Unit 6: Period 6: 1865-1898

6.1 Contexutalizing Period

• Filled with economic changes, political changes, migration and urbanization, and reform efforts
• Abundant with raw materials + labor supply
• Growing population + transportation
• Capital was plentiful
• Labor saving technologies
• The business benefited from government policies
• Talented entrepreneurs

6.2 Westward Expansion: Economic Development

Transcontinental railroads

• The first route → During the Civil War Congress authorized land grants and loans for the first transcontinental Railroad
• Went through the Sierra Nevada mountains to Promontory Point Utah

Four additional routes

• In 1883 three other transcontinental railroads were completed
• Southern Pacific to Los Angeles + Topeka and Santa Fe to Los Angeles + Minnesota to Seattle

Negative effects

• Significant cost but failures as businesses
• Exterminated Buffalo and natives who lived in the region suffered

Settlement of the Last West

• Great Plains changed dramatically and buffalo herds were wiped out
• 10 new western states have been carved out of the Last Frontier
• Oklahoma New Mexico and Arizona remained as territories

The Mining Frontier

• Gold rushes and silver strikes kept a steady flow of hopeful Prospectors pushing into Western mountains to earn money
• Rich strikes created boomtowns and became Infamous for saloons
• Mark Twain started his career as a writer

The Cattle Frontier

• The economic potential of grasslands reached from Texas to Canada
• Cattle at first was rounded up in Texas by Vaqueros
• Texas Longhorn cattle were borrowed from Mexicans and  roamed freely Over Texas grasslands ( 5 million)
• The invention of barbed wire made it easier to fence cattle
• Railroads and Cattle → Construction of railroads opened up Eastern markets for Texas Cattle
• The decline of cattle drives
  • Cattle drives begin to end in the 1880s because of overgrazing and winter blizzards and drought
  • Cattle Frontier was the arrival of homesteaders who used barbed wire fencing to cut off the open range
  • While the cattle owners made huge riches using scientific ranching techniques
  • American eating habits change from pork to beef

The Farming Frontier

• Homestead Act of 1862 → Encouraged farming on Great Plains by offering 160  six acres of land to settle on it for 5 years
• Problems and solutions
  • Sodbusters built homes of sod bricks
  • Hot and cold weather +  scarcity of water
  • The invention of Barbed Wire by Joseph Glidden
  • Falling prices for their crops and cost of machinery →  failure of 2/3 of homesteaders' farms in the Great Plains
• Success on the Great Plains
  • Those who managed to survive adopted dry farming and deep-plowing techniques
  • Government programs to build dams and irrigation systems saved Western farmers

Farmers Organize

• Changes in Agriculture
  • Western Farmers concentrated on raising single-crash crops for international and National markets
  • Large farms were run like factories
  • Small farms could not compete and were driven out of business
• Falling prices
  • Increased production of crops such as wheat and corn drove prices down
  • Downward pressure on prices resulting in deflation
  • Farmers with mortgages faced high-interest rates and the need to grow more and more to pay off old debts
  • Increase production only lowered prices resulting in a vicious cycle
• Rising costs
  • Victimized by the larger National economy + middlemen took all profit
  • Railroads would often charge more for short hauls on lines with no competition than long hauls on lines with competition
  • Local and state governments taxed property and land heavily

Fighting Back

• National Grange movement
  • The National Grange of Patrons of Husbandry was organized in 1868 by Oliver H Kelly
  • It expanded and became active in economics and politics to defend members
  • Grangers established cooperatives
  • Successfully Lobby the legislature to pass laws regulating rates charged by railroads and elevators
  • Granger laws made it illegal for railroads to fix prices by means of pools and give rebates to privileged customers
• Farmers alliances
  • Express their discontent by forming State and Regional groups
  • Alliances had the goal of Economic and political action
• Ocala Platform
  • National Alliance met in Ocala Florida to address problems in Rural America
  • Ocala delegates created the Ocala platform that called for significant reforms
  • Direct election of US senators
  • Lower tariff rates
  • Graduated income tax
  • A new banking system regulated by the federal government
  • Demanded treasury notes and silver be used to increase the amount of money in circulation

6.3 Westward Expansion: Social and Cultural Development

The Closing of the Frontier

• Turner's Frontier Thesis
  • Settling the frontier was an evolutionary process of building a civilization
• Role of Towns and Cities
  • Historians challenge Turner's Theory by arguing Frontier cities were not a late edition
  • Urban markets also made Frontier development possible
• Americans without a frontier
  • Closing of the frontier troubled Turner → saw the frontier as a safety valve for releasing American discontent
  • The largest movement of Americans was not from East to West but from rural communities to cities

American Indians in the West

• Natives occupied the West belong to many tribes and lived in permanent settlements raising corn and livestock
• Western tribal groups that lived on the Great Plains had given up farming in colonial times after the introduction of horses
• Developed a way of life centered on the hunting of Buffalo
• Americans had little understanding of natives and wanted them to develop and assimilate into white culture
• Reservation policy
  • Andrew Jackson's policy of moving Westward was based on the belief that Lance West of Mississippi would remain an Indian country
  • As wagons moved Westward and Transcontinental Railroad was built federal government began to assign plain tribes large tracks of land with definite boundaries
  • Tribes refuse to restrict their movements to reservations → continued following Buffalo
• Indian Wars
  • Americans on Native lands led to violence
  • US Army responsible for massacres
  • After wars, another round of treaties attempted to isolate tribes on smaller reservations with federal agents promising government support
  • Gold miners refused to stay off of the native property
  • Sierra Club aims to preserve natural areas from human interference

6.4 The “New South”

Growth of Industry

• Henry Grady spread the gospel of the New South and argued for economic diversity and Laissez-faire capitalism
• The growth of cities textile industry and improved railroad symbolized efforts for New South
• Birmingham →  leading steel producer
• Memphis →  Lumber industry
• Richmond →  tobacco industry
• South was integrated into National Rail Network
• Northern financing dominated the southern economy
• Northern investors controlled Southern railroads and the steel industry
• Economic growth in the South was hampered by the failure of state and local governments to expand public education

Agriculture and Poverty

• Black farmers were either tenant farmers or sharecroppers
• cotton and other crops remain tied to the South's economy
• Tuskegee Institute in Alabama taught by George Washington Carver promoted the growing of such crops
• Attempts to organize
  • Most small farmers remained in a cycle of debt and poverty
  • Farmers' Southern Alliance was founded and the Colored Farmers National Alliance was founded
  • Both farmers could have United becoming a political force but racial attitudes stood in the way

Segregation

• Redeemers won the support of the business community and white supremacists
• Discrimination and the Supreme Court
  • Civil Rights Cases of 1883 rule that Congress could not be in racial discrimination practiced
  • Plessy v. Ferguson ruled that Louisiana's law did not violate the 14th amendments guarantee of equal protection of the laws
  • Jim Crow Laws: required segregated public facilities based on race
• Loss of Civil Rights
  • Although African Americans were able to vote literacy tests,  poll taxes,  and political party primaries for whites only limited voting
  • Grandfather clauses:  a man could only vote if their grandfather has voted in elections before reconstruction
  • Discrimination took many forms but usually resulted in lynch mobs
  • Economic discrimination was keeping out skilled  African-American workers

Responding to Segregation

• Segregation and discrimination left the South oppressed but not powerless
• International Migration Society:  helped black immigrate to Africa
• Booker T. Washington
  • Born enslaved but graduated from Hampton Institute
  • Established industrial and agricultural schools for African Americans in Tuskegee
  • Atlanta Compromise: the belief that black and white Southerners shared a responsibility to make the region prosper
  • Thought African Americans should work hard at jobs and not challenge segregation and discrimination
  • National Negro Business League
  • Wmphasis on racial harmony and economic cooperation
• Responses to Washington
  • Some criticized him for accepting discrimination
  • W.E.B. du Bois would demand an end to segregation
  • The change came slowly to a region that clung to his past

6.5 Technological Innovation

Inventions

• Telegraph by Samuel F. B. Morse
• Cyrus w.field invented an improved Transatlantic cable
• Telephone by Alexander Graham Bell
• Cash register,  calculating machine,  adding machine
• Improved light bulb by Thomas Alva Edison

The Steel Industry

• Technological breakthroughs launched the steel industry
• The Bessemer process made cheap steel

Technology and Growth of Cities

• Changes in Transportation
  • People had little choice but to live within walking distance
  • Horse-drawn cars and cable cars are being replaced by Electric trolleys, elevated railroads, and subways
  • Brooklyn Bridge made possible longer commutes between residential areas and city centers
• Skyscrapers
  • Taller buildings became profitable and possible through innovations such as the Otis elevator
  • Became a dominant feature in American urban skylines

Marketing Consumer Goods

• Increased output of factories and invention of new consumer products enabled businesses to sell merchandise to large public
• Large department stores became popular
• Packaged food became common items in American households
• Canning changed the eating habits of Americans with mass-produced meat and vegetable products
• Promoted consumer economy and also consumer culture

6.6 The Rise of Industrial Capitalism

The Business of Railroads

• Government support was evident in railroads
• Railroads created a market for goods on a national scale
• Mass production Mass consumption and economic specialization
• Railroad building promoted the growth of the coal and steel industries
• American Railroad Association divided the country into four time zones
• Railroads required investment so they developed complex structures in finance,  business management,  and regulation of competition

Competition and Consolidation

• Consolidation of competing railroads into integrated trunk lines
• Trunk line was a major route between large cities
• Cornelius Vanderbilt use millions from the steamboat business to merge local railroads into New York Central Railroad

Problems and Corruption

• The company suffered from mismanagement and fraud
• Jay Gould made Millions by selling assets and watering stock
• Railroads competed by offering rebates
• Increase profits by forming pools in which companies agreed secretly to fix rates and share traffic

The concentration of Railroad Ownership

• Financial panic and 1893 Forest 1/4 of railroads into bankruptcy
• JP Morgan quickly moved in to take control of bankrupt railroads and consolidate them
• competition removed +  interlocking directorates

Railroad Power

• Customers and small investors for victims of financial schemes
• Granger laws passed by Midwestern states were overturned by Supreme Court
• Interstate Commerce Act was ineffective at first

Industrial Empires

• Andrew Carnegie and the Steel Industry
  • Vertical integration: the company would control every stage of the industrial process
  • United States Steel was the first billion-dollar company
• Rockefeller and the Oil Industry
  • John D Rockefeller founded a company that would quickly eliminate its competition and take control of national oil refineries (horizontal integration)
  • Standard Oil Trust →  controlled 90% of the oil refinery business
  • Monopoly →  dominates a market so much that it faces little to no competition from other companies
  • Standard Oil group because of new technology and efficient management practices
• Controversy Over Corporate Power
  • Trust →  organization or board that manages the assets of other companies
  • Horizontal integration →  company takes control of all its former competitors
  • Vertical integration →  company takes control of all stages of making a product
  • Holding company →  created to own and control diverse companies
  • Monopoly →  dominates Market

Laissez-Faire Capitalism

• Laissez-Faire → economic system between private parties was free from government interference
• Conservative Economics
  • The Wealth of Nations (Adam Smith) →  mercantilism included extensive regulation of trade by the government
  • American industrialists appeal to laissez-faire theory to justify methods of doing business
• Social Darwinism
  • Believe that Darwin's theories of Natural Selection and survival of the fetish be applied to the marketplace
  • Helping the poor was misguided because it interfered with the loss of nature and would only weaken evolution
• Protestant Work Ethic
  • John D Rockefeller diligently applied the Protestant work ethic →  material success was a sign of God's favor and a reward for hard work

Concentration of Wealth

• Richest 10% of the US population controlled 90% of the nation's wealth
• Industrialization created a class of millionaires that change the standard of living

Business Influence outside the United States

• Corps desired to do business in Latin America and Asia
• Industries wanted raw materials that could process into finished goods
• The growth of business interests around the world was one reason that the United States became imperialistic

6.7 Labor in the Gilded Age

• Gilded Age book by Mark Twain referred to the superficial glitter of New Wealth

Challenges for Wage Earners

• Wages
  • Americans work for wages that required them to labor 10 hours a day 6 days a week
  • A large supply of immigrants competing for factory jobs made wages low
  • The iron law of wages argued that raising wages would only increase the working population and availability of more workers resulting in a cycle
  • Real wages rose steadily in the late 19th century but most wage Runners could not support a family on one income
  • Working middle-class families depended on the income of women and children
  • 20% of children worked for less than $380 a year
• Labor Discontent
  • Workers labored in small workplaces that valued  artisan skills
  • Factory work was radically different as workers were assigned just one step in the manufacturing
  • Immigrants abroad and migrants from rural America had to learn to work under the tyranny of a clock
  • Working conditions for dangerous and barely any job security
  • Workers were exposed to chemicals and pollutants causing illnesses and early death

The Struggles of Organized Labor

• Industrial Warfare
  • Lockout:  active closing of a factory to break labor movement before it's organized
  • Blacklist: a roster of names of pro-union workers
  • yellow-dog contract: a contract that included that workers could not join a union as a condition
  • Private Guards and State Militia:  forces used by employers to put down strikes
  • Court injunction:  judicial action used by the employer to prevent or end the strike
• Tactics by Labor
  • Workers were divided into best methods for defending themselves
  • Collective bargaining: the ability of workers to negotiate as a group with an employer over wages and working conditions
• Great Railroad Strike of 1877
  • Railroad companies cut wages in order to reduce costs
  • Strike on Baltimore and Ohio Railroad spread across 11th streets and shut down 2/3 of countries rail lines
  • Rutherford B Hayes used federal troops to end the labor dispute

Attempts to Organize National Unions

• National Labor Union
  • Founded in 1866 + sought to unite all laborers, regardless of skill level or race
  • Called for an eight-hour workday and advocated for social reforms such as the abolition of child labor and convict labor
• Knights of Labor
  • Founded in 1869 by Uriah Smith Stephens
  • Sought to unite all laborers, including women and African Americans, and advocated for worker ownership of factories
  • Organized a number of successful strikes, including the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886
• Haymarket Bombing
  • On May 4, 1886, a protest rally in Haymarket Square in Chicago turned violent when a bomb was thrown at police officers, killing one officer and injuring many others
  • The incident led to a crackdown on labor unions and the arrest and execution of several labor activists
  • Became a symbol of the struggle between labor and capital
• American Federation of Labor
  • Founded in 1886 by Samuel Gompers
  • Sought to unite skilled workers in specific trades and industries, rather than all workers
  • Focused on collective bargaining and improving wages, hours, and working conditions for its members
  • Was more successful than previous labor organizations in achieving its goals

Strikes and Strike Breaking in the 1890s

• Homestead Strike
  • Occurred in 1892, workers went on strike after the company, owned by Andrew Carnegie, announced a plan to cut wages
  • The company hired armed guards to protect its property and hired replacement workers, known as "scabs," to continue production
  • The strike turned violent when the guards and the striking workers clashed, resulting in several deaths and injuries
  • The National Guard was eventually called in to restore order and protect the replacement workers
• Pullman Strike
  • Occurred in 1894 when workers for the Pullman Palace Car Company went on strike to protest wage cuts and the firing of union leaders
  • The American Railway Union supported the strike and refused to handle Pullman cars, causing a nationwide transportation crisis
  • The federal government intervened, obtaining an injunction against the strike and sending troops to enforce it
  • Ultimately unsuccessful and led to the imprisonment of Debs
  • Helped to galvanize the labor movement and increase public support for labor unions.

Condition of the 1900s

• Immigration increased + settled in cities and worked in factories.
• Child labor is prevalent in many industries.
• Women continued to work in factories, facing discrimination and lower pay than male workers.
• The gap between the rich and the poor continued to widen
• The labor movement gained strength and saw some successes, but still faced challenges for better wages and working conditions.

6.8 Immigrants and Migration in the Gilded Age

Growth of immigration

• Push (factors in which people are fleeing) and pull (attractions from adopter country
• The poverty of farmworkers from political turmoil and mechanization of farmwork
• Overcrowding and joblessness + escape from religious persecution
• Old immigrants
  • Came from northern or western Europe
  • Protestant + literate and skilled + quick to assimilate
  • Came from countries with democracy + not completely poor
• New Immigrants
  • Came from southern or Eastern Europe
  • Not majorly protestant + illiterate and unskilled + reluctant to assimilate
  • Came from countries with radical ideas + arrived in poor
• Immigrants from Asia
  • After the California gold rush, many Chinese people came
  • Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 → 10-year end of immigration of Chinese

Immigration and Growth of Cities

• Melting pot → assimilation
• Immigrants moved to cities to seek economic opportunities + left farms
• Patterns of Urban Development
  • Upper and middle classes move to streetcars suburbs to escape the pollution poverty and crime of the city
• Ethnic neighborhoods
  • Never really understood to increase profits landlords divided all housing into small and windowless rooms creating slums and tenement apartments
  • Dumbbell tenements were buildings constructed with open ventilation shafts in the center to provide windows
  • Overcrowding and filth-promoted diseases
  • Immigrant groups created distinct ethnic neighborhoods
  • They would maintain their own language, culture, church, temple, and Social Club
  • They worked hard to achieve the American dream
  • Explosive growth renewed populist protests and nativism

6.9 Responses to Immigration in the Gilded Age

Opposition to Immigration

• Labor unions motivated by economic concerns
• Employers benefited from competition among workers
• Nativists fault alarmed that immigrants would take jobs and liquidate culture
• Social Darwinists believed Southern and Eastern Europeans were biologically inferior to English and German heritage
• Contract labor law of 1885: restricted temporary workers to protect American workers from competition
• Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty stood as beacons of  freedom and liberty
• Anti-immigrant feelings later led to the quota acts of the 1920s

Boss and Machine Politics

• Political machines: tightly organized groups of politicians
• Each machine had a boss politician who gave orders
• Tammany Hall in New York started Social Clubs and developed into power centers to coordinate business immigrants and the underprivileged for votes
• Brought modern services into the city
• Stole millions from taxpayers in the form of grants and fraud

settlement houses

• Hull House: started by Jane Addams, taught English to immigrants
• Children took advantage of public education and opportunities of the industrial economy

6.10 Development of the Middle Class

• The expanding middle class
  • Growth of large Industries incorporations created jobs for colored workers
  • Middle management was needed to coordinate the operations
  • White collared workers increased more than a fourth of all nonagricultural employees
• The Gospel of Wealth
  • Andrew Carnegie wrote the Gospel of Wealth
  • Argued that the wealthy had a moral responsibility to carry out projects of Civic philanthropy to help members of society and better themselves to improve Society
  • Carnegie distributed more than 350 million of his fortune to libraries, universities, concert halls, and other public institutions
• Working woman
  • Most women were young and single
  • Some women with access to higher education broke into professions such as doctors, lawyers, college professors
  • Worked for lower wages and salaries than men

Impact of Income on Urban Development

• Growth of suburbs
  • Low-cost abundant land
  • Inexpensive transport
  • Apread of new construction methods
  • All white communities because of ethnic and racial prejudice
  • Many people enjoyed having privacy
• The Professions
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr argued that the law should evolve with the times and respond to changing needs
  • Clarence Darrow argued that criminal Behavior could be caused by a person's environment

Growth of a popular culture

• The popular press, amusements, music, spectator sports, football, and amateur sports  all became popular within this time
• Due to the reduction in working hours, improve transportation, advertisement, and decline of restrictive values

6.11 Reform in the Gilded Age

Awaking Reform

• Books of criticisms → Progress and Poverty (Henry George) + Looking Backward (Edward Bellamy)
• Religion and Society
  • all religions adapt to the challenges of modern urban living
  • Cardinal James Gibbons → inspired devoted support of old and new immigrants by defending the Knights of Labor
  • Dwight Moody → helped generations of evangelists
  • Salvation Army → provided basic needs to homeless and poor + preached Christian Gospel
• Social Gospel Movement
  • Protestant clergy preached Social Gospel → importance of applying Christianity to social problems through reforms
  • Walter Rauschenbusch → worked in Hell’s Kitchen to take up the cause of social justice
• Social Workers → Jane Adams (Hull House) created the foundation of labor
• Families in Urban Society
  • Divorce rates increased + reduction in family size
  • Many children in labor to afford basic living standards
• Voting Rights for Women
  • Cady Stanton + Susan B. Anthony found American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) → secure votes for women
• Temperance Movement
  • Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (Frances R. Willard) + Anti-Saloon Leauge → powerful political force
  • Carry A. Nation → created sensation by raiding saloons
• Urban Reforms
  • Grassroot efforts + corruption in city gov

Literature and the Arts

• Realism + Naturalism → focused on the reality of society
• Painting + Architecture → adapted different styles
• Frank Lloyd Wright → known for his innovative, organic architectural style, which he called "organic architecture."

Preparation for Change → Laissez-faire policies dominated business and policies but reform would change the vision

6.12 Role of Government in the Gilded Age

Government Actions

• Federal Land Grants

  • provided railroad companies grants for construction
  • led to corruption → Credit Mobilier → bribe gov officials and pocked huge profits

• Interstate Commerce Act (1887)

  • Designed to regulate the railroad industry, particularly in regard to monopolistic practices
  • Required railroad rates to be "reasonable and just," and publish their rates to refrain from offering rebates and other discriminatory practices
  • Created the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to oversee the implementation of the law.
  • Wabash v. Illinois
  • Struck down state attempts to regulate interstate commerce + ruled that only the fed gov had the power to regulate commerce that crossed state lines and that states could not regulate railroads that operated in multiple states
  • Led to the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission and the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act.

• Antitrust Movement

  • Response to the growing power and influence of large corporations
  • Sought to regulate the power of monopolies and trusts and promote competition in the marketplace
  • Sherman Antitrust Act: (1890) it prohibits monopolies and trusts that restrict trade or commerce
  • United States v. E. C. Knight Co.: (1895) ruled that the Sherman Antitrust Act could not be used to break up the E. C. Knight Company + Sherman Antitrust Act applied only to commerce, not manufacturing

  Foreign Policy and the Economy

  • Gov could use foreign policy to shape economic changes

Political Issues: Civil Service, Currency, and Tariffs

• Civil Service Reform
  • The assassination of President Garfield pushed Congress to remove gov jobs from patronage
  • Pendleton Act of 1881 → set up Civil Service Commission + created a system by which applicants for fed jobs based on competitive examination
  • politicians adapted reform by depending less on armies of the party worked and more on fun campaigns
• Money Question
  • Debtors, farmers, and start-ups wanted soft money in circulations→ enable them to borrow money at lower interest rates + pay off loans
  • After the panic of 1873 Americans blamed the gold standard for causing depression
  • Creditors and investors wanted hard money → currency backed up by the gold standard
• Greenback party
  • Advocated for increasing the circulation of paper money not backed by gold, known as "greenbacks"
  • Attracted support from debtors, farmers, and laborers who were hurt by deflation and the high cost of borrowing money
• Demand for silver money
  • Western miners + farmers and debtors wanted the minting of silver money in addition to gold money → increasing the money supply would stimulate the economy and help them pay off debts
  • Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890: required the government to purchase large quantities of silver and issue paper currency backed by both gold and silver
• Silver standard
  • "Silverites," pushed for the adoption of a silver standard, which would make silver the sole basis for the nation's currency
  • This idea was opposed by "Goldbugs," who believed that the country's currency should be backed only by gold
  • The debate over the silver issue became a major political issue and was a key factor in the presidential election of 1896
• Tariff Issue
  • High tariffs → raised prices for consumers
  • Industry growing rich at the expense of rural America

6.13 Politics in the Gilded Age

Political Stalemate

• Importance of patronage + campaigning + political strategy
• Popular politics
  • Reps more on state-level + Dems in cities
  • High turnout → strong party identification and loyalty
• Party Patronage
  • Mugwumps → reps that didn’t support Patronage
• Campaign strategy → making obj for politicians was to hold onto office by offering patronage

Rise of the Populist

• Omaha Platform
  • 1892 Populist Party platform
  • Called for free coinage of silver, graduated income tax, direct election of senators, and government ownership of railroads and telegraphs

Election of 1892:

• Populist Party emerged as a political force with James B. Weaver as its presidential candidate
• Democrats nominated Grover Cleveland, who supported tariff reform and opposed free silver
• Republicans nominated Benjamin Harrison, who supported the protective tariff and opposed free silver
• Cleveland won the election, making him the only president to serve non-consecutive terms

Depression Politics

• Panic of 1893
  • Caused by overbuilding and over-speculation, resulting in a 20% unemployment rate
  • This led to the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1893, which worsened the already declining economy
• Gold Reserve Act
  • 1900 act that required gold to be the only standard for redeeming paper money
• Pullman Strike
  • 1894 nationwide railroad strike in the United States that pitted the Pullman Palace Car Company against the American Railway Union
  • The strike was broken up by federal troops, which caused a wave of riots and violence across the country
• Tariff Reform (Wilson-Gorman Triff in 1894)
  • A moderate reduction in tariff rates
  • Income tax
• Jobless on the March
  • March to Washington → Coxey’s Army → demanded gov spend $500 mil on public work programs to create jobs
  • Coin's Financial School: (William Hope Harvey)advocated for the free coinage of silver. It was widely circulated during the debates over standards

Turning Point in American Politics: 1896

Election of 1896:

• Democrats nominated William Jennings Bryan, who supported bimetallism (free silver) and ran on the slogan "Cross of Gold"
• Republicans nominated William McKinley, who favored the gold standard and had support from business interests
• Populist Party nominated Bryan as well, but the party was divided and lost its momentum
• McKinley won the election, signaling a shift towards a more conservative, pro-business government

McKinley's Presidency

• Made the US a world power
• Dingley Tariff of 1877
• Gold in Alaska
• War with Spain

Significance of Election of 1896

• Populist Demise + Modern politics + Urban dominance