NM

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