Chapter 19
A Troubled Nation Expands Outward
1893 – 1901
“We are only just beginning to realize that the great heroes who
have advanced human destiny are not its politicians, generals, and
diplomatists, but the scientific discoverers and inventors who have
put into man’s hands the instrumentalities of an expanding and controlled
experience, and the artists and poets who have celebrated his
struggles, triumphs, and defeats in such language, pictorial, plastic, or
written, that their meaning is rendered universally accessible to others.” –
John Dewey, on the study of history and geography
"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." William
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]
"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to
battle-be 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 [Spanish American War]
Howard Zinn: "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."
"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 on Karl Marx
“Perhaps the most precious heritage of Marx’s thought is his
internationalism, his hostility to the national state, his insistence
that ordinary people have no nation that they must obey and give
their lives for in war, that we are all linked to one another across
the glove as human beings. This is not only a direct challenge to
modern capitalist nationalism, with its ugly evocations of hatred for “the
enemy” abroad, and its false creation of a common interest for all within
certain artificial borders. It is also a rejection of the narrow nationalism
of contemporary ‘Marxist’ states, whether the Soviet Union, or China, or
any of the others.”
"[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]
"Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all . .
." Jane Addams
"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." ["Je ne suis pas un Marxiste." Karl Marx]
". . . 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" – “as it actually/truly is” [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 antiSemitism. . . . Populism had a dark side that could be seen as
contributing to America's authoritarian and xenophobic tradition."
Martin Ridge, American Retrospectives
Bibliography
 Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward: 2000 - 1887 [1887]
http://eserver.org/fiction/bellamy/intro.html free version
James Chace, 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft, and Debs – The
Election That Changed The Century [2004]
Walter LaFeber, The American Age [1989]
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle
William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Foreign
Policy [1988]
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Concepts
 William Appleman Williams – “open” v. “closed” door US policy
 John Hay “a splendid little war” – [The Platt Amendment] [Link
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Jose Marti to today’s Cuba]
Charles M. Sheldon urged readers to rethink their actions by
asking: “What would Jesus do?” [WWJD]
Mark Hannah’s campaign techniques [Segretti, Rove, Tuck]
“White Man’s Burden.” -- clergymen like Josiah Strong urged
that Americans help Christianize and civilize the world
Most Americans put aside their doubts and welcomed the new
era of aggressive nationalism
Australian ballot
1894, Coxey’s Army
Farmers’ Alliance
Free Silver – Wm Jennings Bryan in 1896 v. McKinley
Granger laws
Greenback party – inflation, [Gerardo’s house in Mexico 1980s]
Interstate Commerce Act – interstate v. intrastate commerce
National American Woman Suffrage Association
Pendleton Civil Service Act
Prohibition Party
Sherman Antitrust Act
Sound money, standards, specie, “constant dollar”
Fiscal policy v. monetary policy
Jack London’s The Iron Heel
Substantive due process v. procedural due process
Text Identifications
 Grover Cleveland, William McKinley
 George Pullman, Eugene Victor Debbs, Pullman strike
 Ida Wells-Barnett, Booker T. Washington, Atlanta Compromise
 Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896
 “Yellow press,” William Randolph Hearst, Sp-American War
 Stephen Crane
 Theodore Roosevelt [next week’s chapter]
The Cooperative Commonwealth
 Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward described a
utopian society in which the economy was under the
collective ownership of the people.
 His 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
 no one earned wages
 sought self-sufficiency through agriculture
 received donations from admirers and wealthy
members.
Chapter Objectives
 Identify some of the ways workers responded to economic hard times
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in 1894.
Identify some of the various responses by the courts and by
women to economic difficulties of the 1890s.
Explain the significance of Plessy v. Ferguson.
Explain American foreign policy during this chapter – Hawaii
through the Spanish American War.
Explain the reasons the United States became involved in the
Spanish-American War.
Explain America’s prosecution of the Spanish American War and its
outcome.
 Explain the significance of the 1896 and 1900 presidential
elections.
I.
The Panic of 1893 and Its Consequences
 Depression hits average working families hardest, but repeal of
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Sherman Silver Purchase Act fails to help
Wilson-Gorman Tariff also fails to help
Coxey’s Army invades Washington but is repulsed
Court injunction halts Pullman Strike
Republicans prevail in 1894 elections
Great Railway Strikes sketch
Understanding the Crisis of the 1890s
 Agricultural Protest
 Farmers’ Alliance
 The People’s Party
 Omaha Platform, 1892
 The Challenge of the Depression
 Coxey’s Army, 1894
 The Battle of the Standards & the Election of 1896
 William Jennings Bryan, Cross of Gold speech
The Limits of Government
 The Weak Presidency
 The Inefficient Congress
 The Federal Bureaucracy and the Spoils System
 Inconsistent State Government
 California – 80 Assembly members, 40 St. Senators
 Weak major system, strong mayor, commissioners
 Hard times bring economic and social unrest
 Business tycoons take over failing companies, concentrating
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wealth even further
Women’s clubs, suffrage societies, and prohibition supporters
increase
Experiments alter city and state governments
Courts continue to protect big business [substantive due process]
Pragmatism grows in popularity
Realism evolves as literary form, often blaming technology for
society’s ills
Supreme Court upholds segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson
White attempts at “Americanizing” Indians almost wipes out
Native American culture
II.
Foreign Policy and National Politics
 Conditions in Hawaii, Venezuela, and Cuba bring suitability of
Monroe Doctrine into question
 Election of 1896 enlivened by campaigns of Bryan and McKinley
 Opponents shaken up by McKinley’s easy victory, and Republicans
dominate
Election of 1896
©2004 Wadsworth, a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Thomson Learning™ is a trademark used herein under license.
The Election of 1896
William Jennings Bryan carried
most of the rural South and
West, but his free silver
campaign had little appeal to
more urban and industrial
regions, which swung strongly to
Republican candidate William
McKinley.
III.
The McKinley Presidency: Achieving World
Power
 Spanish-American War most significant event of McKinley’s
presidency
 Causes include sinking of Maine, yellow journalism, and Delôme
letter
 Americans appear eager for war and are gratified by its brevity
 Peace treaty gives America territories: Guam, Puerto Rico, and
Philippines
™
Spanish American War
 Four-year rebellion in Philippines ensues
 Imperialism re-emerges as national issue [Carnegie, Addams, Ford,
Twain]
 Open Door policy in China leads to failed Boxer Rebellion there
 America looks again to building canal in Central America
 McKinley begins second administration amid great hopes for future
IV.
The United States on the Eve of the 21st
Century
 Nation debates proper direction for new century
 Organization of unions appears to be on horizon
Some Thoughts on National and International
Foreign Policy
September 13, 2006
“Two major questions of ethics in international relations are the
question of who the subject of morality is – individuals, groups or
states – and the question of what duties such subjects have beyond
borders. Accordingly, writers on the ethics of international relations
tend to fall into three categories. At one extreme are the realists
who, while not completely rejecting morality, believe that states are
the dominant actors in world affairs and that the only appropriate
behaviour in international affairs is the pursuit of national interest,
and the balance of power. In this view, one’s responsibility to fellow
citizens far outweighs the obligation to human beings in general. At
the other extreme are the cosmopolitans, who assert that
individuals, not states, are the ultimate subjects of morality and that
values and responsibilities transcend borders. Cosmopolitans also
believe that moral principles are authoritative; where demands of
morality conflict with those of sovereignty, the former take
precedence over the latter. In between the realists and the
cosmopolitans are the internationalists for whom states have a
privileged moral status but who claim that states are bound by the
principle of respect for the sovereignty of other states.” Patrick
Hayden
“We must love one another or die.” Poet W. H. Auden [September 1,
1939]
"If I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal." US
WWII General Curtis LeMay
“Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible
in a government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards
recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a
free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the
individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own
power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.” Henry
David Thoreau
"Remember Smedley Butler? He was perhaps the most decorated Major
General in Marine Corps history. In the early part of this century, he fought
and killed for the United States around the world. Butler was awarded two
Congressional Medals of Honor. Then, when he returned to the United
States he wrote a book titled "War is a Racket" which opens with the
memorable lines: 'War is a racket. It always has been. . . . I was a high
class muscleman for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the
Bankers,' Butler said. 'In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for
capitalism.’ In a speech in 1933, Butler said the following: 'I helped make
Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I
helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank
boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central
American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of
racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking
house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican
Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it
that Standard Oil went its way unmolested'." Russell Mokhiber and
Robert Weissman
“It is not the critic that counts; not the one who points out how the strong
person stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them
better. The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the arena,
whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives
valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is
no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do
the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who
spends himself or herself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the
end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he or she
fails, at least while daring greatly, so that his or her place shall never be
with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt
". . . We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its
population. . . In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of
envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise
a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this
position of disparity without positive detriment to our national
security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and
day-dreaming, and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere
on our immediate national objective. We need not deceive ourselves that
we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction. . . We
should cease to talk about vague and -- for the Far East -- unreal
objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and
democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal
in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic
slogans, the better."
George Kennan, Head of the State Dept planning staff in the early postWorld War II period (This was a top secret internal document written in
1948.)
"All of us have heard this term 'preventive war' since the earliest
days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day
and time...I don't believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I
wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked
about such a thing." President Dwight Eisenhower, 1953, upon being
presented with plans to wage a preventive war to disarm Stalin's Soviet
Union
"Our position is that whatever grievances a nation may have,
however objectionable it finds the status quo, aggressive warfare is
an illegal means for settling those grievances or for altering those
conditions." Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the American
prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, in his opening statement to the
tribunal“
"Truth never damages a cause that is just." Mohandas K. Gandhi
Be Angry at the Sun [1941]
"That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years. . . .
Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors.
This republic, Europe, Asia.
Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs." Robinson Jeffers
“In war, truth is the first casualty.” Aeschylus
"On a visit to Europe a few days before he was assassinated by elite
government forces in San Salvador in November 1989, Father Ignacio
Ellacuria, rector of the University of Central America, addressed the West
on the underlying issues. You 'have organized' your lives around inhuman
values, he said. These values 'are inhuman because they cannot be
universalized. The system rests on a few using the majority of the
resources, while the majority can't even cover their basic necessities. It is
crucial to define a system of values and a norm of living that takes
into account every human being." Noam Chomsky
"Our political culture has a conception of democracy that differs from that
of the Brazilian bishops. For them, democracy means that citizens
would have the opportunity to inform themselves, to take part in
inquiry and discussion and policy formation, and to advance their
programs through political action. For us, democracy is more
narrowly conceived: the citizen is a consumer and observer but not a
participant. The public has the right to ratify policies that originate
elsewhere, but if these limits are exceeded, we have not democracy, but a
'crisis of democracy,' which must somehow be resolved." Noam Chomsky
”I know if I don’t write about something within a couple of years it will be
lost in these piles. The trouble is, all of us feel like this. You’re so far out
of the mainstream that the few people who follow these issues closely
and who write about them know that if they don’t deal with something, it’s
out of history.” Noam Chomsky
"Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human
events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact
that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be,
animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the
same results."—Machiavelli
"[W]hen a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face
men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is
the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of
comprehending any save the most elemental--men whose whole thinking
is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of
what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either
bark with the pack or be lost... [A]ll the odds are on the man who is,
intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre--the man who can most
adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The
Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is
perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of
the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious
day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and
the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." - H. L.
Mencken, in the Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920.
Asked whether America is bound by any international system, legal
framework or code of conduct, the US defense secretary [Donald
Rumsfeld] replied: 'I honestly believe that every country ought to do
what it wants to do ... It either is proud of itself afterwards, or it is
less proud of itself.'
“I think that in the long run, our non-violent approach and the moral
supremacy of the Czechoslovak people over the aggressor had, and still
has moral significance. In retrospect it could be said that the peaceful
approach may have contributed to the breakup of the ‘aggressive’ bloc. . .
. My conviction that moral considerations have their place in politics does
not follow simply from the fact that small countries must be moral because
they do not have the ability to strike aback at bigger powers. Without
morality it is not possible to speak of international law. To disregard moral
principles in the realm of politics would be a return to the law of the
jungle.” Alexander Dubček, August 1990
"When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner,
you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual. So
slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous.
But the individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you can
imagine - benevolent, friendly, nice to their children, even nice to their
slaves, caring about other people. I mean as individuals they may be
anything. In their institutional role, they're monsters, because the
institution's monstrous. And the same is true here." Noam Chomsky
“The majority rules and law rests on numbers, not on intellect or
virtue. . . while theoretically holding that no vote of the majority can
authorize injustice, we practically consider public opinion the real
test of what is true and false; and hence, as a result, the fact which
Tocqueville has noticed, that practically our institutions protect, not
the interest of the whole community but the interests of the
majority.” Abolitionist Wendell Phillips
"Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands
it." Albert Einstein
"It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth to justice
and to expose lies." Noam Chomsky
". . . refuse to settle for simple explanations for complex problems.
. . . Honest history answers our questions only by asking something of
us in return." Text author Edward L. Ayers
"And in the general hardening of outlook that set in . . . practices
which had been long abandoned - imprisonment without trial, the
use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to
extract confessions . . . and the deportation of whole populations not only became common again, but were tolerated and even
defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and
progressive." George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
"Justice, justice . . . both for the ends and the means." Ron Suskind
"It is uncertain if we have the national leadership and the collective
intelligence and will to confront issues that can't simply be solved
by avoidance or the 'invisible hand' of the free market." Dr. Randal
Beeman [2005]