420 Study Guide

Two of the long essay questions will appear on the exam and you will be asked to write on ONE of them.  Below them are key terms.  You should be able to identify basic journalistic facts about each term (who, what, when, where) and explain their historical significance: how does this item help to explain a larger historical trend, idea, event? Or what part does it play in an important historical narrative? Most of the terms should also be useful in writing about the longer essay prompts. Here are some suggestions on how to approach the in-class history exam. 

Study questions for the longer essay

(Numbers correspond to the numbered units on the syllabus)

8-10: Rise of Industry

Press the arrow to see the key terms for these units. Starred items won't be on the exam. 

Taylorism

Efficiency

Productivity

Mechanization

Division of labor

Economies of scale

Mergers

*Trusts

Managers

Limited liability

Stock

Stock exchange

Dividends

Capital

Profits

Capitalists

Robber Barons

Tariff

Invention factories

Wage labor

Contract freedom

Eight-hour day

Strikes

Competition

Consolidation

Real wages

Permanent working class (proletariat)

11: Industrial "progress"

Financiers
Capital accumulation
Brokerage houses
Speculators
Money Supply
Capitalists
Limited liability
Corporations
Dividends
John Henry
Convict leasing
Silicosis
Tuberculosis
*Natick Shoemaker
*Death rates
*Antebellum puzzle

12: Industrial Labor

Great RR strike of 77

General Strike

8-hour day

Child labor

Mechanization

Knights of Labor

Industrial Unions

Pinkertons

Homestead

AF of L

Craft Union

Pullman strike

Eugene Debs

*Injunction

Meatpacking Industry

Immigration

Melting Pot

Lochner v. NY

Police powers

Due process

Liberty of Contract

Judicial Review

13: The West: 

*Gold and Silver rushes, 29

*Bison herds, 29

Homestead Act, 31

*Little Bighorn, 37

Transcontinental RR, 40

*Dawes General Allotment Act, 44

*Ghost Dance, 45

*Wounded Knee, 47

*Buffalo Bill, 49

Frontier thesis, 51

Frederick Jackson Turner, 51

100th Meridian

Rain Follows the plow

John Wesley Powell

Aquifers

14. Politics of the Gilded Age

Farmer's Alliance

Populist Party

*Subtreasury system

Monetary policy

Hard money

Free sliver

Bimetallism

Inflation

Deflation

Tom Watson

Colored Farmers’ Alliance

Fusion

William Jennings Bryan

Eugene V. Debs

Socialist Party

*Bourbons

Jim Crow

Lynching

Disfranchisement

Poll tax

Literacy tests

Ida B. Wells

Lost Cause

15. American in the World

"Splendid little war"
Yellow journalism
The Maine
Weyler
Teller Amendment
Platt Amendment
Roosevelt Corollary
Aguinaldo
Hawaii
Filipino Insurrection
Missionaries
Open Door policy

  16-20. The Progressive Era

Professionalism

Social Engineering

Muckrakers

City Manager

Robert La Follette

Referendum

Scientific Management

Frederick Winslow Taylor

Square Deal

Anthracite Coal Strike

Bull Moose Party

New Nationalism

New Freedom

Federal Reserve Act

*Gabriel Kolko

Hyphenated Americans

Espionage Act

Neutrality

Lusitania

U-Boats

Zimmerman telegram

CPI (Committee on Public Information)

Liberty Loan

Armistice

14 Points

Peace Without Victory

League of Nations

*Article 10