Unit 6: Industrialization through Progressive Era

• Settlement of the West

  • Fredrick Jackson Turner → early academic historian

    • writes a thesis in 1893 claiming, “ the frontier is closed”

    • closing the frontier & its significance on America and American character

      • the american government once had land that was un-setteled by white americans but now all land has been setteled

    • America has crossed a threshold - no place to expand

    • the frontier had made america what it was but there is no longer a frontier and this is a turning point in history

• 3 Waves

  • 1) Mining →

    • 1st wave of white american settelers to the west in big numbers

      • Gold rush

        

    • Mining pockets throughout the western territories of gold and silver

    • short-term wave

      • mining towns turn into ghost towns because all the wealth has been found

    • Placer mining → technique of sifting for gold in streams

    • Comstock Load → tremendous amount of silver pulled from the ground with help from big corporations and big machinary

  • 2) Cattle Industry →

    • story of the open range →

      • concluded quickly that a large amount of cattle roam the southern territory

      • push to get cattle to a market

        • drive cattle northward towards transcontinental railroad system

          

    • “Long drives”

      • start of the cow boys

      • not a long period of time

      • most rapid spread of domesticated animals

    • Cowboys

      • influence of Mexican cattleman

      • many cowboys were hispanic not white

      • Positive Impact of Technology →

        • railroads

        • refrigeration

        • barbed wire

    • Long drives are replaced by Ranching

    • 1887 → harsh winter with lots of cold

      • hit with blizzard that kills 80-90% of heards

  • 3) Farmers

    • longest and most perminant wave

    • Homesteaders → Homestead Act farmers

      • free land and opportunity → 180 acres

      • new technology

      • had to prove that within one year, they could increase the value of that land

        • crops, home, etc

      • given land title if you could prove that

    • Difficulties

      • droughts

      • pests

      • removal from society

• Native American Life on The Great Plains

  • indiginous tribes are living on the land that is going to be setteled by white american settelers

  • The Horse

    • Nomadic → mobile for following food

    • Warfare → increased between tribes

      • a warrior culture

      • destruction of more settled groups

  • The Buffalo

    • used everything

    • depended on for survival

    • followed the herds

• Dispersing the Tribes

  • government originally wanted to make treaties with tibes to create reservations for them to live

    • Ft. Laramie Treaty of 1868

  • Treaty does not last long

    • gold is found on land and the reservation land is changed

  • By the end of the 1800’s buffalo are almost extinct

    

• Government Policy

  • treaties

  • reservations

  • Dawes Act (1887) → encourage natives to drop cultural ways of life and adopt white lives

    • gave 160 acres to each native man in the reservations

      • leaves Surplus Land

        • land is put up for sale and bought by white settelers

  • Assimilation → Americanization

    • boarding schools

      • teach english to native children

        • adopt chrisitanity

        • learn trades

        • ensure they don’t speak their native language

        • remove them from their native relgion

        • some children would never see their families again

• Battles and Conflict

  • Sand Creek Massacre (1864)

    • Colonel Chivington’s attack on Cheyenne

      • 150-500 people slaughtered, many of them women and children

      • the reason of the attack was because there had been attacks on white settelers and they assumed that it had been the Cheyenne tribe

  • Battle of Little Bighorn (1876)

    • Black Hills

    • last stand of George Custer

      • in charge of enforcing reservations and assimilation

    • rare occasion when native americans beat americans

  • Wounded Knee 1890

    • last armed resistance of plains tribes to government policy

    • last attempt to resist assimilation and hold onto their culture

America In The Gilded Age: Rise of Big Business, Urbanization & Immigration In The Late 1800s

The Corporation → new innovations in business

• people are buying stock to invest into these corporations and businesses

  • spreads the risk out so it isn’t all on the company

  • JP Morgan → finds companies and buys them buy owning a majority of their shares

    • would get a seat on the board of directors for these companies

• Cornelius Vanderbilt → shipping industry

• Leland Stanford → Owner of the Central Pacific Railway

• Jay Gould → Also wealthy in the Railroad industry

• The government was not always laissez-faire (“hands off”)

  • Sweetened incentives for building railroads by giving land for each mile of railroad built

    • Federal Land Grants

• Railroads first made money by selling land to farmers and ranchers

• Swift → big in the meat packing industry

  • used vertical integration

• Carnegie → big in the steel industry

  • cuts out the middle man

    • owns the mines, and the refineries, etc.

    • creation of Vertical Integration

• Rockefeller → big in the oil industry

  • Doesn’t own every aspect of the industry but dominates a single part of the industry

    • dominates the refining industry → horizontal integration

      • all are big because they are able to out-compete their competetors

        • Vertical Integration → Owns all steps in the process which allows you to sell your product for cheaper

        • Horizontal Integration → dominating one part of the industry

• “Survival of the Fittest”

• Captians of Industry… or Robber Barrons

Urbanization → growth of cities

• New pattern of immigration

  • By the 1880’s → Large number of immigrants are coming from Southern and Eastern Europe

    • given the title, “new immigrants”

    • “old immigrants” → come from Northern, Central, & Western Europe

• South is still very agriculturally based and have no manufacturing

  • Immigrants settel where their are jobs and do not move to the South

  • South also has Black Share-croppers

Social Networks for Immigrants

• ethnic neighborhoods → neighborhoods that consisted of groups of the same people in which everyone spoke the same native language and had ethnic stores and

  • Immigrants are bringing their cultures with them

  • America expects them to throw away their cultures and become American

• Families would arrive in stages

  • men would come in the first wave and would make enough money to get passage for their family

  • most typically only make enough to send a few people across but typically don’t make enough to go back home

Nativism → Beleive that the priority should be on those who are already living there

• Nativists are anti-immigrants

  • want to spread their culture and remove those who are comming into the country

• Immigrants are met with resistance

• Hypocracy → citizencs say they don’t want immigrants yet they were once immigrants or descended from immigrants

• WASP → # of americans and culture of Americans who are already here

  • White

  • Anglo

  • Saxon

  • Protestants

Contrast

• contrast between wealth and poverty

• Tenement Housing → Where everyon lives in urban areas

  • very unsanitary

  • families shoved into these tiny housing units

• Wealthy → what people typically see with boulevards and parks

  • City Planners worked to provide green areas

• Leisure → need some type of normalcy

  • Baseball, Circus, Amusement Parks all emerge

Need to Know Terms

• Laissez -Faire →

  • traced back to eighteenth century French economists

  • Calls for limited government and competition

  • No government interference in the economy

  • Businesses set all of their regulations and rules

  • Need to have healthy competition for businesses to continue to inovate and produce better products

• Laissez-Faire in the Gilded Age →

  • was the dominat economic doctrine in the Gilded Age

  • Followers of lassez-Faire were called liberals

  • Went against unions that tried to regulate big businesses

• The Gospel of Wealth → Andrew Carnegie

  • the weath surplus of the rich should:

    • not be excessivley spent

    • not be bequeathed(inherited)

    • be used to reduce wealth disparity

      • should be given away to help people and make society better

  • Carnegie became a philanthropist later in life

    • donated much of his wealth to libraries, schools, etc.

• Knights of Labor

  • (1869-1886) Terence V Powderly

  • Goals:

    • inclusive labor union

      • regardless of gender, race, or the amount of work that you did

    • 8 hr work day

    • saftey in factories

    • equal pay

    • no child labor

    • compensation for injury on the job

• Yellow Dog Contract

  • an agreement written to an employer to employee

  • contracts were used to:

    • permit workers from joining other labor unions

    • prohibit participation in other unions by contracts

    • agreeing to quit the union if apart of another union

  • caused a dark shadow between workers and employers

  • caused difficulties for labor unions by restricting workers rights

  • contract was struck by the supreme court as unconstitutional, and unforcible

• The Great Railroad Strike

  • wage cuts

  • started in Mattinsburg, West Virginia

  • spread through large cities like Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Chicago

  • Workers responed:

    • mass walkouts

    • protests

    • violence

    • solidarity

  • strike ended in failure

  • Knights of Labor

  • American Federation of Labor(AFL)

• Protective Tariff

  • post civil war the Union needed to generate money FAST

    • rapid growth was promised with this tariff

    • domestic growth was increased

    • the USA flourished in the industrial industries but the farmers did not agree with them

      • a lot of the country is still built on farming

• Blacklisting

  • placing union organizers on what was known as a blacklist

  • list was circulated and those on it would not be hired by other factory owners

  • was eventually made illegal

• Lockouts

  • refuse to higher by employers

  • had to agree ro employers terms

  • could refuse to higher you if you were in a union

  • would not allow workers to work if their was talk of a strike

    • workers wouldn’t get payed and they would have to give up the strike to work

• Mail-Order Businesses

  • late 1800s

  • Sears, Roebuck and Co - 1886

  • Montgomery Ward - 1872

  • Mail-Order Catalogs

  • Impact on Rural America

    • allows people in rural areas to purchase items even if they don’t live near a physical store

  • Marketing and sales techniques

  • Innovation in delivery

• Social Darwinism

  • charles darwin was a biologist who wrote about the process of evolition through natural selection

  • sociologists took Darwin’s ideas on “survival of the fittest” and used them to justify their corrupt social, economic, and political views—creating Social Darwinism

• Sherman Antitrust Act

  • passed in 1890

    • aimed to prevent monopolies and promote competition by regulating business practices that unfairly retrained trade or created anti-competitive market conditions

  • courts struggled to define “restraint of trade” and were hesitant to break up monopolies

  • In the US v E.C. Knights, the Supreme Court kimited the Acts scope by ruing it did not apply to manufacturing monopolies

• Pullman Strike

  • caused due to unfair budget cuts on Railroad cuts in Pullman, Illinois b the Pullman Company

  • workers lived in company owned houses and used company owned

  • Budget cuts due to panic of 1893 were made for workers but rent and everyday needs stayed the same causing tension and strikes among the company

  • These strikes spread to the American Railroad Union and led to a nation wide strike of the Pullman cars disrupting Railroads all over the country

  • The Injunction

    • the railroad was angry so they went to court arguing that the strike violated interstate commerce and delivery of the US mail

    • on July 2nd, 1984, Chicago court filed an Injunction against the ARU statinf they cannot persuade workers to strike against Pullman

• Industrial workes of the world

  • labor union founded in Chicago in 1905

  • wanted to create one large union

  • opposed American Federation of Labor

  • Beleived all should be allowed in the union despite race, gender, or skill level

  • Two groups within: sociaolists and anarchists

    • Anarchists → beleived in forceful, non-political methods: strikes, sabotage

    • Socialists → beleived IWW should get involved in elections/politics, change from within the system

  • William Haywood → leader, main founder

  • Eugene Debs → leader of american socialist party

  • Daniel De Leon → leader of socialist labor party

• American Railway Union

  • Eugene V. Debs → leader

  • the american railwau union was one of the largest labor unions

  • the union welcomed any railray worker that had rank below foreman

  • lots of strikes were held

    • great northern railroad strike

    • Pullman strike

• American Federation of Labor

  • Samuel Gompers was the leader and founder of the American Federation of Labor

  • he is said to be gifted at orating and assembling strikes and using them as a weapon for his fight

  • the goal of the AF of L were higher wages, shorter hours, and better conditions. in additon to staying our of politics

The Rise of Populism & Agrarian Discontent (1865-1896)

• Beginning of a more involved government

• Paul Harvey → radio host for ABC radio

  • So God Made a Farmer

• Farmers are the backbone

  • noble and virtuous profession

The Origins of Agrarian Discontent

• Economy:

  • prices for crops have decreased and farmers are making less

  • business is booming around these rural communities

  • wealth gap is growing

• Overproduction:

  • farmers have figured out how to make a large amount of money

  • have to get your crops to markey

  • crops can go overseas

  • farmers start to grow large quantities because it is getting shipped all over

  • farmers end up with more product than they can sell

    • surplus

  • farmers have to sell crops for a lower price to get rid of it

The Populist Consipracy

• Farmers look for

  • scapegoat

Minor Villians

• Elevator operators → operators give farmers a ticket price to store grain

  • beleive that operators are rigging the system to get more money

  • dock farmers points and won’t give them money

    • too wet, too dry

• Congress → the U.S. senate

  • democratics and republicans have sold out to big businesses

  • quid pro-co

  • US senators are not elected directly by the people

    • nominated by state legislators

  • makes the Senate an elite social club

• East Coast & Big Business → farmers beleived the wealthy elite —particularly those close to big businesses— controlled the economy

  • there was even enti-Semitic sentiment, with some farmers blaming Jewish individuals for their struggles

Major Villians

• Railroads → to get to a broader market, farmers have to use railroads

  • areas have to pay the railroad rate if they want to get their product to market

  • no arguing or haggeling for prices

  • farmers must pay extremley high prices (200-300% higher)

  • railroads are close with U.S Senate and Congress

• Banks & Farm Foreclosures → interest on everything

  • farmers constantly borrwoing money

    • 20-40% interest on loans compared to today’s 6%

  • farmers must take out loans, to afford supplies and crops

  • farmers must rely on crops to make payments

  • loss of crop with result in foreclosure

The Gold Standard

• every bill has to be backed by a hard currency

• sound currency and money

• makes it harder for farmers to pay back their debt

• farmers start advocating for the free coinage of silver

  • getting off of the gold standard

  • by-medilism

• silver isn’t accepted because the silver declines in value

• creditors v debtors

Agrarian Protest

The Granger Movement

• largley a self-help movement

• put together dances, lectures, and canning parties

• farming can get lonley so they want to make rural small town america a better place to live

• Co-ops → all of the farmers ban together to alleiviate some of the economic pain

  • Co-op would buy supplies and share them between all the farmers in the area to save money

  • would meet with farming companies to control the price they paid

• get political in some states

  • create granger laws

    • try to regulate railroad rates in areas

    • granger laws go up to the supreme court and are struck as unconstitutional

The Alliance Movement

• Mary Lease

  • farmers should pay what they owe banks untill they pay farmers failry for what they are doing

  • have skin in the game

  • raise less corn, raise more help

  • farmers need to get involved if they don’t like laws

  • run for office if you don’t like the politicians

• canidates now trying to help farmers

• farmers running in midwest states

The Populist Movement

• The Populist Party → the peoples party

  • fights for farmers not for big business

• re-enforcing each other in their comittment to the party

• defying the merchants, bankers, lawyers, etc.

• Plain talk newspaper

Omaha Platform (1892)

• government ownership of railroads is supposed to ensure fair pricing

• less wealthy people pay less in taxes

• more wealthy people pay more in taxes

• the secret ballet → voting wasn’t always private and populist beelived that you should be able to vote your conscious without worrying about repercussions

• regulating bank interest rates

• pushing for a standardized 8 hour work day

  • appeal to people in the working class in cities

    • want sympathy

    • strengthen numbers by creating support in big cities

• majoritie of these ideas become standard in the future

The Election of 1892

• Populist party run by Weaver

  • 9% of popular vote

  • 5% if electoral votes

• Democrats win the election with Cleveland

  • Cleveland will not run again

Nebreaska’s Finest: The Great Commoner

• Willian Jennings Bryan → chosen to run for the election as the democratic canadite

  • has populist ideals

  • Cross of Gold Speech

    • given at the 1896 Democratic National Convention (Chicago, IL)

    • speech claims that cities will fall without the help of farmers

The Election of 1896

• Republican McKinley wins Majority popular and elctroal votes

• Democratic Bryan will never win the election or any election in the future

• Populist party is dead after this election

• Democratic party takes some of the Populist ideals and brings them to life

  • changes the government

Legacy

• populist reforms become reality

• lays the foundation for the Progressive Movement

The Progressive: Reforming American Society 1890-1920

Who Were They?

• not poor western farmers

• urbanites/ city dwellers

• middle class

• educated background

  • many have attended schoola and many have college experience

• W.A.S.P.

  • White Anglo Saxon Protestants

• movement effects both parties and is not set to a single party

What Did They Beleive In?

• concerned with the ubanization and beleived that society was in decline

• saw growing class conflict

• wanted to improve/ advance society for the better

• want to remove the ideas of Laissez- Faire & Social Darwinism

  • challenged that these ideas were not correct and would not help to advance american society

    • had placed a lot of responsibily on the individual

• beleived that the poor victims/ products of their environment

  • tenemant housing,cities, businesses, etc.

  • causes them to look at other means to find the problem and solutions

• Faith in knowledge

  • causes them to look at other means to find the problems and solutions

    • social sciences(history, sociology, etc) are emerging in universities

  • systimatic intervention

    • can be used to sovle societies problems

• Management & Planning

  • setting regulations and managing those developments

  • organizing and investigating the problem to get data

  • educating the people about the problems and creating solutions

  • regulations = new laws

Muckrakers

• journalists who informed the american people and wrote stories to get the attention of civilization

  • inform citizens of issues and use managment and solutions

• Ita Tarbell → upset with buisness and goes after Standard Oil and Rockefeller

  • beleived that their business tactics were wrong and tycoons were not acceptable

  • pushed for the federal government to potentially break up these companies

  • looked at the rise of big businesses

• Riis → wrote stories and gave public talks

  • used photography to help gather data and to tell the story of the problem

  • look at urban factory workers and immigrant poor

  • Wrote “How The Other Half Lives”

  • Looks at the Tenemants and Tenament owners and Factory owners and bosses

• Ita Wells → focuses on blacks in the south

  • Blacks are being linched in the south

  • pushes for action to be taken by WASP’s

• Steffens → pushes for an end to poor living conditions

  • wrote “The Shame of the Cities”

• Upton Sinclair → looks at immigrant labor

  • looks at meat packing plants

  • Wrote “The Jungle”

  • wants to regulate working conditions

  • gets the attention of lots of people like Teddy Roosevelt

Settelment House Movement

• white middle class reformers want to help create change

• bought buildings and renovated them into housing to work with immigrants

• Hull House is one of the most notable settelment houses

• Jane Addams is the most notable settelment worker

• Purpose is to try to adopt and take christian teachings and create solutions to try to help immigrants

• want to help immigrant poor

• people are taught english and learn new skills that can be used in the workplace

  • new skills of how to use proper hygene and cooking skills

• Help immigrants to find better housing conditions

  • would report tenament housing to police

• Provided child care and pushed for mandatory school

  • didn’t want to see children playing in the streets or working in factories

• Crusade against child labor

Fight Against Child Labor

• National Child Labor Committee

  • Lewis Hine→ educated and photographs these harsh conditions

    • push to band child labor

• child could work at as young as 5 years old

• children worked in the fields, canning factories, coal mines, etc.

• push for state legislation to take children out of the workforce and put them in schools

• Child labor is not a federal law untill the 1930’s

Anti-Saloon League

• want to discourage alcohol consumption

• Carry A. Nation → well known for her efforts to try and push for state laws to remove saloons

  • would go into saloons with “supplies” and would destroy them

    • rocks, bottels, etc covered in paper

  • evenually started attacking saloons with a hatchet

• Womens Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

  • movement becomes very popular

• 19 states will pass prohibition laws by the late 1910’s

Journey to the 18th Amendment

• 16th amendment → authorized the federal government to create an income tax

  • government would no longer have to rely on alcohol for taxes

• prohibition became a national danger

• mass march occured in Washington D.C. on December 10, 1913 to demand a prohbition amendment to the U.S. Constitution

  • wanted an amendment not a law because it would be in the constitution forever

• 18th amendment → illegal to manufactur and sell alcohol

Eugenics Movements

• Belief → through scientific managment and their geniology, society could improve the quality of the nations population by pruning away the weaker strains

  • want to ensure that these weaker traits do not replicate in the population to make it stronger

• occurs along side the growth in immigrant population

• Beleives that we can take human inequities and find the hereditary connection to them to remove them

• ERO is the head of the eugenics research

  • integrated eugenics into popular culture

• spawned lots of people who endorsed such things as sterilization

• Indiana State Senate is the first to force the sterilization of citizens seen as unfit

• 12 states put sterilization laws into effect

Buck v Bell

• about whether the state laws are constitutional or unconstitutional

• Oliver W. Homes → Supreme Court Justice

• Case is voted 8-1

  • claims that the citizens are not having their rights violated

• IQ test shows Carrie Buck at a mental age of 9

• Carrie and mother confind to an instituion

Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11. Three Generations of imbeciles are enough

Race Relations

• Ida B Wells

• W.E.B. DuBois

  • writer of The Crisis

• NAACP

  • founded to improve and protect black rights

• not much is accomplished untill the modern civil rights movement comes foward

Prostitution

• white slavery - “white slave trade'“

• emerging in cities

• Anti-prostitution movement feared immigrants coming into the country

  • feared that they were runing their christian values

• Mann → passes the Mann act

  • if a male crosses over state lines with the means of prostitution, it is considered a federal crime

• Jack Johnson → beats his white opponent in boxing and is well known

  • often around white women

• use the Mann act to go after Johnson

U.S. v. Jack Johnson

• Johnson had a companion

  • companion was a 19 year old white prostitue

• Mother beleived that Johnson was using hyptonic powers to force her daughter into that position and wanted Johnson to pay

Progressives in the White House

• 3 presidents are known as Progressive era presidents

  • President Teddy Roosevelt → Republican

    • 1901-1908

    • goes after the monopolies that are bad for american consumers

    • known for the “square deal”

      • wanted to provide a fair government that would treat all citizens equally

    • known as the conservation president

      • important for the natinal government to manage the conservation of land

  • President William Taft → Republican

    • 1909- 1912

    • goes after trusts like the Standard Oil Trust

    • does not accomplish much during his term

  • President Woodrow Wilson → Democrat

    • 1913-1920

    • movement dies after Wilsons terms

    • goes after big monopolies

    • Clayton Anti-Trust Act

      • exempts labor unions from being declared as trusts

    • goes after tariffs

    • in favor of the 16th amendment

    • lowers tariffs

    • in favor of the income tax

    • creates the federal reform

      • institution that will regulate the money supply

    • banking reform