Immigration, Urbanization, and Westward Expansion

Mechanized Farming

use of powered machinery and equipment (like tractors, combine harvesters, and mechanical planters) to perform agricultural tasks, replacing manual labor and animal power. This dramatically increased farm productivity and led to a sharp decrease in the number of people needed to work the land.

Urban

• Many middle-class residents who could afford to move to the suburbs, did so.

• They left behind empty buildings and owners converted the buildings into multi-family units for workers and their families.

• Speculators also built tenements.

Rural

refers to the countryside—areas characterized by low population density, smaller settlements, and economies traditionally centered on agriculture or natural resource extraction.

Pull Factors 

• Reasons to enter a country/what attracts you to the country

• Religious freedom, jobs, land, democracy

Push factors

• Reasons to leave a country

• Political persecution, religious persecution, war, famine, no job

Bessemer Process

first inexpensive and fast industrial process for the mass production of steel from molten pig iron, developed in the mid-19th century. It involved blowing air through the molten iron to burn out impurities (like carbon). This innovation made steel widely available and affordable, driving the growth of railroads, skyscrapers, and modern industry.

Factors of Production

Land: All natural resources used in production (e.g., actual land, oil, water, forests).

Labor: The physical and mental effort people contribute to production.

Capital: Human-made resources used to produce other goods (e.g., machinery, tools, buildings).

Entrepreneurship: The innovative idea and risk-taking required to combine the other three factors and start a business.

Corporations

Type of business organization that is recognized by law as a separate legal entity from its owners (shareholders).

Robber Barons

• men who became rich through ruthless and unscrupulous methods

Captains of Industry

-Term used to describe wealthy businessmen who made a positive impact on society through contributions and philanthropy

• Cornelius Vanderbilt (railroad)

• John D. Rockefeller (oil)

• Andrew Carnegie (steel)

• JP Morgan (banking)

Monopoly

• Total control of an industry by one person/one company

  • Illegal due to elimination of COMPETITION

  • How do companies compete? How does competition help the economy?

    • Competition benefits both the consumers and businesses. It lowers costs and spurs the invention of new or better products and more efficient processes.

• Creation of Trusts = competitors merge into one company with the trust running the companies

Transcontinental Railroad

-Connected east and west, 6 month journey cut to 6 days

Populist Party (their platform)

• Angry farmers

  • Prices for crops fell which left farmers in debt

  • Railroad owners increased railroad rates

• Populist Party (People’s Party)

  • Platform

    • Government ownership of railroads to control shipping rates

    • Graduated income tax

    • Labor issues (8 hour work day)

  • Impactful in local elections, party dissolves but leaves a legacy (amendments later passed that were part of the populist platform)

Angel Island

• West coast

• (off the coast of San Francisco) opened in 1910

• Originally designed to handle a flood of European Immigrants after the Panama Canal opened (World War I prevented this)

• Much harsher experience for Asian immigrants compared to Ellis Island

Ellis Island

Prior to 1890, states were responsible for immigration

• (off the coast of NYC) opened on January 1, 1892

• Original building destroyed by fire (1900); original records lost

• First and second class passengers not required to undergo the same inspection as steerage passengers

Old Immigration

-Came mostly from Northern and Western Europe (Great Britain, Germany, Ireland)

• Many spoke English

• Mostly Protestants

• Skilled workers or farmers

New Immigration

-Came from Southern and Eastern Europe (Czechoslovakia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Russia)

• Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics, and Jews

• Unskilled workers

Nativism

• Overt favoritism toward native-born Americans

• Suspicion and fear grew (Protestants feared Catholics)

• Believed immigrants took jobs

• Ethnocentrism- Anglo-Saxons were superior to others.

• Hated immigrants

Immigration Act of 1924

Fueled by post-World War I recession and the First Red Scare 

• Limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota. 

• The quota provided immigration visas to two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census. 

• It completely excluded Arab and Asian immigrants.

Social Darwinism

-theory of natural selection, survival of the fittest (in society)

• Used to justify the superiority of the wealthy and the gap between rich and poor

• Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth = give back to society! (Philanthropy)

Laissez-Faire

•  government does not interfere in the economy (hands off)

  • No rules, no regulations, no laws!

-Led to creation of LABOR UNIONS

-Organization of workers who fight for rights and better conditions (wages, hours, safety)

-Strikes - led to violence and government intervention (i.e. Homestead, Haymarket)

Collective bargaining

-Negotiations between workers and management on labor contracts (hours, salary, working conditions)

Trail of Tears

the forced and deadly removal of about 100,000 Native Americans, including the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations, from their ancestral homelands in the southeastern United States to designated "Indian Territory" (present-day Oklahoma) in the 1830s. Thousands died from hunger, disease, and exhaustion during the devastating journey.

Assimilation

the U.S. government's policy of forcing Native Americans to abandon their traditional cultures, languages, and lifestyles and adopt the customs, values, and practices of white American society. The goal was to "absorb" them into mainstream culture.

Osage Nation

Native American tribe, originally from the Ohio River Valley who later controlled a large territory in the Great Plains (parts of present-day Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma). They were later forced to move to a reservation in Oklahoma. In the early 20th century, the discovery of oil on their Oklahoma land made them, for a time, among the wealthiest people in the U.S., which tragically led to the infamous Osage Indian murders as people sought to steal their wealth.

Reservation System

A policy by which the U.S. government designated specific tracts of land, often undesirable, for Native American tribes to live on after forcing them off their original homelands. The system was designed to confine, control, and eventually "civilize" Indigenous populations, severely disrupting their traditional way of life.

Dawes Act

a U.S. law that allowed the government to break up tribally-owned Native American lands (reservations) into small, individual plots (allotments) for family heads. Its purpose was to encourage Native Americans to become individual farmers and adopt private property ownership, furthering assimilation. Any land left over ("surplus") was then sold to white settlers, resulting in the massive loss of over 90 million acres of tribal land.

Ghost Dance 

Resistance of native americans

a spiritual and religious movement that emerged among Native American nations in the Western United States in the late 1800s.

• Belief: Participants believed that performing the communal dance and following a moral life would cause the white settlers to peacefully leave, the deceased Native American ancestors and the buffalo to return, and the traditional way of life to be restored.

• Significance: It was a peaceful, desperate response to the destruction of their culture, land, and resources by the U.S. government and settlers.

Manifest Destiny

The belief that it was the United States’ right and duty to spread across the North American continent.

Tenement

• low-cost apartment buildings designed to house as many families as the owner could pack in.

• No private toilet/shower/bath

• Fireplace in kitchen

• Often no running water or electricity

• A group of dirty, run-down tenements could transform an area into a slum.

• Because of poverty, overcrowding, and neglect, the old residential neighborhoods of cities gradually declined.

Where did the majority of immigrants come from

1890-1914----15 million immigrants journeyed to the United States, many of whom were Austro-Hungarian, Turkish, Lithuanian, Russian, Jewish, Greek, Italian, Romanian