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Unit 6: Period 6: 1865–1898

6.1 The age of invention and economic growth

Thomas A. Edison's Workshop

  • Built in 1876 in Menlo Park, New Jersey

  • Produced important inventions of the century

  • Edison's greatest invention was the light bulb

  • Pioneer work in power plant development was immensely important

Light Bulb and Power Plants

  • Allowed for the extension of the workday (previously ended at sundown)

  • Wider availability of electricity

  • Created new uses for electricity for industry and home

Age of Invention

  • Last quarter of 19th century known as Age of Invention

  • Many technological advances made (e.g. Edison's)

  • Advances generated greater opportunities for mass production

Economic Growth

  • Economy grew at a tremendous rate

  • People known as "captains of industry" (or "robber barons") became extremely rich and powerful

  • Owned and controlled new manufacturing enterprises

Industrialization: introduction of faster machines in manufacturing leading to economies of scale and decreased cost per unit.

  • Assembly line production: employees performing repetitive tasks leading to increased efficiency but also dangerous working conditions and long working hours.

  • Corporate Consolidation: large businesses resulting from economies of scale and lack of government regulations, leading to monopolies and holding companies.

  • Horizontal Integration: combining smaller companies within the same industry to form a larger company through legal buyouts or illegal practices.

  • Vertical Integration: one company buys out all the factors of production from raw materials to finished product, still allowing competition in the marketplace.

  • Problems with Consolidation: required large amounts of money leading to financial panics and bank failures, public resentment, and government response in the form of antitrust legislation.

  • Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890: law forbidding "restraint of trade" combination, ambiguous wording leading to pro-business Supreme Court interpretation.

  • U.S. v. E. C. Knight Co. 1895: Court ruled that E. C. Knight, controlling 98% of the sugar refining plants, did not violate the Sherman Antitrust Act.

  • Gospel of Wealth: idea that wealth should be used for the betterment of society and not just for personal gain, advocated by Andrew Carnegie.

Factories and City Life

  • Factories were established in cities in the 19th century to reduce labor costs and maximize profits

  • Women and children were hired, as well as newly arrived immigrants in search of work

  • As a result, the cities suffered from poverty, crime, disease, and a lack of livable housing

  • Factories were dangerous, and there was no insurance or workmen's compensation

  • Middle class moved away to nicer neighborhoods, leaving mostly immigrants and migrants in the city

  • Majority of immigrants arrived from Southern and Eastern Europe starting from 1880

  • Ethnic neighborhoods, tenements were common, and minorities faced prejudice and limited job opportunities

  • Municipal governments were practically nonexistent, and services for the poor were provided by churches, private charities, and ethnic communities, or by corrupt political bosses

  • Bosses helped the poor find homes, jobs, apply for citizenship, and voting rights but at a high cost of criminal means

  • William "Boss" Tweed of Tammany Hall in New York City was a notorious political boss who embezzled millions of dollars through corruption

  • Widespread misery in cities led to the formation of labor unions to improve treatment of workers

  • Labor unions were considered radical and faced opposition from the government, businesses, and the courts

  • Knights of Labor was one of the first national labor unions, founded in 1869

  • Goals of the Knights of Labor included an 8-hour workday, equal pay for equal work, child labor laws, safety and sanitary codes, federal income tax, and more.

Knights of Labor

  • Advocated arbitration over strikes

  • Became increasingly violent in efforts to achieve goals

  • Popularity declined due to violence and association with political radicalism

  • Terrence Powderly, failed strikes, and Haymarket Square Riot contributed to decline

  • Public saw unions as subversive and violent

Homestead Steel Strike

  • Workers protested wage cut, refusal to form a union

  • Factory manager Henry Clay Frick locked out workers, hired replacements, and called in Pinkerton Detective force

  • Clash between Pinkertons and workers led to deaths and retreat of Pinkertons

  • Pennsylvania state militia ended strike, Frick hired new workers

Pullman Palace Car Factory Strike

  • Workers faced wage cut, increased housing costs

  • American Railway Union joined the strike, 250,000 railway workers walked off job, shutting down rail travel in 27 states

  • ARU president Eugene Debs refused to end strike despite court order

  • Debs convicted and jailed, became leader of American Socialist Party after release

American Federation of Labor (AFL)

  • Samuel Gompers, focused on bread and butter issues, higher wages and shorter workdays

  • Excluded unskilled workers, confederation of trade unions

  • Refused to accept immigrants, Black people, women among membership

Charitable Middle-Class Organizations

  • Lobbied local governments for building safety codes, better sanitation, public schools

  • Founded and lived in settlement houses in poor neighborhoods

  • Community centers providing schooling, childcare, cultural activities

  • Jane Addams, Hull House in Chicago, awarded Nobel Peace Prize in 1931

Improvement of Life

  • Wealthy and middle class improved while poor suffered

  • Access to luxuries, leisure time, popular diversions like sports, theater, vaudeville, movies

  • Growth of newspaper industry with Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst

  • Sensational reporting, yellow journalism became popular.

6.2 Jim Crow Laws and Other Developments in the South

Advances in the Machine Age

  • Primarily affected northern cities

South During Machine Age

  • Agriculture continued as main form of labor

  • Textile mills and tobacco processing plants emerged

  • Majority of Southerners remained farmers

Postwar Economics in the South

  • Many farmers forced to sell land

  • Wealthy landowners bought and consolidated into larger farms

  • Landless farmers (Black & white) forced into sharecropping

  • Crop lien system designed to keep poor in debt

  • Unscrupulous landlords kept poor in virtual slavery

Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise Speech

  • Outlined hope for drawing near to white race

  • Pledge for patient, sympathetic help of Black race

  • Call for higher good (blotting out of racial animosities)

  • Desire for absolute justice and law obedience

Jim Crow Laws

  • Federal government exerting less influence

  • Numerous discriminatory laws passed by towns and cities

  • Supreme Court ruled Fourteenth Amendment did not protect Blacks from private discrimination

  • 1883 - Court reversed Civil Rights Act of 1875

  • 1896 - Supreme Court ruled “separate but equal” facilities were legal

Integration and Equal Rights

  • A far-off dream for most Black people

  • Booker T. Washington: Born into slavery, no illusions of white society accepting Blacks as equals

  • Promoted economic independence as means to improve Black lot

  • Founded Tuskegee Institute for vocational and industrial training for Black people

  • Accused of being an accommodationist

  • Refused to press for immediate equal rights

  • Reality of his time set his goals

Booker T. Washington vs. W. E. B. Du Bois

  • Washington's Atlanta Exposition speech

  • Washington viewed as submissive by Du Bois

  • Du Bois referred to speech as "The Atlanta Compromise"

The Railroads and Developments in the West

  • Ranchers and miners were growing industries in the western frontier

  • Ranchers drove their herds across the western plains and deserts, disregarding property rights and Native American rights to the land

  • Miners prospected for rich mines and sold their rights to mining companies when found

  • Lincoln challenged America to have a Transcontinental Railroad connecting the country within a decade (1863-1869)

  • Railroad construction was paid for by the public but the rail proprietors resisted government control of their industry

  • Railroad companies organized massive buffalo hunts, which nearly led to extinction of the species and caused conflict with Native Americans

  • Rails transformed depot towns into cities and facilitated faster travel, contact with ideas and technological advances from the East, and contributed to the Industrial Revolution

  • Rails also brought standardization of time telling through "railroad time" and time zones

  • Statehood of North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho was achieved by 1889

  • The result of the 1890 census prompted Turner's Frontier Thesis, which argued that the frontier shaped the American character, spirit, democracy, and provided a safety valve for urban areas

  • In the Great Plains, farming and ranching were the main forms of employment, aided by new farm machinery and mail-order retail

  • The Homestead Act and Morrill Land-Grant Act were passed by the federal government to attract settlers and develop the West

  • Agricultural science became a large industry in the US

  • The Nez Perce tribe in Oregon was forced to migrate to a reservation in Idaho, leading to resistance by Chief Joseph

  • With families and corporations heading West, government and conservation groups sought added protection of natural resources

  • U.S. Fish Commission was established to protect fish species, which led to the creation of National Parks and Forest Services.

National Politics

Gilded Age of American Politics:

  • Era between Reconstruction and 1900

  • Dubbed by Mark Twain

  • America appeared prosperous but wealth built on poverty of many

  • Shiny exterior of politics hiding corruption and patronage

  • Political machines, not municipal governments, ran cities

  • Big business bought votes in Congress and fleeced consumers

  • Workers had little protection from employer greed

  • Presidents were generally not corrupt but weak

  • Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Chester A. Arthur focused on civil service reform

  • Grover Cleveland believed in minimal government intervention

  • Benjamin Harrison and allies passed major legislation (meat inspection act, banning lotteries, battleships)

  • Activism led to public discomfort and return of Cleveland to White House

Regulating Business and Government:

  • First attempts at regulation in response to widespread corruption

  • States imposed railroad regulations due to price gouging

  • 1877 Supreme Court upheld state law regulating railroads in Munn v. Illinois

  • Precedent for regulation in public interest established

  • 1887 Congress passed first federal regulatory law (Interstate Commerce Act)

  • Set up the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to regulate railroad activities

  • ICC was active until deregulated by Reagan administration in 1980s

Women's Suffrage:

  • Became an important political issue

  • Led by Susan B. Anthony

  • Bill introduced to Congress every year

  • Fight began in earnest

  • American Suffrage Association fought for state suffrage amendments

  • Partial successes achieved in gaining the vote on school issues

  • Women gained right to vote with 19th Amendment in 1920 (50 years after male suffrage)

6.3 The Silver Issue and the Populist Movement

Post-Civil War Era:

  • Increased production in both industrial and agricultural fronts

  • Drop in prices due to greater supply

  • Farmers faced trouble due to fixed payments in long-term debts

  • Farmers supported increased money supply for easier payments and inflation

  • Banks opposed the plan, preferring gold-backed money supply

  • Farmers' plan called for liberal use of silver coins (supported by western miners and midwestern/southern farmers)

  • Issue had elements of regionalism and class strife

Grange Movement and Farmers' Alliances:

  • Grange Movement founded in 1867, with over a million members by 1875

  • Cooperatives for farmers to buy machinery and sell crops as a group

  • Political endorsement and lobbying for legislation

  • Replaced by Farmers' Alliances, allowing women's political activism

  • Grew into political party People's Party (political arm of Populist movement)

  • Other groups formed by minority farmers (e.g. Las Gorras Blancas, Colored Farmers' Alliance)

People's Party:

  • 1892 convention, with platform called the Omaha Platform

  • Call for silver coinage, government ownership of railroads and telegraphs, graduated income tax, direct election of senators, shorter workdays

  • 1892 presidential candidate James Weaver received over 1 million votes

  • Populist goals gained popularity during the financial crisis of 1893-1897

Granger Laws:

  • Granger laws regulated the railroads in the 1870s and 1880s

Populist Movement:

  • 1896 Populists backed Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan

  • Bryan ran on platform of free silver, loosening control of northern banking interests

  • Republicans allied with big businesses, McKinley received huge contributions from large companies

  • Bryan lost election, Populist movement declined with improved economy

6.4 Foreign Policy: The Tariff and Imperialism

Before the Civil War

  • Most Americans earned their living through farming

  • No federal income tax until 16th Amendment in 1913

  • Tariff was a huge controversy

Tariff of Abominations & Nullification Crisis

  • Tariff of Abominations (1828) caused Nullification Crisis during Jackson's first administration

Tariff after Civil War

  • Tariff dominated national politics

  • Industrialists demanded high tariffs to protect domestic industries

  • Farmers and laborers hurt by high tariffs

  • Democrats supported lower tariffs

  • Republicans advocated high protective tariffs

Tariff Laws

  • McKinley Tariff (1890) raised duties on imported goods almost 50%

  • Wilson-Gorman Tariff (1894) resembled McKinley Tariff

  • Tariff issue dominated congressional debate and had impact on foreign relations

Spanish-American War

  • Wilson-Gorman Tariff considered one of the causes of the Spanish-American War

Theodore Roosevelt

  • Assistant Secretary of Navy in 1898 during Spanish-American War

  • Ordered U.S. Pacific Fleet to Philippines, then led volunteer regiment in Cuba

Machine Age and American Production

  • American production capacity grew rapidly

  • America looked overseas for new markets due to increased nationalism and search for new markets

Expansionism & Imperialism

  • William H. Seward set precedent for increased American participation in Western Hemisphere

  • American businesses developed markets and production in Latin America, gained political power in region

  • Expansionism (business in regions) supported by most Americans, imperialism (control of another country) more controversial

Influence of Sea Power

  • Book by Captain Alfred T. Mahan, "The Influence of Sea Power Upon History" (1890) popularized idea of the New Navy

  • Successful foreign trade relied on access to foreign ports, colonies, and strong navy

  • After upgrading ships, U.S. turned attention to foreign acquisitions

U.S. Interest in Hawaii

  • Search for port along trade route to Asia attracted U.S. to Hawaii

  • American involvement began in 1870s with American sugar producers trading with Hawaiians

  • Hawaii economy collapsed in 1890s due to U.S. tariffs and dependence on trade with U.S.

  • White minority overthrew native government, U.S. annexed Hawaii, angering Japan (40% of Hawaii's residents were Japanese descent)

  • Cuban natives revolted against Spanish control, instigated by U.S. tampering with the Cuban economy

  • Cuban civil war followed and reported in detail by the Hearst newspaper

  • The explosion of American warship Maine in Havana harbor led to war with Spain

  • U.S. drove Spain out of Cuba and Philippines in the Spanish-American War

  • Spain ceded the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam to the U.S. in the Treaty of Paris

  • U.S. claimed it wouldn't annex Cuba through Teller Amendment, but troops stayed and made Cuba include Platt Amendment in its new constitution

  • Platt Amendment granted U.S. control over Cuba's foreign affairs, U.S. troops eventually left in 1934 during FDR's administration

  • Control of the Philippines raised the question of annexation or independence

  • Arguments for annexation: Europe would conquer Philippines, U.S. moral obligation to "Christianize and civilize" Filipinos

  • Arguments against annexation: promote independence and democracy, U.S. no better than British tyrants they overthrew

  • Senate voted to annex the Philippines by a close margin, but Filipino nationalists responded with a guerrilla war

  • U.S. used brutal tactics to subdue the revolt and inflicted casualties on the civilian population

  • The U.S. granted the Philippines independence in 1946

  • The question arose as to the legal status of the native population in newly acquired territories, "Does the Constitution follow the flag?"

  • Supreme Court ruled through Insular Cases that the Constitution didn't follow the flag and Congress could administer each overseas possession as it chose

  • America hoped to gain entry into Asian markets through McKinley's Open Door Policy

AK

Unit 6: Period 6: 1865–1898

6.1 The age of invention and economic growth

Thomas A. Edison's Workshop

  • Built in 1876 in Menlo Park, New Jersey

  • Produced important inventions of the century

  • Edison's greatest invention was the light bulb

  • Pioneer work in power plant development was immensely important

Light Bulb and Power Plants

  • Allowed for the extension of the workday (previously ended at sundown)

  • Wider availability of electricity

  • Created new uses for electricity for industry and home

Age of Invention

  • Last quarter of 19th century known as Age of Invention

  • Many technological advances made (e.g. Edison's)

  • Advances generated greater opportunities for mass production

Economic Growth

  • Economy grew at a tremendous rate

  • People known as "captains of industry" (or "robber barons") became extremely rich and powerful

  • Owned and controlled new manufacturing enterprises

Industrialization: introduction of faster machines in manufacturing leading to economies of scale and decreased cost per unit.

  • Assembly line production: employees performing repetitive tasks leading to increased efficiency but also dangerous working conditions and long working hours.

  • Corporate Consolidation: large businesses resulting from economies of scale and lack of government regulations, leading to monopolies and holding companies.

  • Horizontal Integration: combining smaller companies within the same industry to form a larger company through legal buyouts or illegal practices.

  • Vertical Integration: one company buys out all the factors of production from raw materials to finished product, still allowing competition in the marketplace.

  • Problems with Consolidation: required large amounts of money leading to financial panics and bank failures, public resentment, and government response in the form of antitrust legislation.

  • Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890: law forbidding "restraint of trade" combination, ambiguous wording leading to pro-business Supreme Court interpretation.

  • U.S. v. E. C. Knight Co. 1895: Court ruled that E. C. Knight, controlling 98% of the sugar refining plants, did not violate the Sherman Antitrust Act.

  • Gospel of Wealth: idea that wealth should be used for the betterment of society and not just for personal gain, advocated by Andrew Carnegie.

Factories and City Life

  • Factories were established in cities in the 19th century to reduce labor costs and maximize profits

  • Women and children were hired, as well as newly arrived immigrants in search of work

  • As a result, the cities suffered from poverty, crime, disease, and a lack of livable housing

  • Factories were dangerous, and there was no insurance or workmen's compensation

  • Middle class moved away to nicer neighborhoods, leaving mostly immigrants and migrants in the city

  • Majority of immigrants arrived from Southern and Eastern Europe starting from 1880

  • Ethnic neighborhoods, tenements were common, and minorities faced prejudice and limited job opportunities

  • Municipal governments were practically nonexistent, and services for the poor were provided by churches, private charities, and ethnic communities, or by corrupt political bosses

  • Bosses helped the poor find homes, jobs, apply for citizenship, and voting rights but at a high cost of criminal means

  • William "Boss" Tweed of Tammany Hall in New York City was a notorious political boss who embezzled millions of dollars through corruption

  • Widespread misery in cities led to the formation of labor unions to improve treatment of workers

  • Labor unions were considered radical and faced opposition from the government, businesses, and the courts

  • Knights of Labor was one of the first national labor unions, founded in 1869

  • Goals of the Knights of Labor included an 8-hour workday, equal pay for equal work, child labor laws, safety and sanitary codes, federal income tax, and more.

Knights of Labor

  • Advocated arbitration over strikes

  • Became increasingly violent in efforts to achieve goals

  • Popularity declined due to violence and association with political radicalism

  • Terrence Powderly, failed strikes, and Haymarket Square Riot contributed to decline

  • Public saw unions as subversive and violent

Homestead Steel Strike

  • Workers protested wage cut, refusal to form a union

  • Factory manager Henry Clay Frick locked out workers, hired replacements, and called in Pinkerton Detective force

  • Clash between Pinkertons and workers led to deaths and retreat of Pinkertons

  • Pennsylvania state militia ended strike, Frick hired new workers

Pullman Palace Car Factory Strike

  • Workers faced wage cut, increased housing costs

  • American Railway Union joined the strike, 250,000 railway workers walked off job, shutting down rail travel in 27 states

  • ARU president Eugene Debs refused to end strike despite court order

  • Debs convicted and jailed, became leader of American Socialist Party after release

American Federation of Labor (AFL)

  • Samuel Gompers, focused on bread and butter issues, higher wages and shorter workdays

  • Excluded unskilled workers, confederation of trade unions

  • Refused to accept immigrants, Black people, women among membership

Charitable Middle-Class Organizations

  • Lobbied local governments for building safety codes, better sanitation, public schools

  • Founded and lived in settlement houses in poor neighborhoods

  • Community centers providing schooling, childcare, cultural activities

  • Jane Addams, Hull House in Chicago, awarded Nobel Peace Prize in 1931

Improvement of Life

  • Wealthy and middle class improved while poor suffered

  • Access to luxuries, leisure time, popular diversions like sports, theater, vaudeville, movies

  • Growth of newspaper industry with Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst

  • Sensational reporting, yellow journalism became popular.

6.2 Jim Crow Laws and Other Developments in the South

Advances in the Machine Age

  • Primarily affected northern cities

South During Machine Age

  • Agriculture continued as main form of labor

  • Textile mills and tobacco processing plants emerged

  • Majority of Southerners remained farmers

Postwar Economics in the South

  • Many farmers forced to sell land

  • Wealthy landowners bought and consolidated into larger farms

  • Landless farmers (Black & white) forced into sharecropping

  • Crop lien system designed to keep poor in debt

  • Unscrupulous landlords kept poor in virtual slavery

Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise Speech

  • Outlined hope for drawing near to white race

  • Pledge for patient, sympathetic help of Black race

  • Call for higher good (blotting out of racial animosities)

  • Desire for absolute justice and law obedience

Jim Crow Laws

  • Federal government exerting less influence

  • Numerous discriminatory laws passed by towns and cities

  • Supreme Court ruled Fourteenth Amendment did not protect Blacks from private discrimination

  • 1883 - Court reversed Civil Rights Act of 1875

  • 1896 - Supreme Court ruled “separate but equal” facilities were legal

Integration and Equal Rights

  • A far-off dream for most Black people

  • Booker T. Washington: Born into slavery, no illusions of white society accepting Blacks as equals

  • Promoted economic independence as means to improve Black lot

  • Founded Tuskegee Institute for vocational and industrial training for Black people

  • Accused of being an accommodationist

  • Refused to press for immediate equal rights

  • Reality of his time set his goals

Booker T. Washington vs. W. E. B. Du Bois

  • Washington's Atlanta Exposition speech

  • Washington viewed as submissive by Du Bois

  • Du Bois referred to speech as "The Atlanta Compromise"

The Railroads and Developments in the West

  • Ranchers and miners were growing industries in the western frontier

  • Ranchers drove their herds across the western plains and deserts, disregarding property rights and Native American rights to the land

  • Miners prospected for rich mines and sold their rights to mining companies when found

  • Lincoln challenged America to have a Transcontinental Railroad connecting the country within a decade (1863-1869)

  • Railroad construction was paid for by the public but the rail proprietors resisted government control of their industry

  • Railroad companies organized massive buffalo hunts, which nearly led to extinction of the species and caused conflict with Native Americans

  • Rails transformed depot towns into cities and facilitated faster travel, contact with ideas and technological advances from the East, and contributed to the Industrial Revolution

  • Rails also brought standardization of time telling through "railroad time" and time zones

  • Statehood of North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho was achieved by 1889

  • The result of the 1890 census prompted Turner's Frontier Thesis, which argued that the frontier shaped the American character, spirit, democracy, and provided a safety valve for urban areas

  • In the Great Plains, farming and ranching were the main forms of employment, aided by new farm machinery and mail-order retail

  • The Homestead Act and Morrill Land-Grant Act were passed by the federal government to attract settlers and develop the West

  • Agricultural science became a large industry in the US

  • The Nez Perce tribe in Oregon was forced to migrate to a reservation in Idaho, leading to resistance by Chief Joseph

  • With families and corporations heading West, government and conservation groups sought added protection of natural resources

  • U.S. Fish Commission was established to protect fish species, which led to the creation of National Parks and Forest Services.

National Politics

Gilded Age of American Politics:

  • Era between Reconstruction and 1900

  • Dubbed by Mark Twain

  • America appeared prosperous but wealth built on poverty of many

  • Shiny exterior of politics hiding corruption and patronage

  • Political machines, not municipal governments, ran cities

  • Big business bought votes in Congress and fleeced consumers

  • Workers had little protection from employer greed

  • Presidents were generally not corrupt but weak

  • Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Chester A. Arthur focused on civil service reform

  • Grover Cleveland believed in minimal government intervention

  • Benjamin Harrison and allies passed major legislation (meat inspection act, banning lotteries, battleships)

  • Activism led to public discomfort and return of Cleveland to White House

Regulating Business and Government:

  • First attempts at regulation in response to widespread corruption

  • States imposed railroad regulations due to price gouging

  • 1877 Supreme Court upheld state law regulating railroads in Munn v. Illinois

  • Precedent for regulation in public interest established

  • 1887 Congress passed first federal regulatory law (Interstate Commerce Act)

  • Set up the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to regulate railroad activities

  • ICC was active until deregulated by Reagan administration in 1980s

Women's Suffrage:

  • Became an important political issue

  • Led by Susan B. Anthony

  • Bill introduced to Congress every year

  • Fight began in earnest

  • American Suffrage Association fought for state suffrage amendments

  • Partial successes achieved in gaining the vote on school issues

  • Women gained right to vote with 19th Amendment in 1920 (50 years after male suffrage)

6.3 The Silver Issue and the Populist Movement

Post-Civil War Era:

  • Increased production in both industrial and agricultural fronts

  • Drop in prices due to greater supply

  • Farmers faced trouble due to fixed payments in long-term debts

  • Farmers supported increased money supply for easier payments and inflation

  • Banks opposed the plan, preferring gold-backed money supply

  • Farmers' plan called for liberal use of silver coins (supported by western miners and midwestern/southern farmers)

  • Issue had elements of regionalism and class strife

Grange Movement and Farmers' Alliances:

  • Grange Movement founded in 1867, with over a million members by 1875

  • Cooperatives for farmers to buy machinery and sell crops as a group

  • Political endorsement and lobbying for legislation

  • Replaced by Farmers' Alliances, allowing women's political activism

  • Grew into political party People's Party (political arm of Populist movement)

  • Other groups formed by minority farmers (e.g. Las Gorras Blancas, Colored Farmers' Alliance)

People's Party:

  • 1892 convention, with platform called the Omaha Platform

  • Call for silver coinage, government ownership of railroads and telegraphs, graduated income tax, direct election of senators, shorter workdays

  • 1892 presidential candidate James Weaver received over 1 million votes

  • Populist goals gained popularity during the financial crisis of 1893-1897

Granger Laws:

  • Granger laws regulated the railroads in the 1870s and 1880s

Populist Movement:

  • 1896 Populists backed Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan

  • Bryan ran on platform of free silver, loosening control of northern banking interests

  • Republicans allied with big businesses, McKinley received huge contributions from large companies

  • Bryan lost election, Populist movement declined with improved economy

6.4 Foreign Policy: The Tariff and Imperialism

Before the Civil War

  • Most Americans earned their living through farming

  • No federal income tax until 16th Amendment in 1913

  • Tariff was a huge controversy

Tariff of Abominations & Nullification Crisis

  • Tariff of Abominations (1828) caused Nullification Crisis during Jackson's first administration

Tariff after Civil War

  • Tariff dominated national politics

  • Industrialists demanded high tariffs to protect domestic industries

  • Farmers and laborers hurt by high tariffs

  • Democrats supported lower tariffs

  • Republicans advocated high protective tariffs

Tariff Laws

  • McKinley Tariff (1890) raised duties on imported goods almost 50%

  • Wilson-Gorman Tariff (1894) resembled McKinley Tariff

  • Tariff issue dominated congressional debate and had impact on foreign relations

Spanish-American War

  • Wilson-Gorman Tariff considered one of the causes of the Spanish-American War

Theodore Roosevelt

  • Assistant Secretary of Navy in 1898 during Spanish-American War

  • Ordered U.S. Pacific Fleet to Philippines, then led volunteer regiment in Cuba

Machine Age and American Production

  • American production capacity grew rapidly

  • America looked overseas for new markets due to increased nationalism and search for new markets

Expansionism & Imperialism

  • William H. Seward set precedent for increased American participation in Western Hemisphere

  • American businesses developed markets and production in Latin America, gained political power in region

  • Expansionism (business in regions) supported by most Americans, imperialism (control of another country) more controversial

Influence of Sea Power

  • Book by Captain Alfred T. Mahan, "The Influence of Sea Power Upon History" (1890) popularized idea of the New Navy

  • Successful foreign trade relied on access to foreign ports, colonies, and strong navy

  • After upgrading ships, U.S. turned attention to foreign acquisitions

U.S. Interest in Hawaii

  • Search for port along trade route to Asia attracted U.S. to Hawaii

  • American involvement began in 1870s with American sugar producers trading with Hawaiians

  • Hawaii economy collapsed in 1890s due to U.S. tariffs and dependence on trade with U.S.

  • White minority overthrew native government, U.S. annexed Hawaii, angering Japan (40% of Hawaii's residents were Japanese descent)

  • Cuban natives revolted against Spanish control, instigated by U.S. tampering with the Cuban economy

  • Cuban civil war followed and reported in detail by the Hearst newspaper

  • The explosion of American warship Maine in Havana harbor led to war with Spain

  • U.S. drove Spain out of Cuba and Philippines in the Spanish-American War

  • Spain ceded the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam to the U.S. in the Treaty of Paris

  • U.S. claimed it wouldn't annex Cuba through Teller Amendment, but troops stayed and made Cuba include Platt Amendment in its new constitution

  • Platt Amendment granted U.S. control over Cuba's foreign affairs, U.S. troops eventually left in 1934 during FDR's administration

  • Control of the Philippines raised the question of annexation or independence

  • Arguments for annexation: Europe would conquer Philippines, U.S. moral obligation to "Christianize and civilize" Filipinos

  • Arguments against annexation: promote independence and democracy, U.S. no better than British tyrants they overthrew

  • Senate voted to annex the Philippines by a close margin, but Filipino nationalists responded with a guerrilla war

  • U.S. used brutal tactics to subdue the revolt and inflicted casualties on the civilian population

  • The U.S. granted the Philippines independence in 1946

  • The question arose as to the legal status of the native population in newly acquired territories, "Does the Constitution follow the flag?"

  • Supreme Court ruled through Insular Cases that the Constitution didn't follow the flag and Congress could administer each overseas possession as it chose

  • America hoped to gain entry into Asian markets through McKinley's Open Door Policy