Homestead Act

Homestead Act

- Land for nearly free

- Huge draw for people from East and Europe to settle in the West

- File for a homestead (up to 160 acres of land)

- Develop the land over a 5-year period

- File for and recieve the deed for the land

Dawes Act

- Sought to Americanize Indian

- Reservations divided among families in 160 acre segments

- Tribal loyalties had to be renounced to gain American citizenship

- Between 1887 and 1934, Indians lost over half of their reservation lands to white

- Boarding schools: "Kill the Indian, save the man"

Transcontinental Railroad(s)

- Long held dream to connect the country by rail

- Fed government subsidizes Central and Union Pacific for the first trans-railroad

- Companies also receive land grants around their tracks. Highly valuable property for the railroad

- Leads to a "railroad economy', and Populist movement wanting more regulation of the railroads

Laissez-Faire

- A hands-off economy government approach

- Few or no regulations

- Few or no taxes

- The invisible hand of the market will determine winners and losers. Profits and bankruptcies

- Popular belief in the late 1800s

Industrial Capitalism

- Late 1800s see the growth of giant industries utilizing heavy machines

- Individual large companies employ a lot of workers

- All sorts of effects including growth of a management class, growth of unions that fight for better wages and working conditions, decrease in the cost of certain goods due to mass production, wealthy industrialists have incredible influence over government policy

Vertical Integration

- companies expanded by controlling several stages of production that might normally be done by separate companies

- Gave a competitive advantage to companies who could achieve it

- Lowered costs below competitors, drove competitors out

Horizontal Integration

- Some companies brought up competitors to increase their market share

- Decrease competition

- Led to monopolies in certain industries (ex. standard oil)

Trusts and Monopolies

- Trust is a conglomeration of companies with the same owners (major stock holders) working together (and not competing)

- Monopolies are businesses that have total or near total control over entire sectors of an economy (steel, oil)

- Many trusts would also be considered monopolies

Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)

- The public wanted the govt to take action against monopolies

- passed to prohibit monopolies

- was first used in the 1890s against Unions against corporations, showing the corruption of the gilded age

- stregthened by the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914

Gold Standard

- State/local paper money phased out during the civil war

- Greenbacks; paper money was printed out and backed by gold

- value of greenbacks fluctuated by the supply of both fold and the gold-backed paper money in circulation

- wealthy industrialists favored the gold standard

- greenback party and farmers preferred bimetallism

Tenant Farming

- Many plantations were broken up into smaller segments

- A tenant farmer worked a small segment

- A tenant farmer brought food and supplies on credit

- After the wealthy landowner sold the crops part of the profit was used to pay off the tenant farmer debt for the food and supplies

- similar to sharecropping, many poor farmers (mostly black) were held in a system similar to serfdom

New South

- idea that the South can modernize and industrialize like the North after the Civil War

- Capitalism and industry can replace the agricultural dependent economy of the south

- Booker T. Washington advocated for freedmen to be free labor of an industrialized South

Populist (People's) Party

- Grange and Farmers Alliance movements form a political party

- Frustrated with the laissez faire attitude of the federal government and the cycle of falling prices, scare money, and debt

- this is why the organized this party

- goals included tariff reduction, public ownership of railroads, and currency reform

Americanization

- Immigration to the US shifted (southern and eastern europe) and began to increase

- increased public debates about assimilation and "americanizing the new immigrants"

- immigrants try to both adopt american norms but also hold onto their heritage

political machines

- a party organization led by a single boss or small autocratic group, commands enough botes to maintain political and administrative control of a city, country, or state

- had power and influence in the rapidly growing cities of the late 19th century

- Able to garner votes from immigrant groups and poor with social services

- corrupt due to elections, govt contracts, and taking money from taxes

- Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed are the best examples

Gilded Age

- 1870-1900

- period of rapid economic growth but also social conflict and political corruption

- "gilded" means covered with gold on the outside but not golden on the inside

- A lot of wealth for few but most lived in poverty

Social Darwinism

- Darwinian ideas of natural selection in the natural world were being applied to humanity

- Were used to justify the success of those at the top of the socioeconomic ladder

- applied to global matters and justified American and European Imperialism "White man's burden"

Social Gospel

- movement of artists and critics (agrarians, utopians, and advocates of the social Gospel), championed alternative visions for the economy and US society

- Focused Christian ethics on the problems of US society

- Christian side of the progressive movement

- Jane Addams Hull House and Jacob Riis "how the other half lives"

- washington gladden and walter rauschenbusch were major leaders

Progressives

- Late 1800s and well into the 1900s

- Middle class reformers

- Sought to apply principles of professions (medicine, law, buisness, teaching) to problems of society

- strong faith in progress and the ability of educated people to overcome problems

Jane Addams - Hull Houses

- example of social gospel and progressive reformer

- settlement hull houses had the goal of americanizing immigrants, and english and culture classes

Sierra Club

- Created by John Muir, a preservationist

- Environmental organization working to preserve America's natural spaces for its beauty and recreation

- Lobbied politicians for national parks

- National parks = preservation

- National forests = conservation

- National forests were managed for both industry and recreation

Muckrakers

- investigative journalists writing long form pieces for magazines or books

- exposing government and corporate corruption (Ida Tarbell "History of Standard Oil"

- Terrible living and working conditions (Riis "How the other half lives" and Sinclair "The Jungle")

- Anti-lynching and civil rights (Ida B. Wells "southern horrors: lynch law in all its phases")