HISTORY II: Ch. 19 & 20 American Yawp

Progressive Age

Progressive Era, named for the various "progressive" movements that attracted various constituencies around various reforms. Americans had many different ideas about how the country's development should be managed and whose interests required the greatest protection. Reformers sought to clean up politics, black Americans continued their long struggle for civil rights, women demanded the vote with greater intensity while also demanding a more equal role in society at large, and workers demanded higher wages, safer workplaces and the union recognition that would guarantee these rights. Whatever their goals, "reform" became the word of the age, and the sum of their efforts, whatever their ultimate impact or original intentions, gave the era its name.

Gilded Age

The many problems associated with the Gilded Age—the rise of unprecedented fortunes and unprecedented poverty, controversies over imperialism, urban squalor, a near-war between capital and labor, loosening social mores, unsanitary food production, the onrush of foreign immigration, environmental destruction, and the outbreak of political radicalism—confronted Americans.

"splendid"?

Secretary of State John Hay memorably referred to the conflict as a "splendid little war," and at the time it certainly appeared that way. Fewer than four hundred Americans died in battle in a war that lasted about fifteen weeks.

Push/pull

This massive movement of people to the United States was influenced by a number of causes

Villa vs Blackjack

Villa and several hundred supporters attacked American interests and raided the town of Columbus, New Mexico, in March 1916, and killed over a dozen soldiers and civilians. Wilson ordered a punitive expedition of several thousand soldiers led by General John J. "Blackjack" Pershing to enter Northern Mexico and capture Villa. But Villa eluded Pershing for nearly a year and, in 1917, with war in Europe looming and great injury done to U.S.-Mexican relations, Blackjack left Mexico

Booker T v. DuBois

implicitly abandoned all political and social rights. . . I never thought Washington was a bad man . . . I believed him to be sincere, though wrong." Du Bois would directly attack Washington in his classic 1903 The Souls of Black Folk, but at the turn of the century he could never escape the shadow of his longtime rival. "I admired much about him," Du Bois admitted, "Washington . . . died in 1915. A lot of people think I died at the same time."Du Bois attacked Washington and urged black Americans to concede to nothing, to make no compromises and advocate for equal rights under the law.

Boxer Rebellion

in 1900, American troops joined a multinational force that intervened to prevent the closing of trade by putting down the Boxer Rebellion, a movement opposed to foreign businesses and missionaries operating in China.

Weyler's actions

in an attempt to crush the uprising, Spanish general Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau had been conducting a policy of reconcentration—forcing Cubans living in certain cities to relocate en masse to military camps—for about two years.

--Meat/Food/Drug

intended the novel to reveal the brutal exploitation of labor in the meatpacking industry, and thus to build support for the socialist movement, its major impact was to lay bare the entire process of industrialized food production. The growing invisibility of slaughterhouses and livestock production for urban consumers had enabled unsanitary and unsafe conditions. "The slaughtering machine ran on, visitors or no visitors," wrote Sinclair, "like some horrible crime committed in a dungeon, all unseen and unheeded, buried out of sight and of memory."7 Sinclair's exposé led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.

"corporate oligarchy"

"Never in the history of the world was society in so terrific flux as it is right now," Jack London wrote in Iron Heel, his 1908 dystopian novel in which a corporate oligarchy comes to rule the United States. He wrote, "The swift changes in our industrial system are causing equally swift changes in our religious, political, and social structures. An unseen and fearful revolution is taking place in the fiber and structure of society. One can only dimly feel these things, but they are in the air, now, today."

Cuba libre!

. Cubans in the United States and their allies raised cries of Cuba Libre!

Nativism

. Nativists opposed mass immigration for various reasons. Some felt that the new arrivals were unfit for American democracy, and that Irish or Italian immigrants used violence or bribery to corrupt municipal governments. Others (often earlier immigrants themselves) worried that the arrival of even more immigrants would result in fewer jobs and lower wages.

Roosevelt Corollary

1904, proclaiming U.S. police power in the Caribbean. United States would treat any military intervention in Latin America by a European power as a threat to American security. Roosevelt reaffirmed the Monroe Doctrine and expanded it by declaring that the U.S. had the right to preemptive action through intervention in any Latin American nation in order to correct administrative and fiscal deficiencies. the Monroe Doctrine asserted that the United States wished to promote stable, prosperous states in Latin America that could live up to their political and financial obligations

Addams and her house

After visiting London's Toynbee Hall in 1887, Addams returned to the US and in 1889 founded Hull House in Chicago with her longtime confidant and companion Ellen Gates Starr.Hull House workers provided for their neighbors by running a nursery and a kindergarten, administering classes for parents and clubs for children, and organizing social and cultural events for the community. Hull House began exposing conditions in local sweat shops and advocating for the organization of workers.

"trust-busting" president?

Aggression against the trusts—and the progressive vogue for "trust busting"—took on new meaning under the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. Despite his own wealthy background, Roosevelt pushed for anti-trust legislation and regulations, arguing that the courts could not be relied upon to break up the trusts. Roosevelt believed that there were good and bad trusts, necessary monopolies and corrupt ones. Although his reputation was wildly exaggerated, he was first major national politician to go after the trusts.

Mahan's influence

Alfred Thayer Mahan's naval theories, described in his The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, influenced Roosevelt a great deal. In contrast to theories that advocated for commerce raiding, coastal defense and small "brown water" ships, the imperative to control the sea required battleships and a "blue water" navy that could engage and win decisive battles with rival fleets.

Riis and other half

In 1890, New York City journalist Jacob Riis published How the Other Half Lives, a scathing indictment of living and working conditions in the city's slums. Riis not only vividly described the squalor he saw, he documented it with photography, giving readers an unflinching view of urban poverty. Riis's book led to housing reform in New York and other cities, and helped instill the idea that society bore at least some responsibility for alleviating poverty

fleet

As president, Roosevelt continued the policies he established as Assistant Naval Secretary and expanded the U.S. fleet. The mission of the Great White Fleet, sixteen all-white battleships that sailed around the world between 1907 and 1909, exemplified America's new power.

"Big stick" v. "dollar" v. "gunboat"

Big Stick- The United States used military intervention in various circumstances to further its objectives, but it did not have the ability nor the inclination to militarily impose its will on the entirety of South and Central America "Dollar Diplomacy"- assert dominance over the hemisphere.The United States actively intervened again and again in Latin America Dollar diplomacy offered a less costly method of empire and avoided the troubles of military occupation "Gunboat Diplomacy"- naval forces and marines land in a national capital to protect American and Western personnel, temporarily seize control of the government, and dictate policies friendly to American business, such as the repayment of foreign loans

"Black female activists"

Black female activists, meanwhile, generally viewed imperialism as a form of racial antagonism and drew parallels between the treatments of African-Americans at home and, for example, Filipinos abroad. Indeed, Ida B. Wells viewed her anti-lynching campaign as a kind of anti-imperialist activism.

Sherman Act

Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act, which established the Interstate Commerce Commission to stop discriminatory and predatory pricing practices. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 aimed to limit anticompetitive practices, such as those institutionalized in cartels and monopolistic corporations. It declared a "trust ...or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce... is declared to be illegal" and that those who "monopolize...any part of the trade or commerce...shall be deemed guilty."22 The Sherman Anti-Trust Act declared that not all monopolies were illegal, only those that "unreasonably" stifled free trade

Protestantism v. Catholicism

By 1900, Catholicism in the United States had grown dramatically in size and diversity, from one percent of the population a century earlier to the largest religious denomination in America (though still outnumbered by Protestants as a whole). As a result, Catholics in America faced two intertwined challenges, one external, related to Protestant anti-Catholicism, and the other internal, having to do with the challenges of assimilation. Many Protestants doubted whether Catholics could ever make loyal Americans because they supposedly owed primary allegiance to the Pope.. Catholics felt that Protestant notions of the separation of church and state and of licentious individual liberty posed a threat to the Catholic faith.

Clayton

Clayton Anti-Trust Act of 1914. The Clayton Anti-Trust Act substantially enhanced the Sherman Act, specifically regulating mergers, price discrimination, and protecting labor's access to collective bargaining and related strategies of picketing, boycotting, and protesting. Congress further created the Federal Trade Commission to enforce the Clayton Act, ensuring at least some measure of implementation.24

WWJD

Confronted by both the benefits and the ravages of industrialization, many Americans asked themselves, "What Would Jesus Do?" In 1896, Charles Sheldon, a Congregational minister in Topeka, Kansas, published In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do?

Vertical and horizontal

Each displayed the vertical and horizontal integration strategies common to the new trusts: Carnegie first utilized vertical integration by controlling every phase of business (raw materials, transportation, manufacturing, distribution), and Rockefeller adhered to horizontal integration by buying out competing refineries. Once dominant in a market, critics alleged, the trusts could artificially inflate prices, bully rivals, and bribe politicians.

Aguinaldo

Emilio Aguinaldo was inaugurated as president of the First Philippine Republic (or Malolos Republic) in late January of 1899 Under the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo, Filipinos who had fought for freedom against the Spanish now fought for freedom against the very nation that had claimed to have liberated them from Spanish tyranny

Open Door

In 1899, Secretary of State John Hay articulated The Open Door Policy.....It had all western powers to have equal access to Chinese markets. Hay feared that other imperial powers—Japan, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Russia—planned to carve China into spheres of influence. It was in the economic interest of American business to maintain China for free trade.

Sinclair and his jungle

In 1906, Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, a novel dramatizing the experiences of a Lithuanian immigrant family who moved to Chicago to work in the Stock Yards.

Gentlemen's Agreement

In 1907, the immigration of Japanese laborers was practically suspended when the American and Japanese governments reached the so-called Gentlemen's Agreement, according to which Japan would stop issuing passports to working-class emigrants.

"health and sanitation"

Gifford Pinchot, arguably the father of American forestry and a key player in the federal management of national forests, meanwhile emphasized what he understood to be the purpose of conservation: "to take every part of the land and its resources and put it to that use in which it will serve the most people."Muir took a wider view of what the people needed, writing that "everybody needs beauty as well as bread."25 These dueling arguments revealed the key differences in environmental thought: Muir, on the side of the preservationists, advocated setting aside pristine lands for their aesthetic and spiritual value, for those who could take his advice to "[get] in touch with the nerves of Mother Earth."26 Pinchot, on the other hand, led the charge for conservation, a kind of environmental utilitarianism that emphasized the efficient use of available resources, through planning and control and "the prevention of waste." In Hetch Hetchy, conservation won out. Congress approved the project in 1913. The dam was built and the valley flooded for the benefit of San Francisco residents.

--1885

In 1885, in response to American workers' complaints about cheap immigrant labor, Congress added foreign workers migrating under labor contracts with American employers to the list of excludable people.

Preservation v. conservation

Historians often cite preservation and conservation as the two competing strategies that dueled for supremacy among environmental reformers during the Progressive Era. The tensions between these two approaches crystalized in the debate over a proposed dam in the Hetch Hetchy Valley in California. The fight revolved around the provision of water for San Francisco.

"unregulated immigration"

Immigration might bring some benefits, but "it also introduces disease, ignorance, crime, pauperism and idleness."Franklin Benjamin Sanborn thus advocated federal action to stop "indiscriminate and unregulated immigration."

Triangle Fire

In 1911 the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in Manhattan caught fire. By the time the fire burned itself out 71 workers were injured and 146 had died.Events such as the Triangle Shirtwaist fire convinced many Americans of the need for reform, but the energies of activists were needed to spread a new commitment to political activism and government interference in the economy.

19th Amendment

In January 1918, President Woodrow Wilson declared his support for the women's suffrage amendment and, two years later women's suffrage became a reality. After the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, women from all walks of life mobilized to vote.

"hatchetation"

In Wichita, Kansas, on December 27, 1900, Nation took a hatchet and broke bottles and bars at the luxurious Carey Hotel. Arrested and charged with $3000 in damages, Nation spent a month in jail before the county dismissed the charges on account of "a delusion to such an extent as to be practically irresponsible." But Nation's "hatchetation" drew national attention.

"corrupt politician" (familiar?)

In one of the defining books of the Progressive Era, The Promise of American Life, Herbert Croly argued that because "the corrupt politician has usurped too much of the power which should be exercised by the people," the "millionaire and the trust have appropriated too many of the economic opportunities formerly enjoyed by the people." Croly and other reformers believed that wealth inequality eroded democracy and reformers had to win back for the people the power usurped by the moneyed trusts.

Success of Granger laws and Munn

In the Midwest, so-called "Granger laws" (spurred by farmers who formed a network of organizations that were part political pressure group, part social club, and part mutual-aid society that became known as "the Grange") regulated railroads and other new companies. Railroads and others opposed these regulations for restraining profits and, also, because of the difficulty of meeting the standards of each state's separate regulatory laws. In Munn, the court declared that "Property does become clothed with a public interest when used in a manner to make it of public consequence, and affect the community at large.

Trust

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a "trust" was a monopoly or cartel associated with the large corporations of the Gilded and Progressive Eras who entered into agreements—legal or otherwise—or consolidations to exercise exclusive control over a specific product or industry under the control of a single entity. Certain types of monopolies, specifically for intellectual property like copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade-secrets, are protected under the Constitution for the "to promote the progress of science and useful arts," but for power entities to control entire national markets was something wholly new, and, for many Americans, wholly unsettling.

Twain'

Mark Twain traveled to the Middle East as part of a large tour group of Americans.

Anti-Imperialist League

founded in 1899 and populated by such prominent Americans as Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, and Jane Addams, protested American imperial actions and articulated a platform that decried foreign subjugation and upheld the rights of all to self-governance

Muckrakers

Journalists who exposed business practices, poverty, and corruption—labeled by Theodore Roosevelt as "Muckrakers"— aroused public demands for reform.

--Alice Paul

Led by Alice Paul, the National Women's Party took to the streets to demand voting rights, organizing marches and protests that mobilized thousands of women.

--reasons for supporting it

Many suffragists argued that women's votes were necessary to clean up politics and combat social evils. WTUL members viewed the vote as a way to further their economic interests and to foster a new sense of respect for working-class women. . Some, even outside of the South, argued that white women's votes were necessary to maintain white supremacy.

Plessy v. Ferguson

New Orleans resident Homer Plessy challenged the constitutionality of Louisiana's segregation of streetcars. The court ruled against Plessy and, in the process, established the legal principle of separate but equal. Plessy v. Ferguson decision that legalized segregation under the "separate but equal" doctrine, Washington said to white Americans, "In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress."

Looking Backward

One of the most popular novels of the nineteenth century, Edward Bellamy's 1888 Looking Backward, was a national sensation. In it, a man falls asleep in Boston in 1887 and awakens in 2000 to find society radically altered. Poverty and disease and competition gave way as new industrial armies cooperated to build a utopia of social harmony and economic prosperity

Bull Moose

Roosevelt left and formed his own coalition, the Progressive, or "Bull-Moose," Party.

Naval base in Cuba

Roosevelt's policy justified numerous and repeated police actions in "dysfunctional" Caribbean and Latin American countries by U.S. marines and naval forces and enabled the founding of the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (That approach sometimes called as gunboat diplomacy)

Social Gospel

Sheldon's novel became a best seller, not only because of its story but because the book's plot connected with a new movement transforming American religion: the social gospel.The social gospel emerged within Protestant Christianity at the end of the nineteenth century. It emphasized the need for Christians to be concerned for the salvation of society, and not simply individual souls.

Empire?

Should the United States act as an empire? Or were foreign interventions and the taking of territory antithetical to its founding democratic ideals? What exactly would be the relationship between the US and its territories? And could colonial subjects be successfully and safely incorporated into the body politic as American citizens?

Suffrage movement

Suffragists' hard work resulted in slow but encouraging steps forward during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Notable victories were won in the West, where suffragists mobilized large numbers of women and male politicians were open to experimental forms of governance. By 1911, six western states had passed suffrage amendments to their constitutions.

US in Middle East

The U.S. government had traditionally had little contact with the Middle East. Trade was limited, too limited for an economic relationship to be deemed vital to the national interest, but treaties were nevertheless signed between the U.S. and powers in the Middle East. Still, the majority of American involvement in the Middle East prior to World War I came not in the form of trade, but in education, science, and humanitarian aid.

Guano

The United States acquired its first Pacific territories with the Guano Islands Act of 1856. . Guano—collected bird excrement—was a popular fertilizer integral to industrial farming. The Act authorized and encouraged Americans to venture into the seas and claim islands with guano deposits for the United States.

--1882

The category of excludable people expanded continuously after 1882.

Disenfranchisement efforts

The disenfranchisement laws effectively moved electoral conflict from the ballot box, where public attention was greatest, to the voting registrar, where supposedly color-blind laws allowed local party officials to deny the ballot without the appearance of fraud.

Hawaii

The first American missionaries arrived in Hawaii in 1820.....American missionaries in Hawaii, obtained large tracts of land and started lucrative sugar plantations. During the nineteenth century, Hawaii was ruled by an oligarchy based on the sugar companies, together known as the "Big Five." This white American "haole" elite was extremely powerful, but they still operated outside of the formal expression of American state power

"melting pot"?

The idea of America as a "melting pot," a metaphor common in today's parlance, was a way of arguing for the ethnic assimilation of all immigrants into a nebulous "American" identity at the turn of the 20th century. A play of the same name premiered in 1908 to great acclaim, causing even the former president Theodore Roosevelt to tell the playwright, "That's a great play, Mr. Zangwill, that's a great play." Cover of Theater Programme for Israel Zangwill's play "The Melting Pot"

Chinese Exclusion Act

Then, in May 1882, Congress suspended the immigration of all Chinese laborers with the Chinese Exclusion Act, making the Chinese the first immigrant group subject to admission restrictions on the basis of race. They became the first illegal immigrants.

"new immigrants"

These "new immigrants" were poorer, spoke languages other than English, and were likely Catholic or Jewish. White Protestant Americans typically regarded them as inferior, and American immigration policy began to reflect more explicit prejudice than ever before

Teddy and his riders

Two months later, American troops took Cuba's San Juan Heights in what would become the most well-known battle of the war, winning fame not for regular soldiers but for the irregular, particularly Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders. Roosevelt had been the Assistant Secretary of the Navy but had resigned his position in order to see action in the war. His actions in Cuba made him a national celebrity.

Us vs Mexico

When the brutal strongman Victoriano Huerta executed the revolutionary, democratically elected president Francisco Madero in 1913, newly inaugurated American President Woodrow Wilson put pressure on Mexico's new regime. Wilson refused to recognize the new government and demanded Huerta step aside and allow free elections take place. Huerta refused.5 When Mexican forces mistakenly arrested American sailors in the port city of Tampico in April 1914, Wilson saw the opportunity to apply additional pressure on Huerta. Huerta refused to make amends, and Wilson therefore asked Congress for authority to use force against Mexico. But even before Congress could respond, Wilson invaded

Purification of the ballot

by restricting black voting and they would prevent racial strife by legislating the social separation of the races

Immigration Acts (exact dates aren't important, but know what each act targeted)

denying admission to people who were not able to support themselves and those, such as paupers, people with mental illnesses, or convicted criminals, who might otherwise threaten the security of the nation.

Laissez-faire capitalism

or "hands off," economic policy

--fear of radicalism

others worried that immigrants brought with them radical ideas such as socialism and communism. These fears multiplied after the Chicago Haymarket affair in 1886, in which immigrants were accused of killing police officers in a bomb blast

Women's clubs

social organizations devoted to various purposes. Some focused on intellectual development, others emphasized philanthropic activities. Increasingly, these organizations looked outwards, to their communities, and to the place of women in the larger political sphere.

--familiar fears?

that the influx of foreigners would undermine the racial, economic, and moral integrity of American society

--effect on unions

the Act was turned against itself, manipulated and used, for instance, to limit the growing power of labor unions.

--Philippine Insurrection

the Philippine-American War, was a brutal conflict of occupation and insurgency. Contemporaries compared the guerrilla-style warfare in challenging and unfamiliar terrain to the American experiences in the Indian Wars of the late-nineteenth-century.

Maine

the United States government proclaimed a wish to avoid armed conflict with Spain, President McKinley became increasingly concerned about the safety of American lives and property in Cuba. He ordered the battleship Maine to Havana harbor in January 1898. The Maine sat undisturbed in the harbor for about two weeks. Then, on the evening of February 15, a titanic explosion tore open the ship and sent it to the bottom of the ocean. Three-quarters of the ship's 354 occupants died.

Hearst and "yellow"

the loudest Americans had already decided that Spanish treachery was to blame. Capitalizing on the outrage, "yellow journals"—newspapers that promoted sensational stories, notoriously at the cost of accuracy—such as William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal called for war with Spain. When urgent negotiations failed to produce a mutually agreeable settlement, Congress officially declared war on April 25.

"question of American imperialism" and identity?

then, seeks to understand not only direct American interventions in such places as Cuba, the Philippines, Hawaii, Guam, and Puerto Rico, but also the deeper history of American engagement with the wider world and the subsequent ways in which American economic, political, and cultural power has shaped the actions, choices, and possibilities of other groups and nations. . In a sense, imperialism and immigration raised similar questions about American identity: who was an "American," and who wasn't? What were the nation's obligations to foreign powers and foreign peoples? And how accessible—and how fluid—should American identity be for newcomers? All such questions confronted late-nineteenth-century Americans with unprecedented urgency.

"white man's burden"

to uplift the world's racially inferior peoples, the North looked to the South as an example of how to manage non-white populations. The South had become the nation's racial vanguard

Ida B. Wells

viewed her anti-lynching campaign as a kind of anti-imperialist activism. worked against southern lynching, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois vied for leadership among African American activists, resulting in years of intense rivalry and debated strategies for the uplifting of black Americans.

"American" women and imperialism

women could serve as missionaries, teachers, and medical professionals, and as artists and writers they were inspired by, and helped to transmit, ideas about imperialism. Social and technological progress had freed women of the burdens of physical labor and elevated them to a position of moral and spiritual authority. White women thus potentially had important roles to play in U.S. imperialism, both as symbols of the benefits of American civilization and as vehicles for the transmission of American values