CHAPTERS 16-19

CHAPTER 16-19
plains Indians-Nomadic Blackfoot, Arapaho, Assiniboine, Cheyenne, Comanche, Crow, Gros Ventre, Kiowa, Lakota, Lipan, Plains Apache (or Kiowa Apache), Plains Cree, Sarsi, Shoshone, and Tonkawa. Semi-sedintary Arikara, Hidatsa, Iowa, Kaw (or Kansa), Mandan, Omaha, Osage, Otoe, Pawnee, Ponca, and Wichita.  Survived on the Bison
indian disadvantages-at war against an economically, industrially advanced culture
taos indian rebeliion-1847 new mexico, killed governor and anglo-american officials
anglo-american onslaught-English forced out, sometimes violently the californios or mexicans
hispanics oppressed-texas, many Mexicans lost their land even after the war
increasing chinese immigration- many came due to gold rush. 200,000 by 1880 in west
transcontinental RR- 90% of workers were Chinese.
china towns- community in a city made, organized and governed by Chinese
growing gender balance- # of Chinese women increased, about half were prostitutes
chinese exclusion act-banned Chinese immigration for 10 years. Barred already present Chinese from becoming naturalized citizens. Made permanent in 1902
home stead act of 1862-permitted settlers to buy plots of 160 acres for a small fee if occupied and improved for 5 years
Plains Indians: the Indians of the great plains proved to be the hardest part for white settlers to overcome in their quest for western expansion, there were many tribes that filled the great plains of central and western united states. Most tribes did not want to join forces against the white aggression, but three of the tribes, the Sioux the Arapaho and the Cheyenne had formed an alliance that dominated the plains.
Indian disadvantages: in this time the disadvantages toward the Indians was immense with the far more industrialized settlers.
Taos Indian rebellion: When the Taos Indians rebelled, the killed the new governor and other Anglo-American officials before being subdued by united states army forces.
Anglo-American onslaught: The Mexicans who lived in California where excluded from the mines during the gold rush, also the Mexicans where were there also lost their lands and farms from either corrupt business deals or outright seizure.
Increasing Chinese immigration: by 1880 more than 20,000 Chinese had settled in the United States. At first the Chinese where accepted as hardworking conscientious people. However the idea of the Chinese changed very quickly when because the white Americans began to think of the Chinese as rivals.
Importance of the Transcontinental Railroad: during the construction of the transcontinental railroad, the Chinese had been 90% of the work force for the pacific side of the construction. This was because the Chinese worked harder and demanded little and worked for low wages. But in 1866 the Chinese workers rebelled against the conditions and went on strike to demand higher wages and a shorter workday, but the company starved them into submission. When the railroad was completed in 1869 thousands of Chinese lost their jobs.
Chinatowns: When the railroad had been finished, most of the Chinese flocked to the cities, the biggest Chinatown had appeared in San Francisco. Most of the Chinese formed the lower ring of the work force, but the main occupations of the Chinese were laundry workers, by the 1890’s two-thirds of the laundry workers were Chinese.
Growing gender balance: most of the Chinese women that came to America came because the were sold here as prostitutes but after the 1880’s, the Chinese men started seeking companionship in families.
Chinese exclusion act: congress solved the violence problem by creating the Chinese exclusion act which prevented the Chinese from immigrating to the u.s. and also prevented the Chinese already here from becoming naturalized citizens.
Homestead act of 1862: provided plots of land of 160 acres for a small fee if they occupied the land they purchased for five years and improved it.
Multiracial working class: the western working class was made up of whites African Americans and immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, also the Chinese Filipinos Mexicans and Indians. The whites occupied the better and more skilled jobs while the unskilled jobs there were very few whites.
Mining booms: in 1849 the gold rush to California occurred. At first it was individual mining, then corporations moved to lode mining which dug deeper, when this happened, the farmers and ranchers established a permanent economy
Gender disparity: at this time the men greatly outnumbered the women. the women who did move to these towns usually came with their husbands but those who didn’t had a great market for prostitution.
Concentration policy: By the early 1850s, the idea of establishing one great enclave in which many tribes could live gave way to a new reservations policy known as “concentration”. In 1851, the government assigned all the tribes their own defined reservations, confirmed by individual treaties—treaties often illegitimately negotiated with unauthorized “representatives” chosen by whites, people known sarcastically as “treaty chiefs”. It divided the tribes from one another and made them easier to control. It allowed the government to force tribes into scattered locations and to take over the most desirable lands for white settlement.
After the Civil War, professional and amateur hunters—even scasual visitors shooting from passing trains—swarmed over the plains, slaughtering the huge animals.Some Indian tribes (notably the Blackfeet) also began killing large numbers of buffalo to sell in the booming new market. In 1865, there had b een at least 15 million buffalo; a decade later, fewer than a thousand of the great beasts survived.
Indian warriors attacked wagon trains, stagecoaches, and isolated ranches, often in retaliation for earler attacks on them by whites. As the US Army became more deeply involved in the fighting, the tribes began to focus more of their attacks on white soldiers.
After being attacked by Indians in eastern Colorado, whites called up a large territorial militia. The governor urged all friendly Indians to congregate at army posts for protection before the army began its campaign. One Arapaho and Cheyenne band under Black Kettle, apparently in response to the invitation, camped near Fort Lyon on Sand Creek in November 1864. Some members of the part were warriors, but Black Kettle believed he was under official protection and exhibited no hostile intention. Nevertheless, Colonel J. M. Chivington led a volunteer militia force—largely consisting of unemployed miners, many of whom were apparently drunk—to the unsuspecting camp and massacred 133 people, 105 of them women and children.
It was not only he US military that harassed the tribes. It was also unofficial violence by white vigilantes who engaged in what became known as “Indian hunting”. Sometimes the killing was in response to Indian raids on white communities. But considerable numbers of whites were committed to the goal of literal “elimination” of the tribes whatever their behavior, a goal that rested on the belief in the essential inhumanity of Indians and the impossibility of white coexistence with them. Indian population in California from 150,000 before the Civil War to 30,000 in 1870.
At the Battle of the Little Bighorn in southern Montana in 1876, an unprecedentedly large army, perhaps 2,500 tribal warriors,, surprised Custer and part of his regiment, surrounded them, and killed every man.
Leader of the Nez Perce, persuaded his followers to flee from the expected retrib ution. American toops pursued and attacked them, only to be ddriven off in a battle at White Bird Canyon.Joseph moved with 200 warriors and 350 women, children and old people in an effort to reach Canada. They were finally caught just short of the Cadain boundary.
Inspired ecstatic, mystical visions—including images of the retreat of white people from the plains and a restoration of the great buffalo herds
Fighting broke out in which about 40 white soldiers and up to 200 of the Indians died in South Dakota.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs tried to move Indian families onto their own plots of land and also took many Indian children away from their families and sent them to boarding schools un by whites. They moved as well to stop Idian religious rituals and ncouraged the spread of Chrisitianiy and the creation o Christian churches on the reservations.
For a time in the late 1870s and early 1880s, the new western farmers flourished, enjoying the fruits of an agricultural economic boom. Beginning in the mid-1880s, however the boom turned to bust, and the western agricultural economy began a long, steady decline.
Cheap rail ratesà The rail roads promoted settlement in utah, and lowered their ticket prices for trips west
Barbed wire was developed—in order to fence in the large ranches in the plains
Scarce Waterà Water was scarce in the plains even when there was rainfall, after a series of good rainfall years, a series of bad rainfall years came—and the plains converted back to a desert region—but some farmers dealt w/ the water problem by using well pumps powered by steel wind mills
 Most people who moved to the plains were farmers in the Midwest before
 There were booming agrarian years in the 1880’s, after that it became arid and dry, and production became more expensive
Reverse Migrationà Since production became too expensive many farmers went into debt—eventually these farmers migrated back east, where they were originally from—turning once flourishing towns into ghost towns, and those who refused to migrate east continued to suffer from the falling prices
Commercial agricultureà The production of crops for sale, crops intended for widespread distribution (e.g. supermarkets), and any non-food crops such as cotton and tobacco 
Over Productionà from 1865-1900 farms around the world dramatically increased production—world wide overproduction led to a drop in prices for most agricultural goods, commercial farming had made some people extremely wealthy, but the industry was suffering relative to the rest of the nations economy.
Grievancesà overproduction was causing the farming industry to decline, people started to search for what the problem was, their answer were very immediate: inadequate freight rates, high interest rates, and an inadequate currency—but this was not the cause of over production, only unwanted expenses—that caused some farmers to go into debt.
Belief in Conspiracyà the third and last big grievance concerned the prices of the crops, a conspiracy theory began circulating—the middle men, the speculators were thought to be fixing the prices
These agrarian resentments led to isolation of farm life—many teenagers left the farms for the city—because they were so bored.
Isolation and obsolenceà these feelings led to discomfort amongst many of the farmers. Some farmers began to write. Farmers were becoming aware of their position in the declining agrarian market and the new industrial/urban growth.


Chapter 17
Alexander graham bellà in 1866 Cyrus W. Field laid a transatlantic telegraph cable to Europe. Then in the next decade, Alexander Bell developed the first telephone with commercial capacity. Then in the next 50 years, the radio, typewriter, car, and plane were fabricated—helping business in America.
Impact of electric powerà the greatest invention was in the findings of electricity. The pioneers of electric power include charles f. bush (arc lamp), and Thomas Edison who invented the incandescent light bulb.
RR’s revved upà 40, 000 miles of RR track were added in the 1870’s and 80’s due to an increase in iron production.
Bessemer processàThe Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass-production of steel from molten pig iron. The process is named after its inventor, Henry Bessemer, who took out a patent on the process in 1855. The key principle is removal of impurities from the iron by oxidation through air being blown through the molten iron. The oxidation also raises the temperature of the iron mass and keeps it molten.
New Blast furnacesà built in 1870 and after—these furnaces were 75 feet tall and could produce 500 tons of steel per week.
New transportation systemsà since the steel industry expanded, new transportation systems had to emerge. New steam engines were created to serve the new freighters being built (of steel).
Rise of the petroleum industryà the rising steel industry served many different aspects of the American economy, but in the new transportation systems lubrication was needed, this is where oil came in. There was oil in western Pennsylvania. George Bissel showed people that oil could be used in many different ways. He raised money and started drilling, and produced more than 500 barrels per month—the demand for the substance grew quick, especially with the rise of the automobile.
Henry fordà petrol (gasoline) was discovered, you could extract it from oil, and the internal combustion engine was soon after developed. The American car industry soon developed several famous cars.  Henry Ford—creator of the assembly line also created the first of the famous cars. In 1895 there were 4 cars in America, in 1920 there were 5 million.
The Wright brosà began constructing a glider in 1899 that would end up being propelled by engine. By 1904 they improved the airplane so much that it could fly 23 miles. But its good to note that most of the first aero technologies were developed in france.
Corporate research and developmentà General Electric was one of the first companies to develop their own laboratories. The Emergence of corporate research labs coincided with a decline in government support for research.
Taylorismà Scientific management (also called Taylorism, the Taylor system, or the Classical Perspective) is a theory of management that analyzes and synthesizes workflow processes, improving labor productivity. He said if employees each did little things the whole process would be faster and more efficient.
Assembly lineà introduced by Henry Ford, the assembly line, at first dealt with automobiles but soon delved into other industries. The main jist of the assembly line is that employees each do one thing, they (for example) specialize at either putting on the wheels or painting the car.
Importance of government subsidiesà the government was important in funding expansion of RR’s, and other industries.
Limited liabilityà Limited liability is a concept whereby a person's financial liability is limited to a fixed sum, most commonly the value of a person's investment in a company or partnership with limited liability. A shareholder in a limited company is not personally liable for any of the debts of the company, other than for the value of his investment in that company.
US steel createdà Andrew Carnegie, a Scottish immigrant worked his way up and created his own steel mill, soon to find himself at the top of the industry. He soon bought up coal mines and RR’s. He financed his buyings buy selling stock. In 1901 he sold out to JP morgan for 450 million—he merged Carnegies busineses with others and created US steel, worth 14 billion and con trolls 2/3’s of the nations steel production.

horizontal integration-a number of firms engaged in the same enterprise combined into 1 corporation
Vertical integration-A large company takes over different businesses that it relies on
standard oil-vertically and horizontally integrated company owned by John Rockefeller. Everything painted red
holding company-central corporate body that buys up stock of various members of company
ideology of individualism-industry provides a chance to succeed and obtain wealth
social Darwinism-the fittest will survive and benefit while the less fit will not suceed
corporate wealth legitimated-leaders used social Darwinism to explain their success
gospel of wealth-the wealthy had great responsibility to advance social progress
horatio alger-once homosexual preacher. Author who wrote “rags to riches” stories
socialsist labor party-pro-reformers of capitalism, very little success
henry georges single tax-land tax designed to destroy monopolies, distribute wealth more equally and eliminate poverty.
American Railway union: led by Eugene V. Debs. This group went on strike and all transportation from Chicago to the pacific coast was paralyzed.

Government intervention in homestead strike: the governor of Pennsylvania sent the state’s entire National Guard contingent, approximately 8000 men to Homested.

Henry Clay Frick: Shortly after marrying his wife, Adelaide Childs, in 1881, Frick met Andrew Carnegie in New York City (the Fricks were on their honeymoon). This meeting resulted in a partnership between H. C. Frick & Company and Carnegie Steel Company, and was the predecessor to United States Steel. This partnership ensured that Carnegie's steel mills had adequate supplies of coke. Frick became chairman of the company

Haymarket bombing: at Haymarket Square on May 1 when the police told the crowd to disperse, someone threw a bomb killing seven police officers and injuring sixty-7 others.

Samuel gompers: Gompers helped found the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions in 1881 as a coalition of like-minded unions. In 1886 it was reorganized into the American Federation of Labor, with Gompers as its president. He would remain president of the organization until his death (with the exception of one year, 1895).

AFL: The AFL was the largest union grouping in the United States for the first half of the twentieth century, even after the creation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) by unions that left the AFL in 1938 over its opposition to organizing mass production industries. While the union was founded and dominated by craft unions throughout the first fifty years of its existence, many of its craft union affiliates turned to organizing on an industrial basis to meet the challenge from the CIO in the 1940s.

Terrence V. Powderly: For several years the knights remained a secret fraternal organization. But in the late 1870’s, under the leadership of Terence V. Powderly, the order moved into the open and entered a period of spectacular expansion. By 1886, it claimed a total membership of over 700,000.

Rail road strike of 1877: when the railroad company announced a 10% wage decrease all workers from St. Louis to Baltimore destroyed equipment and rioted. When it was over 100 people had died only a couple weeks after it had begun. This was the first major national labor conflict in America.

Molly Maguires: This was a militant group that used violence and even murder in its battles, but much of the violence was instigated by the operation managers to suppress unionization.

Child labor: at least 1.7 million children under sixteen years of age were employed in factories and fields; 10% of all girls aged ten to fifteen, and 20% of all boys, held jobs.

Harsh working conditions: Most factory laborers worked ten-hour days, six days a week; in the steel industry they worked twelve hours a day. Industrial accidents were frequent.

Growing ethnic tensions: groups didn’t like each other. Big surprise.

Temperance movement: The temperance movement attempted to greatly reduce the amount of alcohol consumed or even prohibit its production and consumption entirely. In predominantly Muslim countries, temperance is part of Islam. In predominantly Protestant countries, forms of Christianity influenced by Wesleyan views on sanctification have strongly supported it at times. More specifically, religious or moralistic beliefs have often been the catalyst for temperance, though secular advocates do exist. The Women's Christian Temperance Union is a prominent example of a religion-based temperance movement.

WCTU: The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is the oldest continuing non-sectarian women's organization in the U.S. and worldwide. Founded in Fredonia, New York in 1873, the group spearheaded the crusade for prohibition. Members advanced their cause by entering saloons, singing, praying, and urging saloonkeepers to stop selling alcohol. Subsequently, on December 22, 1873, they were the first local organization to adopt the name, Women's Christian Temperance Union.

Frances Willard: Frances Willard expressed views that conflicted with a fellow progressive, the African-American journalist Ida B. Wells. Wells accused Willard of supporting the stereotype of white women needing to be protected against black men, which conflicted with Well's own efforts to dispel that stereotype, as well as accusing Willard of not speaking out against the lynching of black men. Willard repeatedly denied Wells' accusation and maintained that her primary focus was upon empowering and protecting women. (Willard's WCTU actively recruited black women and included them in its membership.)

Political Machines- Boss Tweed, Tammy Hall:

Tee Totaler:

Lizzie Borden: ] (July 19, 1860 – June 1, 1927, both in Fall River, Massachusetts) was a New England spinster who was the central figure in the hatchet murders of her father and stepmother on August 4, 1892 in Fall River, Massachusetts in the United States. The slayings, subsequent trial, and the following trial by media became a cause célèbre, and the fame of the incident has endured in American pop culture and criminology. Although Lizzie Borden was acquitted, no one else was ever arrested or tried, and she has remained notorious in American folklore. Dispute over the identity of the killer or killers continues to this day.

Margret Sanger: (September 14, 1879 – September 6, 1966) was an American birth control activist, an advocate of negative eugenics, and the founder of the American Birth Control League (which eventually became Planned Parenthood). Initially met with fierce opposition to her ideas, Sanger gradually won some support, both in the public as well as the courts, for a woman's choice to decide how and when, if ever, she will bear children. Margaret Sanger was instrumental in opening the way to universal access to birth control
In 1881, representatives of a number of craft unions formed the Federation of Organized Trade and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada. Fiver years later, this body took the name it has borne ever since, the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Rejecting the Knights of Labor’s idea of one big union for everybody, the Federation was an association of essentially autonomous craft unions that represented mainly skilled workers.\
The powerful leader of the AFL, concentrated on labor’s immediate objectives: wages, hours, and working conditions.
In Chicago, a center of labor and radical strength, a strike was already in progress at the McCormick Harvester Company. City police had been harassing the strikers, and labor and radical leaders called a protest meeting at Haymarket Square on May 1. When the police ordered the c rowd to disperse, someone threw a bomb that killed seven policemen and injured sixty-seven others. The police, who had killed four strikers the day before, fired into the crowd and killed four more people. Conservative, property-conscious Americans—frightened and outraged—demanded retribution. Chicago officials finally rounded up eight anarchists and charged them with murder, on the grounds that their statements had incited whoever had hurled the bomb. All eight scapegoats were fond guilty after a remarkably injudicious trial. Sever were sentenced to death. One of them committed suicide, four were executes, and two had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment.
To most middle-class Americans, the Haymarket bombing was an alarming symbol of social chaos and radicalism. “Anarchism” now became in the public mind a code word for terrorism and violence, even though most anarchists were relatively peaceful,For the next thirty years, the specter of anarchism remained one of the most frightening concepts in the American imagination. It was a constant obstacle to the goals of the AFL and other labor organizations, and it did particular damage to the Knights of Labor. However much they tried to distance themselves from the radicals, labor leaders were always vulnerable to accusation of anarchism, as the violent strikes of the 1890s occasionally illustrated.
Carnegie’s chief lieutenant, they had decided that the Amalgamated “hato go”. Over the next two years, they repeatedly cut wages at Homestead. At first, the union acquiesced, aware that it was not strong enough to wage a successful strike. But in 1892, when the company stopped even discussing its decisions with the union and gave it two days to accpt another wage cut, the Amalgamated called for a strike. Frick abruptly shut down the plant and called in 300 guards from the Pinkerton Detective agency, well known as strikebreakers, to enable the company to hire nonunion workers. They approached the plant by river, on barges on July 6, 1892. The trikers poured gasoline on the water, set it on fire, and then met the Pinkertons at the docks with guns and dynamite. After several hours of fighting, which killed three guards and ten strikers and injured many others, the Pinkertons surrendered and were escorted roughly out of town.
The worker’s victory was temporary. The governor of Pennsylvania, at the comopany’s request, sent the state’s entire national Guard contingent, some 8,000 men, to Homestead. Production resumed, with strikebreakers now protected by troops.
Was the largest union of its time, and the first industrial union in the United States. It was founded on June 20, 1893, by railway workers gathered in Chicago, Illinois, and under the leadership of Eugene V. Debs (locomotive fireman and later Socialist Presidential candidate), the ARU, unlike the trade unions, incorporated a policy of unionizing all railway workers, regardless of craft or service. Within a year, the ARU had hundreds of affiliated local chapters and over 140,000 members nationwide.Beginning in August 1893, the Great Northern Railroad cut wages repeatedly through March 1894. By April, the ARU voted to strike and shut the railroad down for 18 days, pressuring the railroad to restore the workers' wages. It was the ARU's first and only victory.Similarly, the Pullman Palace Car Company cut wages five times – 30 to 70 percent – between September and March. The Company was based in the town of Pullman, Illinois, named after its owner, millionaire George Pullman. The town of Pullman was his "utopia." He owned the land, homes and stores. Workers had to live in his homes and buy from his stores, thereby ensuring virtually all wages returned directly back into his pockets. Upon cutting wages, the workers suffered greatly from this setup as rent and product prices remained the same. The workers formed a committee to express their grievances resulting in three of its members being laid off, resulting in a full stop in production on May 11, 1894.
In the last decades of the nineteenth century, labor made few real gains despite militant organizing efforts. Industrial wages rose harldy at all. Labor leaders won a few legislative victories—the abolition of the Contract Labor Law, the establisment of an eight-hour day for government employees, compensation for some owrkers injured on the job, and others. But many such laws were not enforced. Widespread strikes and protests, and many other working-class forms of resistance, large and small, led to few real gains. The end of the century found most workers with less political power and less control of the workplace than they had had forty years before.
The shifting nature of the work force was a source of labor weakness. Many immigrant workers came to America intending to earn some money and then return home. The assumption hat they had no long0range future in the country eroded their willingness to organize. Other workers were in constant motion, moving from one job to another, one town to another, seldom in a single place long enough to establish any institutional ties or exert real power. Above all, perhaps, workers made few gains in the late nineteenth century because they faced corporate organizations of vast wealth and power, which were gnerally determine to crush any efforts by workers to challenge their prerogatives. And as the Homestead and Pullman strikes suggest, the corporations usually had the suport of local, state, and federal authrorities, who were willing to send in troops to “preserve order” and crush labor uprisings on dmand.
Despite the creation of new labor unions and a wave of strikes and protests, workrs in the late nineteenth century failed on the whole to create successful organizations or to protect their interests. In the battle for power within the emerging industrial economy, almost all the advantages seemed to lie with capital.

Chapter 18

In the late nineteenth century, Americans left the declining agricultural regions of the East at a dramatic rate. Some moved to the newly developing farmlands of the West. But almost as many moved to the cities of the East and the Midwest.
The most important source of urban population growth, however was the great number of new immigrants from abroad. Some came from Canada, Latin America, and—particularly on the West Coast—China and Japan. But the greatest number came from Europe.
By 1890, most of the population of the major cities consisted of immigrants: 87 percent of the population in Chicago, 80 percent in New York, 84 percent in Milwaukee and Detroit.Equally striking was the diversity of new immigrant populations. In other countries experiencing heavy immigration in this period, most of the new arrivals were coming from one or two sources. But in the United States, no single national group dominated.
The cultural cohesiveness of the ethnic communities clearly eased the pain of separation from the immigrants’ native lands. Some ethnic groups (Jews and Germans in particular) advanced economically more rapidly than others (for example, the Irish). One explanation is tha t, by huddling together in ethnic neighborhoods, immigrant groups tended to reinforce the cultural values of their previous societies. When those values were particularly well suited to economic advancement—for example, the high value Jews placed on education—ethnic identification may have helped members of a group to improve their lots. When other values predominated—maintaining community solidarity, strengthening family ties, preserving order—progress could be less rapid.
Native-born Americans encouraged assimilation in countless ways. Public schools taught children in English, and employers often insisted that workers speak English on the job. Most non-ethnic stores sold mainly American products, forcing immigrants to adapt their diets, clothing, and lifestyles to American norms.
They proposed screening immigrants through literacy tests and other standards, to separate the “desirable” from the “undesirable”.
Immigrants provided a cheap and plentiful labor supply to the rapidly growing economy, and many argued that America’s industrial (and indeed agricultural) development would be impossible without it.
It would allow city residents a healthy, restorative escape from the strains of urban life by reacquainting them with the natural world. Federick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux deliberately created a public space that would look as little like the city as possible. Instead of the ordered, formal spaces common in some European cities, they created instead a space that seemed entirely natural.
Led the “city beautiful” movement. The movement strove to impose a similar order and symmetry on the disordered life of cities around the country.
One of the largest public works projects ever undertaken in America to that point, the city of Boston gradually filed in a large area of marshy tidal land in the late 1880s to create the neighborhood know as “Back Bay”.
Many of the moderately well-to-do took advantage of less expensive land on the edges of the city and settled in new suburbs, linked to the downtowns by trains or streetcars.
jacob riisàwas a Danish immigrant who was a photographer—he shocked the USA middle class with his pictures of tenement life, aka the slums.
sky scrapersàchicago 1884, the first skyscraper, ten stories tall was built—it launched a new era of architecture, the construction industry emerged as a result. And the development of elevators made taller buildings possible. Buildings were made fireproof to control raging city fires—fire departments were built too.
inadequate sanitationà disease was an even greater struggle for cities than fires. Diseases attained in poor regions of a city were usually passed onto the middle class region where there it would be passed onto the upper class—and soon there was an endemic disease. The problem was in improper sewage disposal—it would get into drinking water and stuff. Typhoid fever and cholera were typical.
air pollutionà many people were unaware of “environmental destruction” aka pollution. Large factories were extracting large sums of coal into the atmosphere and creating a “perpetual fog” in the cities.
public health serviceà(1912) it attempted to create common health standards for all factories—its duty was in preventing diseases from becoming endemic in the large cities.
growing crime rateà in the late 19th century the murder rate quadrupled from 25 out of a million to 100. This was due to urban expansion, which created more poverty. In the south there were a lot of homicides, in the west there was instability--namely suicide. Native born Americans were as likely to commit a crime as an immigrant. The rich, in order to protect themselves, built gates, and bought guns, lots of them.
function of the urban bossà to win votes for his organization, to help get him on top, helping people out. Those who were loyal attained privlages—they attained municipal jobs mainly.
william m tweedà most corrupt urban boss, extravagant usage of public funds got him sent to jail.
rising incomeà everyone in the us had a rising income, some more than others, but still everyones was rising—many fortunes were made due to the emergence of new industries—the middle class experienced an uplift. Doctors, lawyers and other pros. Experienced a dramatic uplift.
ready made clothingà rising income made mass consumerism possible. An enormous industry arouse out of this—apparel. Buying and preparing food was also a big part of consumerism. Consumerism provided the country with more healthy food and as a result the life expectancy rose 6 years.
Consumerismà the rise in income per person, allowing people to buy really what ever they wanted—which created new industries food markets, and clothing/apparel—before the civil war people made their own clothing.
 marshall field-created 1 of the first department stores in chicago
national consumer league-lead by Florence Kelley, attempted to mobilize women’s power as consumers to force retailers/manufacturers to improve wages and working conditions
simon patten- argued that leisure was affordable, and almost a necessity in the industrial age
baseball-“rounders” adopted version of cricket became big quickly after civil war
basketball invented-1891 by James Naismith, Springfield mass.
vaudeville-form of theater using French models, included acts. Florenz Ziegfield famous for this
d.w. Griffith-pioneer of motion pictures: the birth of a nation, intolerance
coney island-famous and fabulous amusement park/resort in brooklyn
dime novels-tales of detectives, wild west, and other moral uplift stories
william randolph hearst-very wealthy man who by 1914 controlled 9 newspapers and 2 magazines
Unprecedented Geographical Mobility: a lot of people moved to the west
Diverse Immigrant Populations: over 80% of the population in major cities were immigrants
Importance of Ethnic Ties: the different important things that groups had rubbed off on other people and the community grew as a whole.
Assimilation Encouraged: schools only taught English, but assimilation was still encouraged.
Immigration Restriction League: five Harvard alumni founded an organization that tested the immigrant to sort the desirables and the undesirables.
Cheap Immigrant Labor: because of the amount of immigrants in the country, there were very few jobs not filled even at and incredibly low rate.


chapter 19

PARKER!!!!—didn’t do chapter 19, tisk, tisk.
Grover Cleveland (known as “reform” governor) was respected, if not often liked, for his stern and righteous opposition to politicians, grafters, pressure groups, and Tammany Hall. He embodied an era in which few Americans believed the federal government could, or should, do very much. Cleveland had always doubted the wisdom of protective tariffs. The existing high rates, he believed, were responsible for the annual surplus in federal revenues, which was tempting Congress to pass “reckless” and “extravagant” legislation, which he frequently vetoed.
The Democrats re-nominated Cleveland and supported tariff reductions. The Republicans settled on former senator Benjamin Harrison of Indiana, who was obscure but respectable and the grandson of President William Henry Harrison; and they endorsed protection. The campaign was both the first since the Civil War to involve a clear question of economic difference between the parties and one of the most corrupt elections in American history. Cleveland won the popular vote by 100,000, but Harrison won an electoral majority of 233 to 168 and thus the presidency.
Despite its name, the Act has fairly little to do with "trusts". Around the world, what U.S. lawmakers and attorneys call "Antitrust" is more commonly known as "competition law." The purpose of the act was to oppose the combination of entities that could potentially harm competition, such as monopolies or cartels. Its reference to trusts today is anachronism. At the time of its passage, the trust was synonymous with monopolistic practice, because the trust was a popular way for monopolists to hold their businesses, and a way for cartel participants to create enforceable agreements. The Sherman Act was not specifically intended to prevent the dominance of an industry by a specific company, despite misconceptions to the contrary. According to Senator George Hoar, an author of the bill, any company that "got the whole business because nobody could do it as well as he could" would not be in violation of the act. The law attempts to prevent the artificial raising of prices by restriction of trade or supply [1]. In other words, innocent monopoly, or monopoly achieved solely by merit, is perfectly legal, but acts by a monopolist to artificially preserve his status, or nefarious dealings to create a monopoly, are not.
Representative William McKinley of Ohio and Senator Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island drafted the highest protective measure ever proposed to congress. Known as the McKinley Tariff, it became law in October 1890. The tariff was detrimental to the American people, since it acted to raise the price of goods purchased; anything being bought from overseas which now became more expensive than a local product rose in price to that of the local product, and anything bought from overseas which even with its price increase was still cheaper than a local product had to be bought at the new, higher price. This made the mass of people significantly less wealthy in real terms since everything cost more. This tended to cause an increase in wages, as people required more pay to maintain proper renumeration for their skills, which in turn increased the cost of producing local goods, since the cost of labour rose. This in turn acted to make people poorer. The tariff was in fact the harshest detrimental to the American farmers. Not only did the tariff drive up the prices of farm equipment (since wages and imported components were more expensive), it also failed to halt sliding agricultural prices, possibly since there wasn't much competition with imported goods since American agricultural produce was already cheaper than imports.
Banned discrimination in rates between long and short hauls, required that railroads publish their rate schedules and file them with the government, and declared that all interstate rail rates must be “reasonable and just”.
The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, also simply styled the Grange, is a fraternal organization for American farmers that encouraged farm families to band together for their common economic and political good. Founded in 1867 after the Civil War, it is the oldest surviving agricultural organization in America, though now much diminished from the over one million members it had in its peak in the 1890s through the 1950s. In addition to serving as a center for many farming communities, the Grange was an effective special interest group for farmers and their agendas, including fighting railroad monopolies and pushing for rural mail deliveries. Indeed, the word "grange" itself comes from a Latin word for grain, and is related to a "granary" or, more generically, a farm.
Saw it as an effort to build a new kind of society in which economic competition might give way to cooperation. The Farmers' Alliance was an organized agrarian economic movement amongst U.S. farmers that flourished in the 1880s. First formed in 1876 in Lampasas, Texas, the Alliance was designed to promote higher commodity prices through collective action by groups of individual farmers. The movement was strongest in the South and Great Plains, and was widely popular before it was destroyed by the power of commodity brokers. Despite its failure, it is regarded as the precursor to the United States Populist Party, which grew out of the ashes of the Alliance in 1889.
peoples party establishedàThe Populist Party (also known as the People's Party) was a relatively short-lived political party in the United States in the late 19th century. It flourished particularly among western farmers, based largely on its opposition to the gold standard. The party did not remain a lasting feature of the political landscape, though many of its ideals have. The very term "populist" has since become a generic term in U.S. politics for politics, which appeals to the common in opposition to established interests.
populisms limited appealàalthough populism really appealed to farmers, populism failed to expand beyond this group. They really didn’t know if they wanted to accept blacks into the party—interracial issues.
Knights of laboràThe Knights of Labor, also known as Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor, was one of the most important American labor organizations of the 19th century. Founded by nine Philadelphia tailors in 1869 and led by Uriah S. Stephens, its ideology may be described as producerist, demanding an end to child and convict labor, equal pay for women, a progressive income tax, and the cooperative employer-employee ownership of mines and factories.
the populists reform programàPopulist ideas: proposed a system of subtreasuries where farmers could use the crops as collateral and get a loan, they wanted an abolition of national banks, they wanted direct election of us senators, government ownership of RRs and telegraphs; a graduated income tax—their ideas were aimed at fixing the economy.
The Panic of 1893àCauses: People attempted to redeem silver notes for gold; ultimately the statutory limit for the minimum amount of gold in federal reserves was reached and U.S. notes could no longer be successfully redeemed for gold. The investments during the time of the Panic were heavily financed through bond issues with high interest payments. The National Cordage Company (the most actively traded stock at the time) went into receivership as a result of its bankers calling their loans in response to rumors regarding the NCC's financial distress. A series of bank failures followed, and the price of silver fell. The Northern Pacific Railway, the Union Pacific Railroad and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad all failed. This was followed by the bankruptcy of many other companies; in total over 15,000 companies and 500 banks failed (many in the west). About 17%-19% of the workforce was unemployed at the Panic's peak.
Homestead and Pullman strikesà The depression caused major labor upheavals—in both strikes laborers were locked out of the factories and stripped of their jobs.
“Bi-metallism”à In economics, bimetallism is a monetary standard in which the value of the monetary unit can be expressed as a certain amount of gold and as a certain amount of silver; the ratio between the two metals is fixed by law. In economic history the debate took place primarily inside the United States in the late 19th century, as the U.S. was the only major country that was a large producer of both gold and silver.
Crime of 73à The Fourth Coinage Act was enacted by the United States Congress in 1873 and embraced the gold and denied silver. Western mining interests and others who wanted silver in circulation labeled this measure the "Crime of '73". For about five years, gold was the only metallic standard in the United States. This measure was a contributing factor to the subsequent depression that ravaged America from 1873-78.
Free silverà Free Silver was an important political issue in the late 19th century United States. To understand exactly what is meant by "free coinage of silver", it is necessary to understand the way mints operated in the days of the gold standard. Essentially, anyone who possessed un-coined gold, such as successful prospectors, or assayers or refiners to whom they had sold their holdings, could deposit it at one of the U.S. Mints, where it would be made into gold coins. The coins would then be given to the depositor, less a small deduction for processing and funding Mint operations. Possibly in most cases the depositor would not receive coins made of the actual gold he had deposited, but would receive his due compensation in coins the mint already had ready. Free silver advocates wanted silver to be accepted by the mints in the same way; if you deposited enough silver, by weight, to manufacture a silver dollar, then the mint should pay out a silver dollar to you.
sherman silver purchase act-increased the amount of silver that the government was required to purchase every month
mckinley nominated-ex congressman, ohio governor, republican ran presidency of 1896
cross of gold speech-“Youu shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold”
fusion-the populists parties only option was to fuse with the democrats
emergence of modern campaigning-the traditional “front-porch” campaign was replaced with large conventions in multiple states. Bryan traveled 18,000 mi., addressed 5 mil people
demise of the populist party-they gambled and lost everything with the fusion with the democrats after that party lost
gold standard act-the only standard for redeeming money, 1900