Economic depression (1873–1879)

First department store opens in Philadelphia (1874)

Great Railroad Strike (1877)

Deskilling of labor under mass production

Hostility toward Chinese immigrants grows

Successful containment of New York cholera outbreak spurs movement for public health (1866)

First national park established at Yellowstone (1872)

Appalachian Mountain Club founded (1876)

Democrats make sweeping congressional gains (1874)

Era of close party competition in national elections (1874–1894)

Reconstruction ends (1877)

Comstock Act bans circulation of most information about sex and birth control (1873)

National League launches professional baseball (1876)

Henry George, Progress and Poverty (1879)

First vertically integrated corporations

Rockefeller establishes Standard Oil Trust

Emergence of white-collar managerial work

Women enter paid labor as office workers

Knights of Labor grows rapidly (mid-1880s)

American Federation of Labor founded (1886)

Rapid industrialization draws immigrants from around the world; American cities grow rapidly

Chinese Exclusion Act (1882–1943)

Drought on the plains prompts calls for federal irrigation

Hatch Act (1887) provides federal support for agricultural research and experiment stations

Industrialization and urban growth cause rising pollution

Pendleton Civil Service Act (1883)

Peak influence of Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (1880s)

Interstate Commerce Act (1887)

Hull House settlement founded (1889)

Increasing numbers of students attend college

Booker T. Washington founds Tuskegee Institute (1881)

William Dean Howells calls for realism in literature (1881)

Birth of American football

Popularity of vaudeville (1880s–1890s)

Severe economic depression (1893–1897)

Accelerated corporate mergers in key industries

Birth of modern advertising

Gorras Blancas confront wealthy Anglo interests in New Mexico

Ellis Island opens (1892)

Supreme Court upholds segregation of schools and public facilities in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Unemployed whites attack and drive Chinese farmworkers out of California

Sierra Club founded (1892)

“Bicycle craze” and rise of hiking and camping get more Americans outdoors

Rise of People’s Party (1890–1896)

Sweeping Republican gains (1894)

“Solid South” emerges; African American disenfranchisement in South (1890–1905)

William McKinley defeats William Jennings Bryan (1896)

National Consumers’ League founded (1899)

Chicago World’s Fair (1893)

Literary realism and naturalism gain recognition

Popularity of ragtime music (1890s–1900s)

Armory Show introduces modern art (1913)

Rise of Social Gospel

Joseph Pulitzer pioneers “yellow journalism”

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

Women’s Trade Union League founded (1903)

International Workers of the World founded (1905)

Marianna mine disaster (1907)

Muller v. Oregon (1908) permits state regulation of women’s working hours

Triangle Shirtwaist fire (1911)

Rising immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe

Height of eugenics (1900s–1920s)

Increasing numbers of blacks move to cities; responses include “race riots” by whites

Japanese immigrants barred from becoming U.S. citizens (1906)

Lacey Act (1900)

Antiquities Act (1906) gives president authority to create and protect national monuments

National Audubon Society forms (1901)

Newlands Reclamation Act (1902)

First national wildlife refuge created (1903)

U.S. Forest Service created (1905)

National Park Service created (1916)

William McKinley assassinated; Theodore Roosevelt becomes president (1901)

Niagara Movement calls for full voting rights and equal opportunities for blacks

Women’s suffrage movement grows

Nickelodeons introduce commercial motion pictures

Custom of unchaperoned “dating” arises

Rise of the Negro Leagues

Peak in overseas missionary activity

Advent of literary and artistic modernism