History Ch. 21

  • The chapter introduction relates the story of the "World's Columbian Exposition" to make the point that American society and the world had been transformed by the industrial revolution.

  • The world created at the Columbian Exposition was indeed illusory; in fact, events in America at that time revealed, the political system in America was ill-equipped to cope with the economic and social revolutions that were reshaping the country.

  • The pattern of late-nineteenth-century politics included strong party loyalty.

  • "Bloody shirts" -each side blamed the other for the Civil War.

  • Pendleton Act 1883—reform of civil service, response to Garfields assassination, established civil service merit standards and procedures for government jobs.

    McKinley Tariff

  • Republicans tended to support a program of active federal support for economic growth, including high tariffs

  • On the tariff issue, Republicans supported high protective tariffs; on the money question, debtors and farmers sought the inflationary consequences of printing greenbacks.

  • Hayes was the first of the “Ohio dynasty” (1876)

  • ended reconstruction and pursued civil service reform

  • Chester Arthur, Vice President becomes president after Garfield

  • creation of the interstate commerce commission in 1887

  • created in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Munn v. Illinois and set an important precedent in establishing a right for government to regulate private corporations.

  • The most innovative proposal of the Ocala Demands came from Charles Macune.
    His "subtreasury system" would have required a system of government warehouses for crop storage until prices rose.

  • Farmer frustrations that fueled the rise of the People's Party included debt, a credit crunch, and resentment against railroads and eastern banking interests.

  • In the years surrounding 1890, an innovative program of self-help spearheaded by the Southern Alliance movement flourished, though on the whole the effort, known as "coopertives," failed.

  • Cleveland and the Democrats won the White House and both houses

  • As a result of the depression of 1893, new attitudes toward poverty and government responsibility emerged

  • "Free Silver” meant, the U.S. government would promote prosperity by inflating the money supply through minting all the silver offered to it.

  • Free silver was a monetary scheme; it was also a symbolic protest of the agricultural south and west against the commercial Northeast.

  • The most important issue in the 1896 presidential campaign was the money question

  • Disenfranchisement of African Americans also targeted poor whites who might break party ranks.

  • The “little green ballot” referred to by Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute, was earnings