Download Unit 7: Ch. 23 Unit 7: Ch. 23

The “Bloody
“Bloody Shirt”
Shirt” Elects Grant
Unit 7: Ch. 23 - 26
Chapter 23
Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age
Rep. nominated CW hero Gen. U. S. Grant, who had no political experience.
• Rep. barely elected Grant by “waving the bloody shirt,” or recalling
CW victories & his popularity. Dem. Seymour didn’t accept a
redemptionredemption-ofof-greenbacksgreenbacks-forfor-maximummaximum-value platform, and thus
doomed his party.
• This close election, taught Rep. not to take future victories for granted
The Era of Good Stealings
1. As population rose sharply(immigration) so did corruption.
• Railroad promoters cheated gullible bond buyers customers.
• StockStock-market investors manipulated market w/ speculation.
• Too many judges & legislators took bribes & paypay-offs.
2. Two notorious millionaires were Jim Fisk and Jay Gould.
• 1869, they plotted to control gold market, but had to get treasury to
stop selling gold. They worked Pres. Grant & his brotherbrother-inin-law, but
their plan failed when the treasury sold gold.
3. Tammany Hall (political machine) of NYC, led by “Boss” Tweed,
used bribery, graft, & fake elections to steal $200 million from NYC.
•
•
•
Tweed finally caught when The New York Times secured evidence of
misdeeds & printed them in face of $5 million bribe.
Samuel J. Tilden led the prosecution of Tweed & later used fame to
become Democratic nominee in the presidential election of 1876.
Thomas Nast, political cartoonist, constantly drew against Tammany’s
corruption.
A Carnival of Corruption
1. Grant failed to see corruption; his friends wanted offices, his cabinet
was corrupt, & his inin-laws, the Dent family, were on public payrolls.
2. Credit Moblier, a railroad construction company created by Union
Pacific railroad stock holders that who paid themselves inflated
prices for small railroad construction.
•
NY newspaper busted CM & 2 members of Congress were formally
censured (took CB stock) & VP himself was shown to have accepted 20
shares of stock.
1
1. What do you see?
2. Describe what is going
on.
3. What to you think the
artist is trying to say?
4. How does this help to
bring down “Boss”
Tweed?
3. 1875, the Whiskey Ring had robbed Treasury of millions of dollars,
& when Grant’s private secretary was shown to be one of the
criminals, Grant retracted statement of “Let no guilty man escape.”
•
1876, Sec. of War Belknap pocketed $24k by selling junk to Indians.
The Liberal Republican Revolt of 1872
1. By 1872, rising disgust w/ Grant’s administration caused reformers to
organize the Liberal Republican Party & nominate Horace Greeley.
•
Dem. Party also supported Greeley, even though he had blasted them
repeatedly in his newspaper (the New York Tribune), but he pleased
them because he called for a clasping of hands between the N & S and
an end to Reconstruction.
2. Campaign filled w/ mudslinging, still, Grant crushed Greeley in the
electoral and popular vote was well.
3. 1872, Republican Congress passed a general amnesty act that
removed political disabilities from all but some 500 former
Confederate leaders.
Depression, Deflation, and Inflation
1. Panic of 1873, too many railroads & factories & over
over--loaning by banks
to those projects. (over(over-speculation & tootoo-easy credit)
•
•
•
1st, failure of NY banking firm Jay Cooke & Company, a financier of CW.
Greenbacks issued in CW were being recalled, but during panic, “cheap“cheapmoney” supporters wanted greenbacks printed again, for inflation
Supporters of “hard“hard-money” (gold & silver) got Grant to veto a bill to
print more paper money & Resumption Act of 1875 pledged gov’t to
further w/draw greenbacks & redeem bill for gold at face value, in 1879.
2. Debtors wanted more silver used but Grant refused to coin silver
dollars, stopped in 1873 & silver discoveries shot down price of silver.
•
Greenbacks regained value, few exchanged bills for gold on Redemption
Day in 1879.
3. 1878, BlandBland-Allison Act instructed Treasury to buy & coin between
$2 m & $4 m worth of silver bullion each month; ineffective.
4. Rep. hardhard-money policy led to election of a Democratic House of Rep.
in 1874 & spawned the Greenback Labor Party in 1878.
Pallid Politics in the Gilded Age
1. “The Gilded Age,” coined by Mark Twain - times looked good, yet there
were problems. Times filled w/ corruption & presidential election
squeakers, & even though Dems & Reps had similar ideas on economic
issues, there were fundamental differences.
•
•
•
•
Republicans linked to Puritanism.
Democrats similar to Lutherans & Roman Catholics.
Democrats had strong support in the South.
Republicans had strong votes in North & West, and from the Grand
Army of the Republic (G.A.R.), former Union veterans.
2. 1870s & 1880s, Republican infighting was led by rivals Roscoe Conkling
(Stalwarts) and James G. Blaine (Half(Half-Breeds), who bickered and
deadlocked their party.
The HayesHayes-Tilden Standoff, 1876
1. Grant derailed by the House to run for 3rd term, so, Rep. nominated
Rutherford B. Hayes, “Great Unknown,” & Dems ran Samuel Tilden.
•
•
Election very close, Tilden got 184 votes of 185 needed in Electoral College,
but votes in 4 states, LA, SC, FL, & part of OR, were unsure and disputed.
Disputed states sent in 2 sets of returns, one Democrat, one Republican.
2
The Birth of Jim Crow in the PostPost-Reconstruction South
1. Reconstruction ended & military left south, whites reasserted power.
•
•
Literacy requirements for voting began, voter registration laws emerged, &
poll taxes began. All targeted at black voters.
Most blacks became sharecroppers (provided nothing but labor) or tenant
farmers (had to provide their own tools).
2. 1896, Supreme Court ruled on Plessy v. Ferguson that “separate but
equal” facilities were constitutional. “Jim Crow” segregation legalized.
Class Conflicts and Ethnic Clashes
1. 1877, 4 largest railroads cut wages by 10%. Workers began work
stoppages & when Pres. Hayes sent troops in, violence erupted, & 100+
people died.
2. Failure of railroad strike showed weakness of labor movement, but
partly caused by friction between races, mostly Irish & Chinese.
3. San Francisco, Irish
Irish--born Denis Kearney incited his followers to
terrorize Chinese.
4. 1879, Congress passed a bill severely restricting immigration of Chinese.
Hayes vetoed bill, said it violated an existing treaty w/ China.
•
After Hayes, Chinese Exclusion Act, passed in 1882, barring any Chinese
from entering the US—
US—first law limiting immigration.
The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction
1. Electoral Count Act of 1877, set up an electoral commission
that consisted of 15 men from Senate, House, & the Supreme
Court, which would count the votes.
2. Feb. of 1877, Senate & House met to settle dispute, &
eventually, Hayes became president as a part of the rest of the
Compromise of 1877. True to a compromise, both sides won:
•
•
•
North - Hayes president if he agreed to remove troops from last
2 Southern states (LA & SC), also, a bill to subsidize Texas &
Pacific rail lines.
South - military rule & Reconstruction ended when military
pulled out of the South.
Compromise of 1877 abandoned Blacks in South by
withdrawing troops, & their last attempt at protection of Black
rights was the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which was mostly
declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the 1883
Civil Rights cases.
3
The Pendleton Act of 1883
CivilCivil-service reform established a merit system of making
appointments to office rather than “pull” or spoils system.
•
•
•
Set up Civil Service Commission, administered open competitive
service & offices not “classified” by the president remained the
foughtfought-over footballs of politics.
Arthur cooperated, & by 1884, classified nearly 10% of all federal
offices, or nearly 14k of them.
Partially divided politics from patronage, but it drove politicians into
“marriages of convenience” w/ business leaders.
The BlaineBlaine-Cleveland Mudslingers of 1884
1. Mugwumps - Rep reformers switched to Dem Party because of James G.
Blaine became Republican candidate
2. Dems chose Cleveland for Pres. but shocked when it was revealed that he
might have been the father of an illegitimate child.
• Campaign of 1884 saw the lowest mudslinging in history.
• Election depended on NY, but unfortunately, one foolish Republican
insulted the race, faith, & patriotism of NY’s heavy Irish population,
as a result, NY voted for Cleveland; & that was the difference.
The Drumbeat of Discontent
Populist Party emerged in 1892 from disgruntled farmers.
• Wanted: inflation via coinage of silver, graduated income tax, gov’t
regulation of RR & telegraphs/telephones, direct elections of U.S. senators, a
1 term limit, initiative & referendum, shorter workday & restrict immigration
Cleveland and Depression
1. Depression of 1893 was 1st panic in new urban & industrial age & completed
the almost predictable, 2020-year cycle of panics during the 1800s
2. About 8k business houses collapsed in 6 mo. & dozens of RR lines went into
the hands of receivers.
• Cleveland now had a deficit, & according to law Treasury had to issue
gold for the notes it had paid in the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, thus
causing a steady drain on gold in the Treasury—
Treasury—the level dropped below
$100 m at one point.
3. Cleveland had malignant growth removed; had he died, Adlai E. Stevenson, a
“soft money” man, would have caused massive chaos with inflation.
4. Cleveland used his executive power to break Bryan’s “free silver” filibuster
in the Senate—
Senate—thus alienating the silversilver-supporting Democrats.
“Old Grover” Takes Over
1. Grover Cleveland, 1st Dem president since Buchanan & a supporter of
laissezlaissez-faire capitalism
2. Cleveland named 2 former Confederates to his cabinet & at 1st tried to
adhere to merit system but eventually fired almost 2/3 of the 120k
federal employees), but he had his problems.
• Military pensions; given to CW veterans, also used fraudulently to
give money to all sorts of people.
• BUT, Cleveland vetoed a bill to add new people to pension list.
3. 1881, Treasury had surplus $, most came from high tariffs, & a push for
lowering the tariff; big industrialists opposed it.
4. Cleveland researched it & became inclined to lower the tariff, late 1887,
he openly tossed the appeal for lower tariffs into the lap of Congress.
• Dems were upset while Reps gloated at his apparently reckless act.
The Billion Dollar Congress
1. New Speaker, Reed, worked to obtain a quorum in Congress, counted
Dems present who didn’t answer the roll call, & after 3 days, he opened
the “Billion Dollar” Congress—
Congress—legislated many expensive projects.
Cleveland Breeds a Backlash
1. Cleveland was embarrassed at having to resort to J.P. Morgan
to bale out the depression.
2. He was also embarrassed by the WilsonWilson-Gorman Tariff. He’d
promised to lower the tariff, but so many tacktack-ons had been
added, the
result was nill.
• Further, the Supreme Court struck down an income tax. It
looked like all politicians were tools of the wealthy.
4
Spanning the Continent with Rails
Chapter 24:
Industry Comes of Age
The Iron Colt Becomes an Iron Horse
1. After Civil War, railroad production grew from 35k mi.
of track in 1865 to 192,556 mi. of track in 1900.
» Congress gave 1 sq. mile land blocks to RR companies totaling
155,504,994 acres.
– 1887 Cleveland stopped practice of withholding land for
other uses until RR companies found the best route.
2. RRs gave land their value; towns w/ RRs became cities
while those w/o railroads sank into ghost towns.
1. Once South seceded, Congress commissioned Union Pacific
Railroad (UPR) to move westward from Omaha, NE, to CA in 1862.
• UPR received huge sums of money & land to lay its tracks, but
corruption also plagued it; Credit Mobilier reaped $23 m. profits
• Irishmen, might lay as much as 10 miles a day.
• When Indians attacked to save their land, & scores of workers
fought back & both workers & Indians died.
2. In CA, Central Pacific Railroad (CPR) charged w/ building
eastward, & it was backed by the Big 4: including Leland Stanford,
the exex-governor of California who had useful political connections,
and Collis P. Huntington, an adept lobbyist.
• The Central Pacific used Chinese workers, and received the
same incentives as the Union Pacific, but it had to drill through
the hard rock of the Sierra Nevada.
3. 1869, transcontinental rail line completed at Promontory Point
near Ogden, UT; UPR laid 1,086 mi. of track & CPR laid 689 mi.
Binding the Country with Railroad Ties
Revolution by Railways
1. Before 1900, 4 other transcontinental railroads were built:
1. RR connected the nation, generated a huge market & lots of jobs, helped
the rapid industrialization of America, and stimulated mining &
agriculture in West by bringing people & supplies to & from the areas
where such work occurred.
2. RRs helped people settle in the harsh Great Plains.
3. RRs created the 4 national time zones on Nov. 18, 1883.
4. RRs were also the makers of millionaires & the millionaire class.
•
•
•
•
Northern Pacific Railroad, 1883, from Great Lakes to WA.
Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe, 1884, SW deserts.
Southern Pacific, 1884, New Orleans to San Francisco.
Great Northern ran from MN to Seattle & built by James J. Hill.
2. Many pioneers over-invested on land & banks that supported this
often went bankrupt when land wasn’t as valuable as speculated.
Corruption & Wrongdoing in Railroading
Railroad Consolidation and Mechanization
1. Older eastern RR, NY Central, headed by Vanderbilt, often
financed western railroads.
2. RR advancements: steel rails, the Westinghouse air
brake increased safety, the Pullman Palace Cars were
luxurious passenger cars, telegraphs, double-racking, & block
signals.
• Nevertheless, train accidents were common, as well as death.
1. Credit Mobilier
2. Jay Gould embezzled millions of $ in RR companies stocks; UPR.
3. “Stock watering,” RR companies overover-inflating worth of their stock & sold
them at huge profits.
4. RR owners abused the public, bribed judges & legislatures, employed
lobbyists, elected RR men to political office, gave rebates to wealthy, &
used free passes to gain favor in the press
5. RR giants began entering into defensive alliances to show profits, & began
the 1st “pools” or trusts. A pool (“cartel”) is a group of competitors who
agree to work together, usually to set prices.
5
Government Bridles the Iron Horse
1. The Grange formed by farmers to combat RR corruption
2. State efforts to stop RR monopolies stopped when Supreme Court ruled in
the Wabash case that states could not regulate interstate commerce.
3. Interstate Commerce Act, 1887, banned rebates & pools, required RRs to
publish rates, forbade unfair discrimination against shippers, banned
charging more on short hauls than for a long one, & set up Interstate
Commerce Commission (ICC) to enforce this.
4. Act not a victory against corporate wealth, they could use the act to their
advantage, but it represented the 1st attempt by Congress to regulate
businesses for society’s interest.
1. 1876, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.
2. Thomas Edison, was the most versatile inventor, who, while best known
for his electric light bulb, also cranked out scores of other inventions.
The Trust Titan Emerges
1. Industry giants used various ways to eliminate competition &
maximize profits, became known for trusts & giant, monopolistic
corporations.
•
Carnegie used “vertical integration,” he bought out &
controlled all aspects of an industry.
•
Rockefeller, mastered “horizontal integration,” allied w/ or
bought out competitors to monopolize a given market. He used
this method to form Standard Oil and control oil industry.
•
J.P. Morgan also placed his own men on the boards of directors
of other rival competitors to gain influence there and reduce
competition, a process called “interlocking directorates.”
Miracles of Mechanization
1. 1860, U.S. 4th largest manufacturer in the world, by 1894, #1, WHY?
•
•
•
•
•
Now-abundant liquid capital.
Fully exploited natural resources (like coal, oil, and iron)
Massive immigration made labor cheap.
US ingenuity played a vital role, like mass production (Eli Whitney) were
being refined & perfected.
Inventions: cash register, stock ticker, typewriter, refrigerated car, electric
dynamo, & electric railway, which displaced animal-drawn cars.
The Supremacy of Steel
Rockefeller Grows an American Beauty Rose
1. 1900, US produced as much steel as England & Germany combined.
2. This due to invention of the Bessemer process made steelsteel-making cheaper
& more effective:
1. 1859, a man named Drake first used oil to get money, & by the
1870s, kerosene, was used to light lamps all over the nation.
2. By 1885, 250k of Edison’s electric light bulbs were in use, & the
electric industry soon rendered kerosene obsolete, just as kerosene
had made whale oil obsolete.
3. Oil was just beginning w/ gasolinegasoline-burning internal combustion
engine.
4. Rockefeller, ruthless & merciless, organized Standard Oil Co. of
Ohio in 1882 (5 yrs earlier, he had already controlled 95% of all the
oil refineries in the country).
5. Rockefeller crushed weaker competitors—
competitors—part of the natural
process according to him—
him—but his company did produce superior
oil at a cheaper price.
6. Other trusts, which also generally made better products at cheaper
prices, emerged, such as the meat industry of Gustavus F. Swift and
Philip Armour.
•
•
Cold air blown on redred-hot iron burned carbon deposits & purified it.
US was 1 of a few nations that had a lot of coal, iron, & other essential
ingredients for steel making, & quickly became #1.
Carnegie and Other Sultans of Steel
1. Carnegie started poor, but by working hard, assuming responsibility, &
charming influential people, he worked his way up to wealth.
2. He was not a man who liked trusts; still, by 1900, he was producing 1/4 of
the nation’s Bessemer steel, & getting $25 million a year.
3. JP Morgan, now ready to step into steel tubing industry, but Carnegie
threatened to ruin him, so after negotiations, Morgan bought Carnegie’s
entire business at $400 million.
4. Carnegie, fearing ridicule for possessing so much money, spent the rest of
his life donating $350 m of it to charity, pensions, & libraries.
•
Morgan took Carnegie’s holdings, added others, & launched the US Steel
billion-dollar corporation (it was
Corporation in 1901, became world’s 1st billioncapitalized at $1.4 billion).
6
The Gospel of Wealth
The South in the Age of Industry
1. “Gospel of Wealth,” many newly rich worked from poverty, & thus felt
some were destined to become rich & help society w/ their $.
2. “Social Darwinism” applied Darwin’s survivalsurvival-ofof-thethe-fittest theories to
business. It said, Carnegie was at top of the steel industry because he was
most fit to run such a business.
3. Reverend Conwell of Philadelphia became rich by delivering his lecture,
“Acres of Diamonds” thousands of times, & in it he preached poor people
made themselves poor & rich people made themselves rich; everything
was because of one’s actions only.
4. Corporate lawyers used 14th Amend to defend trusts, the judges agreed,
saying that corporations were legal people & thus entitled to their
property, & plutocracy ruled.
1. South remained Ag despite all industrial advances.
2. Southerners urged the South to industrialize.
3. Many northern companies set rates to keep South from gaining any
competitive edge.
•
4. Impact of the New Industrial Revolution on America
•
•
•
Government Tackles the Trust Evil
1. 1890, Sherman AntiAnti-Trust Act; it forbade combinations in restraint of
trade, w/out any distinction between“good” and “bad” trusts.
•
•
It proved ineffective, however, because it couldn’t be enforced.
Not until 1914 was it properly enforced and those prosecuted for violating
the law were actually punished.
In Unions There Is Strength
1. Workers who wanted to improve their conditions found that they
could not, since their bosses could easily hire unemployed to take
their places, since immigrants increased supply of labor.
2. Corporations had many weapons against strikers; hired
strikebreakers, asked courts to order strikers to stop striking, & to
bring in troops. Other methods; hired “scabs”, replacements or
“lockouts” to starve strikers into submission, & often, workers had
to sign “ironclad oaths” or “yellow dog contracts” which banned
them from joining unions.
• Workers could be “blacklisted,”
• MiddleMiddle-class, tired of recurrent strikes, stopped listening.
3. People thought Carnegie & Rockefeller had worked hard to get to
the top, and workers could do the same if they “really” wanted to
improve their situations.
Cheap labor led to creation of many jobs & many white Southerners
saw employment as a blessing.
Standard of living rose, immigrants swarmed to the U.S., &
Jeffersonian ideals about the dominance of agriculture fell.
Women, swarmed to factories & found new opportunities,
“Gibson Girl,” by Charles Dana Gibson, became romantic ideal.
• The Gibson Girl was young, athletic, attractive, and outdoorsy
(not the stay-at-home mom type).
• Many women never achieved this, they toiled in hard work out
of necessity.
5. US becoming a nation of wage earners not farmers, & fear of
unemployment never far & illness of a breadwinner was disastrous.
2. National Labor Union, 1866, represented a giant boot stride by
workers & attracted an impressive total of 600k members, but it
only lasted 6 yrs.
•
•
Chinese excluded & didn’t try to get Blacks & women to join.
It worked for the arbitration of industrial disputes & 88-hour workday, & won
the latter for gov’t workers, but the depression of 1873 knocked it out.
3. A new organization, Knights of Labor, was begun in 1869 & cont.
secretly until 1881. KL organization was similar to the NLU.
•
•
It only barred liquor dealers, professional gamblers, lawyers, bankers, and
stockbrokers, and they campaigned for economic and social reform.
Led by Terence V. Powderly, the Knights won a number of strikes for the 88hour day, & when they staged a successful strike against Gould’s Wabash RR
in 1885, membership mushroomed to ¾ of a million workers.
7
Unhorsing the Knights of Labor
The AF of L to the Fore
1. Knights involved in many May Day strikes of which half failed.
2. Chicago, home to 80k Knights & a few hundred anarchists who
advocated violent overthrow of US gov’t, & on May 4, 1886,
Chicago police went to a meeting called to protest brutalities by
authorities when a bomb was thrown, killing or injuring people.
• 8 anarchists were rounded up, no proof they had any association
w/ bombing, but since they had preached incendiary doctrines,
the jury sentenced five of them to death on account of
conspiracy & gave the other three stiff prison terms.
• 1892, John P. Altgeld, a GermanGerman-born Democrat was elected
governor of Illinois & pardoned the 3 survivors after studying
the case extensively.
• He received violent verbal abuse for that & was defeated during
rere-election.
3. The Haymarket Square Bombing forever associated the KL w/
anarchists & lowered their popularity & effectiveness; membership
declined, & those that remained fused with other labor unions.
1. 1886, Samuel Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor.
•
An association of selfself-governing national unions, each kept its independence,
with the AFL unifying overall strategy.
2. Gompers demanded a fairer share for labor.
•
He sought better wages, hours, & working conditions.
3. AFL tried to speak for all workers but fell far short of that.
•
Composed of skilled laborers, but willing to let unskilled
laborers fend for themselves. Critics called it “the labor trust.”
4. 1881 to 1900, there were over 23k strikes involving 6,610,000
workers w/ a total loss to both employers & employees of about
$450 million.
•
Perhaps the greatest weakness of labor unions they only represented 3% of
all workers.
5. By 1900, public was starting to concede the rights of workers and
beginning to give them some or most of what they wanted.
•
1894, Labor Day was made a legal holiday.
6. A few owners began to realize losing money to fight labor strikes
was useless, though most owners still fought labor unions.
The Urban Frontier
1. 1870 to 1900, US population doubled & population of cities tripled
Chapter 25:
America Moves to the Cities
•
Architect Louis Sullivan perfected skyscrapers (first in Chicago in 1885).
•
Cities grew from small & compact to huge metropolises
•
Cities had electricity, indoor plumbing, telephones & electric trollys
•
Department stores, Macy’s (NY) & Marshall Field’s (Chicago) provided jobs &
attracted middlemiddle-class shoppers.
•
Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie told of a woman’s escapades in the big city and
made cities dazzling and attractive.
•
City dwellers could easily buy cheap things thru mailmail-order houses like Sears &
Montgomery Ward criminals flourished, impure water, uncollected garbage,
unwashed bodies & droppings made cities smelly & unsanitary.
•
Worst were slums, they had soso-called “dumbbell tenements,” were worst since
they were dark, cramped, and had little sanitation or ventilation.
3. To escape, the wealthy of the citycity-dwellers fled to suburbs.
8
The New Immigration
1. “Old Immigration” up to 1880s, mostly from British Isles & W.
Europe; literate & accustomed to representative gov’t. “New
Immigration” of 1880s & 90s, from Baltic & Slavics of SE Europe;
illiterate & unaccustomed to representative gov’t., Europeans,19%
of immigrants in 1880, by early 1900s, over 60%.
Southern Europe Uprooted
1. Europeans came because, no room in Europe, few employment
opportunities, since industrialization had eliminated many jobs.
• US often praised as people boasted of eating everyday, freedom
& opportunities.
• ProfitProfit-seeking Americans possibly exaggerated benefits so they
could get cheap labor and more money.
2. Many immigrants to America stayed for a short time & then
returned home & those who remained (persecuted Jews, who
settled in NY) tried to retain their own culture & customs.
• Children of immigrants at times rejected the Old World culture
& plunged completely into American life.
Narrowing the Welcome Mat
1. “Nativism” & anti-foreignism, came back in the 1880s, as old immigrants
disliked new immigrants.
• “native” Americans blamed immigrants for the degradation of the
urban government. Feared mixing w/ inferior people would ruin
Anglo-Saxon race.
• Trade unionists hated them for their willingness to work for superlow wages and for bringing in dangerous doctrines like socialism and
communism into the U.S.
2. Anti-foreign organizations, American Protective Association (APA),
created to combat new immigrants, & labor leaders tried to stop
immigration; immigrants used as strikebreakers.
3. 1882, Congress passed 1st restrictive law against immigration, it banned
paupers, criminals, & convicts & Chinese Exclusion Act to restrict
Chinese immigrants.
4. 1885, law banning importation of foreign workers under substandard
(low wage) contracts.
5. 1917, literacy tests for immigrants passed.
6. Ironically in this anti-immigrant climate, the Statue of Liberty
arrived from France—a gift from the French to America in 1886.
Reactions to the New Immigration
1. Gov’t did little to help immigrants assimilate into US society, so
immigrants often controlled by powerful “bosses” (NY’s Boss
Tweed) who provided jobs & shelter in return for political support.
2. Gradually, nation’s conscience awoke to the plight of the slums, &
people like Walter Rauschenbusch & Washington Gladden began
preaching the “Social Gospel,” insisting churches tackle social issues
3. Jane Addams, founded Hull House, 1889, to teach children & adults
skills & knowledge they would need to survive & succeed in the US.
•
•
•
•
Addams won Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 but dropped by the DAR.
Other settlement houses included Lillian Wald’s Henry Street
Settlement in New York, which opened its doors in 1893.
Settlement houses were centers for women’s activism & reform,
Florence Kelley & others fought for protection of women workers &
against child labor.
New cities gave women opportunities to earn money & support
themselves better (mostly single women, being both a working
mother & wife was frowned upon).
Churches Confront the Urban Challenge
1. Churches mostly failed to take any stands & rally against urban
problems, people questioned ambition of churches & began to
worry Satan was winning battle of good & evil.
2. New generation of urban revivalists stepped in, like Dwight Moody,
he proclaimed gospel of kindness & forgiveness & adapted the oldoldtime religion to the facts of city life.
•
Moody Bible Institute founded in Chicago, 1889 & continued working well
after his 1899 death.
3. Roman Catholic & Jewish faiths were also gaining many followers
w/ the new immigration.
•
•
Cardinal Gibbons popular w/ Catholics & Protestants, as he preached
American unity.
By 1890, Americans could choose from 150 religions, including the new
Salvation Army, which tried to help the poor.
4. Church of Christ, Scientist (Christian Science), founded by Mary
Baker Eddy, preached a perversion of Christianity that she claimed
healed sickness.
5. YMCA’s and YWCA’s also sprouted.
9
Darwin Disrupts the Churches
1. 1859, Darwin published On the Origin of Species, it created a new
doctrine of evolution & attracted the ire & fury of fundamentalists.
•
“Modernists” took steps from fundamentalists & refused to believe that the
Bible was completely accurate & factual. They argued Bible was a collection
of moral stories or guidelines, but not sacred scripture inspired by God.
2. Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll denounced creationism, as he had been
widely persuaded by the theory of evolution. Others blended
creationism and evolution to invent their own interpretations.
The Lust for Learning
1. A new trend began in the creation of more public schools and
the provision of free textbooks funded by taxpayers.
• By 1900, 6k high schools in America; kindergartens
multiplied.
2. Catholic schools also grew in popularity & in number.
3. Chautauqua movement, 1874, started to partially help adults
who couldn’t go to school.
4. Americans began to develop a faith in formal education as a
solution to poverty.
The Hallowed Halls of Ivy
1. Colleges & universities increased after Civil War, & colleges for
women, ex.Vassar, & Blacks, Howard & Atlanta Univ were
growing.
•
Also, colleges for both genders grew, especially in the Midwest,
and Black colleges also were established, such as Howard University in
Washington D.C., Atlanta University, and Hampton Institute in Virginia.
2. The Morrill Act of 1862 had provided a generous grant of the public
lands to the states for support of education and was extended by the
Hatch Act of 1887, which provided federal funds for the
establishment of agricultural experiment stations in connection
with the landland-grant colleges.
3. Private donations also went toward the establishment of colleges,
including Cornell, Leland Stanford Junior, and the University of
Chicago, which was funded by John D. Rockefeller.
4. Johns Hopkins University maintained the nation’s first high
high--grade
graduate school.
Booker T. Washington and Education for Black People
1. South, war-torn & poor, were far behind in education, especially for
Blacks, Booker T. Washington, an ex-slave came to help. He started
by heading a black normal (teacher) and industrial school in
Tuskegee, Alabama, and teaching the students useful skills & trades.
• However, he avoided the issue of social equality; he believed in
Blacks helping themselves first before gaining more rights.
2. One of Washington’s students was George Washington Carver, who
discovered hundreds of new uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, &
soybeans.
3. In contrast, W.E.B. Du Bois, 1st Black to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard,
demanded complete equality for Blacks & action now. He also
founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP) in 1910.
• Many of DuBois’s differences w/ Washington reflected the
contrasting life experiences of southern & northern Blacks.
The March of the Mind
1. Educators abandoned moral instruction & separated facts from
values.
2. Industrialization demanded practical & vocational training in
sciences. Specialization became the primary goal of universities.
3. Medical schools & science prospered after the Civil War.
•
•
Discoveries by Pasteur & Lister improved medical science, health.
William James helped establish the discipline of behavioral psychology.
•
His greatest work, Pragmatism (1907), preached pragmatism.
The Appeal of the Press
1. Libraries, ex. Library of Congress, opened across US, bringing
literature into people’s homes.
2. The Linotype,1885, allowed the press to keep pace w/ demand, but
competition sparked “yellow journalism,” newspapers reported on
wild & fantastic stories that often were false or exaggerated: sex,
scandal, & other humanhuman-interest stories.
3. 2 new journalistic tycoons emerged: Pulitzer & Hearst used .
4. The AP, established in 1840s, helped to offset some of the
questionable journalism.
10
Apostles of Reform
1. Magazines: Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, & Scribner’s Monthly partially
satisfied public appetite for good reading, but most influential of all was
the NY Nation, 1865, by Edwin L. Godkin, a merciless critic. All were
liberal, reform-minded publication.
2. Another journalist-author was Henry George, who wrote Progress &
Poverty, tried to solve the association of poverty with progress.
•
He came up w/ idea of a graduated income tax
3. Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 1888, criticized social injustices of
the day & pictured a utopian gov’t that nationalized big business to serve
the public good.
Postwar Writing
1. After CW, Americans devoured “dime-novels,” depicted wild West &
other romantic & adventurous settings.
•
The king of dime novelists was Harland F. Halsey.
•
General Lewis Wallace wrote Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ, it combated
ideas & beliefs of Darwinism & reaffirmed traditional Christian faith.
2. Horatio Alger’s very popular, rags-to-riches books said virtue, honesty,
& industry were rewarded by success, wealth, & honor. His most notable
book was titled Ragged Dick.
3. Walt Whitman, one of the old writers who still remained active,
published revisions of his hardy perennial: Leaves of Grass.
4. Emily Dickinson’s poems were published after her death.
Literary Landmarks
The New Morality
Other famous writers:
1. Victoria Woodhull proclaimed free love, & w/ her sister,
• Kate Chopin, wrote about adultery, suicide, & women’s ambitions in
The Awakening.
• Mark Twain wrote books: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Roughing It about the wild West, The
Gilded Age & The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.
• Bret Harte wrote California gold rush stories.
• William Dean Howells editor in chief of the Atlantic Monthly and
wrote about ordinary people and sometimes-controversial social themes.
• Stephen Crane wrote about the seamy underside of life in urban,
industrial America in books like Maggie: Girl of the Street.
• The Red Badge of Courage, a tale about a Civil War soldier.
• Henry James wrote Daisy Miller and Portrait of a Lady, often made
women central characters in his novels & exploring their personalities.
• Jack London wrote about the wild, unexplored regions in The Call of the
Wild, White Fang, and The Iron Heel.
• Frank Norris’s The Octopus exposed the corruption of the railroads.
• Paul Laurence Dunbar & Charles W. Chesnutt, two Black writers, used
Black dialect & folklore in their poems & stories.
Tennessee Claflin, wrote Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, &
shocked readers w/ exposés of affairs, etc.
2. Anthony Comstock waged a lifelong war on the “immoral.”
3. The “new morality” reflected sexual freedom w/ the increase of
birth control, divorces, & frank discussion of sexual topics.
11
Families and Women in the City
Prohibition of Alcohol and Social Progress
1. Urban life was stressful on families, who were often separated, &
everyone had to work—even kids as young as ten yrs. old.
1. Concern over popularity & dangers of alcohol, marked by the
formation of organization that rallied against alcohol & wanted
national prohibition:
• The National Prohibition Party in 1869.
• The Women’s Christian Temperance Union, 1874.
•
In cities, more kids meant more mouths to feed & a greater chance of
poverty.
2. 1898, Charlotte Perkins Gilman published Women & Economics, a
classic of feminist literature, called for women to abandon their
dependent status & contribute to the community thru productive
involvement in the economy. She advocated day-care centers &
centralized nurseries & kitchens.
3. Stanton & Anthony formed the National American Woman Suffrage
Association, 1890, & feminists rallied toward suffrage,
• Leaders included Frances E. Willard & Carrie A. Nation
•The Anti-Saloon League was also formed in 1893.
2. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
was formed in 1866. (livestock)
3. American Red Cross, 1881, formed by Clara Barton, a CW nurse.
4. 1900, a new generation of women activists led by Catt stressed
desirability of giving women the vote if they continued to discharge
their traditional duties as homemakers.
•
Wyoming Territory 1st to offer women unrestricted suffrage, 1869.
5. Ida B. Wells rallied toward better treatment for Blacks & formed the
National Association of Colored Women in 1896.
Artistic Triumphs
1. Art largely suppressed early in the 1800s & failed to really take flight
in America, forcing men like James Whistler & John Singer Sargent to
go to Europe to study art.
2. Mary Cassatt painted sensitive portraits of women & children, while
George Inness became America’s leading landscapist.
3. Thomas Eakins a realist painter & Winslow Homer was perhaps the
most famous & greatest of all, painting scenes of New England life.
4. Great sculptors included Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who made the
Robert Gould Shaw memorial, located in Boston, in 1897.
5. Music reached new heights w/ opera houses & the emergence of jazz.
6. Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, which allowed the
reproduction of sounds that could be heard by listeners.
7. Henry H. Richardson was another fine architect whose
“Richardsonian” architecture was famed around the country.
• The Columbian Exposition in 1893, in Chicago, displayed many
architectural triumphs.
The Business of Amusement
1. In entertainment, Phineas T. Barnum (who quipped,
“There’s a sucker born every minute,” and “People love to be
humbugged.”) and James A. Bailey teamed up in 1881 to stage the
“Greatest Show on Earth” (now the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and
Bailey Circus).
2. “Wild West” shows, like those of “Buffalo Bill” Cody (and the
markswoman Annie Oakley who shot holes through tossed silver
dollars) were ever-popular, and baseball and football became popular
as well.
3. Baseball emerged as America’s national pastime.
4. Wrestling gained popularity and respectability.
5. In 1891, James Naismith invented basketball.
12
The Clash of Cultures on the Plains
1. White settlers began moving West, Indians caught in the middle.
•
Chapter 26:
The Great West &
The Agricultural Revolution
•
2. Gov’t pacified NAs by signing treaties at Fort Laramie, 1851, & Fort
Atkinson, 1853. U.S. failed to understand, NAs didn’t recognize
authorities outside of families, chiefs were inaffective.
3. 1860s, U.S. gov’t intensified its efforts by herding Indians into still
smaller and smaller reservations (like the Dakota Territory).
4. NAs fought back between 1864 to 1890 in the “Indian Wars.”
•
•
Receding Native Population
1. Violence reigned supreme in IndianIndian-White relations.
•
•
1864, Sand Creek, Colorado, Colonel Chivington’s militia massacred some
400 Indians, who thought they had been promised immunity.
1866, a Sioux war party ambushed Capt. Fetterman’s command & civilians
constructing the Bozeman Trail to Montana goldfields, leaving no survivors,
led to a 2nd treaty at Fort Laramie signed 2 years later.
2. Cl. Custer found gold in Black Hills of SD, & goldgold-seekers invaded
Sioux reservation, causing Sitting Bull & the Sioux to go on a warpath,
decimating Custer’s 7th Calvary at Little Big Horn.
3. Nez Percé Indians revolted when gold seekers made the gov’t shrink
their reservation by 90%, & after a tortuous battle, Chief Joseph
surrendered. In his famous speech he said, “From where the sun now
stands I will fight no more forever.”
4. Most difficult to subdue, the Apache tribes of AZ & NM, led by
Geronimo, but they finally surrender & became successful farmers.
5. NAs subdued by (1) railroads, (2) White man’s diseases, (3)
extermination of buffalo, (4) wars, & (5) loss of land.
NA groups began displacing each other, & justified their actions in
that White men had done it to them.
NAs became great riders, hunters & fighters since horses were
introduced.
After Civil War, Army’s mission—
mission— clear Indians out of West.
Invention of the Colt .45 revolver (six(six-shooter) & Winchester
repeating rifle gave US troops the advantage.
Bellowing Herds of Bison
1. Millions of bison dotted American prairie, & by 1865, there were
still 15 million buffalo, but railroads increased buffalo massacres.
2. 1885, fewer than 1k buffalo were left, & in danger of extinction.
The End of the Trail
1. Sympathy for the Indians materialized in 1880s, in part by Helen
Hunt Jackson’s book A Century of Dishonor & her novel Ramona.
•
Humanitarians help them “walk the White man’s road,” hard-liners stuck
to “kill ‘em all” beliefs, & no one cared for traditional heritage & culture.
2. White missionaries would force Indians to convert,1884, they
urged gov’t to outlaw sacred Sun Dance, a festival Whites thought
was the war-drum beating.
•
Battle of Wounded Knee, the “Ghost Dance” brutally stamped out by U.S.
troops, who killed women & children as well.
13
3. The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 dissolved legal entities of all
tribes, but if the Indians behaved the way Whites wanted them to
(become farmers on reservations), they could receive full U.S.
citizenship in 25 years (granted in 1924).
Mining: From Dishpan to Ore Breaker
1. Late1840s, gold discovered in CA, 1858, at Pike’s Peak in CO.,
1859, Comstock Lode in NV discovered, & $340 million gold &
silver mined.
•
Reservation land not allotted to Indians under the act was sold
to railroads.
2. Smaller “lucky strikes” in MT, ID, & other western states. Anarchy
seemed to rule in towns.
•
1879, the Carlisle Indian School in PA founded to teach NA
children how to behave like Whites, completely erasing their
culture.
3. Ore-breaking machinery was brought in to break gold from
quartz.
•
Dawes Act struck forcefully at the Indians, & by 1900 they
lost ½ the land they held 20 yrs before. This plan outlined
U.S. policy until 1934 Indian Reorganization Act which
helped NA population rebound and grow.
4. Women found new rights in these Western lands, gaining suffrage
in WY (1869) (the first place for women to vote), Utah (1870),
Colorado (1893) and Idaho (1896).
5. Mining also added to the folklore and American literature (Bret
Harte & Mark Twain).
Beef Bonanzas and the Long Drive
The Farmers’ Frontier
1. As cities boomed so did the demand for food & meat.
2. The problem of getting meat to public market & cities was solved
by the new transcontinental railroads. Cattle could be shipped to
the stockyards under “beef barons” like the Swifts & Armours.
3. The “Long Drive” become a spectacular feeder of slaughterhouses,
as Texas cowboys herded cattle across desolate land to railroad
terminals in Kansas.
1. 1862, Homestead Act, 160 acres of land & live on it for 5 yrs,
improve it, & pay a $30 fee. Or, people got land after only 6
month’s residence for $1.25 an acre.
• Before, gov’t sold land for revenue, now, giving it away.
• Act allowed ½ million families to buy land & settle out West,
but 160 acres rarely enough to earn a living & survive. Often,
families forced to give up homesteads before 5 yrs were up.
• Fraud developed, 10 X’s as much land ended up w/ land
land-grabbing promoters than w/ real farmers. Sometimes they
didn’t even live on the land, but said they’d erected a “12 by 14”
dwelling—
dwelling—which later turned out to be 12 by 14 inches!
•
In Dodge City Earp and in Abilene, Marshal Hickok maintained order.
4. Railroads & barbedbarbed-wire made & destroyed the cattle herding
business, they also brought sheepherders & homesteaders who
erased the openopen-range days of the long cattle drives.
•
Blizzards of 18861886-87 left cattle starving & freezing.
5. Breeders learned to fence their ranches & to organize (i.e. the
Wyoming StockStock-Growers’ Association).
14
Taming Western Deserts
1. Railroads such as the Northern Pacific helped develop the Ag.
West, a place where land proved to be surprisingly fertile.
2. Higher wheat prices resulted from crop failures around the world,
more people rashly pushed further westward, past the 100th
meridian (the magic 2020-inch per year rainfall line), where it was
difficult to grow crops.
•
•
•
•
Here, as warned by geologist John Wesley Powell, so little rain fell that
successful farming could only be attained by massive irrigation.
Farmers used “dry farming,” or using shallow cultivation methods to
plant & farm, but over time, this method created a finely pulverized
surface soil that contributed to the notorious “Dust Bowl” several
decades later.
Russian species of wheat—
wheat—tough & resistant to drought—
drought—brought in &
grew all over the Great Plains, while other plants were chosen in favor
of corn.
Huge federally financed irrigation projects soon caused the “Great
American Desert” to bloom, & dams that tamed the Missouri &
Columbia Rivers helped water the land.
The Far West Comes of Age
1. New states like CO, ND, SD, MT, WA, ID, & WY were admitted
into the Union after population surges in the West.
• Not until 1896 was UT allowed into the Union, & by the 20th
century, only OK, NM, & AZ remained as territories.
• In OK, U.S. gov’t made available land formerly belonging to
NAs, & thousands of “Sooners” jumped boundary line &
illegally went into OK.
• On April 22, 1889, OK was legally opened, & 18 yrs later, in
1907, Oklahoma became the “Sooner State.”
2. 1890, for the first time, the U.S. census announced that a frontier
was no longer discernible.
3. The “closing” of the frontier inspired the Turner Thesis, which
stated that America needed a frontier.
4. At first, public didn’t notice the frontier was gone, but later,
realized the land was not infinite, & concern led to the first
national parks opening, Yellowstone, 1872, & Yosemite & Sequoia
(1890).
The Fading Frontier
The Farm Becomes a Factory
1. The frontier was a state of mind & a symbol of opportunity.
• Ended romantic, internal development phase of the nation.
• US notoriety for being a mobile society is challenged.
2. The “safety valve theory” stated the frontier was like a safety valve
for folks who, when it became too crowded in their area, could
simply pack up & move West.
• Few citycity-dwellers left cities, since they didn’t know how to
farm; West increasingly became less a land of opportunity for
farms, but for hard laborers and ranchers.
• Free acreage did lure immigrant farmers to West easing
overcrowding & the lure of the West may have led to city
employers raising wages to keep workers in the cities.
3. Cities, not the West, were the safety valves, as busted farmers &
fortune seekers made Chicago & San Francisco into large cities.
4. As Americans expanded west, it was in the transtrans-Mississippi west
that NAs made their last stand, where Anglo culture collided w/
Hispanic culture, & where America faced Asia.
1. Farmers increasingly producing single “cash” crops, they could
concentrate their efforts, make profits, & buy manufactured goods
from mail order companies.
2. LargeLarge-scale farmers tried banking, railroading, & manufacturing,
but new inventions in farming, such as a steam engine that could
pull a plow, seeder, or harrow, twine binder, & the combined
reaperreaper-thresher sped up harvesting and lowered the number of
people needed to farm.
• Farmers inclined to blame banks & railroads for their losses.
3. The mechanization of agriculture led to enormous farms, such as
those in the MNMN-ND area & the Central Valley of CA.
• Henry George described state as a country of plantations &
estates.
• CA vegetables and fruits, raised by illill-paid Mexican workers,
made handsome profits when sold to the East.
15
Deflation Dooms the Debtor
1. 1880s, when world markets rebounded, produced more crops, &
forced prices down, the farmers in US were ruined.
2. Paying back debts was especially difficult in this deflationdeflation-filled
time. Less money in circulation was called “contraction.”
3. Farmers operated year after year on losses and thousands of
homesteads fell to foreclosures, and farm tenancy rather than farm
ownership was increased.
4. The fall of the farmers in the late 1800s was similar to the South
and “King Cotton” during Civil War: depending on one crop was
good in good times but disastrous during less prosperous times.
The Farmers Take Their Stand
1. Greenback movement after CW & agrarian unrest had flared up
2. 1867, the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry, founded by
Oliver H. Kelley to improve lives of isolated farmers through social,
educational, and fraternal activities.
•
Spread to claim over 800k members in 1875, & Grange changed
its goals to include improvement of the plight of the farmer.
•
They got Congress to pass a set of regulations known as the
Granger Laws, but afterwards, their influence faded.
3. Greenback Labor Party also attracted farmers, & 1878, the
Greenback Laborites had over a million votes & elected 14
Congressmen.
•
Unhappy Farmers
1. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, droughts, grasshopper plagues,
and searing heat waves made the toiling farmers miserable and poor.
2. City, state, and federal governments added to this by gouging the
farmers, ripping them off by making them pay painful taxes when
they could least afford to do so.
3. The railroads (by fixing freight prices), the middlemen (by taking
huge cuts in profits), and the various harvester, barbed wire, and
fertilizer trusts all harassed farmers.
4. In 1890, one half of the U.S. population still consisted of farmers, but
they were hopelessly disorganized.
Prelude to Populism
1. The Farmers’ Alliance, late 1870s, was another coalition of farmers
seeking to the banks and railroads.
• However, its programs only helped those who owned their
own land, ignoring tenant farmers, & excluding Blacks.
• The Alliance members agreed on the (1) nationalization of
railroads, (2) abolition of national banks, (3) graduated income
tax, & (4) a new federal sub-treasury for farmers.
2. Populists were led by Ignatius Donnelly from MN & Mary
Elizabeth Lease, both of whom eloquently attacked those who
hurt farmers.
3. The Alliance was still not to be brushed aside, and in the coming
decade, they would combine into a new People’s Party (AKA, the
Populist Party) to launch a new attack on the northeastern
citadels of power.
In 1880, the Greenbackers ran General James B. Weaver, a
Civil War general, but he only polled 3% of the popular vote.
16
Coxey’s Army and the Pullman Strike
1. The Panic of 1893 fueled the Populists. Many disgruntled
unemployed went to D.C. calling for change.
• Most famous was “General” Jacob Coxey. “Coxey’s Army”
marched on D.C. w/ many reporters. They called for:
• relieving unemployment by an inflationary government
public works program.
• an issuance of $500 million in legal tender notes.
2. Pullman Strike, Chicago, led by Eugene Debs, was more dramatic.
• Debs helped organize the workers of the Pullman Company.
• Company hit hard by depression & cut wages by about 1/3.
• Workers struck, sometimes violently.
• U.S. Attorny General Olney sent federal troops to break the
strike. His rationale: strike interfered w/ the U.S. mail.
• Debs went to prison for 6 mo. & turned into leading Socialist
in US.
Golden McKinley and Silver Bryan
1. Rep. candidate, 1896, was McKinley, respectable & friendly CW
major who served many years in Congress representing OH.
•
•
McKinley was the making of another Ohioan, Marcus Alonzo Hanna, who
financially and politically supported the candidate through his political
years.
McKinley, conservative in business, & his platform was for the gold
standard, even though he personally was not.
•
His platform called for a gold-silver bimetallism—as long as, all other
nations did the same, which was not likely.
2. The Democrats struggled to find a candidate, until William
Jennings Bryan, the “Boy Orator of the Platte,” came to the rescue.
•
•
1896 Dem. Convention, Bryan delivered a movingly passionate speech in
favor of free silver. In this “Cross of Gold Speech” he won the nomination
for the Democratic ticket the next day.
•
Dem. ticket for unlimited coinage of silver w/ value ratio of 16 silver
oz. to 1 oz. of gold.
•
Some Dems left the party.
Some Dems charged they’d stolen Populist ideas, & during the Election of
1896, it was essentially the “Demo-Pop” party.
Class Conflict: Plowholders vs. Bondholders
1. McKinley won decisively, getting 271 electoral votes, mostly from
the populous East & upper Midwest, as opposed to Bryan’s 176,
mostly from the South & the West.
2. Election perhaps most important since the elections involving
Lincoln, for it was the first to pit the privileged against the
underprivileged, & resulted in a victory for big business & big
cities.
3. Election of 1896, the “gold vs. silver” election. And, put to the
vote, it was clear then that Americans were going w/ gold.
4. The Middle Class preserved their comfortable way of life while
the Republicans seized control of the White House of 16 more yrs.
Republican StandStand-pattism Enthroned
1. McKinley took office in 1897, he was calm & conservative,
working well with his party and avoiding major confrontations.
2. Dingley Tariff Bill was passed to replace the Wilson-Gorman law
& raise more revenue, raising the tariff level to whopping 46.5 %.
3. Gold Standard Act, 1900, said paper currency redeemable for gold.
17