structures- National American Woman Suffrage Association

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Social Structures- National American Woman Suffrage Association

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The NAWSA was the largest and most important suffrage organization in the United States, and was the primary promoter of women's right to vote. Like AWSA and NWSA before it, the NAWSA pushed for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women's voting rights, and was instrumental in winning the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920.

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This act was passed by Congress in May of 1882 and signed into law by President Chester A. Arthur. The Chinese Exclusion Act banned Chinese immigration into the United States for 10 years and barred Chinese that were already in the country from becoming citizens. It was created to curb the influx of Chinese immigrants to the United States, particularly California.

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The YMCA, which stands for Young Men's Christian Association, was founded in Boston in 1851 and started as an effort to give physical fitness to evangelical men, and eventually women as well. Soon, the idea of "Muscular Christianity" developed from the YMCA. The YMCA was important for business and corporations, as it helped relieve some tensions from labor unrest, and allowed workers to learn the physical discipline required by corporate managers.

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Monopolies are when a business owns all of their competition and their business because they (big business owners) were able to buy out the competitors. This was used by Rockefeller to control the oil business. Companies are allowed to set prices at whatever they want and the consumer would only have that one option for that item.

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Work, Exchange, and Tech- Vertical Integration 

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Work, Exchange, and Tech- Vertical Integration 

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Vertical integration is when you combine into one organization all phases of manufacturing from mining to marketing. This system was used by Andrew Carnegie and provided a reliable efficient way of business.

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Work, Exchange, and Tech- Bessemer Process 

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Work, Exchange, and Tech- Bessemer Process 

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In the 1850s, Henry Bessemer invented the Bessemer process, a way to manufacture steel quickly and cheaply by blasting hot air through melted iron to quickly remove impurities. The Bessemer process revolutionized steel manufacture by decreasing its cost by about 80%. It also helped by greatly increasing the quality, scale, and speed of production of this vital raw material. It allowed the production of railroads, skyscrapers, and etc.

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Railroads continued to rise in popularity as the government subsidized a large portion of the tracks. Inventions such as the Pullman car made railroad travel more popular, and therefore westward travel more common. As railroads pushed west, towns sprang up along these tracks, adding to westward settlement.

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The telegraph was invented in 1823, by Samuel Morse that used a system of dots and dashes to send messages across long distances electronically through a wire. It connected the different hemispheres of the world, allowing for more communication between people. The telegraph allowed railroad operators to communicate with stations about schedule changes, delays, and weather. It also helped journalists since it allowed for quick communication of news around the country and eventually the globe.

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The Gospel of Wealth was an essay written by Andrew Carnegie that promoted Social Darwinism and its benefits. The main ideas in this essay was that the wealth among the few was the natural and most efficient result of capitalism and great wealth brought responsibility and power.

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The Homestead Act of 1862 promised Americans 160 acres of land to families who could settle and cultivate this land for 5 years. The government wanted to move America westward and develop the rural west.

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Laissez-Faire was the idea of "hands-off" government policy on business. Large businessmen such as Andrew Carnegie and Rockefeller were proponents of this ideology as they believed that society was best benefitted by unrestricted business, and the government followed Laissez-Faire policy for most of the 1800s.

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Immigrants formed ethnic neighborhoods within their crowded tenement homes/the areas surrounding it. Through living in close quarters with those who migrated from the same region, they could preserve their culture, language, religion, and customs.

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The ICA (passed in 1887) granted Congress the power to regulate commerce in the US. It prohibited pools and compelled railroads to establish standard rates to regulate big business. Many workers at the time were calling for the regulation of monopolies, and this act demonstrated the government's first steps towards the restriction of big business. The ICA restricted large businesses from monopolizing and growing too powerful

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The populist party was made up of mainly farmers and factory workers. They strove for bimetallism (they wanted more money printed so that they could pay off their debts more easily). They rejected Laissez-Faire ideology and wanted stronger government regulation of big businesses. In general, they wanted more rights for workers and restricted business.

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As many new ethnic groups arrived in America, nativist sentiments dramatically increased. This nativism came from all directions; it came from Americans shunning any non-Anglo race out of society. Americans, for example, did not think highly of the Irish (who were Catholic). They did not really like the Jews, and they despised the Chinese. Many Southern and Eastern European immigrants also disliked the Chinese because they were competition for jobs. The factory-workers saw immigrants as job competition and believed that they were taking their jobs, and it was annoying to them when their strikes would fail as businesses would just choose cheap immigrant labor.

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With industrialization and the rise of big business came the mass production of what were previously deemed "luxury items". Citizens as a whole became more prosperous and goods became more accessible, meaning that standards of living increased. More comfortable lives were lived. As more and more Americans were able to afford more goods, materialism, prosperity, and the middle class rose. There was lots of buying of goods in the capitalist economy.

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The New South was an industrialized vision of the south that emerged after Reconstruction. The goal was to create a self-sufficient economy for the south through industrial growth and internal improvements, with a less agrarian-focused economy (moving towards an industrial economy).

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The Farmers' Alliance was an agrarian movement formed during the 1870s that aimed to help out farmers economically during industrialization. They did this by forming cooperatives and by becoming politically active. Though the Farmers’ Alliance eventually faded, the leaders of the alliance went on to form the influential Populist party to strive for their goals of bimetallism, stronger government regulation of business, and a graduated income tax on a national scale