Ch. 17 - 20 Review Sheet

Gilded Age / consumption / poverty

Gilded Age: when politics was corrupt and stagnant and elections centered on "meaningless hoopla." The term Gilded Age, borrowed from the tital of an 1873 novel cowritten by Mark Twain, suggested that America had achieved a glittery outer coating of prosperity ad lofty rhetoric, but underneath suffered from moral decay. Economically, the term Gilded Age seems apt: as we have seen in previous chapters, a handful of men made spectacular fortunes, and their "Gilded" triumphs belied a rising crisis of poverty, pollution, and erosion of workers' rights. But political leaders were not blind to these problems, and the political scene was hardly idle or indifferent. Rather, Americans bitterly disagreed about what to do. Nonetheless, as early as the 1880s, Congress passed important new federal measures to clean up corruption and rein in corporate power. That decade deserves to be considered an early stage in the emerging Progressive Era.

Big business and corruption

https://www.apstudynotes.org/us-history/topics/gilded-age-scandal-and-corruption/

During the late 19th century, western Native American life was most effected by

post Civil War migrations of whites

Andrew Carnegie / The Gospel of Wealth

Andrew Carnegie was right when he argued that, even though industrialization increased the gap between rich and poor, everyone's standard of living rose. In his famous 1889 essay "The Gospel of Wealth" - he observed that "the poor enjoy what the rich could not before afford. What were the luxuries have become the necessaries of life".

Social Darwinism

Darwin himself disapproved of the word evolution (which does not appear in his book) because it implied upward progress. IN his view, natural selection was blind: environments and species changed randomly. Others were less scrupulous about drawing sweeping conclusions from Darwin's work. IN the 1870s, British philospher Herbert SPencer spun out an elaborate theory of how human society advanced through "survival of the fittest".

Specific reform efforts

Declining family size - spent less years with young children and more years after their children were grown Some educated women shunned marriage entirely because they believed that the only way they could play roles in the public world is to remain single. The clubwomen: The Clubwomen Began largely as cultural organizations to provide middle and upper-class women an outlet for their intellectual energies. By the early 20th century: clubs became less concerned about cultural activities and more concerned with contributing to social betterment. Most clubs excluded blacks; blacks form own clubs Few were willing to accept feminists' arguments, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman's who, in her book Women and Economics, argued that the traditional definition of gender roles was exploitive and obsolete. Mostly did what was uncontroversial **Important force in winning passage of state (and ultimately federal) laws that regulated the conditions of woman and child labor, establishing government inspections and workplaces, regulated the food and drug industries, reformed places toward the Indian tribes, applied new standards to urban housing, and outlawed the manufacture and sale of alcohol. Instrumental in pressuring state legislatures in most states to provide "mother's pensions" to widowed or abandoned mothers with small children -- ultimately was absorbed into the Social Security system. Pressured Congress into establishing the Children's Bureau in the Labor Department to develop policies to protect children many clubwomen formed alliances with other women's groups such as the Women's Trade Union League ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- independent National Association of Colored Women; took concern to African American concerns such as lynching ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Women's Trade Union League founded in 1903 by female union members and upper class reformers. Committed to persuading women to join unions. Held public meetings on behalf of female workers, raised money to support strikes, marched on picket lines and bailed striking women out of jail. -------------------------------------------------------------- The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was formed on February 18, 1890 to work for women's suffrage in the United States. It was created by the merger of two existing organizations, the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA).

Populist party / beliefs

Have you ever felt as if the system is rigged against you? That you work hard and do everything you are supposed to do, but can't get ahead due to an unfair situation? Would you be willing to join those with similar experiences, organize, and launch a political challenge in order to better your life? These were the conditions that faced American farmers in the decades after the Civil War, when the United States rapidly shifted from an agrarian to an industrial economy. Farmers faced significant challenges selling their crops on a global market, gaining access to affordable credit, and dealing with chronic debt. In response, farmers in the South and West formed a third party to address their collective challenges and seek broader political representation. In the 1890s, they created one of the largest third parties in American history, the Populist Party, or People's Party, to challenge the status quo and better the situations of rural families across the country. The central belief of the Populists was producerism. This simply meant that producers (farmers) deserved a fair return for their labor. In other words, the farmer should get enough profit from the sale of crops to pay for the cost of production, as well as money to live and feed his family. For Populists, whether a wheat farmer on the Great Plains, a cotton grower in the South, or a tobacco farmer in North Carolina, the biggest threat to receiving a fair return for labor was monopolies. This meant three things for the farmer. First, various middlemen monopolized the ability of a farmer to get his crop to market. The farmer had to pay exorbitant rates to railroads and middlemen at various stages to sell his produce, thus keeping the farmer from a fair return for his labor and goods. Second, Populists believed that banks monopolized access to credit. Capital (money) was scarce in rural areas, and banks were few. Thus, banks charged very high interest rates for loans that farmers needed for their operations. Populists sought a more flexible currency; in other words, more money in circulation. Third, by the 1890s, Populists came to believe that the U.S. political system was monopolized by two parties - the Democratic Party and the Republican Party - which did not represent the interests of farmers and did not work to address the problems of agriculture in an industrial age.

Jacob RIis / urban reformers

Making innovative use of flash photography, Danish-born journalist Jacob RIis included photographs of tenement interiors in his famous 1890 book, "How the OZther HAlf lives". Riis had a profound inflluence on Theodore Roosevelt when the future president served as NEw York City's police commissioner. Roosevelt asked Riis to lead him on tours around the tenements, to help him better understand the problems of poverty, disease, and crime.

Progressive Movement / beliefs on reform

Progressivism is an overlapping set of movements to combat the ills of industrialization. In the slums and tenements of the metropolis, reformers invented new forms of civic participation that shaped the course of national politics.

Settlement houses

Some urban reformers focused their energies on building a creative new institution, the social settlement. These communitiy welfare centers investigated the plight of the urban poor, raised funds to address urgent needs, and helped neighborhood residents advocate on their own behalf. At the movement's peak in the early twentieth century, dozens of social settlements operated across the United States. The most famous, and one of the first, was Hull House on Chicago's West Side, founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and her companion Ellen Gates Starr. Social settlements took many forms. Some attached themselves to preexisting missions and African American colleges. Settlements served as a springboard for many other projects. Settlement workers often fought city hall to get better schools and lobbied state legislatures for new workplace safety laws. Settlements were thus a crucial proving ground for many progressive experiments, as well as for the emerging profession of social work, which transformed the provision of public welfare.

Dawes Severalty Act

The Dawes Act of 1887 (also known as the General Allotment Act or the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887),[1][2] adopted by Congress in 1887, authorized the President of the United States to survey American Indian tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Indians. Those who accepted allotments and lived separately from the tribe would be granted United States citizenship. The Dawes Act was amended in 1891, in 1898 by the Curtis Act, and again in 1906 by the Burke Act.

Plessy v. Ferguson

The case, Plessy v. Ferguson, was brought by civil rights advocates on behalf of Homer Plessy, a New ORleans residet who was one-eighth black. Ordered to leave a first-class car and move to the "colored" car of a Louisiana train, PLessy refused and was arrested. The court ruled that such segregation did not violate the 14th amendment as long as blacks had access to accommodations that were "seperate but equal" to those of whites. "Seperate but equal" was a myth: segregated facilities in the south was flagrantly inferior. JIm Crow segregation laws, named for a stereotyped black character who appeared in minstrel shows, clearly discriminated, but the Court allowed them to stand. The PLessy decision remained in place until 1954, when the Court's Brown v. TOpeka BOE ruling finally struck down. The PLessy decision showed that consumer culture could be modern and innovative without being politically progressive. BUsiness and consumer culture were shaped by, and themselves shaped, racial and class injustices.

Social Gospel

The goal of renewing religious faith through dedication to justice and social welfare became known as the Social Gospel. Its goals were epitomized by Charles Sheldon's NOvel "In his Steps, which told the storyu of a congregation who resolved to live by Christ's percepts for one year.

Women's roles in reform

The prominence of women in reform movements is one of the most striking features of progressivism. In most states in the early 20th century, women could not vote; they almost never held public office. They had only footholds in only a few professions and lived in a culture where people believed women were not suited for the public world.

Booker T. Washington / Atlanta Exposition

Washington gained national fame in 1895 with his Atlanta compromise address, delivered at the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta, GEorgia. For the exposition's white organizers, the racial compromise was inviting Washington to speak at all. It was a move intended to show racial progress in the South. Washington, in turn, delivered an address that many interpreted as approving racial segregation. Stating that African Americans had, in slavery days, "proved our loyalty to you", he assured whites that "in our humble way, we shall stand by you, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours". The races could remain socially detached. Washington urged, however, that whites join him in working for the highest intelligence and development of all". Whites greeted this address with enthusiasm, and Washington became the most prominent black leader of his generation. His soothing rhetoric and style of leadership, based on avoiding confrontation and cultivating white patronage and private influence, was well suited to the difficult years after Reconstruction. Washington believed that money was color-blind, that whites would respect economic success. He represented the ideals of millions of Africa Americans who hoped education and hard work would erase white prejudice. That hope proved tragically overoptimistic. As the tide of disenfranchisement and segregation rolled in, Washington would come under fire from a younger generation of race leaders who argued that he accomodated too much to white racism.