APUSH Period 6

transcontinental railroad

connects east to west coast

Pacific Railway Acts (1862 + 1864)

government subsidized telegraph lines and railway system connecting east and west coasts

Central Pacific Railroad

West to East (CA → UT)

Asian immigrants (Chinese)

much more difficult/dangerous for work

Union Pacific Railraod

East to West

European Immigrants (Irish and German)

Impact: America’s first big business

Built a nationwide market for goods (mass production and consumption

growth of related industries (iron, coal, lumber, steel)

new towns + communities grew along rail lines → increased settlement on Great Plains

creation of time zones

Closed frontier

by 1890, US census officially determined it had been settled

Frontier Thesis

The frontier was symbolic of independence, rugged individualism, economic opportunity, and equality.

it defined American character and was a safeguard for democracy

Economic impact of the Civil War

victory of industrial capitalism over the plantation system

• paved way for a second industrial revolution

importance of the buffalo

• Crucial to Native Americans because they provided food, shelter, and materials for various needs

• Declined in 1880 due to overhunting and westward expansion

California Gold Rush

• Discovery of gold in 1848

• Flood of newcomers to the territory

• Method: paper lacing and deep-shaft mining

Pikes Peak

• Discovery of gold in Colorado, 1859

• Brought 100,000 miners to the area

Comstock Lode

1859

• Produced more than $340 million in gold and silver by 1890

• Responsible for Nevada entering the Union in 1864

• Caused Nevada’s Virginia City to grow - added theaters, churches, newspapers, schools, libraries, railroads, police

Impact of mining boom

independent gold washing miners became day laborers for corporations working under extreme and dangerous conditions

Boomtowns/Ghost Towns

• Towns infamous for saloons, dance-hall girls, vigilante justice

• Eventually became lonely ghost towns after gold/silver ran out

The Long Drive (1866-88)

• over 6 mil cattle driven North from TX

• ??

Chinese Exclusion Act

• ⅓ of western miners in 1860s were Chinese immigrants

• Act prohibited further immigration to the US by Chinese laborers

• Restricted Chinese immigration severely until 1965

Homestead Act 1862

• Offered 160 acres public land free to any family that settled on it for 5 years

  • Encouraged farming on the Great Plains, about 500,000 families took advantage of it

• houses built of sod → “sodbusters”

Problems

dry land with few rivers and trees made building and farming difficult

farms were too small to be profitable

some developed dry farming techniques

Reservation Policy (Fort Laramie & Fort Atkinson) 

• Federal government assigned the Plains tribes large areas of land (reservations) with definite boundaries

  • Most tribes refused to restrict their movements

Sioux War (1866)

• Before, there was lots of fighting between US troops and Plains Indians, where the US army was the one responsible for many massacres

• Then, an army under Captain William Fetterman was wiped out by Sioux warriors

Indian Appropriation Act of 1871

• Ended recognition of tribes as independent nations by the federal government

• Nullified previous treaties made with the tribes

Battle of Little Big Horn

• Before Sioux was defeated they ambushed Colonel George Custer’s army at Little Big Horn in 1876

Chief Joseph

• Led the Sioux army, attempted to lead a band of Nez Perce into Canada, but ended with defeat and surrender

Ghost Dance

• Religious movement for Indians to resist US government controls

• Leaders believed it could return prosperity to Native Americans

• Government suppressed the movement by killing many, which ended Indian Wars on the land.

Helen Hunt Jackson

• Wrote a book in 1881 called A Century of Dishonor which highlighted the injustices done to American Indians (similar to Uncle Tom’s Cabin)

• Created sympathy for them

• Also generated support for ending Indian culture through assimilation

  • Formal education, job training, conversion to Christianity

Carlisle Industrial School

Set up by reformers to segregate American Indian children from their people and teach them white culture and farming and industrial skills

• Dawes Severalty Act (1887)

• Designed to break up tribal organizations

• Divided tribal lands into plots of 160 acres

  • Government distributed 47 million acres of land

• US citizenship granted to those who stayed on the land for 25 years and lived a “civilized” life

• 90 million acres of former reservation land was sold to white settlers

• New policy proved a failure

Gilded Age

unprecedented prosperity and economic growth on the surface and deep rooted problems beneath the surface

• plutocracy: government of the wealthy

• increased standard of living (not accessible)

• heavy industry

• Cornelius Vanderbilt 

• Used money earned from steamboat business to merge local railroads into the New York Central Railroad in 1867

  • Ran from NYC to Chicago and was more than 4,500 miles of track

Jay Gould

• Entered the railroad business for quick profits and made millions by selling off assets and watering stock.

  • Inflating value of corporation assets before selling its stock to the public 

JP Morgan

• Banker who during the financial panic of 1893 moved in to take control of bankrupt railroads and consolidate them.

  • Competition was eliminated so rates would be stabilized and debts would decrease.

• One of the few powerful men who controlled the railroad system

• Andrew Carnegie

• Leader of the fast growing steel industry

• Manufactured steel in Pittsburgh and exceeded his competitors through being a good salesman and using new technology

• Employed vertical integration

Vertical Integration

• Business strategy where a company would control every stage of the industrial process

  • From mining raw materials to exporting final products

U.S. Steel

• Carnegie sold his steel company to Morgan for over $400 million, becoming US steel

• First billion dollar company and largest enterprise in the world

  • Employed 168,000 people and controlled more than 3/5s of the country’s steel business

• John D. Rockefeller

• company in 1863 that controlled most of the country’s oil refineries

• Extorted rebates from railroad companies and cut prices for oil, forcing other companies to sell out

• Standard Oil Trust, controlled 90% of the oil refinery business

• Horizontal integration

• Caused dominant companies in other industries to organize trusts

Horizontal Integration

• Former competitors bought under a single corporation

“Rags to Riches”

ideology that if you’re suffering you’re not working hard enough

Social Darwinism

the idea that certain people become powerful in society because they are innately better

Laissez-Faire Capitalism

free-market capitalism that opposes government intervention

Gospel of Wealth

Laissez-Faire, wealthy are better and more fit to distribute their wealth than the government

• wealthy had a responsibility to spend their money to “benefit the greater good”

• engage in philanthropy and charity

monopoly

a business that dominates and controls all aspects of the market for a specific good (vertical integration)

trust

a group of businesses who work together to achieve the same level of control as a monopoly (horizontal)

• Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)

• prohibited any “contract, combination, in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce.”

  • Still was too vaguely worded to stop the development of trusts, wasn’t enforced

• United States v. E.C. Knight Co. (1895)

• Ruled that the Sherman Antitrust Act could be applied only to commerce, not manufacturing. 

• declared any attempt to monopolize trade or commerce to be illegal

National Grange Movement

• by Oliver Kelly as a social and educational organization for farmers and their families

• Established cooperatives: businesses owned and run by farmers to save costs

• Lobbied state legislatures in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, to pass laws regulating rates charged by railroads and elevators

• Interstate Commerce Act (1886)

• State laws regulating railroad rates were problems with railroads that crossed state lines

• Required rates to be “reasonable and just”

• prohibited fare discrimination

• Set up first federal regulatory agency, Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)

  **lost most of its cases in the 1890s, was prone to corruption, railroad buses infiltrated it, helped crush competition and stabilize rates

Wabash v. Illinois

• Supreme Court ruled that individual states could not regulate interstate commerce

• Effect: nullified many of the state regulations achieved by the Grangers

• Outcry of farmers and shippers

Farmers’ Alliances

• State and regional groups formed to express discontent

• Taught scientific farming methods

• Goal of economic and political action

• 1 million members by 1890

Ocala Platform

• The National Alliance met in Ocala, FL, to address problems of rural America

• platform that:

  • Supported direct election of US senators

  • Lower tariff rates

  • A graduated income tax (higher income = higher tax)

  • New banking system

  • Demanded that treasury notes and silver were used to increase the amount of money in circulation

  • Federal storage for crops and federal loans

The Lockout

• closing the factory to break a labor movement before it could get organized

Blacklists

names of pro-union workers circulated among employers

Yellow-dog contracts

• workers being told, as a condition for employment, that they must sign an agreement not to join a union

Other strikebreaking tactics

• Calling in private guards and state militia to put down strikes

• Obtaining court injunctions against strikes

• Fostering of public fear against unions

• replacing workers with desperate unemployed people (scabs)

• Great Railroad Strike of 1877

• Cause: railroad companies cut wages to reduce costs

• Shut down ⅔ of the US railroad

• Railroad workers and 500,000 workers from other industries

• President Hayes used federal troops to end labor violence

• 100 people killed

• Impact: some employers improved wages and working conditions. Others busted worker’s organizations.

• National Labor Union

• First attempt to organize workers in all states (skilled and unskilled, agricultural and industrial)

• Goals: higher wages, 8 hour day

  • Equal rights for women and blacks, monetary reform, worker cooperatives

• Victory in 8 hour days but lost support after depression began in 1873

Knights of Labor

• Secret society that began in 1869 to avoid detection

• Advocated:

  • Worker cooperatives “to make each man his own employer”

  • Abolition of child labor

  • Abolition of trusts and monopolies

• Favored settling labor disputes by arbitration rather than strikes

• Haymarket Bombing

• May Day Labor Movement: called for general strike to achieve 8-hour day

  • Labor violence broke out in Chicago

• Workers had a meeting in Haymarket Square and police attempted to break up the meeting 

  • Someone threw a bomb, killing 7 police officers

• Americans were horrified by the bomb and concluded that the union movement was radical and violent

  • Knights of Labor lost popularity and membership

American Federation of Labor

• attaining narrower economic goals 

• higher wages and improved working conditions

• Workers walked out until the employer agreed to negotiate a new contract through collective bargaining.

• founded by Samuel Gompers in 1886

• Homestead Strike & Henry Clay Frick

• Frick: manager of Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead Steel Plant

• Strike in 1892 by cutting wages nearly 20%

• Used weapons of the lockout, private guards, and strikebreakers to defeat the steelworkers’ walkouts

• Failure: set back the union movement in the steel industry

• Pullman Strike

• Strike of workers living in George Pullman’s company town near Chicago

  • Pullman: manufactured railroad sleeping cars known as Pullman cars

  • Announced a general cut in wages in 1894

• Pullman workers connected with American Railroad Union who directed railroad workers to not handle any trains with Pullman cars

• Federal court issued an injunction forbidding interference with the operation of the mail and ordered railroad workers to abandon the boycott and strike

• Eugene V. Debs 

• American Railroad Union leader who didn’t follow the federal court injunction so he was arrested and jailed

  • jailing ended the strike

• After being in jail for 6 months, he concluded that radical solutions were needed to cure labor’s problems so he turned to Socialism and the American Socialist party which he helped to found in 1900.

Urbanization

industrial jobs bring people to cities (international and internal migrations)

Political Machines

a party organization, headed by a single boss or small autocratic group, that commands enough votes to maintain political and administrative control of a city, county, or state

Boss Tweed

Political machine in NYC who manipulated elections and had fraudulent public contracts

known for his corruption and influence in city politics

What helped immigrants

Settlement Houses (Hull House, Jane Addams)

Urban churches (Social Gospel)

Political Machines (Boss Tweed)

• gave them access to government resources

What hindered immigrants

urban slums (tenement housing)

nativism (discrimination)

government legislation (ex. Chinese Exclusion Act)

“robber baron”

described feudal lords in medieval Europe who robbed travelers, often merchant ships along with the Rhine River as they passed nearby

Republicans in the Gilded Age

• pro business but some regulation in social issues

• strength came from men in business and middle class

• gold standard- increase value of dollar if backed by precious metals like gold

Democrats

Won every election in the South following 1877 until mid 20th century

silver standard- less valuable than gold- back it with silver it would decrease the value of the dollar

• makes it easier for people to pay off debts

Party Patronage

loyal party members gifted with jobs and favors

mugwumps

Republicans who didn’t participate in patronage

Industrial Rev: Positive Impacts on Farmers

• new tech—> farming faster and more efficient

• machinery increases production

• railroads → fast transportation of crops to markets

Negative Impacts

• expensive machinery necessary to compete

  • forced farmers into debt

• enormous harvests drove down price of food

• high shipping rates on railroads

Election of 1880

Republicans compromised the election of Garfield as president and Arthur as VP

James Garfield

besieged white house for 100,000 federal jobs

chose half-breeds (Repub faction) for most positions, caused controversy

shot and killed in 1881

Chester A. Arthur

president after Arthur’s Death

supported a bill reforming civil service

• Expanded the number of government employees hired based on their qualifications rather than political connections

• Improved the development of modern American navy

• Questioned the high protective tariff

Grover Cleveland

President from 1885-1889 and 1893-1897

Democrat -> limited government, opposition to political corruption

Focused on civil service reform, tariff policy, and monetary reform

Pendleton Act of 1881

• Set up the Civil Service Commission

• Established a merit based system for federal employment

• Turning point away from the Spoils system

Greenback Party

• To expand the supply of US currency, they campaigned for more paper money and unlimited minting of silver coins

• Northern farmers 

• 14 members elected into congress in 1878

• Died out at the end of the 1870s

Panic of 1873

governments de-pegged currencies to save money

led to Crime of 73 and Specie Resumption Act

Specie Resumption Act 1875

withdrew all greenbacks from circulation

Crime of 1873

Congress stopped the coining of Silver

Bland-Allison Act

• A compromise law that was passed over Haye’s veto in 1878

• Allowed only a limited coinage between 2 and 4 million dollars a month

• Election of 1888

• Democrats campaigned for Cleveland and a lower tariff

• Republicans campaigned for Benjamin Harrison and a high tariff

  • Argued a low tariff would wreck business prosperity

• Extremely close -> Cleveland won popular vote, Harrison won electoral

• Billion Dollar Congress 

• Republicans controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress

• First billion dollar budget in US history

• Increases in monthly pensions to Civil War veterans, widows, and children

• McKinley Tariff of 1890

• raised tax on foreign products by more than 48%

The Populist Party

emerged from frustrated farmers determined to do something about the concentration of wealth

• rejection of Laissez-Faire capitalism

• Thomas Watson runs for president (loses)

Omaha Platform Political Goals

Foundation for the Populist Party:

• direct popular election of senators

• more referendums and initiatives

Economic Goals

unlimited coinage of silver

graduated income tax

8 hour work day

public ownership of railroads, telegraphs, and telephone systems by US gov’t

Election of 1892

• James Weaver of Iowa, Populist candidate, won many votes as a third party candidate but didn’t win

• Was really between Cleveland and Harrison -> Cleveland won

• Panic of 1893

• Stock market crashed due to overspeculation

• Dozens of railroads went into bankruptcy due to overbuilding

• Lasted almost 4 years

• High farm foreclosures

• Unemployment rate reached 20%

Election of 1896

William McKinley (R) vs. William Jennings Bryan (D)

• democrats were divided and absorbed the Populist platform

• Bryan → Silver candidate, gave the “Cross of Gold” speech

• Bryan’s manager got him elected

1896- Turning Point

silver as an issue is dead (gold found in Alaska)

end of Populists → birth of Progressive movement

triumph of modern over traditional values

• industry/urban vs. agriculture/ rural

Klondike gold rush in 1896

Mark Hanna

owner of Cleveland Coal and iron enterprise

raised millions for Republican ticket

front porch campaign

Wizard of Oz Significance

represents America in this time period

Henry Grady and the New South

• Editor of Atlanta Constitution

• New vision for self-sufficient economy built on modern capitalist values, industrial growth, and improved transportation

• Spread idea of New South through editorials arguing for economic diversity and Laissez-Faire Capitalism

• Tenant Farming (sharecropping)

• System of agricultural production where a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in exchange for a share of the crops grown on the land

  • black people tied to the land by debt

• Colored Farmers National Alliance

• Organization for African Americans 

• 250,000 members

• Rallied behind political reforms to solve farmers’ economic problems

• Struggled because power gaps between white people

George Washington Carver

• African American scientist at a college in Alabama

• Promoted growing of peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans

• Made southern agriculture more diverse

Ida B. Wells

crafted positive narratives about African Americans

fought against Jim Crow Laws and lynching

Memphis Free Speech

“Black people more sinned against than they have sinned”