Explain how the economic, social & cultural development of the U.S. from 1877 to 1920
shaped by the development of & response to the industrial city:
Many American workers experienced the economic transformations of the late 19th century in
terms of a wrenching loss of status. After the Civil War, however, many American workers
feared that their status was rapidly eroding. The expanding size of factories made relations
between labor and management increasingly impersonal. Mechanization allowed many industries
to substitute semi-skilled and unskilled laborers for skilled craft workers. A massive influx of
immigrants from southern and eastern Europe saturated labor markets, slowing the growth of
working-class incomes. There was a large migration from farms to urban centers where the
factories were located.
Many working men and women feared that the great industrialists were imposing a new form of
feudalism in America, which was reducing "freemen" to "wage slaves." They demanded "a fair
day's wages for a fair day's work" and an eight-hour work day. Native-born workers, fearing
competition from low-wage immigrant workers, sometimes agitated for immigration restriction.
Many observers feared that the United States was on the brink of a ruinous class war.
At the end of the 19th century, American workers intensely debated how they could best defend
their interests in the face of powerful national corporations. One of the most contentious
questions that late 19th century workers debated was whether labor should agitate for higher
wages, shorter hours, and better working conditions, or for more fundamental transformations in
the nation's economy. Some of the earliest labor organizations called for a "cooperative" rather
than a corporate economy, built around worker-controlled producer cooperatives.
Another source of controversy was whether unions should try to organize whole industries (what
are called industrial unions) or organize particular skilled crafts (craft unions). Unlike unskilled
or semi-skilled craft workers who could be easily replaced by immigrant labor, skilled craft
workers, the "aristocracy of labor," had greater power to bargain with employers.
What was at stake in these debates was the very meaning of American democracy in a modern,
industrial society. Among the crucial questions was government's role in labor disputes: Would
government, at the local, state, and federal levels, align itself with labor or management?
Yet the rise of the big business also produced many anxieties. Corporations were accused of
abusing workers, corrupting the political process, and producing shoddy, unsafe products. Many
feared that corporate power allowed companies to fix prices and influence government decisionmaking.
When a company integrated horizontally, it expanded into related fields of business. In the
1850s, an iron furnace might produce a single product such as cast iron or nails. But U.S. Steel
produced a vast array of metal goods.
During the last third of the 19th century, the American economy was dramatically transformed.
After 30 years of periodic economic crises marked by high unemployment and large numbers of
business failures, business began to consolidate into progressively larger economic units.
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Mythmakers sometimes look back on the late 19th century as the golden age of free enterprise.
But it is important to emphasize that the rise of a new economy did not take place easily.
Working conditions in many factories were appalling. Labor conflict was intense. Businesses
were accused of price fixing, stock watering, and other abuses.
In the end, these abuses would bring about a political reaction. To address the problems of
corporate power, the federal government instituted new forms of regulation in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries.
Explain how the personal story & political career of Theodore Roosevelt offered a
comprehensive understanding of American culture in the late 19th & early 20th centuries:
At the Republican convention in 1900, a senator warned his colleagues not to make Theodore
Roosevelt their vice presidential nominee: "Don't any of you realize that there's only one life
between this madman and the presidency?" As New York's governor, Roosevelt had challenged
banking and insurance interests; Republican Party boss Tom Platt wanted him out of state affairs.
Born in New York City in 1858, Roosevelt was, in his own words, "nervous and timid" as a
youth. He suffered headaches, fevers, and stomach pains. He was so frail and asthmatic that he
could not blow out a bedside candle. So he hiked, swam, boxed, and lifted weights to build up
his strength and stamina. In 1912, he would be shot in the chest by a deranged man, but
proceeded to deliver an hour-long speech before having the bullet removed.
At the age of 23, Roosevelt was elected to the New York state legislature. Then in 1884, his wife
and his mother died on the same day. To distance himself from these tragedies, he retreated to a
25,000-acre ranch in North Dakota's Badlands and became a cowboy. He wore spurs and carried
a pearl-handled revolver from Tiffany, the New York jewelers.
Roosevelt returned to serve as a U.S. Civil Service commissioner; he also served as New York
City's crusading police commissioner, wearing disguises in order to root out corruption. He
subsequently became assistant secretary of the Navy and governor of New York, before his
election as vice president in 1900.
Lacking any military experience and wearing a uniform custom-tailed by Brooks Brothers,
Roosevelt served as second-in-command of the Rough Riders, a volunteer cavalry unit that
fought in Cuba during the Spanish American War. With William McKinley's assassination, he
became, at the age of 42, the youngest president in American history.
Even those who know nothing about his presidency instantly recognize his image carved on
Mount Rushmore--his huge, toothy smile and his wire-rimmed glasses. As president, he made
anti-trust, conservation of natural resources, and consumer protection national priorities. He
forced coal operators to recognize the United Mine Workers.
Roosevelt’s life was filled with contradictions. He was a member of one of the country's 20
richest families, yet he denounced business magnates as "malefactors of great wealth."
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The first president born in a big city, he was a hunter as a well as a conservationist. He was a
bellicose man who boxed in the White House. He was also the first American to receive the
Nobel Peace Prize for brokering peace between Russia and Japan.
Incredibly active and energetic, Roosevelt was "a steam engine in trousers" who somehow found
time to write three dozen books, on topics ranging from history to hunting and in languages
ranging from Italian and Portuguese to Greek and Latin. He was the first celebrity president
known simply by his initials. Said a British envoy, "You must always remember the president is
about six."
In office, Roosevelt greatly expanded the powers of the presidency. A bold and forceful leader,
he viewed the White House as a "bully pulpit" from which he could preach his ideas about the
need for an assertive government, the inevitability of bigness in business, and an active
American presence in foreign policy. He broke up trusts that dominated the corporate world and
regulated big business. He created the Departments of Commerce and Labor and the U.S. Forest
Service. He supported a revolt in a province of Colombia that allowed the United States to build
the Panama Canal. He sent a Great White Fleet on an around-the-world voyage to symbolize
America's rise to world power. He made a dramatic public statement about race when he invited
Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House.
Roosevelt pushed legislation though Congress, authorizing and establishing the authority of the
Interstate Commerce Commission to set railroad rates. In 1904, he won reelection by the largest
popular majority up to that time. But on election night, he announced that he would not seek
reelection in 1908--a statement that undercut his influence during his second term. In 1909, he
retired to hunt big game in Africa, and passed the presidency to his hand-picked successor,
William Howard Taft.
Apart from his philosophy of an active, interventionist government, Roosevelt's most lasting
legacy is that he became the model for a new kind of president: a charismatic, hyperkinetic,
heroic leader, who sought to improve every aspect of society. He made the presidency as large as
the problems posed by industrialization and urbanization.
One of the most significant issues Roosevelt confronted as president was how best to deal with
the growth of corporate power. Between 1897 and 1904, a total of 4,227 firms merged to form
257 corporations. The largest merger combined nine steel companies to create U.S. Steel. By
1904, some 318 companies controlled nearly 40 percent of the nation's manufacturing output.
A single firm produced over half the output in 78 industries.
Many Progressives feared that concentrated, uncontrolled, corporate power threatened
Republican government. Public opinion feared that large corporations could impose
monopolistic prices to cheat consumers and could squash small independent companies.
Roosevelt's Justice Department launched 44 anti-trust suits, prosecuting railroad, beef, oil, and
tobacco trusts. Henry Clay Frick, the steel baron complained, "We bought the son of a bitch and
then he didn't stay bought." The most famous anti-trust suit, filed in 1906, involved John D.
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Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company. It took five years for Roosevelt to win his case in the
Supreme Court. In the end, however, Standard Oil was broken into 34 separate companies.
Theodore Roosevelt did not oppose bigness in and of itself. He only opposed irresponsible
corporate behavior. He distinguished between "good trusts" and bad trusts" and advocated
regulating big corporations in the public interest by means of a government commission.
Explain why American mobilization for World War I should be considered an effective
summation of the primary economic, social & cultural developments of the late 19th &
early 20th centuries:
President Wilson was reluctant to enter World War I. When the War began, Wilson declared
U.S. neutrality and demanded that the belligerents respect American rights as a neutral party. He
hesitated to embroil the United States in the conflict with good reason. Americans were deeply
divided about the European war; involvement in the conflict would certainly disrupt Progressive
reforms. In 1914, he had warned that entry into the conflict would bring an end to Progressive
reform. "Every reform we have won will be lost if we go into this war," he said. A popular song
in 1915 was "I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier."
In 1916, President Wilson narrowly won reelection after campaigning on the slogan, "He kept us
out of war." He won the election with a 4,000 vote margin in California.
Toward Intervention
Shortly after war erupted in Europe, President Wilson called on Americans to be "neutral in
thought as well as deed." The United States, however, quickly began to lean toward Britain and
France.
Convinced that wartime trade was necessary to fuel the growth of American trade, President
Wilson refused to impose an embargo on trade with the belligerents. During the early years of
the war, trade with the allies tripled.
This volume of trade quickly exhausted the allies' cash reserves, forcing them to ask the United
States for credit. In October 1915, President Wilson permitted loans to belligerents, a decision
that greatly favored Britain and France. By 1917, American loans to the allies had soared to
$2.25 billion; loans to Germany stood at a paltry $27 million.
In January 1917, Germany announced that it would resume unrestricted submarine warfare. This
announcement helped precipitate American entry into the conflict. Germany hoped to win the
war within five months. Additionally, they were willing to risk antagonizing Wilson on the
assumption that, even if the United States declared war, it could not mobilize quickly enough to
change the course of the conflict.
Then a fresh insult led Wilson to demand a declaration of war. In March 1917, newspapers
published the Zimmerman Note, an intercepted telegram from the German Foreign Secretary
Arthur Zimmerman to the German ambassador to Mexico. The telegram said that if Germany
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went to war with the United States, Germany promised to help Mexico recover the territory it
had lost during the 1840s, including Texas, New Mexico, California, and Arizona. The
Zimmerman telegram and German attacks on three U.S. ships in mid-March led Wilson to ask
Congress for a declaration of war.
Wilson decided to enter the war so that he could help design the peace settlement. Wilson
viewed the war as an opportunity to destroy German militarism. "The world must be made safe
for democracy," he told a joint session of Congress. Only six Senators and 50 Representatives
voted against the war declaration.
Approximately one-third of the nation (32 million people) were either foreign-born or the
children of immigrants, and more than 10 million Americans were derived from the nations of
the Central Powers. Furthermore, millions of Irish Americans sided with the Central Powers
because they hated the English.
The Wilson administration was convinced that it had to mobilize public opinion in support of the
war. To influence public opinion, the federal government embarked on its first ever domestic
propaganda campaign. Wilson chose muckraking journalist George Creel to head the
government agency, the Committee on Public Information (CPI). The CPI placed pro-war
advertisements in magazines and distributed 75 million copies of pamphlets defending America's
role in the war.
Creel also launched a massive advertising campaign for war bonds and sent some 75,000 "FourMinute Men" to whip up enthusiasm for the war by rallying audiences in theaters. The CPI also
encouraged filmmakers to produce movies, like The Kaiser: the Beast of Berlin, that played up
alleged German atrocities. For the first time, the federal government had demonstrated the power
of propaganda.
Anti-German Sentiment
German American and Irish American communities came out strongly in favor of neutrality. The
groups condemned massive loans and arms sales to the allies as they saw the acts as violations of
neutrality. Theodore Roosevelt raised the issue of whether these communities were loyal to their
mother country or to the United States:
Those hyphenated Americans who terrorize American politicians by threats of the foreign vote
are engaged in treason to the American Republic.
Once the United States entered the war, a search for spies and saboteurs escalated into efforts to
suppress German culture. Many German-language newspapers were closed down. Public schools
stopped teaching German. Lutheran churches dropped services that were spoken in German.
Germans were called "Huns." In the name of patriotism, musicians no longer played Bach and
Beethoven, and schools stopped teaching the German language. Americans renamed sauerkraut
"liberty cabbage"; dachshunds "liberty hounds"; and German measles "liberty measles."
Cincinnati, with its large German American population, even removed pretzels from the free
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lunch counters in saloons. More alarming, vigilante groups attacked anyone suspected of being
unpatriotic. Workers who refused to buy war bonds often suffered harsh retribution, and attacks
on labor protesters were nothing short of brutal. The legal system backed the suppression. Juries
routinely released defendants accused of violence against individuals or groups critical of the
war.
A St. Louis newspaper campaigned to "wipe out everything German in this city," even though St.
Louis had a large German American population. Luxembourg, Missouri became Lemay; Berlin
Avenue was renamed Pershing; Bismark Street became Fourth Street; Kaiser Street was changed
to Gresham.
Perhaps the most horrendous anti-German act was the lynching in April 1918 of 29-year-old
Robert Paul Prager, a German-born bakery employee, who was accused of making "disloyal
utterances." A mob took him from the basement of the Collinsville, Illinois jail, dragged him
outside of town, and hanged him from a tree. Before the lynching, he was allowed to write a last
note to his parents in Dresden, Germany:
Dear Parents: I must on this, the 4th day of April, 1918, die. Please pray for me, my dear parents.
In the trial that followed, the defendants wore red, white, and blue ribbons, while a band in the
court house played patriotic songs. It took the jury 25 minutes to return a not-guilty verdict. The
German government lodged a protest and offered to pay Prager's funeral expenses.
In his war message to Congress, President Wilson had warned that the war would require a
redefinition of national loyalty. There were "millions of men and women of German birth and
native sympathy who live amongst us," he said. "If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt
with a firm hand of repression."
In June 1917, Congress passed the Espionage Act. The piece of legislation gave postal officials
the authority to ban newspapers and magazines from the mails and threatened individuals
convicted of obstructing the draft with $10,000 fines and 20 years in jail. Congress passed the
Sedition Act of 1918, which made it a federal offense to use "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or
abusive language" about the Constitution, the government, the American uniform, or the flag.
The government prosecuted over 2,100 people under these acts.
Political dissenters bore the brunt of the repression. Eugene V. Debs, who urged socialists to
resist militarism, went to prison for nearly three years. Another Socialist, Kate Richards O'Hare,
served a year in prison for stating that the women of the United States were "nothing more nor
less than brood sows, to raise children to get into the army and be made into fertilizer."
In July 1917, labor radicals offered another ready target for attack. In Cochise County, Arizona,
armed men, under the direction of a local sheriff, rounded up 1,186 strikers at the Phelps Dodge
copper mine. They placed these workers--many of Mexican descent--on railroad cattle cars
without food or water and left them in the New Mexico desert 180 miles away. The Los Angeles
Times editorialized: "The citizens of Cochise County have written a lesson that the whole of
America would do well to copy."
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The radical labor organization, the International Workers of the World (IWW), never recovered
from government attacks during World War I. In September 1917, the Justice Department staged
massive raids on IWW officers, arresting 169 of its veteran leaders. The administration's purpose
was, as one attorney put it, "very largely to put the IWW out of business." Many observers
thought the judicial system would protect dissenters, but the courts handed down stiff prison
sentences to the radical labor organization's leaders.
Radicals were not the only one to suffer harassment. Robert Goldstein, a motion picture
producer, had made a movie about the American Revolution called The Spirit of '76, before the
United States entered the war. When he released the picture after the declaration of war, he was
accused of undermining American morale. A judge told him that his depiction of heartless
British redcoats caused Americans to question their British allies. He was sentenced to a 10 year
prison term and fined $5,000.
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