6.2 - 6.4 (Westward Expansion: Economic/Social/Cultural Development), The New South)

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negative effects of the transcontinental railroad

• Expanded too quickly

• Over speculation

  • Market becomes oversaturated (too many railroads)

• Damaged environment

  • Ex. mtns blown up to put railroad → landscape changes (which also changes how water travels, etc)

• Impact on Natives

  • Decimated Buffalo Population

  • Most signif impact

Great American Desert

• term used by pioneers passing thru

• formerly didn’t seem promising for settlement

  • few trees

  • not enough rain for farming

  • winter blizzards

  • dry summers

“Rain Follows the Plow”

• Gov’t comes up with campaign to get ppl to settle west → “Rain Follows the Plow”

• Once you’re on the land & cultivate it, rain will come (at the time, ppl believed it, but ofc that isn’t true)

Mining Frontier

• Placer Mining

• Deep-Shaft Mining

• Comstock Lode in Nevada

• Boomtowns & Ghost towns

• Led to arguments over money supply

Placer Mining

• Individuals with shovels and pans

• Doesn’t work in the mtns → Deep-Shaft mining needed

Deep-Shaft Mining

• Corporations, investors, expensive equipment

• Terrible for environment → poisons water supplies, etc.

• Immigrants and migrants working in Deep-Shaft mines, getting paid poorly

Comstock Lode

• Nevada

• produced hundreds of millions of $ in gold & silver

• led to Nevada entering Union in 1864

  • Idaho & Montana also received early statehood, largely bc of mining booms

Boomtowns & Ghost towns

• rich strikes created overnight towns that were infamous for saloons, dance-hall girls, & vigilante justice

• hwvr, many became ghost towns as gold/silver ran out

• mining towns that endured & grew evolved more like industrial cities than frontier towns depicted in western films

  • ex. Nevada’s Virginia City (created by Comstock Lode) added theaters, churches, newspapers, schools, libraries, railroads, & police

  • San Fran, Sacramento, Denver

vaqueros

• small Mex cowboys in Texas who raised & rounded up cattle

Cattle Frontier

• Cattle and Grass were free

• Cow towns were built near railroads

  • Towns relying heavily on cattle

• Wealthy ranchers

  • Scientific ranching techniques

  • More tender beef

• Beef became the meat of choice

Decline of Cattle Drives

• Blizzards, drought and overgrazing killed 90%

• Barbed wire fencing cut off access to formerly open range

Homestead Act of 1862

• Gov’t gives away lots of land to populate land west of Mississippi to California

• promise of free land combined w/ promotions of railroads & land speculators attracted hundreds of thousands to try to farm Great Plains

• Best land went to railroads (a lot of good land taken → new settlers get meh land)

  • Railroads advertised overseas to ppl in Euro to come & buy it

• Settlers dealt w/ weather, insects, natives, barbed wire

“sodbusters”

• ppl who built homes out of sod bricks on dry & treeless plains

• water was scarce, and wood for fences nonexistent

• barbed wire saves the day

Joseph Glidden

• inventor of barbed wire

• helped farmers fence in lands on lumber-scarce plains

“dry farming”

• farmers soon realized that 160 acres = not enough for farming Great Plains

  • weather, falling prices for crops, cost of new machinery all caused failure of 2/3 of homesteaders’ farms on Great Plains

• successful farmers adopted “dry farming” & deep plowing techniques to make most of moisture available

• plant hardy strains of Russian wheat to withstand extreme weather

Problems in Farming Economy

• By 1900 Farmers were a minority (37%)

  • Railroads, banks, and foreign competition dominated economy

• Commercialization and Specialization

  • Northern & Western farmers focused mainly on cash crops for national & international markets

  • Unable to afford large and expensive machines → smaller farms driven out of business

  • Farmers grew more... lowering the price of crops in US aka deflation (bad for farmers)

  • Expensive land taxes (ex. mortgage)

  • increased production of crops = lowered prices of crops = need more production of crops → vicious cycle for farmers

    • more debts, foreclosures by banks, & more independent farmers forced to become tenants and sharecroppers

“middlemen”

• industrial corporations kept prices high on manufactured goods by forming monopolistic trusts → “Middlemen” (wholesalers & retailers) affected before farmers

• railroads, warehouses, & elevators took what little profit remained by charging high or discriminatory rates for shipment & storage of grain

• railroads would often charge more for short hauls on lines w/ no competition than for long hauls on lines w/ competition

Why did farmers feel victimized by the impersonal forces of the larger economy?

• railroads, warehouses, & elevators took what little profit remained by charging high or discriminatory rates for shipment & storage of grain

• local & state gov’ts charged high property & land taxes but didn’t tax income from stocks and bonds

• tariffs protecting various Amer industries viewed as just another unfair tax paid by farmers & consumers for benefit of industrialists

How did farmers organize for their common interests & protection?

• National Grange Movement

• Farmers’ Alliances

• Ocala Platform

National Grange Movement

• Organized in 1868 by Oliver H. Kelley

• Social and educational organization

• Spread nationwide but mostly popular in Midwest

• as it expanded, active in economics & politics to defend members against middlemen, trusts, & railroads

• Cooperatives

• Granger Laws

• Munn v. Illinois 1877

cooperatives

• businesses owned & run by farmers to save costs charged by middlemen

Granger Laws

• made it illegal for railroads to fix prices by means of pools

• made it illegal to give rebates to privileged customers

Munn v. Illinois (1877)

• Supreme Court upheld right of state to regulate businesses of public nature, such as railroads

Farmers’ Alliances

• state & regional grps that taught scientific farming methods

• unlike Grange, always had goal of economic & political action

  • serious potential for creating independent national political economy

• Farmers’ Southern Alliance & Colored Farmers’ National Alliance

  • both rallied for political reforms to solve farmer’s economic probs

• Racism & economic interests of upper class kept them from uniting

Ocala Platform

• The National Alliance met in Florida (1890)

• Attacked both major parties

  • Repubs focused on manufacturing

  • Dems focused on white supremacy

• Called for reforms

• Mvmt would continue to grow into 3rd political party eventually

The Closing of the Frontier

• Oklahoma Territory 

  • Previously, land was preserved for Native Amers

    • Indian Removal Act

  • Opened for settlement for Amers in 1889

  • Last great land rush

• 1890 Frontier was settled

• Turner’s Frontier Thesis

• Urban markets also made frontier development possible

  • cattle ranchers’ frontier developed bc it was linked by the railroads to Chicago & eastern markets

  • interdependence of development of frontier & growth of towns/cities

Turner’s Frontier Thesis

• Argued that:

  • Frontier experience shaped American culture 

  • Promoted independence

  • Individualism

  • Fostered democracy

  • But ppl became wasteful of natural resources

Natives of the West

• Pueblo Indians

  • Permanent settlements

  • Farming and livestock

• Nomadic Hunter/Gatherers

  • Used Spanish horses to hunt buffalo

Jackson’s Reservation Policy

• 1830s → Jackson’s policy of moving Amer Indians to West was based on belief that lands west of Mississippi would permanently remain “Indian country”

  • expectation proved false w/ western settlement & transcontinental railroad

• Fed gov’t began to assign Plains tribes large tracts of land (reservations) w/ definite boundaries

• most Plains tribes refused to restrict their mvmts to reservations & cont to follow migrating buffalo

Indian Wars

• settlement by miners, ranchers, & homesteaders on Amer Indian lands led to violence

• Settlers and the US Army massacred many

  • 1864 Sand Creek Massacre

  • 1866 Sioux War

    • tables turned & Sioux fighters wipe out the US Army

• Another round of treaties 

  • attempted to isolate Plains Indians on smaller reservations w/ federal agents promising gov’t support

• gold miners refused to stay off Amer Indians’ lands if gold was found on them

• minor native chiefs not involved in treaty-making & younger warriors denounced treaties and tried to return to ancestral lands

• More Wars

  • Second Sioux War

    • Right before = Little Big Horn → Sioux ambushed & destroyed Amers

    • 2nd Sioux War → Sioux defeated forever

      • Chief Joseph, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse

• Slaughter of buffalo by Amers doomed lives of natives on Plains

Ghost Dance Mvmt

• Starts as peaceful endeavor for Natives to

  • celebrate/appreciate their culture

  • refuse US domination

  • Remove whites from ancestral lands

• US Army shut movement down

  • Sitting Bull was killed

  • Fighting broke out

    • Attacked settlements & US army

  • = 1890 Massacre at Wounded Knee

• Natives accepted they would have to be “controlled”

  • Reservations

  • Assimilation

Assimilation

• Assimilation

  • Education

  • Job training

  • Christianity

• Indian Schools (Carlisle Pa.)

  • White culture

  • Farming

  • Industrial skills

  • Separated children from parents

• Not as successful as expected

  • Ppl supposed to return to reservations after school, but never went back to reservation (cont living in “white world”)

  • Older leaders made some white-schooled natives to relearn how to be native

A Century of Dishonor

• By Helen Hunt Jackson

• Push towards new kind of assimilation

  • We’ve assimilated Native Amers in the wrong way (we always focused on leaders and have it trickle down to younger ppl, she said we have to do it opposite way around)

Dawes Act (1887)

• Forced assimilation

• Break up tribes

  • many felt tribes prevented natives from becoming “civilized”

• Land was given to families

• Citizenship if they stayed for 25 years & “adopted habits of civilized life”

• Valuable reservation land was sold to whites

• Does alleviate some of the wars being fought but overall wasn’t successful

  • Disease and Poverty killed most

• 1924 all natives were granted citizenship

• 1934 Indian Reorganization Act

  • Tribal organizations returned (reversed Dawes Act)

The Conservation Movement

• Deforestation sparked conservation mvmt

• breathtaking paintings & photographs → 1864 Yosemite State Park

  • 1872 Yellowstone National Park

• Forest Reserve Act 1891 & Forest Management Act 1897

• Preservationists → 1892 John Muir

  • The Sierra Club - Preserve natural areas

• Arbor Day (dedicated to planting trees) reflected environmental awareness by 1900

• good for railroad companies → supported tourism & their hotels

Forest Reserve Act 1891 & Forest Management Act 1897

• Withdrew federal timberlands from development & regulated their use

Conservation v.s. Preservation

• Conservation = using resources of an area in a responsible way

  • You cut down a tree so you plant another to replace it

• Preservation = preserve it don’t touch it at all

Mexican Americans in the Southwest

• Santa Fe Trail

• Mexican landowners gained citizenship after Mex War

  • drawn-out legal proceedings often resulted in sale or less of lands to new Anglo arrivals

• Mex worked in Farming, Mining, and building railroads

• Mex, Whites, Natives Competed for land and jobs

Santa Fe Trail

• Missouri to New Mexico

• opened up Spanish-speaking southwest to economic development & settlement

• vital link until railroad completed in 1880

Vision of the “New South”

• Self-sufficient economy

• Modern capitalist values

• Industrial growth

• Modernized transportation 

• Improved race relations

• economic vision wasn’t achieved until after WWII

• white supremacy & racial discrimination cont. until 1950s-60s

Henry Grady

• Newspaper editor

• Argued for:

  • economic diversity

  • Laissez-faire capitalism (gov’t does little to control economy, e.g. they don’t own the means of production)

Growth of Industry

• Incentives

  • Tax exemptions

  • Cheap labor

  • Better climate

• Successes

  • Birmingham- Steel

  • Memphis- Lumber

  • Richmond- Tobacco

  • Carolinas- Textiles

• South integrated into national rail network used by North & South

• Increased railroads, industry, and population

Failures of Industrial Growth

• Northern Investors

  • Controlled ¾ of Southern industry

  • Most profits went back North

• Lack of technical education

  • few Southerners had skills needed to foster industrial development

  • resulted in limited economic opportunity (long hours, lower wages)

Tenant Farming & Sharecropping

• ½ of all white farmers & ¾ of all black farmers

• ppl poor & profits from industry flowed to North → Southern banks had little $$ to lend to farmers

• shortage of credit forced farmers to borrow supplies from local merchants in spring w/ a mortgage on their crops to be paid @ harvest

• combo of sharecropping & crop liens kept farmers as virtual serfs tied to land by debt

King Cotton

• Economy mainly tied to cotton → production increased

• More common cotton is → Price fell by 50%

• per capita income in South declined, many farmers lost farms

Diversification and Organization of Southern Farms

• Tuskegee Institute

• Farmers’ Alliances

Segregation

• Redeemers

  • Treated African Americans as inferiors

  • Segregated public facilities

  • Took advantage of racial fear of Whites to remain in political power

• Supreme Court

  • Civil Rights Cases 1883

  • Plessy v. Ferguson 1896

• Jim Crow Laws

  • Segregated facilities

Civil Rights Cases (1883)

• Court ruled that Cong couldn’t ban racial discrimination practiced by priv citizens & businesses, including railroads and hotels, used by public

• law only said GOV’T can’t abridge, not priv corporations/ppl

Plessy v. Ferguson

• Supreme Court upheld LA law requiring “separate but equal accommodations” for white & black railroad passengers

• Court ruled that LA’s law didn’t violate the 14th amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection of the laws”

• resulted in Jim Crow Laws

Loss of Civil Rights

• Decline in Voting Rights

  • Poll Taxes

  • Literacy Tests

  • Grandfather Clause

• Southern Courts

  • Afr Amers could not serve on juries

  • Harsher penalties than whites

    • sometimes not even formality of court-ordered sentence

  • Lynch mobs

• Economics

  • Afr Amers could not work in skilled trades or factories

  • Kept out of the middle-class industrial jobs, worked in farms & low-paying domestic work

Early Civil Rights Movement

• International Migration Society

  • helped Afr Amers emigrate to Africa

  • many moved to Kansas & Oklahoma

• Ida B. Wells

  • Campaigned against lynching & Jim Crow laws

• Booker T. Washington

Atlantic Compromise

• belief that Black & White Southerners shared responsibility for making their region prosper

• Afr Amers should focus on working hard @ their jobs & not challenge segregation and discrimination

• Whites, in turn, should support education & even some legal rights for Afr Amers

W.E.B DuBois

• Argued that Washington’s approach = too willing to accept discrimination

• End segregation 

• Immediate equality

Tuskegee Institute

• Began by George Washington Carver

• Train black men for industrial careers

• Peanuts, soy beans, and sweet potatoes

Booker T. Washington

• Economic self-help

• Money = “A Little Green Ballot” that would empower Afr Amers

• socially, whites & blacks can be as separate as fingers, but economically, we must unite as fist

• Supported Atlanta Compromise

• National Negro Business League

  • supported businesses owned & operated by Afr Amers

• His emphasis on racial harmony & economic cooperation won praise from many Whites

Ocala Platform’s Proposed Reforms

• Direct election of Senators

  • Elected by state ppl rather than be chosen by state legislature

• Lower tariffs

  • Tariffs help American manufacturing, tariffs hurt American farmers

• Graduated income tax

• Banks regulated by federal government to control interest rates can limit foreclosures

• Increase money supply with paper and silver

• Federal storage and federal loans to free farmers from dependence on middlemen and creditors