Term | Definition |
Laissez fair | a policy or attitude of letting things take their own course, without interfering |
Entrepreneur | a person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so |
Protective Tariff | duty imposed on imports to raise their price, making them less attractive to consumers and thus protecting domestic industries from foreign competition |
Patent | a government authority or license conferring a right or title for a set period, especially the sole right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention |
Bessemer Process | a steel-making process, now largely superseded, in which carbon, silicon, and other impurities are removed from molten pig iron by oxidation in a blast of air in a special tilting retort |
Suspension Bridge | a bridge in which the weight of the deck is supported by vertical cables suspended from larger cables that run between towers and are anchored in abutments at each end. |
Time Zone | an area or stretch of land having a particular characteristic, purpose, or use, or subject to particular restrictions |
Mass Production | The manufacture of goods in large quantities by machinery and by use of techniques such as the assembly line and division of labor |
Corporation | a company or group of people authorized to act as a single entity (legally a person) and recognized as such in law |
Monopoly | the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service |
Cartel | an association of manufacturers or suppliers with the purpose of maintaining prices at a high level and restricting competition |
Horizontal Integration | process of a company increasing production of goods or services at the same part of the supply chain |
Trust | confidence placed in a person by making that person the nominal owner of property to be held or used for the benefit of one or more others |
Vertical Integration | the combination in one company of two or more stages of production normally operated by separate companies |
Social Darwinism | the theory that individuals, groups are subject to the same Darwinian laws of natural selection as plants and animals. |
Sweatshop | a factory or workshop, especially in the clothing industry, where manual workers are employed at very low wages for long hours and under poor conditions |
Company town | place where practically all stores and housing are owned by the one company that is also the main employer |
Collective bargaining | negotiation of wages and other conditions of employment by an organized body of employees |
Socialism | a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole |