APUSH unit 6
"The Myth of the Garden"
"The Myth of the Garden" was expressed by Henry Nash Smith's Virgin Land in 1950. It describes the once widely shared belief that the West had the potential to be a virtual Garden of Eden, where a person could begin life anew and where the ideals of democracy could be restored.
Leisure time
People were adamant in claiming that leisure time was both a right and an important contribution to an individual's emotional and even spiritual health. The economist Simon Patten, in The Theory of Prosperity 1902 and The New Basis of Civilization 1910, said modern industry allowed for no scarcity and could create enough wealth to satisfy not just the needs but also the desires of all.
Homestead Act of 1862
The Homestead Act permitted settlers to buy plots of 160 acres for a small fee if they occupied the land they purchased for five years and improved it. It was intended as a progressive measure to give free farmland and create new markets. However, it rested on two misperceptions: (1) it assumed that possession of land would be enough to sustain a farm family, and it did not recognize the effects of the increasing mechanization of agriculture and the rising costs of running a farm (2) a unit of 160 acres was too small for the grazing and grain framing of much of the Great Plains.
Molly Maguires
The Molly Maguires were a militant labor organization in the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania. The Molly Maguires operated within the Ancient Order of Hibernians, an Irish fraternal society and sometimes used terrorist tactics;
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism was the application of Charles Darwin's laws of evolution and natural selection among species to human society. Just as only the fittest survived in the process of evolution, so in human society only the fittest individuals survived and flourished in the marketplace.
Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis
(The Significance of the Frontier in American History 1893) Turner argued that the end of the frontier also marked the end of one of the most important democratizing forces in American life. His thesis was inaccurate because his definition of the frontier was as completely unoccupied when it was in fact was not.The frontier had no need for standing armies, established churches, aristocrats or nobles, nor for landed gentry who controlled most of the land and charged heavy rents. Frontier land was free for the taking.
Holding company
A Holding company was a central corporate body that would buy up the stock of various members of the Standard Oil trust and establish direct, formal ownership of the corporations in the trust
Farming and Machinery Inventions
1840's - The growing use of factory-made agricultural machinery increased farmers' need for cash and encouraged commercial farming 1841 - Practical grain drill patented 1842 - First grain elevator, Buffalo, NY 1844 - Practical mowing machine patented 1847 - Irrigation begun in Utah 1849 - Mixed chemical fertilizers sold commercially 1850 1850 - About 75-90 labor-hours required to produce 100 bushels of corn (2-1/2 acres) with walking plow, harrow, and hand planting 1850-70 - Expanded market demand for agricultural products brought adoption of improved technology and resulting increases in farm production 1854 - Self-governing windmill perfected 1856 - 2-horse straddle-row cultivator patented
Knights of Labor
1869 under the leadership of Uriah S Stephens; membership open to all except lawyers, bankers, liquor dealers, and professional gamblers; welcomed women members such as Leonora Barry an Irish immigrant and head of the Woman's Bureau of the Knights, enlisted 50,000 women members; were loosely organized with local assemblies and national general assemblies; championed 8 hour day and abolition of child labor; wanted to replace wage system with cooperative system that made workers control large part of economy; remained secret until 1870s under Terence V Powderly, by 1886 total membership was 700,000; 1885 striking railway workers forced the Missouri Pacific, a link in the Gould system, to restore wage cuts and recognize their union; 1886 revolt strike on Texas and Pacific RR crushed and discredited organization, by 1890 membership had shrunk to 100,000 and disappeared few years later
child labor laws
38 state legislatures passed child labor laws in the late 19th century, but these laws were of limited impact. 60% of child workers were employed in agriculture, which was typically exempt from the laws. Such children often work twelve-hour days picking or hoeing in the fields. Even for children employed in factories, the laws merely set a minimum age of twelve years and a maximum workday of ten hours, standards that employers often ignored in any case.
Public Health Service
Alice Hamilton, a physician who became an investigator for the U.S. Bureau of Labor, was a pioneer in the identification of pollution in the workplace. She documented improper disposal of lead, chemical waste, and ceramic dust and brought problems to public attention, which inspired legislation in some states. In 1912, the Federal government created the Public Health Service which was charged with preventing such occupational diseases as TB, anemia, and CO2 poisoning, which were common in the garment industry and other trades. The Public Health Service attempted to create common health standards for all factories, but since the agency had few powers of enforcement, it had limited impact. It did however establish the protection of public health as a responsibility of the federal government.
Homestead Strike
Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers was the most powerful trade union able to exercise significant power in the workplace. They had a foothold in Carnegie System's Homestead Plant in Pittsburgh. In 1890, Carnegie and Frick repeatedly cut wages at Homestead and at first, the Amalgamated Association complied because they were not powerful enough to resist. In 1892 the Company denied the Union the right to negotiate and continued to cut wages. The union decided to strike, so Frick shut down the plant and called 300 guards from Pinkerton Detective Agency to allow company to hire nonunion members. On July 6, 1892 Pinkertons and Amalgamated battled until the Pinkertons were forced to surrender. The Governor of Pennsylvania called 8,000 National Guard troops to Homestead and four months after the strike began, Amalgamated surrendered. The Homestead Strike was symbolic of general erosion of union strength as factory labor became increasingly unskilled and workers thus became easier to replace.
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish immigrant who worked his way up from modest beginnings and, in 1873, opened his own steelworks in Pittsburgh. Carnegie came to dominate the steel industry. He lowered costs and prices by striking deals with the railroads and then buying out rivals who could not compete with him. He had an associate, Henry Clay Frick. Carnegie bought up coalmines, leased part of the Mesabi iron range, operated a fleet of ore ships on the Great Lakes, and acquired railroads. Carnegie controlled the processing of his steel from mine to market. In 1901, he sold out of $450 million to the banker J.P. Morgan, who merged the Carnegie interests with others to create the giant U.S. Steel Corporation—a $1.4 billion enterprise that controlled almost 2/3 of the nation's steel production.
City Political Bosses
Any politician who could mobilize the power of said immigrant communities stood to gain enormous influence if not public office, and so there emerged a group of urban bosses, themselves often of foreign birth or parentage. All were men. The principal objective of such a boss was to win votes for his organization. To do so, they provided occasional relief and jobs in city government or in police agencies. The most famously corrupt city boss was William M. Tweed, boss of New York City's Tammany Hall in the 1860s and 1870s, whose excesses finally landed him in jail in 1872. Social Gospel-
Assimilation
Assimilation is the merging of cultural traits from previously distinct cultural groups, not involving biological amalgamation.
Chisholm Trail
Between 1867 and 1871 cattlemen drove nearly 1.5 million head up the Chisholm Trail to Abilene, Kansas.
Boom towns
Boomtowns were mining towns which sprung up following discovery of metals in the soil which usually followed the following cycle: (1) individual prospectors would exploit the first shallow deposits of ore largely by hand (2) corporations moved in to engage in lode or quartz mining (3) commercial mining either disappeared or continued on restricted basis (4) ranchers and farmers moved in and established a more permanent economy. Life in boomtowns involved a speculative spirit. Bonanza kings were much more likely to have come from modest or impoverished backgrounds than the industrial tycoons of the East. Boomtowns attracted outlaws. Men greatly outnumbered women.
Buffalo Soldiers
Buffalo Soldiers originally were members of the U.S. 10th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army, formed on September 21, 1866 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Monopolies
Businessmen actively sought to protect themselves from competition and to replace the natural workings of the marketplace with control by great combinations. People began to blame monopolies for creating artificially high prices and for producing a highly unstable economy because monopolistic industries could charge whatever prices they wished. Railroads in particular charged very high rates along some routes because, in the absence of competition, they knew their customers had no choice but to pay them. Hostility to monopoly was based on the threat to the concept of the 'self made man'. Resentment of monopolies was also based on the emergence of a new class of enormously and conspicuously wealthy people.
Influence of the Skyscraper
By the 1850s, there had been successful experiments with machine powered passenger elevators, and by the 1870s new methods of construction using cast iron and steel beams made it easier to build tall buildings. Equitable Building in New York was completed in 1870 with 7.5 stories. Even taller buildings of ten to twelve stories began appearing. With each passing decade both the size and number of tall buildings increased until, by the 1890s, the term skyscraper began to become a popular description. Steel girder construction was first used in Chicago 1884. New York became the site of more tall buildings than any other city in the world.
Californios
Californios were the Hispanic residents of California. They had little power to resist the onslaught of English-speaking immigrants. Many Californios were excluded from the gold rush and lost their lands to white settlers through corrupt business deals or outright seizure.
Mass merchandising
Important to the new mass market were the development of affordable products and the creation of new merchandising techniques, which made many consumer goods available to a broad market for the first time. A good example was the emergence of ready-made clothing because of the invention of the sewing machine and the spur.
Chivington and Fetterman Massacres
Chivington: Chivington was also called Sand Creek Massacre. Arapaho and Cheyenne were coming into conflict with white miners in Colorado. In response to attacks on stagecoach lines/settlements, large territorial militia threatened retribution but offered for all friendly Indians to congregate at army posts for protection. One band under Black Kettle camped near Forty Lyon on Sand Creek in November 1864. Colonel J.M. Chivington led a volunteer militia force to the camp and massacred 133 people, 105 of them women and children. Fetterman: At the end of the Civil war, white troops were attempting to build a road, the Bozeman trail, to connect Fort Laramie, Wyoming to new mining centers. The western Sioux resented this intrusion and, led by Red Cloud, they harried the soldiers and the construction party so that the road could not be used
Cornelius Vanderbilt
Cornelius Vanderbilt was a railroad magnate. He expressed the attitude of many corporate tycoons with his belligerent question "what do I care about the law? H'aint I got the power?".
Edward Bellamy
Edward Bellamy wrote the utopian novel Looking Backward, which he published in 1888 and which sold more than one million copies. It described the experiences of a young Bostonian who went into a hypnotic sleep in 1887 and awoke in 2000 to find a new social order where want, politics and vice were unknown. The large trusts of the late 19th century had continued to grow and combine with one another until ultimately they formed a single great trust controlled by the government and distributed evenly among the people (fraternal cooperation). The philosophy behind his vision was "nationalism", which led to formation of more than one hundred and sixty nationalist clubs to propagate his ideas.
Eugene Debs
Eugene Debs was a militant American Railway Union leader. He supported the Pullman strike by refusing to handle Pullman cars and equipment. Debs and his associates continued to strike so they were arrested by troops sent in by Cleveland.
Moving assembly line
Ford introduced the moving assembly line into his factories in 1914. This revolutionary technique cut the time for assembling a chassis from 12.5 hours to 1.5 hours. It enabled Ford to raise the wages and reduce the hours of his workers while cutting the base price of his Model T. from $950 in 1914 to $290 in 1929. Ford's assembly line became a standard for many other industries.
Immigration Restriction League
Founded in 1894 in Boston by five Harvard alumni, the Immigration Restriction League was dedicated to the belief that immigrants should be screened, through literacy tests and other standards designed to separate the desirable from the undesirable. Its sophisticated nativism made it possible for many educated, middle-class people to support the restrictionist cause.
Taylorism
Frederick Winslow Taylor's philosophy of scientific management was known as Taylorism. It urged employers to subdivide tasks (making workers interchangeable), encouraged the use of modern machines to make simple tasks more efficient, and argued that scientific management was a way to manage human labor to make it combatable with the machine age. The moving assembly line such as Ford's 1914 factory is an example of Taylorism.
George Custer
George Custer was a golden haired romantic and glory seeker. He killed Black Kettle in 1868 on the Washita River after the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre. He was commander of the 7th cavalry at the battle of Little Big Horn where he and his 264 men were all killed by the Sioux force of 2,500 under Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull.
Ghost Dance
Ghost Dance originally merged during the religious revival of the Sioux led by prophet Wovoka. Mass, emotional Ghost Dance inspired ecstatic visions that many believed were genuinely mystical. Among these visions were images of a retreat of white people from the plains and a restoration of the great buffalo herds. White agents on the Sioux reservation watched the dances in bewilderment and fear. Some believed they might be the preliminary to hostilities.
Henry Clay Frick
Henry Clay Frick was Carnegie's chief lieutenant. Frick repeatedly cut at wages at Homestead. The Amalgamated Association decided to strike so Frick shut down the plant and called 300 guards from Pinkerton Detective Agency to allow company to hire nonunion members.
Henry George
Henry George was the Californian author of Progress and Poverty, published in 1879. He tried to explain why poverty existed amidst the wealth created by modern industry. He blamed social problems on the ability of a few monopolists to grow wealthy as a result of rising land values. He proposed a single tax to destroy monopolies, distribute wealthy more equally and eliminate poverty. In 1886, he narrowly missed being elected mayor of New York
John D. Rockefeller
John D. Rockefeller was the founder and owner of Standard Oil. He launched a refining company in Cleveland and immediately began trying to eliminate competition. In, 1870 he formed the Standard Oil Company of Ohio. He expanded vertically and had his own barrel factories, terminal warehouses and pipelines. By the 1880s, he established his dominance in the petroleum industry, and controlled 90% of the refined oil in the U.S.
Horatio Alger
Horatio Alger was the most famous promoter of the success story. He was originally a minister in a small town in Massachusetts but was driven from his pulpit by a sex scandal. He wrote celebrated novels about poor boys who rose 'from rags to riches'—more than one hundred selling more than twenty million copies. Alger's name became synonymous with the powerful myth that anyone could advance to great wealth through hard work. He grew wealthy from his writings but nevertheless kept his homosexuality under wraps.
Horizontal and vertical integration
Horizontal: the combination of a number of firms engaged in the same enterprise into a single corporation, such as the railroads combining into one company. Vertical: (1890s) the taking over of all the different businesses on which a company relied for its primary function, like Carnegie Steel.
Immigrant ghettoes
Immigrant ghettoes were close-knit ethnic communities within the cities, such as Italian, Polish, Jewish, Slavic, Chinese, French-Canadian, Mexican and other neighborhoods that attempted to re-create in the New World many of the features of the Old.
Immigration
Immigration came from Mexico, Asia, Canada and Europe. 25 million immigrants arrived in the U.S. between 1865 and 1915. By the end of the 19th century, large numbers were Italians, Poles, Russians, Greeks, Slavs, and others. In the west, immigrants were composed of Mexicans and Asians (1 million Mexicans entered the U.S. in the first three decades of the 20th century). New immigrants came either to escape poverty or because they were misled by expectations of new opportunity. Ethnic tensions arose; low paid Poles, Greeks and French Canadians began to displace higher-paid British and Irish workers. Italians, Slavs, and Poles emerged as a major source of labor in the east, replacing natives and northern Europeans. Chinese and Mexicans competed with Anglo-Americans and African Americans in mining, framework, and factory labor in California, Colorado, and Texas.
John Peter Altgeld
John Peter Altgeld was the state governor of Illinois. He was a man with demonstrated sympathies for workers and their grievances. He refused to call out the militia to protect employers, but was was bypassed when railroad operators called upon President Grover Cleveland and attorney General Richard Olney who gladly complied.
Concentration policy
In 1851, each tribe was assigned its own defined reservation, confirmed by separate treaties—treaties often illegitimately negotiated with unauthorized representative chosen by whites (treaty chiefs). The Concentration Policy divided the tribes from one another and made them easier to control, as well as allowed the government to force tribes into scattered locations and to take over the most desirable lands for white settlement.
Reservations
In 1867, the Indian Peace Commission suggested replacing the concentration policy with a plan to move all the Plains Indians into two large reservations—one in Indian Territory (Oklahoma) and other in the Dakotas. However, the Bureau of Indian Affairs poorly administered the reservation plan.
Battle of Little Big Horn
In 1875, led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, the Sioux left their reservation. 264 of the 7th Cavalry under George Custer were sent to round them up in southern Montana in 1876. 2,500 Sioux warriors killed all of the Cavalry
Henry Ford
In 1896 Henry Ford produced the first of the famous cars that would eventually bear his name. By 1910, the auto industry had become a major force in the economy. Ford began using the moving assembly line in his factories in 1914. This revolutionary technique cut the time for assembling a chassis from 12.5 hours to 1.5 hours. It enabled Ford to raise the wages and reduce the hours of his workers while cutting the base price of his Model T. from $950 in 1914 to $290 in 1929. Ford's assembly line became a standard for many other industries.
The Cattle Kingdom
In the Great Plains, cattle farmers were able to graze their herds free of charge and unrestricted by the boundaries of private farms. Railroads gave birth to the range-cattle industry. The western cattle industry was Mexican and Texan by ancestry. Mexicans developed branding, roundups, roping, lariats, saddles, leather chaps, and spurs. Texas had the largest herds of cattle in the country with five million. Long drives first began in early 1866 with as many as 260,000 cattle being herded north to Sedalia, Missouri on the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Market facilities grew up at Abilene, Kansas on the Kansas Pacific Railroad. As Railroads reached farther west, other cities became major centers of stock herding (ex. Dodge City and Wichita, Kansas; Ogallala and Sidney, Nebraska; Cheyenne and Laramie, Wyoming; Miles City and Glendive, Montana). Ranches emerged as permanent bases, small at first, but they became larger as land became fenced in. The cattle industry was dangerous because of the ever-imminent risk that Texas fever decimate the flock.
National Labor Union
In1866, William H. Sylvis founded the National Labor Union— a polyglot association, claiming 640,000 members that included a variety of reform groups having little direct relationship with labor. After the Panic of 1873, the National Labor union disintegrated and disappeared. The NLU had excluded women.
Labor unions
In1866, William H. Sylvis founded the National Labor Union— a polyglot association, claiming 640,000 members that included a variety of reform groups having little direct relationship with labor. After the Panic of 1873, the National Labor union disintegrated and disappeared. The NLU had excluded women. Unions faced special difficulties during the recession years of the 1870s, there was widespread middle-class hostility toward the unions because workers were blamed for violent demonstrations; Molly Maguires
J.P. Morgan
J.P. Morgan was a banker who bought Carnegie Steel in 1901 for $450 million, and who merged it with others to create the giant U.S. Steel Corporation—a $1.4 billion enterprise that controlled almost 2/3 of the nation's steel production. J.P. Morgan also perfected the trust
Jacob Riis
Jacob Riis was a Danish immigrant and New York newspaper reporter and photographer. He shocked many middle-class Americans with his sensational descriptions and pictures of tenement life in his 1890 book How the Other Half Lives. He favored the idea of razing slum dwellings without building any new housing to replace them.
Land Grant universities
Land Grant universities were formed from the Morrill Land Grant Act of the Civil War era, by which the federal government had donated land to states for the establishment of colleges. In 1865, states in the South and West took particular advantage of the law. In all, 69 land grant institutions were established in the last decades of the century—among them the state university systems of California, Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Lester Frank Ward
Lester Frank Ward was a Sociologist who was a Darwinist but rejected the application of Darwinian laws to human society. His Dynamic Sociology (1883) argued that civilization was governed not by natural selection but by human intelligence, which was capable of shaping society as it wished. Ward thought that an active government engaged in positive planning was society's best hope.
Limited liability
Limited liability referred to risking only the amount of the investment. Investors were not liable for any debts the corporation might accumulate beyond that.
Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott gave voice to the often unstated ambitions of many young women. Alcott was born in 1832. Working as a nurse during the Civil War she contracted typhoid and mercury poisoning from her treatment. She died in 1888. Her work: Little Women (1868-69) Little Men (1871) Jo's Boys (1886)
Cowboy culture
Many 19th century Americans came to romanticize the figure of the cowboy and transformed him remarkably quickly from the low-paid worker he actually was into a powerful and enduring figure of myth. Western novels such as Owen Wister's The Virginian (1902) romanticized the cowboy's freedom from traditional social constraints, his affinity with nature, even his supposed propensity for violence. The cowboy had become the most widely admired hero in America, and a powerful and enduring symbol of the important American ideal of the natural man (the same idea that had earlier shaped James Fenimore Cooper's Natty Bumppo). The symbol of the cowboy survived in popular literature, song, film, and Television.
Corporations
Modern corporation emerged as a major force only after the Civil War. Under the laws of incorporation passed in the 1830s/40s, business organizations could raise money by selling stock to members of the public. After the Civil War, one industry after another began doing so. Americans began to consider the purchase of stock a good investment even if they were not themselves involved in business whose stock they were purchasing because of the principle of limited liability. The ability to sell stock to a broad public made it possible for entrepreneurs to gather vast sums of capital and undertake great projects.
Major League Baseball
More than 200 amateur of semiprofessional teams or clubs existed, many of which joined a national association and agreed on standard rules. The first salaried team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, was formed in 1869. In 1876, at the urging of Albert Spalding, they banded together in the National League. A rival league— the American Association—soon appeared, but was replaced in 1901 with the American League. In 1903, the first World Series was played in which the American League Boston Red Sox beat the National League Pittsburgh Pirates. By then, baseball had become an important business and a great national preoccupation, attracting paying crowds in the thousands.
Assimilation
Most immigrants were young—between the ages of 15 and 45—so they usually retained the dream of becoming true Americans. Some first and most second-generation immigrants worked hard to rid themselves of all vestiges of their old cultures, to become thoroughly Americanized. Some even looked with contempt on parents/grandparents who continued to preserve traditional ethnic habits and values. The relationship between men and women became somewhat strained because immigrant women began working outside of the home, something unheard of in most immigrants' countries of origin. Public schools taught children English and employers often insisted that workers speak English on the job. American stores forced immigrants to adapt their diets, wardrobes, and lifestyles and Church leaders also encouraged assimilation.
Munn v. Illinois
Munn v. Illinois, (1877), case in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the power of government to regulate private industries and developed as a result of the Illinois legislature's responding in 1871 to pressure from the National Grange, an association of farmers, by setting maximum rates that private companies could charge for the storage and transport of agricultural products. The Chicago grain warehouse firm of Munn and Scott was subsequently found guilty of violating the law but appealed the conviction on the grounds that the Illinois regulation represented an unconstitutional deprivation of property without due process of law.The Supreme Court heard the appeal in 1877. Chief Justice Morrison Remick Waite spoke for the majority when he said that state power to regulate extends to private industries that affect the public interest. Because grain storage facilities were devoted to public use, their rates were subject to public regulation. Moreover, Waite declared that even though Congress alone is granted control over interstate commerce, a state could take action in the public interest without impairing that federal control. Munn v. Illinois, one of the Granger cases (see Granger movement), was a watershed in the struggle for public regulation of private enterprise. Later court decisions, however, sharply curtailed the government's power to regulate business.
American Federation of Labor
Originally created in 1881 under the name of the Federation of Organized Trade and Labor Unions of the U.S. and Canada, the A.F.L. changed its name in 1886. It was an association of autonomous craft unions and represented mainly skilled workers. It did not want women in the paid workforce but tried to get them equal pay to make them less attractive to employers. Samuel Gompers led the A.F.L. Gompers wanted to secure for the workers he represented a greater share of capitalism's material rewards. He worked to secure better wages and working conditions. The A.F.L. organized a strike to secure an eight hour work day on May 1, 1886.
Urban machines
The urban machine was one of America's most distinctive political institutions. It owed its existence to the power vacuum that the chaotic growth of cities had created. It was also a product of the potential voting power of large immigrant communities. The urban political machines were no more than a political party organized on the grassroots level. They exsisted to win elections and reward its followers with jobs on the city's pallroll.
Battle of Wounded Knee
On December 19, 1890, the 7th Cavalry tried to round up a group of about 350 cold and starving Sioux at Wounded Knee, S. Dakota. Fighting broke out in which about 40 white soldiers and more than 300 Indians including women and children died. What precipitated the conflict is a matter of dispute. White soldiers mowed down Indians with their new machine guns.
Haymarket Square Riot
On May 1, 1886, McCormick Harvester Company workers had been on strike and decided to protest at Haymarket Square. Someone threw a bomb that killed 7 officers and injured 67 other people. The police had killed four strikers the day before and they fired into the crowed and killed four more people. Eight anarchists were charged with murder for the bombing even though they were not responsible. The Haymarket Square Riot served as an alarming symbol of social chaos and radicalism.
Chinese Immigration Act of 1882
Otherwise known as the Chinese exclusion act, the Chinese Immigration Act of 1882 banned Chinese immigration into the U.S. for ten years and barred Chinese already in the country from becoming naturalized citizens. This law reflected the growing fear of unemployment and labor unrest throughout the nation. Congress renewed the law for another ten years in 1892 and made it permanent in 1902. As result of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Chinese population declined by 40% or more in the forty years after its passage
Sherman Antitrust Act, 1890
Passed July 1890 almost without dissent, the Sherman Antitrust Act was seen as symbolic to deflect public criticism. It was a landmark federal statute on competition law passed by Congress in 1890. It prohibited certain business activities that reduced competition in the marketplace, and required the United States federal government to investigate and pursue trusts, companies, and organizations suspected of being in violation. It was the first Federal statute to limit cartels and monopolies, and today still forms the basis for most antitrust litigation by the United States federal government.
Range Wars
Range Wars took place between sheepmen and cattlemen, and between ranchers and farmers. They erupted out of the tensions between these competing groups, resulting in a significant loss of life and extensive property damage.
Urbanization
The urban population of the U.S. increased seven times in the half century after the Civil War. In 1920, the census revealed that a majority of American people lived in urban areas—defined as communities of 2,500 people or more. New York City grew from 1 million in 1860 to 3 million+ in 1900. Chicago had 100,000 residents in 1860 and more than a million in 1900. Natural increase did not contribute to this growth but rather immigration and urbanization
Mail-order catalogs
Rural people gradually gained access to the new consumer world through the great mail-order houses. In 1872 Montgomery Ward distributed a catalog of consumer goods in association with the farmers' organization, the Grange. By the 1880s, he was offering thousands of items at low prices to farmers throughout the Midwest and beyond. He soon faced stiff competition from Sears Roebuck, first established by Richard Sears in Chicago in 1887.
Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers was the powerful leader of the AFL. He believed strongly that a test of a man's worth was his ability to support a family. He accepted the basic premises of capitalism, but Gompers wanted to secure for the workers he represented a greater share of capitalism's material rewards. He supported better wages and working conditions.
"Scientific management"
Scientific management was also known as 'taylorism'. It encouraged changes in techniques of production as a way to manage human labor to make it compatible with the demands of the machine age. It also proposed a way to increase the employer's control of the workplace and to make working people less independent.
Railroads-Financing
Subsidies from federal, state, and local governments—as well as investments from abroad—were vital for vast railroad undertakings, which required far more capital than private entrepreneurs in America could raise by themselves. Equally important were combinations that brought the railroads under the control of a very few men, many railroad combinations continued to be dominated by individuals.
Tenements
Tenements were first build in New York City in 1850. They had been hailed the great improvement in housing for the poor. In reality, however, they boasted windowless rooms, with little or no plumbing or central heating, and often a row of privies in the basement. A New York State law of 1870 required a window in every bedroom of tenements built after that date. Tenements were incredibly crowded and therefore often unsanitary. Jacob Riis brought light to the blight of those living in such conditions in his 1890 How the Other Half Lives.
Sand Creek Massacre
The Arapaho and Cheyenne were coming into conflict with white miners in Colorado. In response to attacks on stagecoach lines/settlements, large territorial militia threatened retribution but offered for all friendly Indians to congregate at army posts for protection. One band under Black Kettle camped near Forty Lyon on Sand Creek in November 1864. Colonel J.M. Chivington led a volunteer militia force to the camp and massacred 133 people, 105 of them women and children.
Bessemer process
The Bessemer process was the process for converting iron into the much more durable and versatile steel. It consisted of blowing air through molten iron to burn out the impurities. It also relied on the discovery of metallurgist Robert Mushet that ingredients could be added to the iron during conversion to transform it into steel. It was displaced by Abram S. Hewitt's open-hearth process of 1868.
Boarding schools
The Bureau of Indian Affairs promoted the idea of assimilation. They took Indian children away from their families and sent them to boarding schools run by whites where they believed the young people could be educated to abandon tribal ways.
City Beautification Movement
The City Beautification Movement began after the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, a world's fair constructed to honor the 400th anniversary of Columbus's first voyage to America. At the center of the wildly popular exposition was the "Great White City" designed by Daniel Burnham. Aiming to impose a similar order and symmetry on the disordered life of cities, those influenced by the movement strove to remake cities all across the country—from Washington D.C., to Chicago, and San Francisco. Only rarely, however, were planners able to complete their dreams because of private landowners. In Boston in the late 1850s, a large area of marshy tidal land was gradually filled in to create the neighborhood known as "black bay", quickly becoming one of largest public works projects in the world. Similar works were undertaken in Chicago and Washington D.C.
The Big Four(railroads)
The Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway, also known as the Big Four Railroad and commonly abbreviated CCC&StL, was a railroad company in the Midwestern United States. Its primary routes were located in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. Long haul and Short haul rates
Dawes Act
The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 provided for the gradual elimination of tribal ownership of land and the allotment of tracts to individual owners (60 acres to the head of a family, 80 acres to a single adult or orphan, 40 acres to each dependent child). Adult owners were given United States citizenship, but unlike other citizens, they could not gain full title to their property for 25 years. The Pueblos were excluded from its provisions.
Sioux Wars
The Eastern Sioux in Minnesota were cramped on an inadequate reservation and exploited by corrupt white agents, so they suddenly rebelled against the restrictions imposed on them by the government's policies. Led by Little Crow, they killed more than 700 whites before being subdued by a force of regulars and militiamen. 38 Indians were hanged and the tribe was exiled to Dakotas. The Western Sioux resented the intrusion of a road (the Bozeman Trail) into the heart of their buffalo range. Led by Red Cloud, they harried soldiers and the construction party, making the road unusable. Battle of Little Bighorn: In 1875, led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, the Sioux left their reservation, 264 of the 7th Cavalry under George Custer were sent to round them up in southern Montana in 1876, all of the Cavalry were killed by the 2,500 Sioux warriors.
Great American Desert
The Great American Desert was a term used in the 19th century to describe the western part of the Great Plains east of the Rocky Mountains in North America to about the 100th meridian.
Interstate Commerce Act, 1887
The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 banned discrimination in rates between long and short hauls, required the railroads to publish their rate schedules and file them with the government, and declared that all interstate rail rates must be reasonable and just—although the act did not define what that meant.
Plains Indian's Culture
The Plains Indians consisted of a diverse group of tribes and language groups. Some lived more or less sedentary, while others were highly nomadic. Their cultures were largely based on close and extended family networks and on an intimate relationship with nature. The tribes subdivided into bands of 500, each with its own governing council, but the community had a decision making process in which most members participated. Tasks were divided by gender. Religion was centered on a belief in the spiritual power of the natural world. Buffalo was the economic basis for the Plains Indians' way of life. Despite cultural similarities, frequent skirmishes arose between rival tribes.
Pullman Strike
The Pullman Strike occurred in 1894 and was a strike staged by Pullman Palace Car Company workers. Workers were forced to live in the 600-acre town of Pullman and rent houses there. In the winter 1893-94, their wages were cut by 25% but rent remained 20-25% higher than comparable accommodations. Workers went on strike and partnered with the militant American Railway Union of Eugene Debs, who refused to handle Pullman cars. Opposing the strike was the General Managers Association (a consortium of twenty four Chicago railroads). It persuaded its members to discharge those who refused to handle Pullman cars and every time this happened, Deb's union instructed its members who worked for the offending companies to walk off their jobs. Within a few days, thousands of railroad workers in 27 states and territories wereon strike, and transportation from Chicago to the Pacific coast was paralyzed. In July of 1894, president Grover Cleveland ordered 2000 troops to the Chicago area and strike quickly collapsed.
Railroad Strike of 1877
The Railroad Strike of 1877 began when eastern railroads announced a 10% wage cut, and soon expanded into a class war. It disrupted rail service from Baltimore to St. Louis, destroyed equipment, and caused riots in the streets of Pittsburgh and other cities. State militias were called out, and, in July, President Hayes ordered federal troops to suppress the disorders in West Virginia. In Baltimore, eleven demonstrators died and forty were wounded. In Philadelphia, state militia open fired on thousands of workers and their families who were attempting to block the railroad crossing and killed twenty people. Overall, one hundred people died. It was America's first major national labor conflict, and it illustrated disputes between workers and employers could not be localized in a national economy, resentment of workers for employers, and frailty of the labor movement—which was seriously weakened by railroad unions—, and it damaged the reputation of labor organizations in other industries as well.
Adam Smith and classical economics
The Wealth of Nations 1776; invisible hand of supply and demand. form foundation for laissez faire economics. An 18th-century philosopher and free-market economist famous for his ideas about the efficiency of the division of labor and the societal benefits of individuals' pursuit of their own self-interest. In his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith proposed the idea of the invisible hand, or the tendency of free markets to regulate themselves by means of competition, supply and demand, and self-interest. Smith is also known for his theory of compensating wage differentials, meaning that dangerous or undesirable jobs will tend to pay higher wages to attract workers to these positions.
Long haul and Short haul rates
The Senate passed its first important piece of railroad legislation—the Gooding long and short haul bill. The bill had to do with a phase of railroad rate-making usually referred to by the words "Charge whatever the traffic will bear." This does not necessarily mean, as it is sometimes interpreted, to raise rates as high as possible. The object of the Gooding bill was to prevent the railroads from lowering certain rates. The problem came up in 1887 and was referred to the Interstate Commerce Commission.
Social Gospel
The Social Gospel movement is a Protestant Christian intellectual movement that was most prominent in the early 20th century United States and Canada. The movement applied Christian ethics to social problems, especially issues of social justice such as economic inequality, poverty, alcoholism, crime, racial tensions, slums, bad hygiene, child labor, inadequate labor unions, poor schools, and the danger of war. Theologically, the Social Gospellers sought to operationalize the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:10): "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."[1] They typically were post-millennialist; that is, they believed the Second Coming could not happen until humankind rid itself of social evils by human effort.[2] The Social Gospel was more popular among clergy than laity.[3] Its leaders were predominantly associated with the liberal wing of the Progressive Movement and most were theologically liberal, although they were typically conservative when it came to their views on social issues.[
Treaty of Fort Laramie
The Treaty of Fort Laramie (also called the Sioux Treaty of 1868) was an agreement between the United States and the Oglala, Miniconjou, and Brulé bands of Lakota people. The Yanktonai Dakota and Arapaho Nation signed it in 1868 at Fort Laramie in the Wyoming Territory, guaranteeing to the Lakota ownership of the Black Hills, and further land and hunting rights in South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. This treaty ended the Sioux War.
Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York and resulted in the fourth highest loss of life from an industrial accident in U.S. history. It was also the second deadliest disaster in New York City. The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers, who died from the fire, smoke inhalation, or from falling to their deaths. Most of the victims were recent Jewish and Italian immigrant women aged sixteen to twenty-three; the oldest victim was 48, the youngest were two fourteen-year-old girls. Because the managers had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits, many of the workers who could not escape the burning building jumped from the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors to the streets below.
Nativism
The arrival of so many new immigrants, and the way many of them clung to old ways and created culturally distinctive communities, provoked fear and resentment among some native-born Americans, just as earlier arrivals had done. Some people reacted against the immigrants out of generalized fears and prejudices, seeing in their foreignness the source of all the disorder and corruption of the urban world. Native-born Americans on the West Coast had a similar cultural aversion to Mexican, Chinese, and Japanese immigrants. Other native laborers were often incensed by the willingness of the immigrants to accept lower wages and to take over the jobs of strikers.
Tammany Hall
The most famously corrupt city boss was William M. Tweed, boss of New York City's Tammany Hall in the 1860s and 1870s, whose excesses finally landed him in jail in 1872. George Washington Plunkitt of New York's Tammany Hall called it "honest graft," meaning it was completely open about its corruption.
Public Education
There was a spread of free public primary and secondary education. In 1860, there were only 100 public high schools in the entire U.S., but by 1900, the total had reached 6,000, and by 1914, it was over 12,000. By 1900 compulsory school attendance laws were in effect in 31 states. Some sought to provide education opportunities for Indians (1870s Hampton Institute, 1879 Richard Henry Pratt's Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania).
U.S. v. Knight
United States v. E. C. Knight Co., also known as the "'Sugar Trust Case,'" was a United States Supreme Court case that limited the government's power to control monopolies. The case, which was the first heard by the Supreme Court concerning the Sherman Antitrust Act, was argued on October 24, 1894 and the decision was issued on January 21, 1895.When the American Sugar Refining Company acquired almost all of the sugar-producing capacity in the U.S., the government sought to divest it of its monopoly.Under the Knight decision, any action against manufacturing monopolies would need to be taken by individual states, making such regulation extremely difficult with regards to out-of-state monopolies because states are prohibited from discriminating against out-of-state goods by, among other things
Trusts
Trusts were pioneered by Standard Oil in the early 1880s and perfected by J.P. Morgan. Stockholders in individual corporations transferred their stocks to a small group of trustees in exchange for shares in the trust itself. Owners of trust certificates often had no direct control over the decisions of the trustees; they simply received a share of the profits of the combination. Trustees themselves were only a few companies, but they could exercise effective control over many.
William T. Sherman
United States general who was commander of all Union troops in the West; he captured Atlanta and led a destructive march to the sea that cut the Confederacy in two (1820-1891)
Urban parks
Urban Parks were among the most important innovations of the period. They reflected the desire of a growing number of urban leaders to provide an antidote to the congestion of the city landscape. Most successful American promoters of this notion of the park as refuge were the landscape designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, who teamed up in the late 1850s to design New York's Central Park. They were recruited to design other great parks and public spaces in other cities (ex. Brooklyn, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Washington D.C.).
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a form of theater adapted from French models, and was the most popular urban entertainment in the first decades of the 20th century. Even saloons and small community theaters could afford to offer their customers vaudeville, which consisted of a variety of acts (musicians, comedians, magicians, jugglers, and others). Florenz Ziefgeld of New York staged more elaborate spectacles than the more simplistic vaudeville. Vaudeville was open to black performers.
Vigilantes
Vigilantes were an unofficial system of social control used earlier in California. Vigilantes were unconstrained by the legal system, and they often imposed their notion of justice arbitrarily and without regard for any form of due process. Sometimes criminals themselves, they secured control of the committees. They continued to operate as private law enforcers after the creation of regular governments.
Wilbur and Orville Wright
Wilbur and Orville Wright owned a bicycle shop and constructed a glider propelled by an internal combustion engine. Four years after they began their experiments, the Orvilles made a celebrated test flight near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in which an airplane took off and traveled 120ft in twelve seconds. By the fall of 1904, they could fly over 23 miles and, in 1905 began taking passengers.
Wild West Shows
Wild West Shows were popular in the late 19th and early 20th century. They were colorful entertainment that may have had little connection with the reality of western life, but they stamped on their audiences an image of the West as a place of adventure and romance that has lasted for generations. P.T. Barnum began popularizing the "wild west" as early as the 1840s when he staged a 'grand buffalo hunt' for spectators in New York, and such shows continued into the 1870s (one of which featured the famous Wild bill Hickok). The first real Wild West show opened in Omaha, Nebraska in 1883. The organizer was William F Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill.
The Gospel of Wealth
Written by Carnegie in 1901, The Gospel of Wealth preached that people of great wealth had not only great power but great responsibilities as well. It was their duty to use their riches to advance social progress.
Comstock Lode
first discovered in 1858 by Henry Comstock; ore found there and other veins of silver in Nevada in 1859
