Cambridge A Level World History (9489): The Gilded Age and the Progressive Era – Revision Notes

These notes condense Cambridge 9489 AS topic 5, The Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, 1870-1920, for fast recall. The topic has four key questions: why industrialisation was so rapid (5.1), what its consequences were (5.2), why Progressivism developed and what it aimed at (5.3), and how successful it was (5.4). For full explanations use the Gilded Age and Progressive Era study guide; for exam practice use the History of the USA practice questions.

Syllabus coverage

CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL AS & A LEVEL HISTORY (9489), 2027-2029 – TOPIC 5

• 5.1 Causes of rapid industrialisation after 1870
• 5.2 Consequences of rapid economic growth
• 5.3 Why the Progressive Movement developed; its aims and policies
• 5.4 How successful the Progressive Movement was, 1890-1920

Rotation reminder: Paper 1 (sources) in 2027; Paper 2 (essays) in 2028 and 2029.

Key terms

Term	Meaning
Gilded Age	Late nineteenth-century era of rapid growth whose glitter hid poverty and corruption
Trust	Combination of companies under one board of trustees to control an industry (Standard Oil, 1882)
Monopoly	Single firm controlling a market and so setting prices
Robber Barons	Critics’ name for magnates such as Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt and Morgan
Laissez-faire	Belief that government should not interfere in the economy
Social Darwinism	Applying “survival of the fittest” to society to justify inequality
Boss system	Urban political machines (e.g. Tammany Hall) trading favours for votes
Panic	Financial crisis with bank failures and unemployment (1873, 1893, 1907)
Muckrakers	Investigative journalists exposing abuses
Primary election	Voters, not party bosses, choose a party’s candidates

Timeline to learn

Year	Event
1869	Transcontinental railroad completed
1873	Panic of 1873
1876	Bell patents the telephone
1883	Pendleton Civil Service Act
1886	Haymarket bombing; American Federation of Labor founded
1887	Interstate Commerce Act
1890	Sherman Anti-Trust Act; Riis’s How the Other Half Lives
1892-94	Homestead strike (1892); Panic of 1893; Pullman strike (1894)
1901	US Steel formed; Theodore Roosevelt becomes President
1906	The Jungle; Pure Food and Drug Act; Meat Inspection Act; Hepburn Act
1911	Supreme Court orders the break-up of Standard Oil
1913	16th and 17th Amendments; Federal Reserve Act; Underwood Tariff
1914	Clayton Anti-Trust Act; Federal Trade Commission
1919-20	18th Amendment ratified (Prohibition); 19th Amendment (women’s suffrage)

5.1 Causes of rapid industrialisation – five headings

1. Civil War legacy: Homestead and Pacific Railway Acts (1862); railroads open the West and consume steel and coal.
2. Population: immigration (“new” immigrants from southern and eastern Europe) and internal migration, including freed African Americans moving north and west.
3. Resources and markets: coal, iron, oil, timber, food; growing exports.
4. Light-touch government: high tariffs, land grants, no central bank – private capital (Morgan) and foreign investment.
5. Technology and attitudes: telephone, typewriter, electricity, steel processes, patents; admiration of success (Carnegie’s “Gospel of Wealth”).

5.2 Consequences – who won and who lost?

• Winners: industrialists and financiers; consumers who gained from cheaper goods; the expanding middle class.
• Losers: tenement dwellers with poor housing and health; workers facing long hours and wage cuts after Panics; farmers squeezed by falling prices and freight rates.
• Politics: trusts influenced parties and state legislatures; urban Bosses ran cities.
• Responses: Knights of Labor (all workers, declined after 1886), AFL (skilled crafts, Gompers); Grangers (co-operatives, state railroad laws), Greenback Party (paper money), later Populists.

5.3 Why Progressivism? – remember “MTB-UW”

• Muckrakers (Tarbell, Steffens, Sinclair)
• Temperance (WCTU, Anti-Saloon League)
• Banking panics and concentrated wealth
• Urbanisation and corruption
• Women’s groups (settlement houses, suffrage)

Aims: democratise politics (secret ballot, primaries, direct election of Senators, civil service reform) and regulate the economy (unions, conditions, banks, insurance, trusts, stock market).

5.4 Success – the evidence in one place

Presidents. Roosevelt – Square Deal, Northern Securities, 1906 consumer laws, conservation. Taft – more antitrust cases, Standard Oil broken up, Mann-Elkins Act. Wilson – Underwood Tariff, Federal Reserve, Clayton Act, FTC.

Amendments. 16th income tax; 17th direct election of Senators; 18th Prohibition; 19th women’s vote.

Limits. Weak enforcement and court challenges; segregation tightened (including federal offices under Wilson); Native Americans and immigrants gained little; women still unequal at work; rural poverty persisted.

Worked example: Paper 1 part (b) structure

“How far do the sources support the view that the trusts benefited the American people?” [25]

1. Group sources: which support (for example, a business leader claiming lower prices), which challenge (for example, a muckraking article or a cartoon of a trust as an octopus).
2. Test each group with provenance: who wrote it, when, and why? A trust’s annual report has a reason to stress benefits.
3. Use your own knowledge to confirm or qualify each source (falling kerosene prices; the Sherman Act’s weak enforcement).
4. Reach a judgement on how far – not just “yes and no”.

Common mistakes and exam traps

• Dates: the Sherman Act is 1890, the Clayton Act 1914; do not swap them.
• Labels: “Populist” (1890s farmers’ party) is not the same as “Progressive” (middle-class reform, c.1900-20).
• Source answers: describing what each source says instead of comparing and explaining.
• Success questions: listing laws without criteria (scope, enforcement, who benefited).
• Minorities: forgetting that Progressivism coexisted with Jim Crow segregation.

Frequently asked questions

What is the single best piece of evidence that the presidency changed? Roosevelt’s intervention in the 1902 coal strike, when he pressed owners into arbitration rather than sending troops against strikers.

Which reforms were state rather than federal? Primaries, initiative, referendum, recall and many labour laws began in the states; Wisconsin under Robert La Follette is a standard example.

How much detail do I need on inventions? Enough to explain their economic effect: for example, the telephone and typewriter allowed large companies to be managed from a central office.

Self-test

1. Name two Acts of 1862 that encouraged western expansion. Homestead Act; Pacific Railway Act.
2. Which union admitted unskilled workers and women? The Knights of Labor.
3. What did the 17th Amendment do? Introduced direct election of Senators.
4. Which two 1906 laws followed The Jungle? The Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.
5. Name Wilson’s two 1914 anti-trust measures. The Clayton Act and the Federal Trade Commission.

Official syllabus

Cambridge International AS & A Level History (9489) syllabus for 2027, 2028 and 2029, Version 2 – cambridgeinternational.org (subject content, topic 5).