The Gilded Age
Chapter 22
The Industrial Era Dawns
1865-1900
The Iron Colt Becomes an Iron Horse
The country's railroad network significantly expanded in the late 1800s. Because of the high costs and risks associated with building railroads, Congress subsidized the cost of many railroad construction projects. Congress also gave a lot of unused public land to the railroad companies.
Spanning the Continent with Rails
In 1862, Congress selected the Union Pacific Railroad company to build a transcontinental railroad starting in Omaha, Nebraska.
The Central Pacific Railroad company was responsible to laying track on the California-side of the transcontinental railroad. The 4 chief financial backers of the Central Pacific Railroad (the Big Four) included Leland Stanford and Collis P. Huntington.
The Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad companies both received financial aid from the government.
The transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, allowing for increased trade with Asia and opening up the West for expansion.
Binding the Continent with Railroad Ties
There were 5 transcontinental railroads built: The Northern Pacific Railroad, running from Lake Superior to Puget Sound, was completed in 1883; the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe, running from Topeka to California, was completed in 1884; the Southern Pacific, stretching from New Orleans to San Francisco, was completed in 1884; and the Great Northern, running from Duluth to Seattle, was completed in 1893 by James J. Hill.
Railroad Consolidation and Mechanization
Cornelius Vanderbilt made lot of money improving the Eastern railroads.
2 advancements helped the development of the railroads: the steel rail and a standard gauge of track width.
Revolution by Railways
The railroad stimulated the industrialization of the country in the post-Civil War years. It created an enormous domestic market for American raw materials and manufactured goods. Railroad companies also stimulated immigration.
Until the 1880s, every town in America had its own local time. To keep schedules and avoid wrecks, the major rail lines proposed, on November 18, 1883, dividing America into 4 times zones - most towns accepted the new time method.
Wrongdoing in Railroading
Some people selling bonds for railroad companies inflated claims about the company's assets and profits, enabling them to sell stocks and bonds in excess of the railroad's actual value ("stock watering").
Many railroad titans felt they were above the law, and they abused the public by bribing judges and legislatures.
Railroad kings were manipulators of a huge natural monopoly and exercised too much direct control over the lives of people.
Railroad companies colluded with each other to protect their profits. "Pools" were agreements to divide the business in a given area and share the profits. Small farmers often paid the highest railroad transportation rates, while big customers paid low rates.
Government Bridles the Iron Horse
During the depression of the 1870s, farmers protested against railroaders who ran the farmers into bankruptcy.
Many Midwestern legislatures tried to regulate the railroad monopoly, but in 1886, the Supreme Court ruled in Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railroad Company vs. Illinois that individual states could not regulate interstate commerce.
In 1887, Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act. It prohibited rebates and pools, required the railroads to publish their rates openly, forbade unfair discrimination against shippers, and outlawed charging more for a short trip than for a long trip over the same line. It also created the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to administer and enforce the new legislation. The new laws provided a forum where competing businesses could resolve their conflicts in peaceful ways (instead of engaging in price wars).
Miracles of Mechanization
The telephone was created in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell. This invention revolutionized the way Americans communicated. Thomas Alva Edison invented numerous devices; the most well-known is the electric light bulb in 1879.
The Trust Titan Emerges
Tycoons like Andrew Carnegie (steel king), John D. Rockefeller (oil baron), and J. Pierpont Morgan (bankers' banker), circumvented their competition. Carnegie used the tactic of "vertical integration" to combine all phases of manufacturing into one organization. He and his business controlled every aspect of production, from mining to marketing. His goal was to improve efficiency.
"Horizontal integration" meant allying with competitors to monopolize a given market. This tactic of creating trusts was used by Rockefeller.
Morgan used the tactic of interlocking directorates when he put his people on the boards of directors of rival companies
The Supremacy of Steel
Steel was "king" during the industrialization era; nearly every aspect of society used it.
By the late 1800s, the United States was producing 1/3 of the world's steel supply. The Bessemer process simplified the steel production process and reduced the price of steel. The process involved blowing cold air on red-hot iron to ignite the carbon and eliminate impurities.
Carnegie and Other Sultans of Steel
Andrew Carnegie was not a monopolist and disliked monopolistic trusts. By 1900, he was producing ¼ of the nation's Bessemer steel.
J. P. Morgan financed the reorganization of railroads, insurance companies, and banks.
In 1900, Carnegie wanted to sell his holdings of his steel companies. He threatened to ruin Morgan's steel pipe production business if Morgan did not buy him out. Morgan bought out Carnegie for $400 million.
Morgan created the United States Steel Corporation in 1901. It was America's first billion-dollar corporation.
Carnegie dedicated the rest of his life to donating his money to charities.
Rockefeller Grows an American Beauty Rose
Kerosene was the first major product of the oil industry. The invention of the electric light bulb made kerosene obsolete.
By 1900, the gasoline-burning internal combustion engine became the primary means of automobile propulsion. The birth of the automobile gave a great lift to the oil industry.
John D. Rockefeller created the Standard Oil Company of Ohio in 1870, attempting to eliminate the middlemen and knock out his competitors. By 1877, he controlled 95% of all the oil refineries in the nation. Rockefeller expanded his company by eliminating his competitors.
Other trusts came about in America. These included the sugar trust, the tobacco trust, the leather trust, and the harvester trust.
The Gospel of Wealth
The wealthy used "survival of the fittest" to explain why they were financially successful and why poor people were poor.
Plutocracy: when a government is controlled by the wealthy. The Constitution gave Congress sole jurisdiction over interstate commerce. This enabled monopolists to use their lawyers to thwart controls by state legislatures. Large trusts also sought safety behind the 14th Amendment, arguing that corporations were actually legal "people."
Government Tackles the Evil Trust
Congress passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, which forbade business activities that the government deemed as anti-competitive. It also required the government to investigate trusts. The law was ineffective because it contained legal loopholes and it made all large trusts suffer, not just the bad ones.
The South in the Age of Industry
As late as 1900, the South still produced fewer goods than it had before the Civil War. Southern agriculture received a boost in the 1880s when machine-made cigarettes replaced hand-made cigarettes. This increased tobacco consumption.
James Buchanan Duke created the American Tobacco Company in 1890.
Many obstacles slowed southern industrialization. Northern-dominated railroad companies charged lower rates on manufactured goods moving southward from the North, but higher rates when raw materials were shipped from the South to the North.
The "Pittsburgh plus" pricing system was economic discrimination against the South in the steel industry. Deposits of coal and iron ore were discovered in Birmingham, Alabama. This should have helped Southern steel manufacturers, but Northern steel companies put pressure on the railroads to increase their shipping rates. This removed Birmingham's economic advantage.
The South excelled in manufacturing cotton textiles. Cotton mills were eventually created in the South, but they paid workers extremely low wages.
The Impact of the New Industrial Revolution on America
Economic developments after the Civil War increased the standard of living in the United States. The agriculture industry was replaced by manufacturing.
Women were most affected by the new industrial age. Women found jobs as inventions arose; the typewriter and the telephone switchboard gave women new economic and social opportunities.
The nation of farmers and independent producers was becoming a nation of wage earners. By the beginning of the 1900s, the vast majority of the nation's population earned wages.
In Unions There Is Strength
New machines displaced employees, but more jobs were created than destroyed in the long run.
Low wages conditions caused some factory workers to go on strike. Corporations sometimes forced their workers to sign "ironclad oaths" or "yellow-dog contracts," stating that the workers would not join a labor union.
Some companies owned the "company town," increasing the prices of basic living expenses so that the company could make more money (grocery stores, banks, etc).
Strikes became commonplace and the middle-class public started to get annoyed by them.
Labor Limps Along
The Civil War gave a boost to labor unions.
The National Labor Union, organized in 1866, lasted 6 years and attracted 600,000 members. The purpose of the union was to organize workers across different trades and challenge companies for better working conditions. Black workers formed their own Colored National Labor Union. The Colored National Labor Union could not work with the National Labor Union because the latter supported the Republican Party and it was supported by racist white unionists.
After the National Labor Union died out in 1877, the Knights of Labor took over. It was led by Terence V. Powderly, and it was started as a secret society. It sought to include all workers, while campaigning for economic and social reform, including and codes for safety and health.
Unhorsing the Knights of Labor
On May 4, 1886 in Haymarket Square, Chicago police tried to break up a protest against alleged police brutalities. Someone threw a dynamite bomb, killing several people. 8 anarchists were convicted; 5 were sentenced to death while the other 3 were sent to jail. In 1892, the governor of Illinois, John P. Altgeld, pardoned the 3 who were in prison.
The Knights of Labor was blamed for the incident at Haymarket Square and as a result, it lost public support. Another problem with the Knights of Labor was that it included both skilled and unskilled workers. When unskilled workers went on strike, they were just replaced.
The American Federation of Labor's inclusion of only skilled worked drained the Knights of Labor of its members.
The AF of L to the Fore
The American Federation of Labor was founded in 1886 and was led by Samuel Gompers. The federation was an association of self-governing unions, each of which kept its own independence. It sought for better wages, hours, and working conditions. The federation's main weapons were the walkout and the boycott. It supported the idea of closed shop, in which an employer could only hire union employees and all of the employees had to be in a union.
The greatest weakness of organized labor was that it was accepted by a small minority of working people.
Labor Day was created by Congress in 1894.
Chapter 23
Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age
1869-1896
The "Bloody Shirt" Elects Grant
The Republicans nominated General Grant for the presidency in 1868. The Republican Party supported the continued Reconstruction of the South, while Grant stood on the platform of "just having peace."
The Democrats nominated Horatio Seymour.
Grant won the election of 1868.
The Era of Good Stealings
Jim Fisk and Jay Gould devised a plot to drastically raise the price of the gold market in 1869. The two men bought and hoarded a large amount of gold, driving up the price. On "Black Friday," September 24, 1869, the Treasury was forced to sell gold from its reserves to lower the high price of gold.
"Boss" Tweed employed bribery, graft, and fraudulent elections to milk New York of as much as $200 million. (Tweed Ring) Tweed was eventually put into prison.
A Carnival of Corruption
Members of the federal government also participated in illicit/unethical activity.
The Credit Mobilier scandal erupted in 1872 when Union Pacific Railroad insiders formed the Credit Mobilier construction company and then hired themselves at inflated prices to build the railroad line, earnings a lot of money. The company paid off members of Congress and the Vice President.
The Liberal Republican Revolt of 1872
The Liberal Republican Party was formed in 1872 in response to the political corruption in Washington and their dissatisfaction with military Reconstruction.
The Liberal Republican Party met in Cincinnati and chose Horace Greeley as their presidential candidate for the election of 1872. The Democratic Party also chose Greeley as their candidate. The Republican Party continued to put its support behind President Grant. Grant won the election of 1872.
The Liberal Republicans caused the Republican Congress to pass a general amnesty act in 1872, removing political restrictions from most of the former Confederate leaders. Congress also reduced high Civil War tariffs and gave mild civil-service reform to the Grant administration.
Depression, Deflation, and Inflation
Over-speculation was the primary cause of the panic of 1873. Banks gave too many imprudent loans to support over-expansion. When profits failed to materialize, people were unable to pay back their loans.
Mistrust of the government lead to high inflation of the greenback. Supported by advocates of hard money (coin money), the Resumption Act of 1875 required the government to continue to withdraw greenbacks from circulation and to redeem all paper currency in gold at face value beginning in 1879.
The coinage of silver dollars was stopped by Congress in 1873 when silver miners began to stop selling their silver to the federal mints; miners could receive more money for the silver, elsewhere.
The policy of the Treasury accumulating gold stock to replace the greenbacks was known as "contraction." This policy increased the value of the greenback due to its reduction in circulation.
The Republican hard-money policy had negative political ramifications and it helped to elect a Democratic House of Representatives in 1874.
Pallid Politics in the Gilded Age
Throughout most of the Gilded Age (a name given to the 30 years after the Civil War by Mark Twain) the political parties in government had balanced out. Few significant economic issues separated the Democrats and Republicans.
Republican voters tended to stress strict codes of personal morality and believed that the government should play a role in regulating the economic and moral affairs of society. They were located in the Midwest and Northeast. Many Republican votes came from the Grand Army of the Republic, a politically active fraternal organization consisting of many Union veterans of the Civil War.
Democrats were immigrant Lutherans and Roman Catholics who believed in toleration of differences in an imperfect world. They also opposed the government imposing a single moral standard on the entire society. Democrats were found in the South and in the northern industrial cities.
Both parties supported patronage, the principle of giving jobs to your political supporters.
The Hayes-Tilden Standoff, 1876
Congress passed a resolution that limited the presidency to two terms, after Grant started to consider running for a 3rd term.
The Republicans chose Rutherford B. Hayes as their presidential candidate for the election of 1876. The Democrats chose Samuel J. Tilden.
In the election, Tilden won the popular vote, but he was 1 vote shy from winning in the Electoral College (184 of 185). 20 electoral votes were in dispute in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida. Each state had sent two ballot counts to Congress. One ballot count said that the Republicans had won, while the other count said that the Democrats had won.
Controversy arose over which candidate should be awarded the disputed electoral votes.
The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction
The Compromise of 1877 was passed by Congress in 1877. Contained within the compromise was the Electoral Count Act, which set up an electoral commission consisting of 15 men from the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Supreme Court. The commission ultimately gave the election to Hayes (Republican).
The Democrats were outraged at the outcome of the election, but agreed that Hayes could take office if he withdrew the federal troops from Louisiana and South Carolina.
With the Hayes-Tilden deal, the Republican Party abandoned its commitment to racial equality.
The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was supposed to guarantee equal accommodations in public places and prohibited racial discrimination in jury selection. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled most of the Act unconstitutional, stating that the 14th Amendment only prohibited government violations of civil rights, not the denial of civil rights by individuals.
The Birth of Jim Crow in the Post-Reconstruction South
After Reconstruction ended in the South, white Democrats ("Redeemers") resumed political power in the South and began to enact laws discriminating against blacks.
Blacks were forced into sharecropping and tenant farming. Through the "crop-lien" system, small farmers who rented land from the plantation owners were kept in perpetual debt and forced to continue to work for the owners.
Eventually, state-level legal codes of segregation known as Jim Crow laws were enacted. The Southern states also enacted literacy requirements, voter-registration laws, and poll taxes to ensure that Southern blacks could not vote.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the South's segregation in the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896), declaring that "separate but equal" facilities for blacks were legal under the 14th Amendment.
Class Conflicts and Ethnic Clashes
Following the panic of 1873 and the resulting depression, railroad workers went on strike after their wages were cut by President Hayes. The strike failed, exposing the weakness of the labor movement.
Many immigrants came to United States hoping to find riches, but many were dismayed when they found none. They either returned home or remained in America and faced extraordinary hardships.
People on the West Coast attributed declining wages and economic troubles to the hated Chinese workers. To appease them, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, stopping Chinese immigration into America.
Garfield and Arthur
Because President Hayes was despised by his own Republican Party, James A. Garfield was chosen as the presidential candidate for the election of 1880. Garfield was apart of the Half-Breed faction of the Republican Party. His Vice President, Chester A. Arthur, was apart of the Stalwart faction. The Democrats chose Civil War hero, Winfield Scott.
Garfield won the election of 1880, but he was assassinated by Charles J. Guiteau at a Washington railroad station. The expected implication of the assassination was that after Arthur took over as president, he would replace the Half-Breed Republican employees with Stalwarts.
The death of Garfield shocked politicians into reforming the spoils system. The reform was supported by President Arthur, shocking his critics. The Pendleton Act of 1883 made mandatory campaign contributions from federal employees illegal, and it established the Civil Service Commission to make appointments to federal jobs on the basis of merit. The civil-service reform forced politicians to gain support and funds from big-business leaders.
The Blaine-Cleveland Mudslingers of 1884
The Republicans chose James G. Blaine as their presidential candidate for the election of 1884. The Democrats chose Grover Cleveland. Grover Cleveland was a very honest and admirable man. Cleveland won the election of 1884.
"Old Grover" Takes Over
Cleveland was the first Democrat to take over the presidency in 28 years. He replaced thousands of federal employees with Democrats.
Cleveland believed that while the people support the government, the government should not support the people.
Cleveland Battles for a Lower Tariff
The Treasury was running a budget surplus due to revenue generated by the high tariff that was enacted during the Civil War. To reduce this surplus, President Cleveland convinced Congress to lower the tariff in 1887. The Republicans opposed lowering the tariff because they thought it would hurt businesses.
The Republicans chose Benjamin Harrison as their presidential candidate for the 1888 election. The Republicans made tariffs an issue for the election of 1888. Cleveland won the popular vote, but Harrison still won the election.
The Billion-Dollar Congress
The Republican Speaker of the House, Thomas B. Reed, took control of the House and used intimidation to get Congress to pass several debated bills. The Billion-Dollar Congress, named for its lavish spendings, gave pensions to Civil War veterans, increased government purchases on silver, and passed the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890. This significantly raised tariffs and financially hurt farmers. Farmers were forced to buy expensive products from American manufacturers while selling their own products into the highly competitive world markets.
The McKinley Tariff Act caused the Republican Party to lose public support and lose their majority in Congress in the congressional elections of 1890.
Chapter 24
America Moves to the City
1865-1900
From 1870-1900, the population of American cities had tripled.
The Urban Frontier
By 1890, New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia all had populations greater than 1 million.
Louis Sullivan contributed to the development of the skyscraper. City limits were extended outward by electric trolleys. People were attracted to cities by amenities like electricity, indoor plumbing, and telephones.
Trash became a large problem in cities due to throwaway bottles, boxes, bags, and cans.
The New Immigration
The New Immigrants of the 1880s came from southern and eastern Europe. They came from countries with little history of democratic government, where people had grown accustomed to harsh living conditions.
Some Americans feared that the New Immigrants would not assimilate into American culture. They began asking if the nation had become a melting pot or a dumping ground.
Immigrants left their native countries because Europe had no room for them. The population of Europe nearly doubled in the century after 1800 due to abundant supplies of fish and grain from America and the widespread cultivation of Europe.
"America fever" caught on in Europe as the United States was portrayed as a land of great opportunities.
Persecutions of minorities in Europe sent many immigrants to the United States. Many immigrants never intended to stay in America forever; a large number returned home with money. Those immigrants who stayed in the United States struggled to preserve their traditional culture.
Machines and Reformers Compete and Clash
The federal government did little to help immigrants assimilate into American society.
Community "bosses" took care of immigrants by providing jobs, housing, schools, parks, and hospitals. In return, immigrants voted for these bosses.
Americans gradually became aware of the troubles of cities. Walter Rauschenbusch and Washington Gladden were Protestant clergymen who sought to apply the lessons of Christianity to the slums and factories.
Settlement House: a house located in a poor, urban area where middle-class people would live and take care of the local community by providing services like healthcare and daycare; became centers of women's activism and of social reform.
Jane Addams established Hull House, the most prominent American settlement house. Addams condemned war and poverty. Hull House offered instruction in English, counselling to help immigrants deal with American big-city life, childcare services for working mothers, and cultural activities for neighborhood residents.
Lillian Wald established Henry Street Settlement in New York in 1893.
Florence Kelley was a lifelong supporter for the welfare of women, children, blacks, and consumers.
Addams, Wald, and Kelley paved the way for future women to enter the profession of social work.
Narrowing the Welcome Mat
Antiforeignism, or nativism, arose in the 1880s. Nativists worried that the original Anglo-Saxon population would soon be outnumbered and outvoted, and they blamed immigrants for societal problems.
An antiforeigner organization was the American Protective Association (APA). It was created in 1887 and it urged to vote against Roman Catholic candidates for office.
In 1882, Congress passed the first restrictive law against immigrants. It forced criminals and convicts back to their home countries. In 1885, Congress banned the importation of foreign workers under contract; they were usually contracted for substandard wages. Literacy tests began in 1917.
In 1882, Congress barred the Chinese from immigrating to the United States (Chinese Exclusion Act).
Churches Confront the Urban Challenge
Protestant churches suffered from people moving to the cities.
Dwight Lyman Moody, a Protestant evangelist, preached about kindness and forgiveness. He contributed to adapting the old-time religion to the facts of city life. The Moody Bible Institute was founded in Chicago in 1889 to carry out his work.
Roman Catholic and Jewish faiths were gaining enormous strength from the New Immigration.
By 1890, there were over 150 religious denominations in the United States.
The Church of Christ, Scientist was founded in 1879 by Mary Baker Eddy, who preached that the true practice of Christianity heals sickness.
Darwin Disrupts the Churches
Published in 1859 by Charles Darwin, On the Origin of the Species stated that humans had slowly evolved from lower forms of life.
The theory of evolution cast serious doubt on the idea of religion. Conservatives stood by their beliefs of God and religion, while Modernists flatly refused to accept the Bible in its entirety.
The Lust for Learning
During this time period, public education and the idea of tax-supported elementary schools and high schools gained support.
Teacher-training schools, called "normal schools", experienced great expansion after the Civil War.
The New Immigration in the 1880s and 1890s brought new strength to the private Catholic parochial schools, which were becoming a major part of the nation's educational structure.
Public schools excluded millions of adults.
Crowded cities generally provided better educational facilities than the old one-room rural schoolhouses.
Booker T. Washington and Education for Black People
The South lagged far behind other regions in public education. African-Americans suffered the most.
The leading champion of black education was ex-slave Booker T. Washington. He taught in 1881 at the black normal and industrial school at Tuskegee, Alabama. His self-help approach to solving the nation's racial problems was labeled "accommodationist" because it did not directly challenge white supremacy. Washington avoided the issue of social equality, focusing on economic equality.
George Washington Carver taught and researched at Tuskegee Institute in 1896. He became an internationally famous agricultural chemist.
Black leaders, including Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, attacked Booker T. Washington because Washington condemned the black race to manual labor and perpetual inferiority. Du Bois helped to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1910.
The Hallowed Halls of Ivy
Female and black colleges arose after the Civil War.
The Morrill Act of 1862 granted public lands to the states to support education. Land-grant colleges formed out of these grants.
The Hatch Act of 1887 extended the Morrill Act and provided federal funds for the establishment of agricultural experiment stations in connection with the land-grant colleges.
Millionaires and tycoons donated generously to the educational system.
Johns Hopkins University, founded in 1876, had the nation's first high-grade graduate school.
Public health increased due to scientific advancements.
William James made a large impact in psychology through his numerous writings.
The Appeal of the Press
The Library of Congress was founded in 1897. Printing of newspapers was increased by the invention of the Linotype in 1885.
Joseph Pulitzer was a leader in the techniques of news sensationalism (yellow journalism).
William Randolph Hearst built up a chain of newspapers, starting with the San Francisco Examiner in 1887.
The Associated Press, founded in the 1840s, was gaining strength and wealth.
Apostles of Reform
One of the most influential magazines was the New York Nation. Started in 1865 by Edwin L. Godkin, it pushed for civil-service reform, honesty in government, and a moderate tariff.
Henry George wrote the book Progress and Poverty in 1879, which addressed the association of progress with poverty. He proposed a 100 percent tax on profits due to increased land value.
Edward Bellamy wrote the socialistic novel, Looking Backward. The book portrayed a time in the future when big businesses are nationalized to serve the public interest.
The New Morality
Victoria Woodhull wrote the periodical, Woodhull and Clafin's Weekly in 1872, which proclaimed her belief in free love.
Anthony Comstock helped pass the Comstock Law, which censored "immoral" material from the public.
Families and Women in the City
Starting in the late 1800s, divorce rates increased and family sizes decreased.
Women became more independent in the urban environment. Feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman called upon women to abandon their dependent status and contribute to the larger life of the community through productive involvement in the economy.
In 1890, the National American Woman Suffrage Association was founded.
The re-born suffrage movement and other women's organization excluded black women.
Ida B. Wells helped launch the black women's club movement, which led to the establishment of the National Association of Colored Women in 1896.
Prohibiting Alcohol and Promoting Reform
Liquor consumption increased during the late 1800s.
The National Prohibition Party was created in 1869. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union was created in 1874.
The Anti-Saloon League convinced states to band the sale of alcohol. In 1919, the 18th Amendment banned alcohol in America.
Postwar Fiction, Lowbrow and High
As literacy increased, book reading also increased. "Dime novels" were short books about the wilds of the West.
General Lewis Wallace wrote the novel, Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ, to combat Darwinism.
Horatio Alger was a Puritan New Englander who wrote more than 100 volumes of juvenile fiction involving New York newsboys in 1866.
Authors started to write about realism, naturalism, and regionalism.
Realism: authors wrote about coarse human comedy and drama of the world
William Dean Howells was the editor-in-chief of the Boston-based Atlantic Monthly. He wrote about ordinary people and contemporary social themes. He was the "father of American realism."
Mark Twain was a journalist, humorist, satirist, and opponent of social injustice.
Henry James wrote about the confrontation of innocent Americans with Europeans. His novels frequently included women as the central characters. He was a master of psychological realism.
Naturalism: writers applied detached scientific objectivity to the study of human beings
Stephen Crane wrote about the unpleasant side of life in urban, industrial America.
Jack London was a famous nature writer who wrote about a possible fascistic revolution in The Iron Heel.
Theodore Dreiser wrote with disregard for prevailing moral standards.
Regionalism: authors wrote about local ways of life before industrialization
In 1899, feminist Kate Chopin wrote about adultery, suicide, and women's ambitions in The Awakening.
Bret Harte was an author of the West, writing of California gold-rush stories.
Black writer Paul Laurence Dunbar embraced the use of black dialect and folklore to discuss southern black culture.
Artistic Triumphs
Music and portrait painting increased in popularity.
The phonograph, invented by Thomas Edison, enabled the reproduction of music by mechanical means.
The Business of Amusement
The circus emerged in the 1880s. Baseball was also emerging as the national pastime, and a professional league was created in the 1870s.
Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith.
Chapter 25
The Conquest of the West
1865-1896
Indians and White on the Plains
In the West, soldiers spread cholera, typhoid, and smallpox to the Indians. They also reduced the bison population through hunting.
The federal government tried to appease the Plains Indians by signing treaties with the "chiefs" of various "tribes" at Fort Laramie in 1851 and at Fort Atkinson in 1853. The treaties marked the beginning of the reservation system in the West.
Indians usually recognized no authority outside their own family; "tribes" and "chiefs" were fictitious names made up by white people.
In the 1860s, the government grouped the Plains Indians into smaller plots of land: mainly the "Great Sioux reservation" in Dakota Territory, and the Indian Territory in Oklahoma.
The Indians Fight Back
At Sand Creek, Colorado in 1864, Colonel J. M. Chivington's militia killed 400 innocent Indians.
In 1866, a Sioux war party attacked and killed Captain William J. Fetterman's command of 81 soldiers and civilians in Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains.
The Battle of the Little Bighorn was a rare Indian victory in the plains wars.
In 1876, Colonel George Armstrong Custer's Seventh Cavalry was slaughtered as they tried to suppress the Indians after the Sioux attacked settlers who were searching for gold in the "Great Sioux reservation."
The Nez Percé Indians were sent to a dusty reservation in Kansas in 1877.
The "taming" of Indians was accelerated by the railroad, white men's diseases, and alcohol.
Bellowing Herds of Bison
After the Civil War, over 15 million bison grazed the western plains. By 1885, fewer than 1000 were left after the bison had been slaughtered for their tongues, hides, or for amusement.
"Kill the Indian and Save the Man"
President Grant announced the "Peace Policy" in 1869 to peacefully encourage Indians to assimilate to white culture. The policy tried (but failed) to limit military engagements on Indian reservations. In 1871, Congress declared that the U.S. would no longer recognize the sovereignty of Indian tribes or negotiate treaties.
By the 1880s, the nation began to realize the horrors it had committed on the Indians. Helen Hunt Jackson published A Century of Dishonor in 1881 which told of the record of government ruthlessness in dealing with the Indians. She also wrote Ramona in 1884 which told of injustice to the California Indians.
The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 dissolved many tribes as legal entities, wiped out tribal ownership of land, and set up individual Indian family heads with 160 free acres. If the Indians behaved like "good white settlers" then they would get full title to their holdings as well as citizenship. The Dawes Act attempted to assimilate the Indians with the white men. The Dawes Act remained the basis of the government's official Indian policy until the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.
In 1879, the government funded the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.
Mining: From Dishpan to Ore Breaker
In 1858, minerals including gold and silver were discovered in the Rockies, prompting many "fifty-niners" or "Pike's Peakers" to rush to the mountains in search of the precious metals.
"Fifty niners" also rushed to Nevada in 1859 after gold and silver were discovered at Comstock Lode.
Women gained the right to vote in Wyoming (1869), Utah (1870), Colorado (1893), and Idaho (1896), long before the women of the East.
Frontier mining played a vital role in bringing people and wealth to the West. The discoveries of gold and silver also allowed the Treasury to resume specie payments in 1879 (payments for silver).
Beef Bonanzas and the Long Drive
Transcontinental railroads enabled live cattle to be transported to the East from Texas. The cattle were butchered once they arrived in an Eastern city.
Cattle-raisers organized the Wyoming Stock-Growers' Association to make the cattle-raising business profitable.
The Farmer's Frontier
The Homestead Act of 1862 allowed a settler to acquire as much as 160 acres of land by living on it for 5 years, improving it, and paying a nominal fee of about $30. Instead of public land being sold primarily for revenue, it was now being given away to encourage settlement of empty spaces and to provide a stimulus to the family farm.
Much of the land given away by the Act had terrible soil and the weather included no precipitation. Many homesteaders were forced to give their homesteads back to the government.
The 100th meridian was an imaginary line running from the Dakotas to Texas that separated the wet East from the dry West. "Dry farming" was the practice of using shallow cultivation to grow crops in the dry western environment. Over time, it depleted and dried the soil.
Tough strains of wheat flourished in the West, and new federally-financed irrigation projects caused the Great American Desert to bloom.
The Far West Comes of Age
The West experienced tremendous population growth from the 1870s to the 1890s. Colorado was admitted as a state in 1876 after the Pike's Peak gold rush.
From 1889-1890, the Republican Congress, seeking more Republican electoral and congressional votes, admitted six new states: ND, SD, MT, WA, ID, and WY. Utah was admitted in 1896, after the Mormon Church formally banned polygamy in 1890.
Many "sooners" illegally entered the Indian lands in the district of Oklahoma. On April 22, 1889, the district was opened to the public and thousands came. In 1907, Oklahoma was admitted as the "Sooner State."
The Fading Frontier
In 1890, an American frontier line was no longer evident; all the unsettled areas were now broken up by isolated bodies of settlement.
Western migration may have caused urban employers to maintain high wages to discourage workers from leaving to go farm the West.
Western cities grew as failed farmers, failed miners, and unhappy easterners sought fortune in cities. By 1880, the area from the Rockies to the Pacific Coast was the most urbanized region in America, measured by the percentage of people living in cities.