5.1 Progressivism

What is Progressivism?
A collection of different ideas on how to fix the problems within America
1st step: fixing the government
Problems can be fixed by applying scientific principles

MUCKRAKERS
A name for journalists who investigated social conditions & political corruption
They raked(pulled) up ‘muck’ (dirt) on politician and society
Pressured gov’t to make reforms
Topics covered included: poverty, disease, & crime, among other things
Lost of different types of progressives
Some wanted to improve government efficiency
Commission plan: replaces gov’t – a board of commissioners hires experts to run city departments
Texas was the first state to have a city that adopted this plan

Democracy & Progressivism
Progressives wanted more democracy
1st target: elections and voter concerns
Direct primary
Robert La Follette
Party election where all members get to vote for a candidate
This is what we have now

CHANGING LEGISLATION
Initiative: group of citizens can introduce legislation
Referendum: proposed legislation has to be submitted to the voters for approval
Recall: voters can demand a special election to remove an elected official
This happened in CA when we recalled Gray Davis and elected Arnold

TACKLING SENATE CORRUPTION
Progressives proposed the direct election of state senators by voters
1912 – 17th Amendment: direct election by voters

THE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT
Suffrage movement: movement for women’s rights
1848 – 1st convention (Seneca Falls)
After the Civil war, the 14th&15th amendments protected the voting rights of African Americans.
Women wanted these A’s to apply to them as well
Republicans said no
The argument over 14&15divided them into 2 groups.
Only 4 states gave women voting rights before 1900:
Wyoming
Idaho
Utah
Colorado
NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMEN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION
Aka the NAWSA
Combined both groups
Leader: Alice Paul
Used protests
Eventually, she was booted out and started a new group, the National Women’s Party.
This group used protests and hunger strikes
1918 – woman suffrage amendment fails to pass by 2 votes
1919 –Senate passes 19th amendment
1920 – amendment ratified

SOCIAL WELFARE PROGRESSIVISM
Created charities to help the poor & disadvantaged; pushed for new laws
National Child Labor Committee: worked to end child labor
Zoning laws & building codes: regulated how land could be used and ensured that buildings were constructed safely
To improve the safety of workers’ conditions:
Workers’ Compensation - $ if you get hurt on the job
Health codes – make workplaces safer
Building codes – ensured that the place would stay up

TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT
Moderation or elimination of alcohol
Caused society’s problems: poverty, crime, unemployment
Women’s Christian Temperance Movement (1874)
Pushed for prohibition

PROGRESSIVES v Big BUSINESS
Some progressives wanted to regulate big business (large corporations) but had different ideas on how
Break up big companies
Crate gov’t agencies to regulate
Some wanted Socialism: the idea that gov’t should control all industry/business
American socialist party ran Eugene Debs for pres in 1912

4.3

TEDDY ROOSEVELT"S RISE TO POWER
In the 1900 election, President McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan by a wide margin. On September 6, 1901, Leon Czolgosz shot President McKinley, who died a few days later.
Theodore Roosevelt, McKinley’s vice president, became the youngest person to become president. Roosevelt believed the United States had a duty to shape the “less civilized” parts of the world. He wanted the United States to become a world power.

AMERICAN DIPLOMACY IN ASIA
In 1899 the United States was a major power in Asia. Between 1895 and 1900, American exports to China quadrupled.
In 1894 war began between China and Japan over what is now Korea. This ended in a Japanese victory. In the peace treaty, China gave Korea independence and Japan territory in Manchuria. The war showed that China was weaker than people had thought, and that Japan had successfully adopted Western technology.
Japan’s rising power worried Russia. They forced Japan to give back the part of Manchuria to China and later made China lease the territory to Russia. Leasing a territory meant it would still belong to China but a foreign power would have control. This leasehold became the center of a sphere of influence, an area where a foreign nation controlled economic development such as railroad and mining.
President McKinley and Secretary of State John Hay supported an Open Door policy in China. They believed all countries should be allowed to trade with China. Hay sent notes to countries with leaseholds in China asking to keep ports open to all nations. Hay expected all powers would abide by this plan.
Secret Chinese societies were organized to end foreign control. Members of the Boxers started the Boxer Rebellion. Group members invaded foreign embassies in Beijing and killed more than 200 foreigners and took others prisoner. An international force stopped the rebellion in August 1900.
Theodore Roosevelt won the Noble Peace prize in 1906 for his efforts in ending the war between Japan and Russia.
After the peace treaty between Japan and Russia, relations between the United States and Japan worsened. Each nation wanted greater influence in Asia. They agreed to respect each other’s territorial possessions, to uphold the Open Door policy, and to support China’s independence.
The Great White Fleet, 16 battleships of the new United States Navy, was sent around the world to show the country’s military strength. Visiting Japan did not help the tension that already existed.

A GROWING PRESENCE IN THE CARIBBEAN
In 1901 the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty signed by the U.S. and Great Britain gave the United States exclusive rights to build and control any proposed canal through Central America. A French company that had begun to build a canal through Panama offered to sell its rights and property in Panama to the United States. In 1903 Panama was still a part of Colombia, which refused John Hay’s offer to purchase the land and gain rights to build the canal.
Panamanians decided to declare their independence from Colombia and make their own deal with the United States to build the canal. The short uprising against Colombia was supported by the United States, which sent ships to Panama to prevent Colombia from interfering.
The United States recognized Panama’s independence, and the two nations signed a treaty to have the canal built. Construction of the 50-mile canal took ten years. It shortened the distance from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean by about 8,000 nautical miles.
The 1904 Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine stated that the United States would intervene in Latin American affairs when necessary to maintain economic and political stability in the Western Hemisphere. The corollary was first applied to the Dominican Republic when it fell behind in its debt payments to European nations. Latin American nations resented the growing American influence.
The new president of the United States, William Howard Taft, continued Roosevelt’s policies. He believed that if American business leaders supported Latin America development, everyone would benefit. His policy came to be called dollar diplomacy.

4.2

THE COMING OF WAR
Cuba, a Spanish colony, provided wealth for Spain with sugarcane plantations. In 1868 Cuban rebels declared independence and began a guerrilla attack against Spanish authorities. After the attack failed, the Cuban rebels fled to the United States to plan a new revolution. Writer and poet José Martí, an exiled leader of Cuba’s revolution, fled to New York City. He raised money from Americans and began purchasing weapons and training troops to prepare for an invasion of Cuba.
In 1894, after the United States imposed new tariffs on sugar, the economy of Cuba was devastated. Martí and his followers began a new rebellion in February of 1895. They seized control of eastern Cuba, declared its independence, and set up the Republic of Cuba in September 1895.
At the start of the Cuban revolution, Americans were neutral. But after reports in two newspapers, the New York Journal owned by William Randolph Hearst and the New York World owned by Joseph Pulitzer, Americans began to side with the rebels. The newspapers, trying to outdo each other, began to use yellow journalism by running exaggerated stories of Spanish attacks on Cubans.
The Cuban rebels attacked and destroyed American property, hoping for American intervention in the war.
The Spanish appointed General Valeriano Weyler to serve as governor. He caused the deaths of tens of thousands of Cuban villagers by sending them to reconcentration camps. This led Americans to call for intervention in the war.
The Spanish ambassador to the U.S., Enrique Dupuy de Lôme, wrote a private letter, describing President McKinley as weak and seeking admiration of Americans. The New York Journal printed the letter, causing Americans to become angry over the insult.
In February 1898, the USS Maine, anchored in Havana, Cuba, exploded, killing 266 American officers and sailors. Although no one knows why the ship exploded, many Americans blamed Spain.
President William McKinley did not want to intervene in the war, fearing it would cost the United States too many lives and hurt the economy. Within the president’s own political party, jingoism was very strong. In 1898, after much pressure, McKinley authorized Congress to declare war on Spain.

A WAR ON 2 FRONTS
The United States Navy’s North Atlantic Squadron blockaded Cuba. An American fleet in British Hong Kong was ordered to attack the Spanish fleet in the Philippines—a Spanish colony.In May 1898, Commodore George Dewey led a squadron that destroyed or captured Spanish warships in Manila Bay in the Philippines. McKinley sent 20,000 American troops to the Philippines and, along the way, seized the island of Guam—a Spanish possession in the Pacific.
The American army was untrained and unequipped. Poor conditions in training camps resulted in more Americans dying in training than in battle.
In June 1898, American troops advanced toward Santiago Harbor in Cuba. One group attacked the village of El Caney, and another group attacked San Juan Heights. Among the American troops were the “Rough Riders” led by Colonel Leonard Wood, with Theodore Roosevelt as second in command. Both attacks were American victories. Along with the Rough Riders were the all-black 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments. About one-fourth of the American troops fighting in Cuba were African American.
Along with the Rough Riders were the all-black 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments. About one-fourth of the American troops fighting in Cuba were African American.
Spanish resistance ended with the surrender of Santiago. On August 12, 1898, Spain and the United States agreed to a cease-fire.

AN AMERICAN EMPIRE
Many Americans supported annexing the Philippines because it would provide a naval base in Asia, a stopover on the way to China, a large market for American goods, and the ability to teach “less civilized” peoples.
On December 10, 1898, the United States and Spain signed the Treaty of Paris. Cuba became an independent country. The United States acquired Puerto Rico and Guam and paid Spain $20 million for the Philippines. This treaty made the United States an imperial power.
Controlling its new empire was not easy for the United States. Emilio Aguinaldo, a Filipino revolutionary, ordered his troops to attack American soldiers stationed in the Philippines. American General Arthur MacArthur was forced to set up reconcentration camps resulting in thousands of Filipinos dying.
William Howard Taft, the first U.S. civilian governor of the Philippines, introduced reforms in education, transportation, and health care to try to win over the Filipino people. These reforms slowly lessened Filipino hostility toward American rule. By April 1902, all Filipino resistance stopped. In 1946 the United States granted independence to the Philippines.
In 1900 Congress passed the Foraker Act, making Puerto Rico an unincorporated territory. Congress gradually allowed the people a degree of self-government. In 1917 Puerto Ricans were made citizens of the United States. In 1947 the island was given the right to elect its own governor. Today the debate on whether to grant Puerto Rico statehood, to become an independent country, or to continue as a Commonwealth and part of the United States still exists.
After the war, the United States set up a military government in Cuba. Steps were taken to ensure that Cuba would remain tied to the United States.
The Platt Amendment specified that
(1) Cuba could not make a treaty with another nation that would weaken its power or allow another foreign power to gain territory in Cuba;
(2) Cuba had to allow the United States to buy or lease naval stations in Cuba; (3) Cuba’s debts had to be kept low to prevent foreign countries from landing troops to enforce payment; and (4) the United States would have the right to intervene to protect Cuban independence and keep order. Cuba reluctantly accepted the Amendment. It was repealed in 1934.

4.1

Building Support For Imperialism
Beginning in the 1880s, Americans wanted the United States to become a world power. Their change in attitude was a result of economic and military competition from other nations and a growing feeling of cultural superiority.
Imperialism, the economic and political domination of a strong nation over weaker nations, was a view held by many Europeans nations as they expanded their power overseas. To protect their investments, European nations exerted control over territories where they had invested capital and sold products. Some areas became colonies while others became protectorates. In a protectorate, the imperial power allowed local rulers to remain in control while protecting them against rebellion and invasion. In return, local rulers had to accept advice from the Europeans on how to govern their country.
Americans wanted to develop overseas markets to keep the economy strong. Social Darwinists argued that as nations competed, only the strongest would survive. Americans used these ideas to justify expanding American power overseas
John Fiske, a historian and writer, wrote about “Anglo-Saxonism,” the idea that the English-speaking nations had superior character, ideas, and systems of government and were destined to dominate the planet. Josiah Strong linked missionary work to Anglo-Saxonism, convincing many Americans to support imperialism.

EXPANSION IN THE PACIFIC
Americans expanded across the Pacific Ocean and toward East Asia looking for overseas markets. Americans hoped to trade with China and Japan, but Japan only allowed trade with the Chinese and the Dutch.
In 1852 President Franklin Pierce ordered Commodore Matthew C. Perry to travel to Japan to negotiate a trade treaty. In 1854 the Japanese, impressed by American technology and power, signed a treaty opening two ports to American trade. By the 1890s, Japan had a powerful navy and had set out to build its own empire in Asia.
During an 1872 recession in Hawaii, the United States exempted Hawaiian sugar from tariffs. When the treaty later came up for renewal, the Senate insisted that Hawaii give the United States exclusive rights to a naval base at Pearl Harbor. The trade treaty led to a boom in the Hawaiian sugar industry.
The McKinley Tariff in 1890 gave subsidies to sugar producers in the United States causing the sale of Hawaiian sugar to decline. As a result, the Hawaiian economy also declined.
In 1891 Queen Liliuokalani became the queen of Hawaii. She disliked the influence of American settlers in Hawaii. In 1893 a group of planters, supported by U.S. Marines, forced the queen to give up her power after she unsuccessfully tried to impose a new constitution that reasserted her authority as ruler of the Hawaiian people. The group of planters set up a temporary government and asked the United States to annex the islands.

RELATIONS WITH LATIN AMERICA
In the 1800s, the United States wanted to increase its influence in Latin America by increasing the sale of American products in the region. Americans wanted Europeans to realize that the United States was the dominant power in the region.
Secretary of State James G. Blaine led early efforts to expand American influence in Latin America. He proposed the idea that the United States and Latin America work together in what came to be called Pan-Americanism.
In 1889 the first Pan-American conference was held in Washington, D.C. The goals of the conference were to create a customs union between Latin America and the United States, and to create a system for American nations to work out their disputes peacefully. The Latin Americans rejected both ideas.
Latin Americans agreed to create the Commercial Bureau of the American Republics, an organization that worked to promote cooperation among the nations of the Western Hemisphere. Today this organization is called the Organization of American States (OAS).

BUILDING A MODERN NAVY
Americans were willing to risk war to defend American interests overseas. This led to American support for a large modern navy.
Captain Alfred T. Mahan of the United States Navy published his lectures in a book called The Influence of Seapower Upon History, 1660–1783. The book suggested that a nation needed a large navy to protect its merchant ships and to defend its right to trade with other countries. Mahan felt it necessary to acquire territory overseas for naval bases.
Henry Cabot Lodge and Albert J. Beveridge, two powerful senators, pushed for the construction of a new navy. By the late 1890s, the United States was on its way to becoming one of the top-ranked naval powers in the world.
In the spring of 1898, war began between Spain and the United States.

3.5 Politics and Reform

Main Ideas
From 1877 to 1896, Republicans and Democrats were so evenly matched that only a few reforms were possible at the national level.
Farmers in economic crisis embraced an independent political movement called populism that emerged in the 1890s to challenge the two major parties.
In the late 1800s, Southern states passed laws that denied African Americans the right to vote and imposed segregation.

Vocabulary
populism, inflation, deflation, graduated income tax, poll tax, grandfather clause, segregation, Jim Crow laws

Reading Objectives

1. Explain why the Republicans and Democrats were so evenly matched during this period and why the People’s Party gained support.
2. Discuss how African Americans in the South were disfranchised and how segregation was legalized.

Stalemate in Washington

• Under the spoils system, or patronage, government jobs went to supporters of the winning party in an election. By the late 1870s, many Americans believed that patronage corrupted those who worked for the government. They began a movement to reform the civil service.
• President Rutherford B. Hayes attacked the practice of patronage. The “Stalwarts”—a group of Republican machine politicians who strongly opposed civil service reform—accused Hayes of backing civil service reform to create openings for his own supporters. Civil service reformers were called “Halfbreeds.”
• The Republican candidates for the election of 1880 were a Halfbreed, James Garfield for president, and the Stalwart, Chester Arthur for vice president. They won the election.
• President Garfield was assassinated a few months into his presidency.
• In 1883 Congress passed the Pendleton Act. This civil service reform act allowed the president to decide which federal jobs would be filled according to rules set up by a bipartisan Civil Service Commission. Candidates competed for federal jobs through examinations. Appointments could be made only from the list of those who took the exams. Once appointed to a job, a civil service official could not be removed for political reasons.
• A major reason that few new policies were introduced in the 1870s and 1880s was because the Democrats had control of the House of Representatives and the Republicans had the control of the Senate.
• Both the Republicans and the Democrats were well organized in the late 1800s. The presidential elections were won with narrow margins between 1876 and 1896. In 1876 and 1888, the presidential candidate lost the popular vote, but won the electoral vote and the election.
• The Republicans won four of the six presidential elections between 1876 and 1896. The Democrats controlled the House of Representatives, however, and the Senate was controlled by Republicans who did not necessarily agree with the president on issues.
• In the presidential election of 1884, Republicans remained divided over reform. Democrats nominated Governor Grover Cleveland of New York, a reformer who opposed Tammany Hall.
• Republicans nominated James G. Blaine, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives. Blaine was popular among Republican Party workers.
• A major issue in the campaign was corruption in American government. Voters focused on the morals of each candidate.
• Some Republican reformers, called “Mugwumps,” disliked Blaine so much that they left the party to support the Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland. The Mugwumps did not like Blaine’s connection with the Crédit Mobilier scandal.
• Cleveland admitted to having fathered a child ten years earlier and retained the support of the Mugwumps for his honesty.
• Blaine tried to persuade Roman Catholics to vote Republican because his mother was an Irish Catholic. His tactic failed, and Cleveland was elected president.
• Many strikes occurred during Cleveland’s administration. Small businesses and farmers became angry at railroads because they paid high rates for shipping goods, but large corporations were given rebates, or partial refunds, and lower rates for shipping goods.
• Both Democrats and Republicans believed that government should not interfere with corporations’ property rights. In 1887 a bill was signed creating the Interstate Commerce Commission. This was the first law to regulate interstate commerce.
• Many Americans wanted to do away with high tariffs because they felt that large American companies could compete internationally. They wanted Congress to cut tariffs because these taxes caused an increase in the price of manufactured goods. President Cleveland proposed lowering tariffs, but Congress was deadlocked over the issue. Tariff reduction became a major issue in the election of 1888.
• The Republican candidate in the 1888 election was Benjamin Harrison. His campaign was given large contributions by industrialists who wanted tariff protection. The Democratic candidate was Cleveland. He was against high tariff rates. Harrison won the election by winning the electoral vote, but not the popular vote.
• As a result of the election of 1888, Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress and the White House. The Republicans were able to pass legislation on issues of national concern.
• The McKinley Tariff cut tariff rates on some goods, but increased the rates of others. It lowered federal revenue and left the nation with a budget deficit.
• The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 made trusts illegal, although the courts did little to enforce the law. Businesses formed trusts and combinations at a great rate.

Populism

• In the 1890s, a political movement called Populism emerged to increase the political power of farmers and to work for legislation for farmers’ interests.
• The nation’s money supply concerned farmers. To help finance the Union in the Civil War, the government issued millions of dollars in greenbacks, or paper currency that could not be exchanged for gold or silver coins. This rapid increase in the money supply without a rapid increase in goods for sale caused inflation—a decline in the value of money. The prices of goods greatly increased.
• To get inflation under control, the federal government stopped printing greenbacks and started paying off bonds. Congress also stopped making silver into coins. As a result, the country did not have a large enough money supply to meet the needs of the growing economy. This led to deflation—or an increase in the value of money and a decrease in the general level of prices.
• Deflation forced most farmers to borrow money to plant their crops. The short supply of money caused an increase in interest rates that the farmers owed.
• Some farmers wanted more greenbacks printed to expand the money supply. Others wanted the government to mint silver coins.
• The Grange was a national farm organization founded for social and educational purposes. Grangers put their money together and created cooperatives—marketing organizations that worked to help its members. The cooperatives pooled members’ crops and held them off the market to force the prices to rise. Cooperatives could negotiate better shipping rates from railroads.
• The Grange was unable to improve the economic conditions of farmers. By the late 1870s, many farmers left the Grange and joined other organizations that offered to help them solve their problems.
• The Farmers’ Alliance was formed in 1877.
• The Alliance organized large cooperatives called exchanges for the purpose of forcing farm prices up and making loans to farmers at low interest rates. These exchanges mostly failed. Wholesalers, manufacturers, railroads, and bankers discriminated against the exchanges. The exchanges were too small to dramatically affect world prices for farm products.
• Members of the Kansas Alliance formed the People’s Party, or Populists, to push for political reforms that would help farmers solve their problems.
• In 1890 the Farmers’ Alliance issued the Ocala Demands to help farmers choose candidates in the 1890 elections. The demands included the adoption of the subtreasury plan, the free coinage of silver, an end to protective tariffs and national banks, tighter regulation of the railroads, and direct election of senators by voters.
• By early 1892, Southern members of the Alliance began to realize that Democrats were not going to keep their promises to the Alliance and they were ready to leave the Democratic Party and join the People’s Party.
• In July 1892, the People’s Party held its first national convention where it nominated James B. Weaver to run for president. The People’s Party platform called for unlimited coinage of silver, federal ownership of railroads, and a graduated income tax, one that taxes higher earnings more heavily. It also called for an eight-hour workday, restriction of immigration, and denounced the use of strikebreakers.
• Democrats nominated New Yorker Grover Cleveland for the 1892 presidential election. Cleveland won the election.
• The Panic of 1893 was caused by the bankruptcy of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroads. It resulted in the stock market crash and the closing of many banks. By 1894 the country was in a deep depression.
• President Cleveland wanted to stop the flow of gold and make it the sole basis for the country’s currency, so he had Congress repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. This caused the Democratic Party to split into the goldbugs and the silverites. Goldbugs believed the American currency should be based only on gold. Silverites believed coining silver in unlimited amounts was the answer to the nation’s economic crisis.
• The Democrats nominated William Jennings Bryan for the presidential election of 1896. He strongly supported the unlimited silver coinage. Populists also supported Bryan for president.
• The Republicans nominated William McKinley of Ohio for president. He promised workers a “full dinner pail.” Most business leaders liked McKinley because they thought the unlimited silver coinage would ruin the country’s economy.
• McKinley won the election of 1896. New gold strikes in Alaska and Canada’s Yukon Territory and in other parts of the world increased the money supply without needing to use silver. As the silver issue died out, so did the Populist Party.

The Rise of Segregation

• After Reconstruction, most African Americans were sharecroppers, or landless farmers who had to give the landlord a large share of their crops to cover their costs for rent and farming supplies.
• In 1879 Benjamin “Pap” Singleton organized a mass migration of African Americans, called Exodusters, from the rural South to Kansas.
• Some African Americans that stayed in the South formed the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance. The organization worked to help its members set up cooperatives. Many African Americans joined the Populist Party.
• Threatened by the power of the Populist Party, Democratic leaders began using racism to try to win back the poor white vote in the South. By 1890 election officials in the South began using methods to make it difficult for African Americans to vote.
• Southern states used loopholes in the Fifteenth Amendment and began to impose restrictions that barred almost all African Americans from voting.
• In 1890 Mississippi required all citizens registering to vote to pay a poll tax, which most African Americans could not afford to pay. The state also required all prospective voters to take a literacy test. Most African Americans had no education and failed the test. Other Southern states adopted similar restrictions. The number of African Americans and poor whites registered to vote fell dramatically in the South.
• To allow poor whites to vote, some Southern states had a grandfather clause in their voting restrictions. This clause allowed any man to vote if he had an ancestor on the voting rolls in 1867.
• In the late 1800s, both the North and the South discriminated against African Americans. In the South, segregation, or separation of the races, was enforced by laws known as Jim Crow laws.
• In 1883 the Supreme Court overturned the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The ruling meant that private organizations or businesses were free to practice segregation.
• Southern states passed a series of laws that enforced segregation in almost all public places.
• The Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson endorsed “separate but equal” facilities for African Americans. This ruling established the legal basis for discrimination in the South for over 50 years.
• In the late 1800s, mob violence increased in the United States, particularly in the South. Between 1890 and 1899, hundreds of lynchings—executions without proper court proceedings—took place. Most lynchings were in the South, and the victims were mostly African Americans.
• In 1892 Ida B. Wells, an African American from Tennessee, began a crusade against lynching. She wrote newspaper articles and a book denouncing lynchings and mob violence against African Americans.
• Booker T. Washington, an African American educator, urged fellow African Americans to concentrate on achieving economic goals rather than legal or political ones. He explained his views in a speech known as the Atlanta Compromise.
• The Atlanta Compromise was challenged by W.E.B. Du Bois, the leader of African American activists born after the Civil War. Du Bois said that white Southerners continued to take away the civil rights of African Americans, even though they were making progress in education and vocational training. He believed that African Americans had to demand their rights, especially voting rights, to gain full equality.

3.4 The Gilded Age

The Gilded Age

• In 1873 Mark Twain and Charles Warner co-wrote the novel, The Gilded Age.
• Refers to the time between 1870 and 1900.
• Gilded = something being gold on the outside, inside made of cheaper material.
• This was a time of growth but beneath the surface were corruption, poverty, and a huge difference between rich and poor.

Individualism

• the belief that regardless of your background, you could still rise in society.
• Horatio Alger, a minister, from Massachusetts, left the clergy and moved to New York where he wrote over 100 novels about rags-to-riches stories.

Social Darwinism

• Herbert Spencer, an English philosopher, first proposed the idea of Social Darwinism.
• Spencer took Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection and applied it to human society.
• Darwin’s theory: a species that cannot adapt to the environment will eventually die out
• Spencer felt that human society evolved through competition.
• society got better because only the fittest survived.
• Industrial leaders agreed with Social Darwinism.
• Many devout Christians and some leading scientists opposed the idea of Darwin’s conclusions.
• They rejected the theory of evolution because it went against the Bible’s account of creation.

Gospel of Wealth

• Stated that wealthy Americans were responsible and should engage in philanthropy, using great fortunes to further social progress. (giving back to the community)
• Created by Andrew Carnegie, a wealthy business leader

Popular Culture

• People had more $$ to spend on entertainment and recreation.
• The saloon acted like a community and political center for male workers.
• Amusement parks like Coney Island were built
• People started watching sports
• Vaudeville became popular. It combined animal acts, acrobats, gymnasts, and dancers in its performance.
• New music: ragtime - based on the patterns of African American music.

Reform

• 1879- Henry George- Progress and Poverty.
• challenged the ideas of Social Darwinism and laissez-faire economics.
• 1883- Lester Frank Ward’s Dynamic Sociology
• Created Reform Darwinism
• cooperation and not competition caused people to succeed.
• He wanted government to become more involved in solving societal problems.
• Naturalism - writers criticized industrial society.
• They suggested that some people failed in life due to circumstances they could not control.

• Social Gospel movement - used the ideals of charity and justice to help the urban poor.
• wanted to apply “Christian Law” to social problems.
• believed that competition was the cause of many social problems. This led to many
• Churches offered gyms, social programs, and daycare.
• Eventually led to an organization known as the Salvation Army.

• YMCA: tried to help industrial workers and urban poor through Bible studies, prayer meetings, citizenship training, and group activities.
• Dwight L. Moody - president of the Chicago YMCA.
• against Social Gospel and Social Darwinism.
• He felt the way to help the poor was by redeeming their souls, not by giving them services.

• Settlement house movement: it’s a Christian duty to improve the living conditions of the poor.
• Jane Addams set up settlement houses in poor neighborhoods. Addams opened Hull House in 1889 and inspired many others.
• Medical care, recreation programs, and English classes were provided at settlement houses.

Education

• New industry needed trained workers, so schooling became important
• Americanization, or becoming knowledgeable about American culture, was key to the success of immigrant children.
• Booker T. Washington led the crusade to formed the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in 1881 to provide an education for African Americans
• The number of colleges increased
• Morrill Land Grant Act - gave federal land grants to states to build agricultural and mechanical colleges
• The number of women’s colleges also increased.
• Free libraries provided education to city dwellers.
• Andrew Carnegie donated millions toward the construction of libraries.

3.3 Immigration and Urbanization

Main Idea
After the Civil War, millions of immigrants from Europe and Asia settled in the United States.
During the three decades following the Civil War, the United States transformed rapidly from a rural nation to a more urban one.

Vocabulary
nativism, tenement, political machine, graft

Reading Objectives

1. Analyze the effects of immigration on national policy.
2. Evaluate the changes that cities experienced because of the increased population.

Immigration

• By 1900, eastern and southern Europeans made up more than half of all immigrants. Of the 14 million immigrants who arrived between 1860 and 1900, many were European Jews. America offered immigrants employment, few immigration restrictions, avoidance of military service, religious freedom, and the chance to move up the social ladder.
• Most immigrants took the difficult trip to America in steerage, the least expensive accommodations on a steamship. The 14-day trip usually ended at Ellis Island, a small island in New York Harbor. It served as a processing center for most immigrants arriving on the East Coast after 1892.
• Most immigrants passed through Ellis Island in a day. However, some faced the possibility of being separated from family and possibly sent back to Europe due to health problems.
• Most immigrants settled in cities. They lived in neighborhoods that were separated into ethnic groups. Here they duplicated many of the comforts of their homelands, including language and religion.
• Immigrants who learned English, adapted to American culture, had marketable skills or money, or if they settled among members of their own ethnic group tended to adjust well to living in the United States.
• Severe unemployment, poverty, and famine in China; the discovery of gold in California; the Taiping Rebellion in China; and the demand for railroad workers in the United States led to an increase in Chinese immigration to the United States in the mid-1800s.
• In Western cities, Chinese immigrants worked as laborers, servants, skilled tradesmen, and merchants. Some opened their own laundries.
• Between 1900 and 1908, Japanese immigration to the United States drastically increased as Japan began to build an industrial economy and an empire.
• In 1910 a barracks was opened on Angel Island in California. Here, Asian immigrants, mostly young men and boys, waited sometimes for months for the results of immigration hearings.
• The increase in immigration led to nativism, a preference for native-born people and the desire to limit immigration. Earlier, in the 1840s and 1850s, nativism was directed towards the Irish. In the early 1900s, it was the Asian, Jews, and eastern Europeans that were the focus of nativism.
• Nativism led to the forming of two anti-immigrant groups. The American Protective Association was founded in 1887. The party’s founder, Henry Bowers, disliked Catholicism. He wanted to stop Catholic immigration. In the 1870s, Denis Kearny, an Irish immigrant, organized the Workingman’s Party of California. This group wanted to stop Chinese immigration. Racial violence resulted.
• In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act that barred Chinese immigration for 10 years and prevented the Chinese already in America from becoming citizens. This act was renewed by Congress in 1892, made permanent in 1902, and not repealed until 1943.

Urbanization

• The urban population of the United States grew from about 10 million in 1870 to over 30 million by 1900.
• Immigrants remained in the cities, where they worked long hours for little pay. Still, most immigrants felt their standard of living had improved in the United States.
• Farmers began moving to cities because of better paying jobs, electricity, running water, plumbing, and entertainment.
• Housing and transportation needs changed due to the increase in the amount of people living in cities.
• As the price of land increased, building owners began to build up. Skyscrapers, tall steel frame buildings, were constructed for this reason.
• In the late 1800s, various kinds of mass transit developed to move large numbers of people around cities quickly. Beginning with the horsecar, and later to the more sophisticated electric trolley cars and elevated railroads, engineers created ways to move the ever-expanding population around the city.
• Definite boundaries could be seen between where the wealthy, middle class, and working class people lived.
• Wealthy families lived in the heart of the city where they constructed elaborate homes.
• The middle class, which included doctors, lawyers, engineers, and teachers, tended to live away from the city.
• The majority of urban dwellers were part of the working class who lived in city tenements, or dark and crowded multi-family apartments.
• The growth of cities resulted in an increase in crime, fire, disease, and pollution. From 1880 to 1900, there was a large increase in the murder rate. Native-born Americans blamed immigrants for the increase in crime.
• Alcohol contributed to crime in the late 1800s.
• Contaminated drinking water from improper sewage disposal resulted in epidemics of typhoid fever and cholera.
• A new political system was needed to cope with the new urban problems. The political machine, an informal political group designed to gain and keep power, provided essentials to city dwellers in exchange for votes. Party bosses ran the political machines.
• The party bosses had tight control of the city’s money. Many of the politicians became wealthy due to fraud or graft—getting money through dishonest or questionable means.
• The most famous New York Democratic political machine was Tammany Hall. During the 1860s and 1870s, Tammany Hall’s boss was William M. Tweed. Tweed’s corruption sent him to prison in 1874.
• Opponents of political machines, such as Thomas Nast, blasted bosses for their corruption. Defenders, though, thought machines supplied necessary services and helped to assimilate the masses of new city dwellers.

3.2 Industrialization

The Railroads

• After the Civil War, railroad construction expanded.
• Pacific Railway Act: the construction of a transcontinental railroad by the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroad companies; completed on May 10, 1869.
• Railroads encouraged the growth of industry. They linked the nation and increased the size of markets.
• The railroad industry stimulated the economy by spending large amounts of money on steel, coal, and timber.
• In the early 1800s, most railways served only local needs, resulting in many unconnected rail lines. Eastern capitalists wanted to create a single rail transit system from the many smaller railroads.
• Eventually seven systems controlled most of the railroad traffic.
• 1883: rail service became safer and more reliable when the American Railway Association divided the country into four time zones, or regions.
• Why did the railroads need to standardize time across the country?
• Big connected railroad systems increased efficiency, decreased time spent in travel, and united Americans from different regions.
• The gov’t gave land grants to railroad companies to encourage railroad construction.
• Railroad companies like the Union Pacific and Central Pacific were able to cover all their building costs by selling the land to settlers, real estate agencies, and other businesses.

Railroads and Business

• The wealth of railroad entrepreneurs led to accusations that they had got their wealth illegally. Bribery was common.
• Not all railroad entrepreneurs were corrupt.
• James J. Hill: built the Great Northern Railroad without any federal help. It became the most successful transcontinental railroad and the only one not to go bankrupt.

The Rise of Big Business

• By 1900 big business dominated the economy of the United States.
• Corporation: an organization owned by many people but treated by law as a single person.
• Stockholders, the people who own the corporation, own shares of ownership called stock. Issuing stock allows a corporation to raise large sums of money and spreads out the financial risk.
• corporations invest the stock money in new technologies to increase their efficiency.
• Big corporations had an advantage over small manufacturing companies.
• Big corporations could produce cheaply and continue to operate, even in poor economic times, by cutting prices to increase sales.
• Many small businesses with high operating costs were forced out of business.
• Andrew Carnegie began vertical integration of the steel industry.
• A vertically integrated company owns all the different businesses it depends on for its operation.
• saves money but also makes the big company bigger.
• Business leaders also pushed for horizontal integration - combining many firms doing the same type of business into one large corporation.

Monopolies and Trusts

• Monopoly: when one company gains control of an entire market.
• In the late 1800s, Americans became suspicious of large corporations and feared monopolies.
• Many states made it illegal for a company to own stock in another company without permission from the state legislature.
• 1882: Standard Oil formed the first trust, which merged businesses without violating laws against owning other companies.
• A trust allows a person to manage another person’s property.
• holding company: doesn’t produce anything itself. It owned the stock of companies that did produce goods.
• The holding company controlled all the companies it owned, merging them all into one large enterprise.

The Workers

• Workers in industrial America faced monotonous work, dangerous working conditions, and an uneven division of income between the wealthy and the working class.
• Many thought that the only way to fix it was to form unions

Marxism

• The ideas of Karl Marx
• popular in Europe.
• The struggle between the workers and the owners shaped society.
• He believed the workers would revolt and gain control.
• a socialist society would be created in which the wealth was evenly divided, and classes would no longer exist.
• Tens of thousands of immigrants arrived in the United States. People began to associate Marxism with immigrants.
• They became suspicious of unions as well.

Unions

• Employers opposed industrial unions, which united all craft workers and common laborers in a particular industry.
• To prevent unions from forming, companies would have workers take oaths or sign contracts promising not to join a union. They would also hire detectives to identify union organizers.
• Workers attempted to create large unions, but rarely succeeded.
• confrontations between owners and government ended in violence.
• If a union was formed, companies used a lockout to break it.
• Workers went without pay and were locked out of the property.
• If the union did strike, employers would hire replacement workers called strikebreakers.
• Workers who organized a union or strike were fired and put on a blacklist—a list of troublemakers.
• Once blacklisted, a worker could get a job only by changing trade, residence, or his or her name.
• 1886: delegates from over 20 trade unions organized the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
• The AFL’s first leader was Samuel Gompers. Gompers wanted to keep unions out of politics and to fight for small gains such as higher wages and better working conditions.
• The AFL had three goals:

1. to get companies to recognize unions and agree to collective bargaining;
2. to push for closed shops, where companies could only hire union members;
3. to promote an eight-hour workday

Women in the Workplace

• By 1900: more than 18% of the labor force.
• Women worked as domestic servants, teachers, nurses, sales clerks, and secretaries.
• Women were paid less than men. It was felt that men needed a higher wage because they needed to support a family.
• Most unions excluded women.

3.1 Settling the West

Main Ideas
Miners seeking to strike it rich settled large areas of the West.
Ranchers built vast cattle ranches on the Great Plains, while settlers staked out homesteads and began farming the region.
The settlement of the West dramatically altered the way of life of the Plains Indians.

Vocabulary
placer mining, quartz mining, vigilance committee, open range, long drive, homestead, assimilate

Reading Objectives

1. Trace the growth of the mining industry and big ranches in the West.
2. Explain how and why people began settling the Great Plains.
3. Summarize problems caused by attempts to assimilate Native Americans.

Growth of the Mining Industry

• The growing industries in the East needed the West’s rich deposits of gold, silver, and copper. These deposits brought settlers to the West’s mountain states.
• Prospectors used simple equipment like picks, shovels, and pans to mine the shallow deposits of ore by hand. This process is known as placer mining. Corporations dug deep beneath the surface to mine the deposits of ore in a process known as quartz mining.
• In 1859 prospector Henry Comstock staked a claim for a silver mine in Six-Mile Canyon, Nevada. This caused Virginia City, Nevada, to go from an outpost to a boomtown almost overnight. Several years later, the mines ran out of silver and the boomtown became a ghost town. The cycle of boom and bust was repeated throughout the mountainous West.
• During boom times, crime was a serious problem. Vigilance committees formed to track down and punish wrongdoers.
• Mining helped the growth of Colorado, the Dakota Territory, and Montana. Mining in Colorado spurred the building of railroads through the Rocky Mountains. Denver became the supply point for the mining areas and the second largest city in the West after San Francisco.

Ranching and Farming the Plains

• The Great Plains region extends westward to the Rocky Mountains from around the 100th meridian—an imaginary line running north and south from the central Dakotas through western Texas.
• After the Civil War, many Americans began building large cattle ranches on the Great Plains. The Texas longhorn was a breed of cattle that could survive the harsh climate of the plains.
• The cattle ranching industry grew in part because of the open range—vast areas of grasslands owned by the federal government. Cattle raisers could graze their herds free of charge and without boundaries.
• During the Civil War, large numbers of eastern cattle were slaughtered to feed the Union and Confederate armies. After the war, beef prices soared. This made it worthwhile to round up the longhorns.
• The first long drive in 1866 across the Great Plains to the railroad in Sedalia, Missouri, proved that cattle could be driven north to the rail lines and sold for 10 times the price they could get in Texas.
• Railroads provided easy access to the Great Plains. Railroad companies sold land along the rail lines at low prices and provided credit.
• The federal government helped settle the Great Plains by passing the Homestead Act in 1862. For $10, a settler could file for a homestead, or a tract of public land available for settlement. The homesteader could get up to 160 acres of public land and could receive title of it after living there five years.
• Settlers on the Plains found life very difficult. The environment was harsh, with summer temperatures soaring over 100°F and winter bringing blizzards and extreme cold. Prairie fires and swarms of grasshoppers were a danger and a threat.
• By the 1860s, farmers on the Great Plains were using newly designed steel plows, seed drills, reapers, and threshing machines. These machines made dry farming possible. Farmers could work large tracts of land with the machines.
• Wheat withstood drought better than other crops, so it became the most important crop on the Great Plains. Wheat farmers from Minnesota and other Midwestern states moved to the Great Plains in large numbers to take advantage of the inexpensive land and the new farming technology. The Wheat Belt began at the eastern edge of the Great Plains and included much of the Dakotas and the western parts of Nebraska and Kansas.
• Wheat withstood drought better than other crops, so it became the most important crop on the Great Plains. Wheat farmers from Minnesota and other Midwestern states moved to the Great Plains in large numbers to take advantage of the inexpensive land and the new farming technology. The Wheat Belt began at the eastern edge of the Great Plains and included much of the Dakotas and the western parts of Nebraska and Kansas.
• Several events caused Great Plains farmers to fall on hard times. In the 1890s, a glut of wheat caused prices to drop. Some farmers lost their land because they could not repay bank loans they had taken out. A prolonged drought that began in the 1880s forced many farmers to return to the East.

Native Americans

• Some Native American nations of the Great Plains lived in communities and farmed and hunted. Most Native Americans of the Great Plains were nomads who moved from place to place in search of food. They followed the herds of buffalo.
• Native American groups of the Great Plains had several things in common. They lived in extended family networks and had a close relationship with nature. They were divided into bands with a governing council. Most Native American groups practiced a religion based on a belief in the spiritual power of the natural world.
• Native Americans had been under pressure for years from advancing white settlement. In 1862 the Sioux in Minnesota launched a major uprising.
• In 1867 Congress formed an Indian Peace Commission, which proposed creating two large reservations on the Plains. The Bureau of Indian Affairs would run the reservations. The U.S. army would deal with any groups that did not report to or remain on the reservations.
• This plan was doomed to failure. Signing treaties did not ensure that the government or Native Americans would abide by their terms.
• By the 1870s, buffalo were rapidly disappearing. By 1889 very few buffalo remained. The buffalo were killed by migrants crossing the Great Plains, professional buffalo hunters who wanted their hides, sharpshooters hired by railroads, and hunters who killed them for sport.
• Many Native Americans left their reservations to hunt buffalo on the open plains. In addition, when American settlers violated the treaties, the Native Americans saw no reason to abide by them.
• At the Lakota Sioux reservation in 1890, the Lakota were ordered by a government agent to stop the Ghost Dance—a ritual that was celebrating the hope that the whites would disappear, the buffalo would return, and Native Americans would reunite with their ancestors. The dancers fled the reservation and were chased by the U.S. troops to Wounded Knee Creek. Many Lakota were killed. This was the final Native American resistance to federal authority.
• Some Americans had opposed the treatment of Native Americans. Some people thought that the situation between whites and Native Americans could be improved if Native Americans could assimilate, or be absorbed into American society as landowners and citizens. This included breaking up reservations into individual allotments, where Native Americans would live in families and support themselves. This became the policy when Congress passed the Dawes Act in 1887.
• The Dawes Act was a failure. Few Native Americans had the training or enthusiasm for farming or ranching. They found the allotments too small to be profitable. Few Native Americans were willing or able to adopt the American settlers’ lifestyles in place of their own culture.