Ch 22: Industry Comes of Age (1865-1900)

“The Gilded Age” - Mark Twain; called this bc it seems luxurious (there’s a lot of wealth), but there’s also a lot of bad stuff in govt (corruption, poverty)

Transcontinental Railroad

• there were many, but this is the one sponsored most by Congress

• seen this before in Gadsden Purchase, Stephen Douglas (K-N Act → Civil War), Henry Clay (smth abt transcontinental RR)

• Congress gives main sponsorship to 1 line - Union Pacific + Central Pacific

  • Congress didn’t give money but grants of land (they got alternating tracks of land → w/this, the RR company could sell that land)

  • you’ll see immigrants buying cheap land in NE

• Union Pacific

  • Omaha, NE

  • 1086 mi

  • construction company: Credit Mobilier (corruption)

  • Irish laborers

• Central Pacific

  • Sacramento, CA

  • 689 mi

  • no corruption like the other one

  • Chinese laborers

  • Stanford

• met at Promontory Point, UT

• there are 4 more transcontinental RR lines b/f 1900 (but none of them get as much from Congress)

Vanderbilt

• in his early years, he built his career on smth else

• later in life → started RR business in NY

• he popularizes steel rail

  • steel comes from iron (from the ground)

  • steel’s stronger + lighter than iron

  • steel is not new but b/f Bessemer Process (from England), it was expensive

• Vanderbilt imports Bessemer steel from England

  • builds a $100 million fortune

Railroad Improvements

• steel rail

• standard gouge of track width

• Westinghouse (name of the inventor) air braker

• Pullman Palace Cars (ride in luxury)

• eventually refrigerated cars

• How did the railroad network spur the industrialization of post-Civil War years? It moved ppl, raw materials, + manufactured goods

• In the east, the railroad boosted factories; west - mining.

• railroad

  • food to the big cities → which grow → leads to urbanization

  • stimulated immigration

• standard RR times - 4 zones based on where you live

• Daylight Savings (to save fuel)

• Jay Gould - controls stocks of 5 or 6 companies (+ makes all rates really high)

RR Wrongdoings

• stock watering

• bribes

• free passes

• pooling

  • all the businesses charge the same really high price (which replaces competition → lowers prices)

• charging more for a short haul than a long haul

  • farmers had short hauls → RR companies taking advantage of the farmer bc farmers had to get their grain

• bribe ppl (esp journalists bc they’ll write favorable things abt them)

• stock promoters inflate how much stocks are worth (?)

RR Wrongdoings Retaliation

• Patrons of Husbandry

  • Husbandry - raising livestock

  • farmers that tended to + raised livestock

  • they get the states to pass laws that regulate railroads → Granger Laws

Wabash v Illinois

• 1886

• Supreme Court ruled that states can’t regulate interstate commerce (Article 1, Section 3, Clause 8)

• Supreme Court overturned the Granger Laws

  • bc of this, ppl said that smth else needed to be done to help farmers

Interstate Commerce Act

• 1887

• govt is doing smth a year after (Wabash v Illinois) → working pretty fast

• prohibited rebates + pools

• required RR companies to publish rates openly

• said that there couldn’t be discrimination against shippers

  • those ppl that didn’t have any choice but to use the RR would pay more

• outlawed charging more for short haul than long haul

• Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) - created to administer + enforce this new law

• this was the first large-scale attempt for the govt to regulate business for the benefit of society

• was not perfect, had a lot of loopholes, + was not enforced very well

New Inventions

• Second Industrial Revolution

  • why?

    • liquid capital was becoming abundant (this was money you could spend + invest)

    • natural resources of the country were ready to be fully exploited (by mining)

    • immigration (1880s) from Eastern Europe + Southern Europe (ppl of the Orthodox religion + Italians) → caused a flare in nativism

    • ingenuity

• Alexander Graham Bell

  • telephone

    • improves communication network in the country as well as the world

• Thomas Edison

  • lab in Menlo Park, NJ

  • light bulb

  • phonograph

  • moving picture (camera)

  • DC electricity (Tesla was AC → the one that we use)

Trusts

• popular during this time was Social Darwinism - survival of the fittest relating to wealth (tries to justify racism too)

• Andrew Carnegie

  • immigrant from Scotland

  • made his money w/steel (Bessemer Process)

  • used vertical integration

    • owned the entire production from top to bottom (owned the mines, RR, + the factories) - reduces his own costs

  • not a monopolist (only owned 25% of the nation’s Bessemer steel)

  • his steel industry was in Pittsburg, PA

  • sold his company to J.P. Morgan in 1900 for $400 million (Morgan turned into the first $1 billion corporation)

  • believed in this Gospel of Wealth idea

    • it was a sin to die rich

  • hardly paid his workers anything

• Rockefeller

  • oil

  • 1870: Standard Oil Company

  • 1877: controlled 95% of oil

  • monopolist - horizontal integration

  • automobile keeps the industry growing (electricity replaced kerosene)

  • created jobs

• J.P. Morgan

  • USS (US Steel)

    • first $1 billion corporation

  • financier/banker

  • bought up a lot of companies

  • used interlocking directorates

    • had his own ppl in the management of other’s companies

• Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 1890

  • John Sherman

    • from OH

    • when competition btwn businesses gets eliminated, consumers get hurt

  • forbade business combinations in restraint of trade

  • had an unintended consequence

    • outlawed labor unions

  • didn’t really do anything (except for outlawing labor unions) bc it had too many loopholes

Labor Unions

• ADD SMTH

Ch 23: Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age (1869–1896)

• presidents during this age are called Forgettable Presidents

• voter turnout is the highest during the Gilded Age

Patronage

• spoils system (Jackson) w/a new name

• rewarding of office to ppl that supported president

  • gets very incompetent ppl in office (ppl that don’t deserve the job)

• Democrats + Republicans agreed on most things

• difference btwn them mainly has to do w/ethnicity + culture at this time

  • Democrats

    • can be seen in Northern cities

    • more tolerant of differences btwn ppl (bc cities are religiously + culturally diverse bc of immigrants )

    • not a strict policy on morality

  • Republicans

    • can be seen in the North (rural areas), West, blacks in South

    • strict ideas on morality and believe that the govt should enforce those ideas

• Stalwarts ❤ patronage

  • Roscoe Conkling

    • called all the shots

    • president needs support from him to be successful (that’s how important he was)

• Half-Breeds

  • anti-patronage

  • leader: James Blaine

  • these ppl are rly just jealous that Conkling gets to make all the decisions + has all the power, but they would endorse Patronage if they were the ones w/the power

1868 Election

• Republican: Grant

  • he wins

  • during his presidency, he’s aloof (not aware)

  • “waved the bloody shirt” - reminded everyone of the South’s fault during the Civil war

  • encouraged the ppl on side of Union during war to vote for him: “vote as you shot”

  • blacks won him the vote (the 15th amendment was proposed to make sure he wins)

• Democrat: Horatio Seymour

Grant Administration: Scandals

• Gold

  • Jay Gould + Jay Fisk

    • both rly bad

    • planned to corner (control) the gold market

    • financiers/bankers

    • they buy all the gold in the country at their bank

    • US Treasury has gold so they “convince” (he rly just goes w/it) Grant to withhold that gold

    • so they can raise the price of gold

      • which makes it harder to pay back loans (which are paid back in gold)

      • helps to start the 1873 Panic

    • Grant tries to help later when he catches wind of what’s going on (but it’s too little, too late)

• Credit Mobilier

  • construction company for the Union Pacific RR (w/the Irish workers and from Omaha, NE)

  • the leaders of the Union Pacific RR created this company

  • Credit Mobilier got paid $73 million for $50 million of work

    • members of Congress + VP finds out abt this - they get paid to keep their mouths shut (kickback)

    • Grant doesn’t know abt this

  • truth abt this revealed in 1872

• Whiskey

  • there was a tax on whiskey

  • if you hadn’t paid the taxes, you would have to pay double + the person that ratted you out would get 10% of that penalty

    • but what the tax collectors did was they asked for more money than the 10% of penalty that they would get if they rat the person out but less than the penalty itself

  • govt was defrauded of abt $1 million bc of whiskey tax

  • 7/8 of taxes were not being collected

• Local → Tweed

  • municipal (city) corruption

    • political machine

      • always has a boss (who is typically not a mayor) behind the scene pulling all the strings

      • group of men running city govt + stay in power in a corrupt fashion (control election, etc.)

        • stole taxpayer money → enriched themselves at the expense of the people while they were in office

  • most famous political machine led by William Tweed (Boss Tweed) - Tammany Hall (also called Tweed Ring)

    • it was already around b/f him

    • immigrants vote for them bc political machines cater to immigrants → breeds nativism

      • and since the voting’s public → those ppl from Tammany Hall can pressure immigrants to vote for them

    • fallen Tweed member (fell out of Boss Tweed’s good graces) revealed all the secrets of Boss Tweed

    • Thomas Nast

      • most famous political cartoonist ever

      • cartoons just had pictures and so immigrants could understand them (might not necessarily understand words in English so this helped)

      • Tweed offered $5 million to New York Times to not reveal his secrets (but Nast continued publishing - nothing could stop him)

    • Tweed did get arrested, but no prison big enough to hold him (alluding to the cartoon) bc his corruption reaches very far

      • escapes to Spain, but they bring him back (bc of the cartoons, that’s how they identify him) → dies in jail (found a prison big enough to hold him → alluding to that cartoon again)

1872 Election

• Grant won again

1873 Panic

• overspeculation

  • went too far w/the industrialization, banks gave unwise loans to ppl to start factories but didn’t turn up in profit

• over 15,000 businesses went bankrupt

• blacks hit rly hard (the bank that most blacks used (Freedmen’s Savings and Trust) went bankrupt) - they lose $7 million

1876 Election, Compromise of 1877

• R: Hayes

• Democrat: Tilden

  • NY prosecutor that put Tweed in jail

• multiple states sent different votes

• a committee formed to solve this issue

  • it had more Republicans than Democrats → Compromise of 1877: Hayes gets White House + soldiers are out of South → Reconstruction ends

Jim Crow Laws

• not passed by the US Congress but by the states

• laws of segregation

• Plessy v Ferguson: Supreme Court said “separate but equal” is okay

• North doesn’t have state laws of segregation but that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t segregation in the North (there was)

Chinese

1880 Election → Garfield

1884, 1888 Elections

Ch 24: American Moves to the City (1865-1900)

Growth of Cities

• 1870-1900 - population tripled in American cities bc farms were very productive (immigrants can’t move to a place that doesn’t have food) → urbanization (ppl moving to cities)

  • since they’re so productive, there are fewer farmers needed so some of them also move to the cities

  • NYC - second largest city behind London

• Gilded Age is known for industrialization, urbanization, corruption

• skyscraper - 10+ stories (iron was too heavy → steel is lighter and stronger so it makes skyscrapers possible, elevators make it usable (Otis made elevators safe))

• Chicago’s population grows the most (this is when it gets put on the map)

  • there’s a fire → the rebuild happens w/skyscrapers

• Brooklyn Bridge is made during this time

• dept stores + age of consumer culture

  • consumer culture: not fixing things yourself but buying new things

  • ppl living in cities → mass producing goods bc it’s cheaper to buy

    • problem: waste disposal (trash, nasty water, dirty ppl, dumbbell tenements (no ventilation, one bathroom for many families), horse carriages)

Immigration

• old

  • b/f 1880s

  • typically from Northern and Western Europe (Germans, Irish)

• new

  • 1880s

  • Southern + Eastern Europe (Italy, Greece)

    • Orthodox Christians, illiterate, poor

  • try to preserve culture (don’t assimilate well) → settle in ethnic neighborhoods → Little Italy

• reasons

  • persecution in Europe (Jews), no room in Europe, coming for jobs, more food, land that RR companies were selling

• reactions

  • political machines took care of immigrants

  • Jane Addams (1889) - established the Hull House (Chicago): part of the “Settlement House Movement”, best example of a settlement house

    • it was a community center where immigrants (and just poor ppl in general) could get help

  • settlement houses - started by women, in poor neighborhoods, offered English classes, counseling, childcare to working mothers, cultural activities (for immigrants)

    • they were like the 1st social service

  • nativism

    • fear that the WASP would be outnumbered + outvoted, & fear that the WASP would disappear

    • blamed immigrants for the degradation of urban govt

    • trade unionists hated immigrants bc they would work for “starvation wages”

    • immigrants bought radical ideas (socialism, communism, anarchism)

• restrictions

  • 1882 - Chinese completely barred

  • 1882 - first restrictive law banned paupers, criminals, convicts

  • over time, the list of “undesirables” grew

  • 1917 - literacy test (over 3 presidents’ vetoes)

Darwin’s On the Origin of Species

• publishes 1859 - “natural selection” rejected divine creation

• by 1875, religious ppl were split

  • conservative minority

    • stood by Scripture

    • condemned Darwin

    • will give rise to fundamentalism in 1920s

  • majority “accommodationists”

    • flatly refused to accept the Bible in its entirety

    • feared hostility toward evolution would alienate educated believers

  • Darwinism loosened religious moorings + promoted skepticism among religious ppl

Trends in Education

• teacher-training schools (“normal schools”) increased

• kindergartens gained support

• private Catholic parochial schools

• Chautauqua Movement (1874) - NY

  • successor to lyceums for adult education

  • nation-wide public lectures

  • extensive courses of home study also

• education facilities in cities were better than country

• illiteracy rate fell

Colleges & Universities

• colleges + universities boomed a/f CW

• more women attended college

• Southern black colleges

• Morrill Act (1862)

  • gave generous grant of public lands to states for support of edu

  • “land-grant colleges” bound themselves to provide certain services

• Hatch Act (1887)

  • extended the Morrill Act

  • gave $ to establish agricultural experiment stations in connection w/land-grant colleges

Booker T. Washington

• former slave (he was a child when slavery ended)

• champion of black edu

• 1881 - began the black normal + industrial school in Tuskegee, AL

  • taught useful trades to gain self-respect + economic security (most blacks were sharecroppers meaning they were indebted to white ppl perpetually so he wanted to do this so they weren’t sharecroppers anymore)

• self-help approach to solve the nation’s racial problems

• avoided issue of social equality (never talked abt it bc he needs white men to hire his students + donate to his school)

• believed economic independence is the road to black political + civil rights

W.E.B DuBois

• born in MA - mixed race

• Ph.D. from Harvard (first black to get it)

• demanded complete equality for blacks - social and economic

• helped found the NAACP in 1910

• demanded the “talented tenth” of the black community to be given full and immediate access to the mainstream of American life (criticized Washington bc he didn’t call for immediate social equality)

Sensationalism

• newspaper presses were big

• 2 new newspaper tycoons

  • Joseph Pulitzer

    • immigrant from Hungary

    • New York World

    • colored comic supplements (“Yellow Kid”)

    • Yellow Journalism

  • William Randolph Hearst

    • from CA

    • built powerful chain of newspapers

    • San Francisco Examiner

Postwar Writing

• book-reading increased w/literacy

• Dime novels depicted wild west, kids loved these paperbacks

• popular writers

  • Horatio Alger

    • juvenile fiction

    • virtue, honesty, + industry was rewarded by success, wealth, honor

      • survival of the purest

  • Walt Whitman

  • Emily Dickinson

  • Kate Chopin

  • Mark Twain

  • Stephen Crane

  • Henry Adams

  • Henry James

  • Jack London

  • Frank Norris

  • Theodore Dreiser

Suffrage for Women?

• voting for women was allowed in the frontier first (bc life was hard for everyone so there was more equality)

• suffrage happens in 1920 + it happens from this last push here

• 1890 - National American Woman Suffrage Association

  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton + Susan B. Anthony

• 1900 - Carrie Chapman Catt stressed the desirability of giving women the vote if they were to continue to discharge their traditional duties as homemakers + mothers

• 1869 - Wyoming territory - 1st unrestricted suffrage to women

• this reborn suffrage movement excluded black women

• Ida B. Wells - journalist + teacher, led anti-lynching crusade

• states can allow women to vote even if federal law doesn’t

Temperance

• liquor consumption increased during CW - re-doubled the zeal of temperance reformers

• WCTU (Woman’s Christian Temperance Union)

  • 1874

  • Frances E. Willard

  • Carrie Nation - took hatchet to bottles and bars

• Anti-Saloon League, 1890

• 1919 - 18th Amendment - prohibition

Amusement

• Vaudeville - coarse jokes, acrobats

• minstrel shoes in South

• circus - Phineas T. Barnum + James A. Bailey, 1881

• Wild West shows, 1883

  • William (“Buffalo Bill”) Cody

  • Annie Oakley

• baseball - emerging as national pastime

• boxing

• croquet

• bicycle

Ch 25: The Great West & the Agricultural Revolution (1865-1896)

• Five Civilized Tribes were Eastern tribes

• ppl didn’t live in the Great Plains bc it was very dry (until now bc govt makes land very cheap so immigrants come to live there)

The Great West: Indians

• Plains Indians (they’re nomadic, in the Great Plains (NE, Kansas))

  • Native Americans were in the path of advancing white pioneers - clash was inevitable

  • conflict amongst Indian tribes bc of shrinking buffalo herds (hunting grounds became competitive) - they follow bison herds, horses are very important for them too

• treaties w/Plains Indians

  • treaties w/”chiefs” + federal govt at Ft. Laramie (1851) + Ft. Atkinson (1853)

    • beginning of reservation system in West

    • established boundaries for territory of each tribe

    • tried to separate Indians into two “colonies” - to north and south of corridor intended for white settlement

    • problem: Indians’ way of life rejected the idea of authority - their nomadic lifestyle meant they had no concept of being confined to a defined territory

• fighting w/Plains Indians

  • Sand Creek Massacre, 1864 (Colorado) - US soldiers under Col. Chivington massacred 400 Indians

  • 1866 - Sioux war party ambushed + massacred Cpt. W. Fetterman’s soldiers in Bighorn Mts. (Wyoming) - trying to block construction of Bozeman Trail

  • 1868 - Treaty of Ft. Laramie: govt abandoned Bozeman Trail + “Great Sioux Reservation” guaranteed to Sioux tribes

  • 1874 - gold discovered in Black Hills (South Dakota) - gold seekers invaded Sioux land (Sioux went on war path)

  • 1876 - Battle of Little Bighorn

    • Col. Custer set out to suppress the Sioux + return them to reservations

    • Custer was attacked by camping along the Little Bighorn River

  • 1877 - Nez Perce

    • US tried to move Nez Perce Indians onto a reservation

    • Chief Joseph led Nez Perce away (toward Sitting Bull in Canada)

    • harsh conditions + loss of life prompted Chief Joseph to surrender

    • Nez Perce were promised their ancestral lands in Idaho, but were sent to a reservation in Kansas instead (40% died from disease)

  • Battle of Wounded Knee, 1890 - Dakota Sioux - using outlawed Ghost Dance

    • Ghost Dance

      • if performed, then all buffalo would return + all whites would die

      • when this starts spreading, it gives hope + builds resistance so US govt outlaws Ghost Dance

    • last conflict, a/f this, you don’t hear anything fighting w/Indians, no more Indian resistance

• taming of the Indians

  • railroad brought troops, farmers, cattleman, settlers

  • white man’s disease + fire whiskey

  • extermination of buffalo doomed Plains Indians’ way of life

• forced assimilation

  • Dawes Severalty Act (1887)

    • dissolved tribes as legal entities (used to be foreign entities)

    • wiped out tribal ownership of land (Indians didn’t believe in private ownership of land)

      • they’re forcing assimilation on them

    • set up individual Indian family heads w/160 free acres

      • the land that was left over would be sold to settlers

    • if Indians “behaved” they would get full title to their holdings + citizenship if 25 years (probationary period later extended)

      • this was a lie

  • Reflection on Dawes Act

    • tried to make rugged individualists out of Indians

    • ignored reliance of Indian culture on tribally held land

    • forced assimilation became cornerstone of govt policy toward Indians until 1934

  • boarding schools

    • reservation land not given to Indians under the Dawes Act was sold to RR + white settlers

    • proceeds used to educate and “civilize” the Indians

    • boarding schools created to “kill the Indian and save the man”

The Great West: Mining + Agriculture

• mining (intensified conflict btwn whites + Indians)

  • gold discoveries

    • Pike’s Peak, Colorado, 1858

    • Comstock Lode, Nevada, 1859

  • big business came into mining (ore-breaking machinery brought)

  • attracted population - women won equality on rough frontier (vote: Wyoming 1869, Utah 1870, Colorado 1893, Idaho 1896)

• cattle

  • long drive

  • cattle-raising became a big business (breeders fenced ranches, organized)

• agriculture: developing the agricultural West

• population growth in West

• deflation - example on pg. 9 of text notes

• farmers organize