Industrialization,
Corruption, Labor and
Reform
Learnong Objects
 Understand how art such as Riis’ photography and
Nast’s cartoons influenced public policy
 Analyze how successful was organized labor in
improving the position of workers in the period from
1875 to 1900
 Identify the economic and political grievances of late
19th century American farmer
 At the end of the 19th century, the largest worldwide
population movement in human history brought a wave
of immigrants to the United States. How many came?
When did they come? Where did they come from?
What types of work were they involved in? (29-31)
 Describe the shift from home to factory work and from
agriculture to industry
 Describe the shift from self-employment to wage work
 Describe the shift from water and animal power to fossil
fuels
Jacob Riis
 Jacob Riis published How the Other Half Lives:
Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890)
 What technological Innovation allowed Riis to start
photographing the slums?
 What was tenement housing?
Tenement Reform
 Physicians attributed 8,000 to 9,000 deaths a year to
tuberculosis, mostly in the poorest and most unsanitary
neighborhoods of the City.
 The First Tenement House Act (1867) required fire escapes
for each suite and a window for every room, loophole closed
in 1879 by requiring windows to face a source of fresh air
and light, not an interior hallway
 New York State Tenement House Act of 1901 set
minimum size requirements for the spaces (such as
courtyards) onto which windows opened and mandated that
one bathroom be installed inside the building for every two
families
As House and Garden magazine wrote, "The
dumbbell block is perhaps the worst type of
tenement ever allowed in a modern, enlightened
community. The halls and ten of the fourteen
rooms on each floor are dark and ill-ventilated,
dependent for light and air solely upon narrow
airshafts which give little or no light below the top
floors."
Business and life
 What was railroad time?
 How did management systems change during this
period?
 What is the “business cycle?” What causes it to
happen? What are the effects when this cycle is so
volatile?
Corruption
 What is the spoils system? Why was it of such concern
in terms of corruption?
 What ended it?
Boss Tweed
 1860s, William M. Tweed was the political boss of New
York City
 funds came from the bribes and kickbacks that he
demanded in exchange for city contract
 1861 construction of the New York County Courthouse
- the city wound up spending nearly $13 million-roughly $178 million in today's dollars--on a building
that should have cost several times less
Tweed Corruption
 A carpenter was paid $360,751 (roughly $4.9 million today) for one
month's labor in a building with very little woodwork.
 A furniture contractor received $179,729 ($2.5 million) for three
tables and 40 chairs.
 And the plasterer, a Tammany functionary, Andrew J. Garvey, got
$133,187 ($1.82 million) for two days' work;
 Tweed personally profited from a financial interest in a
Massachusetts quarry that provided the courthouse's marble.
 When a committee investigated why it took so long to build the
courthouse, it spent $7,718 ($105,000) to print its report. The
printing company was owned by Tweed.
Tweed’s Downfall
 In July 1871, The New York Times with reams of
documentation that the Tweed Ring
 political cartoons of Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly,
created a national outcry
 Tweed and many of his cronies were facing criminal
charges and political oblivion.
The "Brains” 1871
Political Machines Benefits
 Political machines often created benefits for the city.
 professionalized urban police forces and instituted the
first housing regulations.
 served the welfare needs of immigrants, offered jobs,
food, fuel, and clothing to the new immigrants and the
destitute poor.
 served as a ladder of social mobility for ethnic groups
blocked from other means of rising in society.
Criticisms
 In The Shame of the Cities, the muckraking journalist
Lincoln Steffens argued that it was greedy
businessmen who kept the political machines
functioning.
 It was their hunger for government contracts,
franchises, charters, and special privileges, he
believed, that corrupted urban politics.
 What was the problem with the Sherman Anti-Trust Act
and the Interstate Commerce Act?
Labor
 What made the CLU unique compared to previous
unions?
 Describe the Knights of Labor? How was the Knights of
Labor “racist?”
 Describe the story of the “Eight-Hour Movement.”
Labor
 What happened at Haymarket Square in Chicago?
 Describe what transpired at Homestead between
1889-1892. How did this demonstrate that “locally
organized workers were ill-matched against new,
nationally organized corporations
Agrarian Revolt and Populism
 What were the economic concerns of the rural working
class?
 What is the Farmer’s Alliance?
 What is Populism? What are the platforms of the new
Populist Party?
 What was the “free silver movement”?
Populism Readings
 Identify the economic and political grievances of late 19th century
American farmers.
 How compelling do you find the farmers' reform program?
 Do you think that agrarian radicalism was a realistic response to
actual conditions or an irrational and hysterical expression of
farmers' fears and anxieties?
 Was the decision of farmers in l896 to focus on the issue of free
silver a betrayal of agrarian ideals or a reasonable response to the
political situation facing farmers?
 Make a chart showing the similarities and difference amount the
Populist, Democrat and Republican Platforms
Election of 1896