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Chapter Twenty
Commonwealth and
Empire, 1870—1900
Part One:
Introduction
"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battlebe Thou near them! With them-in spirit-we also go forth from the sweet peace
of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their
soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields
with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the
guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste
their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of
their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out
roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their
desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of
summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail,
imploring. Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-for our sakes who
adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter
pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the
white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of
love, of Him who is the Source of Love, and who is the ever-faithful refuge
and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite
hearts. Amen." Mark Twain
This chapter covers the conflicts between the
populists and those groups that held the wealth
and power. Mass political movements of farmers
and workers were organized. These movements
were also actively supported and shaped by women
in addition to struggling for their own rights. There
was a moment of democratic promise that was lost
when Americans might have established a
commonwealth based on agreement of the people
for the common good. Instead a national governing
class and a large bureaucratic state emerged. While
debating their future, most Americans seemed
united in pursuing an empire. Anti-imperialists lost
as the U.S. acquired numerous territories and took
an interventionist stance toward others.
"One of the things that I got out of reading history
was to begin to be disabused of a notion of what
democracy is all about. The more history I read, the
more it seemed very clear to me that whatever
progress has been made in this country on various
issues, whatever things have been done for people,
whatever human rights have been gained, have not
been gained through the calm deliberations of
Congress or the wisdom of presidents or the
ingenious decisions of the Supreme Court.
Whatever progress has been made in this
country has come because of the actions of
ordinary people, of citizens, of social
movements. Not from the Constitution." Howard
Zinn
"The Bill of Rights says nothing about the right to
work, to a decent wage, to housing, to health care, to
the rights of women, to the right of privacy in sexual
preference, to the rights of peoples with disabilities. .
. . We should look beyond the Bill of Rights to the
UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
which says that all people, everywhere in the world,
are entitled to work and decent wages, to holidays
and vacations, to food and clothing and housing and
medical care, to education, to child care and
maternal care." Howard Zinn
"We are living in a dangerous world. Our state of
civilization is such that mankind already is capable of
becoming enormously wealthy but as a whole is still
poverty-ridden. Great wars have been suffered.
Greater wars are imminent, we are told. Do you not
think that in such a predicament every new idea
should be examined carefully and freely?" Bertolt
Brecht [What he was prevented from saying to the
House Committee on Un-American Activities]
His plays include: Galileo, The Good Woman,
Mother Courage
"Liberties are not given; they are taken." Aldous
Huxley
One day in London Marx refused to a "Marx Club"
organized by Pieper saying: "Thanks for inviting me
to speak to your Karl Marx Club. But I can't. I'm not
a Marxist." [Zinn, Failure to Quit page 146]
"Je ne suis pas un Marxiste." Karl Marx
"[Marx's] critique of capitalism in those Economic and
Philosophic Manuscripts did not need any mathematical proofs
of ‘surplus value.’ It simply stated (but did not state it simply)
that the capitalist system violates whatever it means to be
human. The industrial system Marx saw developing in Europe
not only robbed them of the product of their work, it estranged
working people from their own creative possibilities, from one
another as human beings, from the beauties of nature, from
their own true selves. They lived out their lives not
according to their own inner needs, but according to the
necessities of survival. This estrangement from self and
others, this alienation from all that was human, could not be
overcome by an intellectual effort, by something in the mind.
What was needed was a fundamental, revolutionary change in
society, to create the conditions -- a short workday, a rational
use of the earth's natural wealth and people's natural talents, a
just distribution of the fruits of human labor, a new social
consciousness -- for the flowering of human potential, for a
leap into freedom as it had never been experienced in history."
Howard Zinn [Failure to Quit, pg. 147]
"The People's Party is the protest of the plundered against the
plunderers -- of the victim against the robbers. Tom Watson
[1892]
". . . if the great industrial combinations do not deal with
us they will have somebody to deal with who will not have
the American idea." Samuel Gompers [c. 1916]
"No concession can be made to the minority in this country
without a surrender of the fundamental principle of popular
government. The people have a right to have what they want,
and they want prohibition." Williams Jennings Bryan [1923]
"I hold that if the Almighty had ever made a set of men that
should do all the eating and none of the work, He would have
made them with mouths only and no hands; and if He had ever
made another class that He intended should do all the work
and no eating, He would have made them with hands only and
no mouths." Abraham Lincoln [1859]
". . . Hofstadter did not share the view of more recent scholars
that progressivism was an impulse fundamentally different from,
indeed antithetical to, populism. Instead, he portrayed the two
movements as part of the same broad current of reform." Alan
Brinkley, American Retrospectives page 52
"wie es eigenlich gewesen ist" [Historian Von Rankin?]
"[Hofstadter's] treatment, which embraced his deep suspicion of
agrarianism, hypothesized that the angry farmers in the South
and Middle West were hard-pressed Protestants and petty
capitalists unable to come to terms with the realities of a
worldwide market economy and turned -- as did other groups
with declining status -- to xenophobia and anti-Semitism. . . .
Populism had a dark side that could be seen as
contributing to America's authoritarian and xenophobic
tradition." Martin Ridge, American Retrospectives
Commonwealth and Empire
Chapter Focus Questions
• What characterized the growth of federal and state
governments and the consolidation of the modern
two-party system?
• How did mass protest movements develop?
• What were the economic and political crises of
the 1890s?
• How did the United States develop as a world
power?
• What were the causes and outcomes of the
Spanish-American War?
Part Two:
American Communities
Chronology
1867
Patrons of Husbandry (Grange) founded
Secretary of State William H. Seward negotiates the purchase
of Alaska
1873
Coinage Act adds silver to gold as the precious metal
base of currency
Panic of 1873 initiates depression
1874
Granger laws begin to regulate railroad shipping rates
1877
Rutherford B. Hayes elected president
Great Uprising of 1877 by railroad workers is 1st
nationwide strike
1879
Henry George publishes Progress and Poverty
1881
President James A. Garfield assassinated
Chester A. Arthur becomes president
1883
1884
Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act passed
Grover Cleveland elected president
1886
1887
1888
1889
1890
I
1891
1892
May 3 Haymarket Bombing
Interstate Commerce Act creates the Interstate
Commerce Commission
Edward Bellamy publishes Looking Backward
National Colored Farmer's Alliance and Cooperative
Union formed
Benjamin Harrison elected president
National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union formed
Sherman Silver Purchase Act adds to amount of money
n circulation
McKinley tariff establishes highest import duties yet
Rival woman suffrage organizations merge to form the
National American Woman Suffrage Association
National Women's Alliance formed
Populist (People's) Party formed
Grover Cleveland elected to second term as president
Coeur d'Alene miners' strike
Homestead, Pennsylvania, steel-workers' strike
Ida B. Wells begins crusade against lynching
1893
1894
1896
1898
1899
1900
Western Federation of Miners formed
Financial panic and economic depression begin
World's Columbian Exhibition opens in Chicago
"Coxey's Army" marches on Washington, D.C.
Pullman strike
Plessy v. Ferguson separate but equal segregation
William McKinley defeats William Jennings Bryan 1897
Dingley tariff again raises import duties to all-time high
Eugene V. Debs helps found Social Democratic Party
Hawaii is annexed
War is declared against Spain; Cuba + Philippines
Anti-Imperialist League formed
Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education
sanctions separate schools for black and white children
Secretary of State John Hay announces Open Door
Guerilla war begins in the Philippines
Gold Standard Act commits US to gold standard
McKinley reelected
The Cooperative
Commonwealth
• Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward described a
utopian society in which the economy was under the
collective ownership of the people.
• People enjoyed short workdays, long vacations, and
retired at age 45.
• The Point Loma community, established near San
Diego in 1897:
– was a communal society that provided both private and
shared housing
– where no one earned wages
– sought self-sufficiency through agriculture
– received donations from admirers and wealthy members.
Part Three:
Toward a National
Governing Class
The Growth of Government
• The size and scope of government at all levels
grew rapidly during the gilded age.
• New employees, agencies, and responsibilities
changed the character of government.
• Taxes increased as local governments
assumed responsibility for providing such
vital services as police, fire protection,
water, schools, and parks.
The Machinery of Politics
• The federal government developed its departmental
bureaucracy.
• Power resided in Congress and the state
legislatures.
• The two political parties only gradually adapted to the
demands of the new era. Political campaigns featured
mass spectacles that reflected the strong competition
for votes.
• Political machines financed their campaigns through
kickbacks and bribes and insured support by providing
services for working-class neighborhoods.
• Offices were filled by the spoils system that rewarded
friends of the winning party.
The Spoils System and Civil
Service Reform
• In 1885, Congress passed the
Pendleton Civil Service Reform that
created the civil service system and a
professional bureaucracy.
• This effort paralleled similar efforts at
professionalism in other fields.
Part Four:
Farmers and Workers
Organize their Communities
The Grange
• Farmers and workers built movements that challenged
the existing system.
• The Grange formed in the 1870s by farmers in the
Great Plains and South who suffered boom and bust
conditions and natural disasters.
• Grangers blamed hard times on a band of “thieves
in the night,” especially railroads, and pushed
through laws regulating shipping rates and other
farm costs.
• Grangers created their own grain elevators and set
up retail stores for farm machinery. The depression
of the late 1870s wiped out most of these programs.
The Farmers’ Alliance
• In the late 1880s, Texas farmers, led by Charles W.
Macune, formed the National Farmers Alliance and
Industrial Union, in cooperation with the Colored
Alliance. The Alliance sought to:
– challenge the disproportionate power of the governing class
– restore democracy
– establish a cooperative economic program
• Northern Plains farmer organizations soon joined the
Alliance.
• Midwestern farm groups battled railroad influence.
• By 1890, the Alliance was a major power in several
states demanding demanded a series of economic
reforms.
Workers Search for Power
• In 1877, a “Great Uprising” shut down railroads
all across the country.
• Federal troops were called out precipitating violence.
• Government created national guards to prevent
similar occurrences.
• Workers organized stronger unions that
increasingly resorted to strikes and created labor
parties.
• Henry George ran for mayor of New York and
finished a respectable second.
• In the late 1880s, labor parties won seats on
numerous city councils and in state legislatures in
industrial areas where workers outnumbered other
classes.
Women Build Alliances
• Women actively shaped labor and agrarian protest.
• The Knights included women at their national
convention and even ran day-care centers and baking
cooperatives.
• Women were active members in the Grange and
Alliances.
• The greatest female leader was Frances E. Willard,
who:
– was president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union
– mobilized nearly one million women to promote reform and to
work for women’s suffrage.
Farmer-Labor Unity
• Between 1890 and 1892, the Farmers’ Alliance, the
Knights of Labor, the National Colored Farmers’
Alliance and other organizations formed the Peoples’
Party.
• The Peoples' Party platform called for:
•
government ownership of railroads, banks, and telegraph
•
•
the eight-hour day
the graduated income tax, and other reforms
• Though the party lost the 1892 presidential race,
Populists elected three governors, ten congressional
representative, and five senators.
Part Five:
The Crisis of the 1890s
Financial Collapse and
Depression
• In 1893, the collapse of the nation’s major rail lines
precipitated a major depression.
• Full recovery was not achieved until the early 1900s.
• Unemployment soared and many suffered great
hardships.
• Tens of thousands took to the road in search of work or
food.
• Jacob Coxey called for a march on Washington to
demand relief.
• “Coxey’s Army” never reached its intended size and
was met with violence in 1894.
Strikes and Labor Solidarity
• In Idaho, a violence-plagued strike was
broken by federal and state troops. In the
aftermath, the miners formed the Western
Federation of Miners.
• The hard times precipitated a bloody
confrontation at Andrew Carnegie’s
Homestead steel plant.
• A major strike in Pullman, Illinois:
– spread throughout the nation’s railroad system
– ended with the arrest of Eugene Debs
– resulted in bitter confrontations between federal
troops and workers in Chicago and other cities.
The Social Gospel
• A “social gospel” movement led by ministers such as
Washington Gladden, called for churches to fight
against injustice.
• Charles M. Sheldon urged readers to rethink their
actions by asking: “What would Jesus do?”
• The Catholic Church endorsed the right of workers to
form trade unions.
• Immigrant Catholic groups urged priests to ally with the
labor movement.
• Women’s religious groups such as the YWCA (Young
Women’s Christian Association) strove to provide
services for poor women.
Part Six:
Politics of Reform, Politics
of Order
The Free Silver Issue
• Grover Cleveland won the 1892 election by
capturing the traditional Democratic Solid
South and German voters alienated by
Republican nativist appeals.
• When the economy collapsed in 1893,
government figures concentrated on
longstanding currency issues to provide a
solution.
• The debate was over hard money backed
by gold or soft money backed by silver.
Cleveland favored a return to the gold
standard, losing much popular support.
Populism's Last Campaign
• The hard times strengthened the
Populists, who were silver advocates.
• They recorded strong gains in 1894.
• But in 1896, when the Democrats
nominated William Jennings Bryan as a
champion of free silver,
• Populists decided to run a fusion ticket of
Bryan and Tom Watson. broke out in over
100 cities.
The Republican Triumph
• Republicans ran William McKinley as
a safe alternative to Bryan.
• Republicans characterized Bryan as
a dangerous man who would cost
voters their jobs.
• Mark Hannah’s campaign techniques
The Election of 1896
• Bryan won 46% of the vote but failed to carry
the Midwest, Far West, and Upper South.
• Traditional Democratic groups like Catholics
were uncomfortable with Bryan and voted
Republican.
• The Populists disappeared and the
Democrats became a minority party.
• McKinley promoted a mixture of pro-business
and expansionist foreign policies.
• The return to prosperity after 1898 insured
continued Republican control.
Nativism and Jim Crow
• Neither McKinley nor Bryan addressed the
increased racism and nativism throughout the
nation.
• Nativists blamed foreign workers for hard times
and considered them unfit for democracy.
• Southern whites enacted a system of legal
segregation and disenfranchised blacks, approved
by the Supreme Court.
• Racial violence escalated, despite Ida B. Wells’s
one-woman crusade against lynching.
• Reformers abandoned their traditional support for
black rights and accepted segregation and
disenfranchisement.
The Spread of Disfranchisement
Part Seven:
"Imperialism and
Righteousness"
The White Man's Burden
• Many Americans proposed that the economic crisis
required new markets for American production.
• Others suggested Americans needed new frontiers to
maintain their democracy.
• The Chicago World’s Fair:
– showed how American products might be marketed throughout
the world
– reinforced a sense of stark contrast between civilized AngloSaxons and savage people of color.
• A growing number of writers urged America to take up
the “White Man’s Burden.”
• Clergymen like Josiah Strong urged that Americans
help Christianize and civilize the world.
Foreign Missions
• After the Civil War, missionary activity increased
throughout the non-western world. They helped
generate public interest in foreign lands and laid the
groundwork for economic expansion.
An Overseas Empire
• Beginning in the late 1860s, the United States began
expanding overseas.
• Secretary of State William Henry Seward launched the
nation’s Pacific empire by buying Alaska and expanding
the United States presence in Hawaii.
• The United States policy emphasized economic control,
particularly in Latin America.
• During the 1880s and 1890s, the United States
strengthened its navy and began playing an increased
role throughout the Western Hemisphere and the
Pacific.
Hawaii
• The United States annexed Hawaii in 1898.
• Hawaii was a stepping-stone to Asian markets.
• In 1899, Secretary of State John Hay proclaimed
the Open Door policy in Asia to insure American
access and laid the basis for twentieth-century foreign
policy.
Part Eight:
The Spanish-American
War
The United States and Cuba
• By 1895, public interest in Cuban affairs grew,
spurred on by grisly horror stories of Spanish
treatment of revolutionaries.
• McKinley had held off intervention, but public clamor
grew following an explosion on the USS Maine.
The Spanish-American War
• The United States smashed Spanish power in
what John Hay called “a splendid little war.”
• The Platt Amendment protected U. S.
interests and acknowledged its unilateral
right to intervene in Cuban affairs.
• The United States also annexed a number of
other Caribbean and Pacific islands including
the Philippines.
War in the Philippines
• Initially Filipino rebels welcomed American troops.
• After the United States intended to annex their country,
they turned against their former allies.
• Between 1899 and 1902, Americans fought a war that
led to the death of one in every five Filipinos.
• Supporters defended the war as bringing civilization to
the Filipinos.
• Critics saw the abandonment of traditional support for
self-determination and warned against bringing in darkskinned people.
Critics of Empire
• The Filipino war stimulated the founding of an AntiImperialist League that denounced the war and
territorial annexation in no uncertain terms.
• But most Americans put aside their doubts and
welcomed the new era of aggressive
nationalism.