Immigration
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Populists
–
Progressives
Your Turn
• What does gilded mean?
• Why does the term apply to the late
1800s, early 1900s?
Immigration 1860 - 1900
•
Immigrants came to the industrial
centers of the United States
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•
Worked for low wages
Mainly from southern and eastern Europe
–
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Went through Ellis Island
Settled in the North
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•
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More major cities
Greater educational opportunities
More jobs
Major reason why some immigrants were
denied entry
•
They carried a contagious disease
Immigrant Supporters
•
Political machines
(powerful politicians)
provided them with
jobs and other favors
–
Tammany Hall
•
•
Provided for the welfare
of immigrants and other
city dwellers
Immigrant would
therefore vote for the
politicians
Immigrant Problems
•
Nativists
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–
•
Immigrants major cause of urban problems
Main objective was to restrict immigration
Discrimination
–
–
•
Spoke different languages
Had different customs
Chinese
–
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Laws discriminated they accepted very low
wages
Chinese Exclusion Act – 1882
•
Chinese laborers could not enter America
Immigrant Urban Living
Conditions
• Tenements
–
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Overcrowded and filthy apartments
Threatened by unsafe living
conditions
Reflected ethnic cultures
Disease due to poor sanitation
Jacob Riis, in How the Other Half
Lives, and Lincoln Steffens, in The
Shame of the Cities
• Exposing poverty and corruption in many
U.S. cities
Activity
• Imagine that you are giving advice
to a new immigrant to the United
States during the Gilded Age
• Create a pamphlet that explains
what the immigrant should expect
to encounter.
Farmers
• Farmers remained largely ignorant of basic
business practices after the Civil War. They
had none of the power that had made other
businessmen prosperous. Farmers had no
control over the marketplace. Their
prosperity, in fact, depended on six factors
which they could not regulate:
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Business Cycles
Credit
Transportation
Labor Supply
Price Structure
Government policies
• In reaction to these problems, farmers
began to take political action.
Populists
• Major third party movement
– Farmers
– Party machine = The
Grange
– William Jennings Bryan
(leader)
• 1896 presidential candidate
• Fought against the gold
standard for money.
• Wanted unlimited coinage of
silver
Main critiques made by
Populists:
• The American legal system placed too
much emphasis on property rights
• Monopolies were an economic and
social evil
• Social Darwinism & laissez-faire were
bankrupt ideologies
• Industrial society had turned
individuals into economic
commodities
• Wealth was unevenly distributed
Progressives
• Emerged out the Populist
movement
• Government
–
protect workers
–
Businesses were subject to government
control
•
Interstate Commerce Commission
• Greater efficiencies in
production (Model T)
• Municipal reformers
–
Utilities controlled by the city
Progressives
• Tariff reform
– Underwood Simmons Bill
• Theodore Roosevelt
– Strong National gov’t
• Regulate business
– National Park System
• Managing federal lands
• Conservation of natural resources
• Recreational areas for the public
– Breakup of several trusts deemed harmful to
the public
Progressive Amendments
• 16th Amendment
– Income Tax
• 17th Amendment
– Direct election of Senators
• 18th Amendment
– Prohibition of alcohol
• 19th Amendment
– Women’s right to vote
– Originally granted in 10 western states