 Labor supply
 Tech innovations
 Entrepreneurs
 Gov’t assistance of business
 Domestic market for manuf. goods
 Union Pacific (Omaha) going west & Central
Pacific (Sacramento) going east
 Land grants
 Promontory Point, Utah (May 1869)
 created 4 time zones out of necessity
 Economy of scarcity to abundance (Simon Patten)
 National brands
 Chain stores – A&P, Woolworths (nat’l network)
 Greater variety & low prices
 Mail-order Catalogs- Montgomery Ward, Sears & Roebuck
 Rural areas included in trends
& tech
 Electricity plays major role
 Meant “going out” – public places
 Amusement parks, movie palaces, vaudeville houses, dance
halls, saloons, sports…
 Race, class & gender all factors – high brow/low brow
 Men – spectator sports & gambling (baseball #1)
 Working class leisure
 New found time but not $
 Street camaraderie
 Saloons –“regulars”–ethnic basis, political connections, dark vices
 Movies – 1st true mass enter. medium
 “Birth of a Nation” – had real plot (totally racist but elaborate)
 Role of “Pragmatic” thinking
 Encouraged by Darwinism
 Gov’t promotion of higher ed. – “land grant” institutions
 Iron/steel industry & rr interrelated
 Petroleum- lubricant & then multiple uses
 Dawning of auto industry – by 1910 total social influence
 Beginning of corporate r&d - corp/univ partnerships
 Scientific management – Frederick Taylor
 Mass production & assembly line
 Corporations- new ventures so costly needed size & capital
corps provide – lure of limited liability
 Managerial style – hierarchy of control (middle management)
 Corporate integration – vertical & horizontal
•Carnegie – steel industry – vertical integration
•Morgan – buys out Carnegie – US Steel(billion $ comp)
•Rockefeller – Standard Oil – prime ex of monopoly
/horizontal
 Trusts shift to holding companies (lots of power in
hands of the few)
 Corp. size grew, costs cut, complex industrial
infrastructure, new mrkts, more jobs, mass
production
 Hugely controversial
 Undemocratic or Protestant work ethic on steroids?
 Corrupt rise to power or ingenuity of self made
men?
 Gap bwtn rich & poor growing
 Series of recessions blamed on monops.
 Massive influx
 Domestic – rural migrations
 Foreign – 1865-1915 huge #s – recruitment of unskilled
 Increased ethnic tensions
 Vulnerable @ work – conditions & cycles
 Centralized control of factory work (no
control or connection to product)
 Women – threatened social values
 Children – social ill but laws weak or
bypassed
 Massive immigration (southern & eastern Europe)
b/c opportunities
 Nativism inspires xenophobic organizations @ all
levels
 Quality of housing for poor not a concern
 South – former slave quarters
 Cities – tenements (large occupancy & low rent)
 How the Other Half Lives – Jacob Riis
 Public spaces & services
 Public park as counter to congestion
 Frederick Law Olmstead – Central Park
 Museums & libraries – cities as source of knowledge
 “City Beautiful” Movement – Euro inspired-revitalize old
sections w/new impressive structures
 Daniel Burnham’s “Great White City” (1893 Chicago
World’s Fair) – whole-scale redesigning – attempted but
not achieved
 “Back Bay”–out ward expansion
 Boston marsh zone neighborhood
 Skyscrapers – upward expansion
 Passenger elevators, steel girder construction,
architectural design
 Crime
 Fire – “great fires” destroyed large areas
 Less flammable building materials
 Professional fire dept.
 Disease
 close quarter living & working conditions
 Indigence
 Pollution – as related to health issues
 Public Health Services (TB, poisonings)
 *public health as responsibility of fed. gov’t – forerunner
of OSHA (1970)
 Cowboy – myth vs reality – the “natural man”
 The Frontier (“closed” 1890)
 Frederick Jackson Turner’s thesis
 Democratizing politically & socially
 Independence & individualism
 Pragmatism
 Safety valve
• Bonanza farms – irrigation
• Family farms still
dominated
• $ needed to irrigate, use
chems & machinery too
much for avg fam. – “land
monopoly”
 “Long drives” – east Texas to Chicago – lost a lot
herd on the way
 Chisholm Trail (Abilene, Kansas) railhead
 More land going to ag rather than grazing
 Barbed wire (Glidden)
 Threats to way of life
 Bureau of Indian Affairs – generally incompetent
 War against buffalo – (sport, fads, food & hides, rr devel) - Almost
wiped out 1875
 Relocations pit tribe vs tribe
 Distrust – Sand Creek Massacre (1864) Cheyenne
 Outright Hunting – mining & settler conflicts
 Little Big Horn (1876) Sioux (Sitting Bull & Crazy Horse)-unity
 Chief Joseph (1877) Nez Perce
 *Resistance by Ghost Dance-whites retreat, buffalo return
 Wounded Knee (1890) Sioux – role of machine guns
 Assimilation – Dawes Severalty Act(1887)
 Allowed white settlers to buy land so lost land & culture
 Had to prove degree of “civilization” to get citizenship
 Electoral Stability
 High voter turnout
 Cultural/regional party identification
Role of the National Government
Interpreted and accepted roles & responsibilities
 Stalwarts – Roscoe Conkling, NY
 Halfbreeds – James Blaine, ME
 Mugwumps – wouldn’t play the “game”– sat the fence
Rutherford & Lemonade
Lucy Hayes
•Removed last Recon.
Troops from south
James Garfield
•Ohio Halfbreed
•Gave majority of
patronage jobs to
halfbreeds
Chester Arthur
•Stalwart
•Tried for distance from
Stals.
•Pendleton Act
 James Blaine
 “Rum, Romanticism and Rebellion”
 Grover Cleveland
 Reputation of reform & anti corruption
 Gets mugwump support
 Large NY Catholic turnout
•Frugal & limited gov’t
•Civil service reform
•Vetoed many private pension bills (Civil War)
•Interstate Commerce Act of 1887
•Dawes Act
•Anti-tariff
 Key issue is tariff
 Grover Cleveland
 Benjamin Harrison
 Electoral votes vs popular votes
 Billion-dollar Congress (Repubs have both houses)
 Sherman Anti-trust Act (1890)
 McKinley Tariff (1890)
 Civil War Pension increases
 Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890
 1890 Congressional shift
 Growing agrarian discontent
•
Oliver Kelly
•
First organized 1870s in the Midwest, the south, and
Texas
•
Cooperative associations
•
Social &educational components
•
Succeeded in lobbying for “Granger Laws.”
•
Rapidly declined by late 1870s
 Social Darwinism
 Gospel of Wealth
 Horatio Alger myths
OR
• Gov’t should shape econ/society or else – Caesar’s Column
• Henry George
• Laurence Gronlund
• Edward Bellamy
 Mostly failures – seen as threat to liberty of contract
 Middle class viewed unions as troublemakers/radicals/
foreigners
 “Molly Maguires” – seen as violent intimidators
 Great Railroad Strike (1877) -1st major nat’l labor conflict
 Rioted, destroyed equip.
 Militias called out
 Conflicts no longer local issues
 Workers frustrated w/management & gov’t’s protections
 Fragility of unions
 Knights of Labor – Terrance Powderly
 Accepted almost everybody
 Broad themed philosophical goals
 Temporarily popular &
then disbanded
 American Federation of Labor – Samuel Gompers
 Limited membership
 Skilled craftsmen
 Allowed women to reduce
wage threat
 Wages & conditions primary
concerns
 Haymarket Square (1886 – Chicago)- public meeting re:8hr
day – bomb thrown/police killed
 Symbol of social chaos, radicalism & anarchy
 Homestead Strike (1892 – Pittsburgh)
 Wage cuts w/out collective bargaining
 Brought in Pinkertons & then militia to protect “scab”workers
 Public opinion anti union
 Setback in steel industry union movement till 1930s
 Pullman Strike (1894 – Chicago)
 Wages cut but no rent cuts in company town
 Eugene Debs leads call for walk off & boycott
 Owners link pullmans to mail cars so fed. court issues
injunction (supported by Cleveland) & Debs jailed
 Strike folds
 Wages not keeping up w/COL
 Lost legislative challenges
 Strikes ineffective
 Unions represented small % of workers
 Women, unskilled, minorities, immigrants
 Ethnic/racial/language barriers
 Shifting/transient workforce
 Belief in next generation moving to management
• Begun in the late 1880s (Texas first – the Southern
Alliance; then in the
Midwest—the Northern Alliance).
• Built upon the ashes of the Grange
• More political and less social than Grange
• Ran candidates for office.
• Controlled 8 state legislatures & had 47
representatives in Congress during the
1890s.
In 1889 both
the Northern and
Southern Alliances
merged into on—the
Farmers’ Alliance.
 James Weaver
 Small, low-tech farmers, sharecroppers & tenant farmers
 “raise less corn & more hell”
–Mary Lease
 Did ok in pres. election but very well in st. & nat’l
legislative contests
 “Challenge to the brutal & chaotic
way the economy was developing”
1. System of “sub-treasuries.”
2. Abolition of the National Bank.
3. Direct election of Senators.
4. Govt. ownership of RRs,
telephone & telegraph companies.
5. Government-operated postal savings banks.
6. Restriction of undesirable immigration.
7. 8-hour work day for government employees.
8. Abolition of the Pinkerton detective agency.
9. Australian secret ballot.
10. Re-monitization of silver.
11. A single term for President & Vice President
 Conservative Cleveland reelected
 Stock market crash (b/c big corp bankruptcies)
 Bank failures
 Tightening of credit
 Fledgling comps. fail
 Skyrocketing unemployment
 Mitigating factors
 Depressed crop prices
 Euro. depression = loss of mkts
 Less Euro gold in US
Here Lies Prosperity
Jacob Coxey & his “Army of
the Commonweal of Christ.”
 March on Washington  “hayseed socialists!”
 Historically bi-metal
 1870s changed
 Mint ratio 16:1
 Market ration
 1873 Congress discontinues silver coinage
 Crime of ’73
 Free silver movement
 Wm McKinley (Repub, Ohio) oppose silver coinage
 Mts & plains state delegates go over to Dems
 Wm Jennings Bryan (Dem, Nebraska)
 South & west delegates incorp. Populist ideas – free silver
 “Cross of Gold” speech sways convention
 Populists no other choice so “fuse” w/Dems
You shall not press
down upon the brow
of labor this crown of
thorns; you shall not
crucify mankind
upon a cross of gold!
 McKinley (w/Hanna direction & $) followed tradition
 “front porch” campaign
 Bryan did opposite – lot less $ & a lot more movement
18,000 miles of campaign “whistle
stops.”
The Seasoned
Politician
vs.
The “Young”
Newcomer
Into
Which
Box Will
the Voter
of ’96
Place
His
Ballot?
• Focus on silver undermined efforts to build
bridges to urban voters
• Did not form alliances with other groups
• During end of campaign – rising wheat prices
• McKinley’s campaign was well-
organized and highly funded.
• Seen by many as a demagogue
• Campaign seen as undignified
• Presidential candidates “stood” for office rather
than “running” for it
•1900  Gold
Standard Act
• confirmed the
nation’s
commitment to
the gold standard.
• A victory for the
forces of
conservatism
 End of stalemate & stagnation of Gilded age
 Began era of Repub. dominance of presidency &




Congress
Repubs – party of “free soil, free labor & free men” now
business, industry & strong nat’l gov’t
Urban dominance
Beginnings of modern politics
Demise of Populists
•
The economy experienced rapid change.
•
The era of small producers and
farmers was fading away.
•
Race divided the Populist Party,
especially in the South.
•
The Populists were not able to break
existing party loyalties.
•
Most of their agenda was co-opted by
the Democratic Party