14.1
*Between the end of the Civil War and the start of the Great War, twelve new states, all of them in the West, entered the Union.  This was the result of a hunger for land among Americans, especially recent immigrants, and government policies that encouraged the settlement of the West, where most of the land was owned by the Federal Government.

*The Homestead Act, passed by Lincoln in 1862, gave for a nominal fee a quarter-section (160 acres) of western land to any citizen or immigrant filing for citizenship who would take a family west and develop the land—this stipulation was to make sure land went to families and not just to land speculators.  By 1900, over 80 million acres had been claimed under this Act.

*The Morrill Land-Grant Act, named after Representative Justin Smith Morrill (R-Vermont) and also passed in 1862, gave federal land to state governments.  This land was to be sold and the proceeds used to fund state agricultural and technical colleges.

*All this was made possible by the concept of private property—that is what made it worthwhile to move west, acquire land, and improve it.  This opportunity is why so many immigrants came to America in the 19th Century, and why so many succeeded.

14.2
*The conquest of the West was not without problems.  It was populated by tribes of Indians who resented their land being sold and settled.  Indians attacked pioneers, and the settlers fought back, with atrocities on both sides.  To ensure the expansion of the frontier, the US Army eventually mounted a series of Indian Wars that, despite such failures as Custer’s Last Stand at the Little Bighorn River in Montana, where the arrogant Custer was killed with his whole command by 2,000 Sioux, the largest Indian force ever assembled, the US Army finally pushed all the Indians into reservations.  Eventually even the old Indian Territory was opened up to settlement as the Oklahoma Territory.

14.3
*During the early stages of settlement, the West boomed.  Money was made in mining, ranching (especially cattle ranching), and farming, especially with the help of new technology.

*Initially, however, many families could not even afford to build houses.  They build dugouts into the side of hills, living in burrows, or built sod houses out of thick mats of roots and soil.  When they made more money, they could build a finer frame house.  Picture:  503

*In 1890, the Census Bureau, when considered population distribution, declared that there was no longer a frontier.  The country had enough people spread across it that it was impossible to determine a line beyond which unsettled land still existed.  In response to this, Frederick Jackson Turner published his Frontier Thesis, in which he stated that America had been based on the struggle of the frontier, where hard work had equalised all men and created democracy anew as the frontier progressed from Tennessee to Wyoming.

14.4
*Despite the expansion of the West and its rapid settlement, there were problems.  Just as excessive staple crop production drove down the value of crops in the South during and after Reconstruction, keeping the sharecroppers and tenant farmers in debt, so the ever-larger wheat crops of the West made each particular shipment of wheat (and each individual farmer’s income) less valuable.  Graph:  507

*Two financial panics, in 1873 and 1893, caused banks to call in their loans and farms to fail.  Farmers also felt gouged by railroad owners and urban companies that bought their produce.

*Farmers had other problems:  tariffs, which protected American manufacturers, meant that farm equipment was expensive, and the nation had experienced significant deflation since the Civil War.  The government was no longer printing paper money, so it was harder to get cash, and, after 1873, the government switched to the gold standard, which meant that money either had to be made of gold or have an equal amount of gold in the government’s hands.  This reduced the money supply, hurting debtors (mostly farmers) and miners (who sold the government silver); however, it made money more stable, which was popular among bankers.

*Farmers began to protest, and to ask to government to help them out, even though the government had always felt it had no business helping individuals—to do so, it was felt, would make them dependent so they no longer worked hard.  Farmers in the South and West disagreed, and became politically active.  Mary Lease said they should ‘raise less corn and more hell!’  Consequently, farmers formed or joined co-operatives to sell crops and buy goods together to get better prices, and such groups often turned into political groups such as the Grange, the Farmers’ Alliances, and eventually the People’s Party, also called the Populists.

*The Populists demanded reform through government action.  They wanted more circulation of money, the minting of all the silver that could be mined, a progressive income tax, and government ownership of transportation and communication, so it could be run for the common good, not private profit.

*The Populists and the Democrats backed the same presidential candidate:  William Jennings Bryan.  An amazing orator, his Cross of Gold Speech against the gold standard was one of the most famous in American History.  ‘You shall not press down upon the brow of labour this crown of thorns.  You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!’  Bryan, however, was defeated by McKinley twice.

*By 1900, however, gold had been discovered in South Africa, the Yukon, and Alaska (where Seward’s investment finally paid off), so that money became more readily available.  Farm prices also rose.  Although Populism rapidly declined, its goals of reform lived on and merged with those of the Progressives.

13.1
*The late 19th Century saw the invention and improvement of many technologies that dramatically changed people’s lives.  Oil was discovered and used for lubricants, light, and eventually power, railroads expanded, electricity was used for power, the light bulb was invented, as was the electric chair, the telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, new ways of making steel, and time zones.
 
13.2
*Business expanded in the late 19th Century.  During the Civil War and in the boom following it, industrialists in the north built more and bigger factories, and made more money.  They used this wealth to buy up their competitors, and eventually form monopolies.  Many of these men, such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, used their power to provide better products without fear of competition, and gave great gifts to charitable works, especially education.  At their best, these men were called ‘captains of industry,’ and they made America prosper.  Without competition, though, some of these monopolies, also called ‘trusts,’ grew corrupt and made money through price-fixing and even through bribery and abusing their influence on government.  The enemies of men such as these called them ‘Robber Barons.’

13.3
*The factories of these captains of industry employed the urban poor, especially immigrants.  In some cases, factory owners even paid for the transportation of immigrants in return for a promise of up to a year’s labour.  As farm prices fell and droughts struck parts of the country, people moved from the farms to the factories as well.  By 1920, the US would have more people living in cities than in the country.

*Most of these factory workers laboured under terrible conditions, often working 12 or more hours a day, for low wages, perhaps $1-$2 a day.  Many were women as well as men, and over 5% were children, who often went to the factories at the age of 12 or 13, but might start as young as 6 if the family was desperate for money.  Those who could not work often starved, as it was thought at the time that helping the poor would make them lazy.

13.4
*To fight what they saw as injustice in the workplace, many labourers turned to Karl Marx’s ideas of socialism.  He predicted that one day the workers of the world would realise that they, as the producers, held the power, and would band together and ultimately take over the means of production and control the world.  As a first step, many workers once again formed labour unions.  Through negotiations, strikes, and violence, these unions tried to get better treatment for their members—better pay, a ten-hour working day, and better working conditions.

*Factory owners did not like unions.  They forbade meetings, fired organisers, signed workers to ‘yellow dog’ contracts, refused to bargain, and even called in private detectives and the army to fight strikers with force.

*In return, labour unions were known to use violence as well, attacking policemen, scabs, and other enemies of the people.  During a days-long demonstration trying to get an eight-hour workday in Haymarket Square in Chicago, an anarchist threw a bomb into a group of policemen, killing one officer.  The police and strikers fired upon one another, killing dozens.  The protest began on 1 May, 1886, and the Haymarket Explosion was on the 4th.  This is why only America does not celebrate Labour Day on 1 May.  There were many other strikes, as well.

*The labour unions would support the socialist candidate for president Eugene V. Debs for decades.

15.1
*In addition to the problems in the factories, there were problems in politics, as well.  From the Grant Administration onwards, politics had grown increasingly corrupt.  Through the ‘spoils system,’ political supporters were rewarded with jobs made even more lucrative by the constant opportunities to take bribes.

15.2
*Cities were overcrowded, especially with immigrants, who often crowded into ghettos, as urban areas where only one ethnic group lived were known.  Famous examples are the Chinatowns of several large cities, or Little Italy in New York.  In some of these, it would not be necessary to speak English, and in some families it would be generations before anyone was fluent in it.

15.3
*These immigrants, unfamiliar with American politics, were prime targets for corrupt politicians’ manipulations, as were the older generations of Americans who resented new immigrants taking their jobs because they would work cheaper, and altering the culture, because they had different traditions.  Eventually, attempts were made to reduce further immigration, especially from Asia, where the people seemed most foreign.  The movement to keep out foreigners was called nativism.

15.1
*Politicians, through careful management, controlled the votes of large sections of the population, and used their power to make profit at government expense, also known as graft.  A famous slogan of Tammany Hall, a political machine run by Boss Tweed, was ‘vote early and vote often.’

*This corruption and sense of entitlement led to tragedy in 1881, when a disappointed office-seeker named Charles Guiteau, shot James Garfield.  After this, attempts were made to reform the spoils system and society in general.

15.4
*As poverty and misery grew in the cities, and the government, feeling it was not meant to interfere in private life, made no effort to intervene, private groups began to address these issues.  In settlement houses, attempts were made to educate immigrants and prepare them for their new life.  To reduce drunkenness, disorder, domestic violence, and self-destruction, the old temperance movement evolved into the prohibition movement, seeking to prohibit the manufacture and sale of alcohol.  Finally, crusades were undertaken against all forms of vice, including pornography and prostitution.

16.1
*The late 19th Century saw a great increase in the quantity and quality of education available to Americans.  In 1870, 2% of 17-year olds graduated from high school and fewer went to college.  Many people felt this needed to change, and public schools were founded throughout the country, despite some opposition from those who did not want to pay for them and from immigrants who did not want their children indoctrinated in a new culture.

*Vassar College in New York, the first college for women, opened in 1865, and more all-female colleges opened throughout the North, and one in Louisiana, before the end of the century, and an even smaller number of schools were co-educational, teaching men and women together.

*Although blacks were supposed to get the same education that their white neighbours did, in most cases they did not, although a few black colleges did exist.

*The goals of the private charities in the cities and of the Populists in the countryside would eventually merge into one movement that would have supporters (and opponents) in both major political parties, the Progressives.

18.1
*The Progressives were not exactly a political party, although they impacted politics significantly and some parties did briefly take their name.  Rather, they believed that the government ought to be accountable to its citizens, that the government should have the power to regulate the rich and big businesses, that government should be less corrupt, more efficient and more powerful because, above all, they believed that government ought to take an active role in improving the lives of it citizens.

*Because they were not a political party, many groups that disagreed on many things still all considered themselves progressives:  the labour movement, socialists, feminists, educational reformers, Christian groups, prohibitionists, and other reformers all considered themselves progressives.

*Perhaps the most famous work of the Progressives was a literary work. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, a novel describing the workings of a meat-packing plant, where diseased cattle and perhaps other meats, completely without government regulation, went into the canned meat that was sent to consumers across America.  He claimed that caned beef from dirty factories had killed more Americans in the Spanish-American War than the Spaniards had.  This disgusted so many Americans that the government was forced to create a board of meat inspectors, which later grew into the FDA.  Sinclair and journalists like him were called muckrakers because they stirred through the filth of society to warn others of its problems—and also because they sometimes told filthy lies to boost sales.  Many were guilty of bad journalism, but a few, like Sinclair, led to great reforms.

18.2
*Just as The Jungle led to regulation of the meat-packing industry, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire, which killed 146 women working in a factory, led to reforms of both factories like theirs and of city services such as the fire company whose ladders were too short to save them and whose nets tore when people jumped into them.

*In many cities, the cities took over the utility systems and other services which had previously been owned by private corporations.  By 1915 2/3 of cities owned some of their utilities, just as Johnson City owns the water board and controls the power company.

*Governments were made more responsive through the creation of the referendum, in which citizens could vote on specific laws passed by the legislature, and the recall, in which citizens could remove elected officials from office early if they were not doing a satisfactory job.

*Workplaces were improved, as safety regulations were created, child labour was ended, and minimum wage laws were created.  The government also took an active role in monitoring the trusts, and busting up trusts that were too corrupt, or that were seen as harmful to the nation, although the government would still break strikes as well.

18.2
*The Federal Government was dominated by Progressives form 1901-1920.  Theodore Roosevelt vastly expanded the national park system, and in 1913 two progressive Amendments were made to the US Constitution:  the XVI, which gave Congress the power to levy an income tax, and the XVII, which made Senators directly elected for the first time in American history.

18.4 (and 16.4)
*Among the Progressives were many women.  The Women’s Rights movement had existed since the 18th century to some extent, and had been organised since the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848.  Several times, under the leadership of Susan B. Anthony, the women’s suffrage movement suggested an amendment to the Constitution to allow women to vote, especially after the XV Amendment gave that right to blacks.

*Some states, especially in the West, began to give women some voting rights, and, beginning with Wyoming in 1890, eventually gave them full suffrage.  In 1916, Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to the US House of Representatives.  Others feared that letting women vote would completely disrupt society and destroy the authority of husbands and fathers.

*Women also began to get some more control over their own finances, and many began to be involved in politics, in the growing charities (many of which were led by women), in labour unions, and especially in the temperance and prohibition movements, as they blamed alcohol for wife beatings and for laziness (and deadbeat husbands).

*In 1890, Anthony, Stanton, and other veteran suffragettes founded the National American Woman Suffrage Association.  Its members practised passive resistance, attempting to vote and then letting themselves be arrested and dragged away.  Sympathy over this combined with effective political lobbying, eventually led Congress to propose an amendment to the Constitution that would let all adult women vote.

*In 1920 the XVIII and XIX Amendments were ratified, respectively outlawing the manufacture and sale of alcohol and giving women the right to vote.  The deciding 36th state to ratify the XIX Amendment was Tennessee.

16.3
*Despite all the changes in most of the country, for blacks, especially in the South, things stayed much the same.

*Almost as soon as Reconstruction ended, blacks in the US, especially in the South began to see their new freedoms vanish once again.  Throughout the South, a variety of laws much like the old black codes sprang up to keep the black people from exercising many of their new rights.  These laws were called ‘Jim Crow’ laws, after a minstrel show routine.

*Voting restrictions were common.  One common form was the poll tax, which required voters to pay a fee.  This was always large enough to keep out most blacks, and had the added benefit of keeping out many poor whites as well, although it was not uncommon to enforce the laws selectively.  Another restriction was the literacy test, in which prospective voters had to demonstrate they could read, which often kept out blacks, who were usually denied much education by the lack of public schools for them.  Again, it was common to give white voters very easy things to read, while giving something different and much harder to black voters.

*Segregation also became common after the Civil War.  It was first instituted in Massachusetts in the 1830s to keep blacks and whites in separate train cars, but the South adopted the idea quickly.    In the South, white and black people used different schools, railroad cars, water fountains, bathrooms, and even different sections in hospitals, theatres, and churches.

*Several attempts were made to overturn segregation, and the most important was the case of Plessy v Ferguson, which went to the Supreme Court in 1896.  Homer Plessy, a very pale black man, had attempted to ride in a white section of a train to force a test case, and was arrested when he announced his race.  He appealed this case all the way to the Supreme Court.  The Supreme Court declared that it was legal to segregate, provided that the areas provided were ‘separate, but equal,’ possibly a good idea in theory, but hard to enforce, as the facilities given blacks were rarely equal to those enjoyed by whites.

*To fight this and other forms of discrimination, a group of black leaders and activists formed the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People in 1890, which still exists and continues to work for the interests of coloured people.
 

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