1876-1900
AAH!!!!!!!!!!!!
Walter Prescott Webb
The Great Plains
 ”Civilization , east of the Mississippi, was based on
three legs: land, timber and water.”
 In the west, she lost two of her legs, timber and
water.
Little Big Horn
 Sioux gathered at the Little Big Horn River
 Sitting Bull
– We will win!
 Custer-”Long Hair”
– 7th Calvary
– Died
Who got rich?

John D. Rockefeller
Trust
 Corporations in the same market put control of business under
group of trustees
 Shareholders receive dividends, but have no say in the business
Vertical Combinations
Horizontal Combinations
Other companies

George Eastman
– "you press the button, we do the rest"
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Crayola Crayons
– 8 Crayons for a nickel
Dentyne gum-1899
Zipper-1896
Cornflakes-1906 Will Kellogg
Thomas Edison
 Most versatile of them all
– Sometimes working 20 hour days
 Menlo Park, New Jersey
– an invention factory
 What did he invent?
Telephone
 Alexander Graham Bell
– Teacher for the deaf
– Went from a microphone
– Telephone
– “Number please ladies”
Money Trust?
 Investment banker
– Able to be a member of the board of directors of several
companies
 Controlled many banks and insurance companies
– In turn gave him a lot of influence over companies
Problems
 Labor
 Cities
 Wealth in the hands of a few
– 73% of the national wealth in the hands of 10% of American
families
 Huge gap between the rich and the poor
Labor Problems
 Long hours
 Low pay
 No workman’s compensation
 Harsh working conditions
– Worst was mining of any kind
What helped?
 Samuel Gompers
 “Trade Union ,pure and simple”
– Only skilled workers
– Worked for 8 hour day
Where were the women?


Most of us were home
But if we had a job,
– Teacher
– Textile worker
Cities
 Filthy
 Grew up too fast
 No sewage systems
 Crime rate
 Slums and tenement housing
Politics
No one of any consequence
Grover Cleveland
Immigration in the late 1800’s
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
New immigrants
– Southern and eastern Europe
Five out of every six Irish and Russian travelers, three out of four Italian
and Hungarian immigrants eventually settled in the nation's great cities.
– No money
– Too late to acquire any free land
“Lovely Lady”
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Auguste Bartholdi
– Sculptor
Gustave Eiffel
– Structural engineer
Brought to America
– No place to put her
Pulitzer-championed the fundraising for the pedestal
“That's who I have been longing to see”
Immigration
from the other direction
Chinese Exclusion Act
 First significant restriction on free immigration in U.S. history
 Excluded Chinese laborers from the country under penalty of
imprisonment and deportation
 Made Chinese immigrants permanent aliens
– Chinese men in the U.S. now had little chance of ever
reuniting with their wives, or of starting families in their new
home.
Made permanent?
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
Yep, in 1902
Repealed after WW II
Imperialism
 International
 Domestic
International Reasons
 World trade
 1865
– $400 million
 1890
– $1 billion
 Capital investments abroad
– 1890
 $500 million
 European example
Domestic reasons
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The frontier was gone
Missionary pressure
Imperialistic propaganda
– Mandate from God
 Josiah Strong’s pamphlet “Our Country”
Naval pressure-Mahan

Groups of Politicians
– Teddy Roosevelt
– Henry Cabot Lodge
Cuba
 Cubans frightfully misgoverned by Spain
 Revolted in 1895
– Adopted a scorched earth policy
 General Weyler (Butcher Weyler)
– Herded civilians in barbed-wire “concentration” camps
– Pestholes where the occupants died
Yellow Journalism
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
Joseph Pulitzer
William Hearst
– Used Cuba to boost their ratings
– Using headlines set in enormous black letters,
– colored paper,
– full-page editorials,
– Illustrations
– provocative cartoons
“You furnish the pictures and I will furnish the
war”
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Battles that never happened
Brutality toward Cuban women that never happened
– Story of a Cuban woman prisoner
 375 columns of print to a romanticized version of her story
Remember the Maine and to hell with Spain!
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Spain backed off
– Weyler was called back
US Maine in Havana harbor
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
– Blew up
US-Spain
Spain-Engine blew up
“Splendid Little War”
Phillipines
 Sailed from China and met little resistance
 Aided by the Filipino people
Let’s go to the war!

Teddy Roosevelt resigned as Governor of New York
Spanish –American War
Read the real account of the battle
We were lucky!
 Oregon barely made it for the battle of Santiago
 Made Teddy aware of the need for a shorter route.
We won!!!
Now what do we do ?
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Cuba-independence(close to us and we could keep our eye on them)
Guam
Puerto Rico
What about the Philippines?
 Philippines
– So far away
– Filipinos, expecting independence, rebel!
Filipino War
 Used the same tactics as Butcher Weyler
– Concentration camps
 Lost more men than in the Spanish American War
 Lasted more than three years
Hawaii
 Sent missionaries early in the 1820’s
 Took the land away
 Pearl Harbor was established
She’s ours!!!!
Election of 1900
 R-McKinley
– Rarely campaigned
 McKinley’s VP-Teddy Roosevelt
– Hanna wanted to kill TR’S political career
– Called TR a cowboy
 D-William Jennings Bryan
– All over USA
McKinley wins again!
 Attending the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, NY
 Standing in a receiving line
– Shot at point blank range by an anarchist
 Died a week later
Look who is President now!
 Read
– Hurricane of 1900