• Describe the reasons for the rapid industrialization that followed the Civil War.

• Account for the rise of "big business" in the late nineteenth century, and describe the new managerial techniques and business practices it ushered in.

• Discuss the South and the West as "peripheries," comparing and contrasting their regional cultures.

• Describe the factors fueling immigration after the Civil War, and outline the similarities and differences between the "new" and "old" immigrants.

1862 Homestead Act makes free land available.

Morrill Act authorizes "land-grant" colleges.

1866 Texas cattle drives begin.

1868–74 Midwestern states pass "Granger" laws to regulate railroads.

1869 Transcontinental railroad completed.

1870 John D. Rockefeller incorporates Standard Oil Company of Ohio.

1872 Thomas Edison invents the stock ticker.

1873 Panic of 1873 ushers in five-year depression.

Supreme Court decides Slaughterhouse Cases.

1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.

Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone.

1877 Supreme Court decides Munn v. Illinois.

1879 Edison invents the incandescent lightbulb.

1882 Economic downturn begins and lasts three years.

Edison’s electric company lights Wall Street.

Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company becomes the nation’s first trust.

Nineteenth-century immigration to the United States peaks..14 | Chapter 18

1883 Railroads divide the United States into standard time zones.

1885 Supreme Court decides Wabash v. Illinois.

1886–87 Severe winter and drought cycle in the West cause collapse of cattle boom.

1887 Passage of the Interstate Commerce Act.

Hatch Act establishes agricultural experiment stations.

1889 New Jersey passes law legalizing holding companies.

1890 Congress passes the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

Superintendent of the census announces the closing of the frontier.

1893 Stock market panic precipitates severe depression, lasting until 1897.

1900 General Electric founds the first formal research lab in American industry.

1901 U.S. Steel becomes the nation’s first billion-dollar corporation.

1903 Orville and Wilbur Wright fly the first airplane.