the birth of modern america · the industrial revolution changed the face of america. ... 1896 •...

232 CHAPTER 12 Becoming a World Power232232

The Birth ofModern America

1877–1900

. The Big Ideas ,SECTION 1: Settling the West

Societies change over time. Native Americans’ way of life came to an end as miners and ranchersfound new riches in the West and farmers settled the Great Plains.

SECTION 2: IndustrializationThe Industrial Revolution changed the face of America. The Industrial Revolution resulted in a nationwide railroad system and a new focus on business and industry.

SECTION 3: Immigration and UrbanizationThe Industrial Revolution changed the face of America. Immigrants flooded into the United States.Together with rural Americans, they moved into cities that adapted to the increased population.

SECTION 4: Early Reforms in a Gilded AgePeople react to periods of breathtaking social and cultural change in different ways. Whilesome people espoused individualism and Social Darwinism, others tried to ease the problems that arosefrom urbanization and industrialization.

SECTION 5: Politics and ReformPeople react to periods of breathtaking social and cultural change in different ways. Americansdisagreed on how to deal with economic and reform issues. African Americans faced increasing discrimi-nation and segregation.

The American Vision Modern Times Video The Chapter 3 video, “Building America,” examines industrial expansion in the United States in the late 1800s.

1860• Transcontinental

railroad completed

1867• British colonies united

to form Dominion of Canada

1869• Chemist Dmitri Mendeleyev

creates periodic table ofelements

1876• Korea forced to

trade with Japan

1878• Independent Serbia

recognized

▲

▲

▼

▲

▼

1877• Farmers’ Alliance

founded in Texas

1860 1870 1880

Lincoln1861–1865

A. Johnson1865–1869

▲Grant

1869–1877Hayes

1877–1881Garfield1881

Arthur1881–1885

1879• Edison perfects

lightbulb

1882• Chinese

Exclusion Actpassed byCongress

▼ ▼

233233

Immigrants arriving at Ellis Island

▲

1890• Sherman Antitrust

Act passed

1894• Pullman

strike begins

1896• Plessy v. Ferguson creates

“separate but equal” doctrine

▲

1901• J.P. Morgan forms

U.S. Steel

▼ ▼

▲

▼ ▼ ▼

1886• American

Federationof Laborfounded

1890 1900

▲Cleveland

1885–1889B. Harrison1889–1893

Cleveland1893–1897

McKinley1897–1901

1892• Rudolf Diesel

patents dieselengine

1894• Sino-Japanese

War breaks out

1896• Modern Olympics

begin in Athens,Greece

1888• Brazil ends

slavery

1885• Indian National

Congress organizesfor independencefrom Great Britain

1883• Brooklyn Bridge

completed

▲

▲

HISTORY

Chapter OverviewVisit the American Vision:Modern Times Web site at

andclick on Chapter Overviews—Chapter 3 to preview chapterinformation.

tav.mt.glencoe.com

http://tav.mt.glencoe.com

234 CHAPTER 3 The Birth of Modern America234 CHAPTER 3 The Birth of Modern America

Good readers look for similarities and differences in new informationthey read. This helps them figure out what it means. You do this

subconsciously in everyday life. For example, if you meet someone new,you probably compare that person to people you know. Is the person thesame or different? If different, what makes that person different?

When you read, comparing and contrasting helps you understand newinformation. Luckily, authors can use certain signal words to tell you whenthey are comparing and contrasting information to something you alreadyknow. Some signal words for showing similarity are same, at the same time,like, and still. Signal words for showing differences include however, rather,but, or on the other hand.

Read the following sentences and notice how signalwords describe similarities and differences.

The story of the Comstock Lode is similar toother stories of gold, silver, and copper strikesthroughout the West. (page 237)

Like ranching, farming also seemed unsuitablefor the Great Plains. (page 239)

At the same time, a new resource, petroleum,began to be exploited. (page 244)

Although the Industrial Revolution began inthe United States in the early 1800s, the nationwas still largely a farming country when the CivilWar erupted. (page 244)

However, employers generally regarded unionsas illegitimate conspiracies that interfered withtheir property rights. (page 250)

In the first three sentences, the authors com-pare developments in mining and ranching,along with events that occurred at the sametime. The last two sentences present contrasts.The fourth sentence contrasts industrializationto the general state of the economy, while thelast sentence clarifies the general attitude ofemployers toward unions.

Comparing and Contrasting

COMPARINGThe author uses the wordssimilar, like, and at the sametime to let you know that inthese sentences somethingwill be compared.

As you read this chapter, take note of the signalwords that the authors use to clue you into thecauses and effects of different events.Recognizing the signal words will help youbetter understand the text.

234

CONTRASTINGThe words although andhowever indicate that theauthor is contrasting some-thing to an event or itemthat was mentioned earlier.

CHAPTER 3 The Birth of Modern America 235

Chronological and Spatial Thinking As you study history, you will use a variety of mapsand documents to interpret human movement, including major patterns of domestic andinternational migration, changing environmental preferences and settlement patterns, thefrictions that develop between population groups, and the diffusion of ideas, technologicalinnovations, and goods.

Interpreting Maps

Have you ever traveled somewhere unfamiliar? You, or the people you traveledwith, probably used maps or other reference materials to help you find your

way. You may have used a small-scale map to plot the general route you would betraveling. Then you may have used a more detailed map or perhaps a map on theInternet for instructions on finding the exact address.

Maps visually represent the physical and political layout of a land. They maydescribe the shape and elevation of the terrain, such as a contour map, or illustratethe impact of humans on the land, such as the boundaries of nations. Two generaltypes of maps are most commonly used: topographical maps describe physicalcharacteristics, while thematic maps provide specific information, such as roads.

When you look at a map, you need to consider the accuracy of the informationpresented. For instance, a map created by early explorers will probably not preciselyrepresent the rivers, mountains, and shorelines. Instead, these are approximations ofwhat the explorers knew at the time. You also must take into account when and how,by whom, and for what purpose the map was made. Some maps may be deliberatelymisleading. For example, it was not uncommon for these same early explorers toexaggerate the size or natural resources of a new land to impress potential investors.

The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration houses many of thenation’s most important documents, maps, and other historical artifacts. As withall historical documents, the National Archives suggests that you should readmaps with analysis in mind. Whenever you look at maps, consider these questions:

• Who is the mapmaker?

• When was the map made?

• What type of map is it?

• What is the purpose of the map?

• Does the text contain information supported by the map?

Before you begin studying Chapter 3, take a look at the Geography Handbook on pages84–91 of your textbook, if you have not doneso already. On these pages you can learn moreabout different types of maps.

This chapter contains several maps. For eachof the maps, answer the questions above tohelp you better understand the information.

235

Analysis Skill Standard CS3


Guide to Reading

ConnectionIn the previous section, you learnedabout the Reconstruction of the UnitedStates after the Civil War. In this section,you will discover how the Gold Rushattracted settlers to the West and howpeople began to settle the Great Plains.

• Miners seeking to strike it rich settledlarge areas of the West. (p. 237)

• Ranchers built vast cattle ranches onthe Great Plains, while settlers stakedout homesteads and began farming the region. (p. 238)

• The settlement of the West dramati-cally altered the way of life of thePlains Indians. (p. 241)

Content Vocabularyplacer mining, quartz mining, vigilancecommittee, open range, long drive,homestead, assimilate

Academic Vocabularyextract, adapt, prior

People and Terms to IdentifyHenry Comstock, Homestead Act, IndianPeace Commission, Sitting Bull, GhostDance, Dawes Act

Places to LocateGreat Plains, Wheat Belt

Reading Objectives• Trace the growth of the mining industry

and big ranches in the West.• Explain how and why people began

settling the Great Plains.

• Summarize problems caused byattempts to assimilate NativeAmericans.

Reading StrategyAs you read about the settlement of the West, complete a graphic orga-nizer similar to the one below listingresources and government policies that encouraged settlement, and the effects of these measures on Native Americans.

Preview of Events

Settling the West

1859Comstock Lodediscovered inNevada

1867Cattle drives beginon Chisholm Trail

1862HomesteadAct

✦1860 ✦1870 ✦1880 ✦1890

1887Dawes Act

1890Wounded KneeMassacre

Resources/GovernmentPolicies

How ItAttractedNew Settlers

Impact onNativeAmericans

. The Big Idea ,Societies change over time. Following Reconstruction, many people moved Westin hopes of making fortunes mining newly discovered deposits of gold, silver, and cop-per needed for industries in the East. As railroads were constructed, settlers alsomoved to the Great Plains to farm or ranch. This influx of settlers had a profoundeffect on the lives of the Native Americans who had roamed the Plains for centuries.Hunters and sharpshooters clearing the way for railroads drastically depleted thebuffalo herds many Native Americans depended on for survival. Many were forcedto relocate or give up their culture by assimilating.

The following are the mainHistory–Social Science Standardscovered in this section.

11.1.4 Examine the effects of theCivil War and Reconstruction and of

the Industrial revolution, includingdemographic shifts and the emergence

in the late 19th century of the UnitedStates as a world power.

11.2.6 Trace the economic developmentof the United States and its emergence

as a major industrial power, including itsgains from trade and the advantage of its

physical geography.

Growth of the Mining Industry

Miners seeking to strike it rich settled largeareas of the West.

Reading Connection Under what circumstances wouldyou choose to move to another state? Read on to find out whatmotivated miners to relocate to the western states.

The rich deposits of gold, silver, and copper in theWest served the needs of growing industries in theEast. They also brought the first wave of settlers thatpopulated the mountain states of the West.

Jacob Waldorf arrived in Virginia City, Nevada, in1873 to seek his fortune in the fabled silver mines ofthe Comstock Lode. Like many others, he found workat one of the big mining companies. Seven days aweek he toiled in a dangerous mine shaft, earningenough to support his family and buy a little stock inlocal mining companies. As his son John recalled:

“The favorite game with our father was stocks. . . .Mother used to say to me, ‘Some day we’re goingback east,’ but for years none of the stocks in whichDad invested showed any disposition to furnish uswith the price of transportation.”In 1877 the stock Waldorf owned skyrocketed in value.“Dad’s holdings rose . . . to $10,000 and mother beganto talk of buying a farm,” John wrote. “The stock keptgoing upward. Dad was worth $15,000 for at least aminute.” He waited for the stock to go even higherbefore selling, but instead it plummeted: “The bottomfell out of Ophi [a mining stock], and Mother’s dreamfarm fell with it, for Dad was broke.”

Jacob Waldorf overcame this financial setback.Earning the respect of his fellow workers, he headedthe miners’ union in 1880 and later served as a state legislator.

—adapted from A Kid on the Comstock

The search for wealth brought many fortune seek-ers like Jacob Waldorf. News of a mineral discoveryin an area would start a stampede of prospectors des-perately hoping to strike it rich. Early prospectorswould extract the shallow deposits of ore largely byhand in a process called placer mining, using simple

equipment like picks, shovels, and pans. After thesesurface deposits dwindled, corporations wouldmove in to begin quartz mining, which dug deepbeneath the surface. As those deposits dried up, com-mercial mining either disappeared or continued on arestricted basis.

The Big Strike in Nevada The story of theComstock Lode is similar to other stories of gold, sil-ver, and copper strikes throughout the West. In 1859 a prospector named Henry Comstock staked aclaim in Six-Mile Canyon, Nevada. The sticky, blue-gray mud found there turned out to be nearly puresilver ore. News of the Comstock strike broughthordes of miners to Virginia City, Nevada. Almostovernight the town went from a frontier outpost to aboomtown of about 30,000, boasting an opera house,shops with furniture and fashions from Europe, sev-eral newspapers, and a six-story hotel with theWest’s first elevator, called a “rising room.” When thesilver veins were exhausted several years later, themines closed. Without the mines, the town’s econ-omy collapsed, and most of the townspeople movedon in search of new opportunities. This cycle of boomand bust—from boomtown to ghost town—wasrepeated throughout the mountainous West.

CHAPTER 3 The Birth of Modern America 237CHAPTER 3 The Birth of Modern America 237

Miner working the Comstock Lode

➤

During the booms, crime posed a serious prob-lem. Prospectors fought over claims, and thieveshaunted the streets and trails. Law enforcers werescarce, and self-appointed volunteers sometimesformed vigilance committees to track down andpunish wrongdoers. In some cases, they punishedthe innocent or let the guilty go free, but most peoplein these communities respected the law and tried todeal firmly but fairly with those accused of crimes.

Mining towns such as Virginia City at first wereinhabited mostly by men, but soon they attractedmore women. Some women owned property andwere influential community leaders. Others workedas cooks or in laundries. Still other women worked at“hurdy-gurdy” houses (named after the mechanicalmusical instrument), where they danced with menfor the price of a drink.

Other Bonanzas Mining also spurred the develop-ment of Colorado, the Dakota Territory, andMontana. The discovery of gold near Pikes Peak in1858 set miners on a frantic rush. Inspired by thephrase “Pikes Peak or Bust,” many panned for goldwithout success and headed home, complaining of a“Pikes Peak hoax.”

In truth, there was plenty of gold and silver in theColorado mountains, but much of it was hiddenbeneath the surface and hard to extract. One of therichest strikes occurred in the late 1870s in Leadville,named for deep deposits of lead that contained largeamounts of silver. By the summer of 1879, as many as1,000 newcomers per week were pouring intoLeadville, creating one of the most famous boom-towns to dot the mining frontier.

Overall, operations at Leadville and other miningtowns in Colorado yielded more than $1 billionworth of silver and gold (many billions in today’smoney). This bonanza spurred the building of rail-roads through the Rocky Mountains and trans-formed Denver, the supply point for the miningareas, into the second largest city in the West afterSan Francisco.

The discovery of gold in the Black Hills of theDakota Territory and copper in Montana led to rapiddevelopment of the northern Great Plains. Minersflooded into the region in the 1870s. After railroadswere built in the 1880s, many farmers and ranchersmoved to the territory. In 1889, Congress divided theDakota Territory and admitted North Dakota andSouth Dakota, as well as Montana, as new states.

Explain How did the discovery ofnew mines affect settlement of the West?

Reading Check

Ranching and Farming the Plains

Ranchers built vast cattle ranches on theGreat Plains, while settlers staked out homesteads andbegan farming the region.

Reading Connection When you think of cowhands,what images come to mind, and from what sources do theseimages derive? Read on to learn about the realities of life as acowboy in the West.

While many Americans headed to the RockyMountains to mine gold and silver after the CivilWar, others began building vast cattle ranches andfarming homesteads on the Great Plains. This regionextends westward to the Rocky Mountains fromaround the 100th meridian—an imaginary line run-ning north and south from the central Dakotasthrough western Texas.

Ranching the Plains In the early 1800s, Americansdid not think cattle ranches on the Great Plains werepractical. Water was scarce, and cattle from the Eastcould not survive on the tough prairie grasses.Farther south, however, in Texas, there existed abreed of cattle adapted to living on the Great Plains.

The Texas longhorn was a breed descended fromSpanish cattle that had been brought to Mexico twocenturies earlier. Ranchers in Mexico and Texas hadallowed their cattle to run wild, and slowly a newbreed—the longhorn—had emerged. Lean andrangy, the longhorn could easily survive in the harshclimate of the Plains, and by 1865, as many as 5 mil-lion of them roamed the grasslands of Texas.

Mexicans had introduced cattle ranching inCalifornia, New Mexico, and Texas before these areasbecame part of the United States. The industry grewin part because of the open range—a vast area ofgovernment-owned grassland. The open range cov-ered much of the Great Plains and provided landwhere ranchers could graze their herds free of chargeand unrestricted by the boundaries of private farms.

Mexican cowhands developed the tools and tech-niques for rounding up and driving cattle. TheseHispanic herders taught American cowhands theirtrade and enriched the English vocabulary withwords of Spanish origin, including “lariat,” “lasso,”and “stampede.”

Prior to the Civil War, ranchers had little incentiveto round up the longhorns. Beef prices were low, andmoving the cattle to eastern markets was not practi-cal. Two developments changed this situation: the


Civil War and the construction of the railroads.During the Civil War, eastern cattle were slaughteredin huge numbers to feed the armies of the Union andthe Confederacy. After the war, beef prices soared,making it worthwhile to round up the longhorns if away could be found to move them east.

By the 1860s, railroads had reached the GreatPlains. Lines ended at Abilene and Dodge City inKansas and at Sedalia in Missouri. Ranchers and live-stock dealers realized that if the longhorns wererounded up and driven north several hundred milesto the railroad, they could be sold for a huge profitand shipped east to market.

In 1866 ranchers rounded up cattle and drove about260,000 of them to Sedalia, Missouri. Although only afraction of the herds survived this first long drive, thedrive overall was a tremendous success as cattle was

sold for 10 times the price it could get in Texas. As rail-roads expanded in the West , other trails soon openedfrom Texas to towns in Kansas, Nebraska, Montana,and Wyoming.

Farming Becomes Big Business Like ranching,farming also seemed unsuitable for the Great Plains.Rainfall averages less than 20 inches per year there,and trees grow naturally only along rivers andstreams. During the late 1800s several factors under-mined the belief that the Plains was a “GreatAmerican Desert.” One important factor was the con-struction of the railroads, which provided easy accessto the Great Plains. Railroad companies sold landalong the rail lines at low prices and provided creditto prospective settlers. Railroads opened officesthroughout the United States and in major cities in


N

SE

W

500 kilometers0Lambert Equal-Area projection

500 miles0

110°W

120°W

90°W

40°N

30°N

PaCIFICOcean

Gulf of Mexico

Rocky

Mount a

ins

Ca sc a

deRa n

ge

Si er r a

Ne v a d a

BlackHills

OREG.

NEV.

CALIF.

ARIZ. TERR. N. MEX.TERR.

UTAHTERR.

N. DAK.

S. DAK

NEBR.

ARK.

LA.

MISS.TEX.

COLO.

MINN.

IOWA

ILL.MO.KANS.

OKLA.TERR.

INDIANTERR.

WASH.

IDAHO

WYO.

MONT.

WIS.

ALA.GA.

FLA.

TENN.

KY.

Go

od

nig

ht-L

oving TrailW

estern

Trail

Ch

isho

lmT

rail

Shawnee Trail

Sedalia Trail

Salt LakeCity

Chicago

St. Paul

Seattle

CarsonCity

Virginia CitySutter's Mill

Helena

Bannack

IdahoCity

SilverCity

Los Angeles

Yuma

Flagstaff

Tucson

SanFrancisco

FortConcho

El PasoFort

Worth

NewOrleansSan

Antonio

Bandera

Victoria

DodgeCity

Ellsworth

Wichita

Omaha

Leadville

Ogallala

Deadwood

Tombstone

St. LouisSedalia

KansasCity

Abilene

Cheyenne

Denver

Santa FeAlbuquerque

GoldSilver

Cattle trailsRailroads

1890 border

Mining Country and Cattle Trails, 1848–1890

Cowhands on a cattle drive

Helena, Montana in 1865

1. Interpreting Maps What cities were destination pointsfor the Chisholm Trail?

2. Applying Geography Skills Why do you think the des-tination cities at the end of the cattle trails are all locatedalong railroad lines?

(l)Thomas Gilcrease Institute, (r)Montana Historical Society, Helena

Europe where land was scarce. Posters and pam-phlets proclaimed that booking passage to the Plainswas a ticket to prosperity.

The catchy slogan “Rain follows the plow,” coinedby a Nebraskan to sell the idea that cultivating thePlains would increase rainfall, encouraged settlers.As if to prove the saying correct, the weather cooper-ated. For more than a decade beginning in the 1870s,rainfall on the Plains was well above average. Thelush green of the endless prairies contradicted thepopular belief that the region was a desert.

In 1862 the government also supported settlementin the Great Plains region by passing the HomesteadAct. For a $10 registration fee, an individual couldfile for a homestead—a tract of public land availablefor settlement. A homesteader could claim up to160 acres of public land and could receive title tothat land after living there for five years. Later gov-ernment acts increased the size of the tracts avail-able. The Homestead Act provided a legal methodfor settlers to acquire clear title to property in theWest. With their property rights secured, settlerswere more willing to move to the Plains.

When settlers arrived on the Plains, they oftenfound life very difficult. The lack of trees and waterforced them to build their first homes from sod cutfrom the ground and to drill wells up to 300 feetdeep. Summer temperatures often soared over 100°

Fahrenheit. Prairie fires were a constant danger.Sometimes swarms of grasshoppers swept overfarms and destroyed the crops. In winter there wereterrible blizzards and extreme cold. Despite thesechallenges, most homesteaders persisted and learnedhow to live in the harsh environment.

For those who had the financial resources, farmingcould be highly profitable on the Plains. During the1880s, many farmers from Minnesota and otherMidwestern states moved to the Great Plains to plantwheat, which was more drought-resistant than othercrops. They took advantage of the inexpensive landand utilized new farming technology, such as reapersand threshers. This productive new Wheat Beltbegan at the eastern edge of the Great Plains andencompassed much of the Dakotas and the westernparts of Nebraska and Kansas.

The bountiful harvests in the Wheat Belt helpedthe United States become the world’s leadingexporter of wheat by the 1880s. In fact, wheat becameas important to the Great Plains as cotton was to theSouth. American wheat growers faced rising compe-tition, however, from other wheat-producing nations.In the 1890s, a glut of wheat on the world marketcaused prices to drop.

Analyzing Why did theHomestead Act motivate settlers to move to the Great Plains?

Reading Check

Farming the Great Plains Technology made farming the vast open plains of America feasible.Here horse-drawn binders are being used to gather hay in the late 1800s. What other factorsencouraged settlement on the Great Plains?

History

Native Americans

The settlement of the West dramaticallyaltered the way of life of the Plains Indians.

Reading Connection Can you recall a situation in whichsomeone broke a promise or agreement with you? Do youremember your reaction? Read on to find out how NativeAmericans responded when the government broke treaties during the late 1800s.

For centuries the Great Plains was home to manyNative American nations. Some lived in communitiesas farmers and hunters, but most were nomads whoroamed vast distances, following their main source offood—the buffalo.

Despite their differences, the groups of PlainsIndians were similar in many ways. They lived inextended family networks and had a close relation-ship with nature. Plains Indian nations, sometimesnumbering several thousand people, were dividedinto bands consisting of up to 500 people. A govern-ing council headed each band, but most membersparticipated in making decisions. Gender deter-mined the assignment of tasks. Women generallyperformed domestic tasks: rearing children, cook-ing, and preparing hides. Men performed tasks suchas hunting, trading, and supervising the militarylife of the band. Most Plains Indians practiced a reli-gion based on a belief in the spiritual power of thenatural world.

Cultures Under Pressure As ranchers, miners,and farmers moved onto the Plains, they deprivedNative Americans of their hunting grounds, broketreaties guaranteeing certain lands to the PlainsIndians, and often forced them to relocate to new ter-ritory. Native Americans resisted by attacking wagontrains, stagecoaches, and ranches. Occasionally anentire group would go to war against nearby settlersand troops. Congress became convinced that some-thing had to be done to end the growing conflict withNative Americans on the Great Plains. In 1867Congress formed an Indian Peace Commission, whichproposed creating two large reservations on thePlains, one for the Sioux and another for southernPlains Indians. Agents from the federal government’sBureau of Indian Affairs would run the reservations.The army would be given authority to deal with anygroups that refused to report or remain there.

This plan was doomed to failure. PressuringNative American leaders into signing treaties did notensure that chiefs or their followers would abide bythe terms. Those who did move to reservations facedpoverty, despair, and the corrupt practices ofAmerican traders.

Conflict and Assimilation By the 1870s, manyNative Americans on the southern Plains had left thereservations in disgust. They preferred hunting buf-falo on the open Plains, so they joined others who hadalso shunned the reservations. Buffalo, however, werebeing killed in large numbers by migrants, profes-sional buffalo hunters, and sharpshooters clearing rail


i n H i s t o r y

Sitting Bull 1831–1890

In June 1876, a showdown loomed between Custer’s troopsand the Lakota Sioux who had left their reservation. Lakota chiefSitting Bull sought help for his people from the supreme powerthey called Wakan Tanka, or the “Great Mystery,” by perform-ing the Sun Dance.

Before dancing, an assistant made many small cuts in thechief’s arms and shoulders. Then Sitting Bull raised his bleed-ing arms to heaven and danced around a sacred pole with hiseyes on the sun. He continued to dance through the night andinto the next day, when he entered a death-like trance. Whenhe revived, he told of a vision in which he saw white soldiersupside down. The Lakota were encouraged by Sitting Bull’sdream and the sacrifice he had made for them. Many felt that

his Sun Dance helped bringthem victory over Custer.

Sitting Bull remaineddevoted to the traditional reli-gious practices of his peopleeven after he and his followersreluctantly returned to thereservation under pressurefrom the army. Federal author-ities regarded ceremonies likethe Sun Dance—practiced inone form or another by manyPlains Indians—as heathen andsubversive. In 1883 the federal government outlawed the Sun Danceand many other Native American religious rites.

lines for railroad companies. By 1889 very few of theanimals remained.

The Lakota Sioux, led by Sitting Bull, and the NezPerce under Chief Joseph tried to resist governmentefforts to force them back on reservations. Sitting Bulland his followers escaped to Canada, but the remain-ing Lakota and the Nez Perce had to give up theirfight against military forces.

Native American resistance to federal authorityfinally came to a tragic end on the Lakota Siouxreservation in 1890. Defying the orders of a govern-ment agent, the Lakota continued to perform theGhost Dance, a ritual that celebrated a hoped-for dayof reckoning. The government agent blamed SittingBull, who had returned to the reservation fromCanada. The attempt to arrest him ended in anexchange of gunfire and the death of the chief. Theparticipants of the Ghost Dance then fled the reserva-tion. On December 29, 1890, as U.S. troops tried to dis-arm the Native Americans at Wounded Knee Creek,gunfire broke out. A deadly battle ensued, costing thelives of 25 U.S. soldiers and approximately 200 Lakotamen, women, and children.

Even before Wounded Knee, some Americans hadlong opposed the treatment of Native Americans.Author Helen Hunt Jackson described the years of bro-ken promises and assaults on Native Americans in herbook, A Century of Dishonor, published in 1881. Jackson’sdescriptions sparked discussions—even in Congress—of better treatment for Native Americans. Some peoplebelieved that the situation would improve only if NativeAmericans could assimilate, or be absorbed, intoAmerican society as landowners and citizens. That

meant breaking up reservations into individual allot-ments, where families could become self-supporting.

This policy became law in 1887 when Congresspassed the Dawes Act. The act allotted to each headof household 160 acres of reservation land for farm-ing; single adults received 80 acres, and 40 acres wereallotted for children. The land that remained after allmembers had received allotments would be sold toAmerican settlers, with the proceeds going into atrust for Native Americans.

While some Native Americans succeeded as farmersor ranchers, many had little training or enthusiasm foreither pursuit. They often found their allotments toosmall to be profitable, and so they sold them. SomeNative American groups had grown attached to theirreservations and hated to see them transformed intohomesteads for settlers as well as Native Americans.

In the end, the assimilation policy proved a dismalfailure. The Plains Indians were doomed because theywere dependent on buffalo for food, clothing, fuel,and shelter. When the herds were wiped out, NativeAmericans on the Plains had no way to sustain theirway of life, and few were willing or able to adoptAmerican settlers’ lifestyles in place of their tradi-tional cultures.

Cause and Effect What impactdid Helen Hunt Jackson’s book A Century of Dishonor have?

Reading Check


Checking for Understanding1. Vocabulary Define: extract, placer

mining, vigilance committee, adapt,open range, prior, long drive, home-stead, assimilate.

2. People and Terms Identify: HenryComstock, Homestead Act, IndianPeace Commission, Sitting Bull, GhostDance, Dawes Act.

3. Places Locate: Great Plains, Wheat Belt4. Identify the goals and terms of the

Homestead Act.

Reviewing Big Ideas5. Explaining How did the mining indus-

try and the growth of ranching andfarming each contribute to the develop-ment of the West?

Critical Thinking6. Evaluating What factors contributed to

the making of the Wheat Belt in theGreat Plains and then to troubled timesfor wheat farmers in the 1890s?

7. Analyzing How would you evaluatethe government’s policy of assimilationof Native Americans?

8. Organizing Use a graphic organizersimilar to the one below to demonstratethe cycle of boom and bust in mining.

Analyzing Visuals9. Analyzing Maps Examine the map of

mining country and cattle trails on page239. Based on the details of the map,how did railways contribute to theopening and the settling of the West?

Writing About History10. Descriptive Writing Write a summary

for the story line of a Hollywood movie.Your summary should realistically por-tray the lives of a miner, a rancher, or aNative American in the West in the mid-to late 1800s. Be sure to include detaileddescriptions of people and places.

CA 11WS1.2

mineralsfound

For help with the concepts in this section of AmericanVision: Modern Times go to andclick on Study Central.

tav.mt.glencoe.com

Study CentralHISTORY


Guide to Reading

ConnectionIn the previous section, you learnedabout the settlement of the West and the Great Plains. In this section, you willdiscover how the Industrial Revolutionchanged the United States and created a new focus on business and industry.

• American industry grew rapidly afterthe Civil War, bringing revolutionarychanges to American society. (p. 244)

• After the Civil War, the rapid construc-tion of railroads accelerated the nation’sindustrialization and linked the countrytogether. (p. 246)

• Big business assumed a more promi-nent role in American life following theCivil War. (p. 248)

• In an attempt to improve their workingconditions, industrial workers cametogether to form unions in the late1800s. (p. 249)

Content Vocabularygross national product, entrepreneur,laissez-faire, corporation, vertical integra-tion, horizontal integration, monopoly,Marxism, industrial union, closed shop

Academic Vocabulary practice, distribution, concept

People and Terms to IdentifyAlexander Graham Bell, Thomas AlvaEdison, Pacific Railway Act, AndrewCarnegie, American Federation of Labor,Samuel Gompers

Reading Objectives• Discuss how the availability of natural

resources, new inventions, and the rail-roads spurred industrial growth.

• Analyze how large corporations cameto dominate American business andlabor.

Reading StrategyOrganizing As you read about thechanges brought about by industrializa-tion, complete a graphic organizer similarto the one below listing the causes ofindustrialization.

Preview of Events

Industrialization

Causes

United StatesBecomes an

Industria l Nat ion

1862John D. Rockefellerbuys first oilrefinery

1869First transconti-nental railroadcompleted

1886American Federationof Labor founded

✦1860 ✦1870 ✦1880 ✦1890

1876Alexander Graham Bellinvents telephone

11.6.5 Trace the advances and retreats of organizedlabor, from the creation of the American Federation ofLabor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations tocurrent issues of a postindustrial, multinational econ-omy, including the United Farm Workers in California.

. The Big Idea ,The Industrial Revolution changed the face of America. Industry in theUnited States flourished following the Civil War. The natural resources industriesneeded were readily available through mining operations in the West. A large population increase provided a readily available workforce. The increase in industryspurred the expansion of railroads, which further accelerated industrialization as railroads linked the country together. To manage the burgeoning industries,business leaders founded corporations. At the same time, workers began to organ-ize and form unions in an effort to improve their working conditions.


11.1.4 Examine the effects of theCivil War and Reconstruction and ofthe Industrial Revolution, includingdemographic shifts and the emergencein the late 19th century of the UnitedStates as a world power.

11.2.1 Know the effects of industrializa-tion on living and working conditions,including the portrayal of working condi-tions and food safety in Upton Sinclair’sThe Jungle.

11.2.5 Discuss corporate mergers that pro-duced trusts and cartels and the economicand political policies of industrial leaders.

11.2.6 Trace the economic development ofthe United States and its emergence as a majorindustrial power, including its gains from tradeand the advantage of its physical geography.


The United States Industrializes

American industry grew rapidly after the CivilWar, bringing revolutionary changes to American society.

Reading Connection If you had to name the inventionmost valuable in your daily life, what would it be, and why?Read on to learn about the many new inventions that emergedin the late 1800s, and find out how these innovations fueled thenation’s industrial growth.

Although the Industrial Revolution began in theUnited States in the early 1800s, the nation was still largely a farming country when the Civil Warerupted. In 1860, out of a population of more than 30 million, only 1.3 million Americans worked inindustry. After the Civil War, industry expanded rap-idly, and millions of Americans left their farms towork in mines and factories.

On October 21, 1879, Thomas Alva Edison and histeam of workers were too excited to sleep. For weeksthey had worked to create an electric incandescentlamp, or lightbulb, that would burn for more than afew minutes. For much of the 1800s, inventors hadstruggled to develop a form of lighting that would becheaper, safer, and brighter than traditional methodssuch as candles, whale oil, kerosene, and gas. IfEdison and his team could do it, they would changethe world. Finally, after weeks of dedicated effort, theyturned night into day. Edison later recalled:

“We sat and looked and the lamp continued toburn and the longer it burned the more fascinated wewere. None of us could go to bed and there was nosleep for over 40 hours; we sat and just watched itwith anxiety growing into elation. It lasted about45 hours and then I said, ‘If it will burn 40 hours now I know I can make it burn a hundred.’”

—quoted in Eyewitness to America

By the early 1900s, with the help of inventors suchas Edison, Americans had transformed the UnitedStates into the world’s leading industrial nation. By1914 the nation’s gross national product (GNP)—thetotal value of all goods and services produced by acountry—was eight times greater than it had beenwhen the Civil War ended.

Natural Resources An abundance of raw materi-als was one reason for the nation’s industrial success.The United States contained vast natural resourcesupon which industry in the 1800s depended, includ-ing water, timber, coal, iron, and copper. Americancompanies could obtain these resources cheaply anddid not have to import them from other countries.Many of the nation’s resources were located in themountains of the American West. The settlement ofthis region after the Civil War helped to accelerateindustrialization, as did the construction of thetranscontinental railroad. Railroads brought settlersand miners to the region and carried the resourcesback to factories in the East.

At the same time, a new resource, petroleum,began to be exploited. Even before the invention ofthe automobile, petroleum was in high demandbecause it could be turned into kerosene. Kerosenewas used in lanterns and stoves. The American oilindustry was built on the demand for kerosene. Asoil production rose, it fueled economic expansion.

A Large Workforce The human resources avail-able to American industry were as important as natu-ral resources in enabling the nation to industrializerapidly. Between 1860 and 1910, the population of theUnited States almost tripled. This population pro-vided industry with a large workforce and also cre-ated greater demand for the consumer goods thatfactories produced.

Population growth stemmed from two causes:large families and a flood of immigrants. Americanindustry began to grow at a time when social and

244 CHAPTER 3 The Birth of Modern America

Thomas Edison➤

economic conditions in China and eastern Europeconvinced many people to leave their nations andmove to the United States in search of a better life.Between 1870 and 1910, roughly 20 million immi-grants arrived in the United States. These multitudesadded to the growing industrial workforce, helpingfactories to increase their production and furtheringthe demand for industrial products.

Free Enterprise Another important factor thatenabled the United States to industrialize rapidlywas the free enterprise system. At the heart of thissystem was the profit motive, which attractedentrepreneurs—people who risk their capital inorganizing and running a business—to manufactur-ing and transportation.

Another central tenet of free enterprise is the abil-ity of businesses to operate without governmentcontrol. In the late 1800s, many Americans embracedthe idea of laissez-faire (leh·say·FAR), literally “letdo,” a French phrase meaning “let people do as theychoose.” Supporters of laissez-faire believe the gov-ernment should not interfere in the economy otherthan to protect private property rights and maintainpeace. These supporters argue that if the governmentregulates the economy, it increases costs and eventu-ally hurts society more than it helps.

In many respects, the United States practicedlaissez-faire economics in the late 1800s. State andfederal governments kept taxes and spending lowand did not impose costly regulations on industry.Nor did they try to control wages and prices. In otherways, the government went beyond laissez-faire andadopted policies intended to help industry, althoughthese policies often had negative results.

By the end of the Civil War, for example, Congresshad imposed new tariffs, or duties on importedgoods, to protect American industry from foreigncompetition. While this helped American companiesin the United States, it hurt those trying to sell goodsoverseas, because other countries raised their tariffsagainst American goods. In particular, it hurt farmerswho sold their products to Europe. Ironically, theproblems farmers faced may have helped speed upindustrialization, as many rural Americans decidedto leave their farms and take jobs in the new factories.In addition, by the early 1900s, many American com-panies were large and highly competitive. Businessleaders increasingly began to push for free trade.

New Inventions A flood of inventions helpedincrease the nation’s productive capacity and improvedthe network of transportation and communications that was vital to the nation’s industrial growth.


N

S

EW

200 kilometers0Lambert Equal-Area projection

200 miles0

40°N

80°W90°W

Chicago

Pittsburgh

New York City

Washington, D.C.

Boston

Major Industries, c. 1900

Coal miningIron orePrairieChief manu-facturing citiesIron/Steel mills

Oil field

Railroad

Sawmills

EarlyPennsylvaniaoil well ➤

1. Interpreting Maps Where were most industrial cities inthe Northeast located?

2. Applying Geography Skills What natural resourcescontributed to making Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a majorsteel center?

New inventions led to the founding of new corpora-tions, which produced new wealth and new jobs.

One of the most dramatic inventions in the late1800s came in the field of communications. In 1874 ayoung Scottish-American inventor named AlexanderGraham Bell suggested the idea of a telephone to hisassistant, Thomas Watson. Watson recalled, “He hadan idea by which he believed it would be possible totalk by telegraph.” Bell worked until 1876 before hesucceeded in transmitting his voice. The telephonerevolutionized both business and personal commu-nication. In 1877 Bell and others organized the BellTelephone Company, which eventually became theAmerican Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T).

Perhaps the most famous inventor of the late 1800swas Thomas Alva Edison. A great innovator, Edisonworked tirelessly to invent new products and toimprove devices created by others. He first achievedinternational fame in 1877 with the invention of thephonograph. Two years later, Edison perfected thelightbulb and the electric generator. His laboratorythen went on to invent or improve several other majordevices, including the battery and the motion picture.

In 1882 the Edison Electric Illuminating Companylaunched a new industry—and the transformation ofAmerican society—when it began to supply electricpower to customers in New York City. In 1889 severalof Edison’s companies merged to form the EdisonGeneral Electric Company, which today is known as GE.

As knowledge about technology grew, almosteveryone in the United States felt its effects. Shortlyafter the Civil War, Thaddeus Lowe invented the icemachine, the basis of the refrigerator. In the early 1870s,Gustavus Swift hired an engineer to develop a refriger-ated railroad car. New inventions and standardizationalso improved the clothing and shoe industries. Prices

for food, clothes, shoes, and other products dropped asthe United States industrialized.

Analyzing How much did theavailability of resources aid in industrialization? Why?

The Railroads: Linking the Nation

After the Civil War, the rapid construction of railroads accelerated the nation’s industrializationand linked the country together.

Reading Connection In what ways has technologyhelped unify the United States in recent years? Read on to learn how railroads helped connect Americans who lived in different sections of the nation.

In 1865 the United States had about 35,000 miles ofrailroad track, almost all of it east of the MississippiRiver. After the Civil War, railroad constructionexpanded dramatically, linking the distant regions ofthe nation in a transportation network. By 1900 theUnited States, now a booming industrial power,boasted more than 200,000 miles of track.

The railroad boom began in 1862 when PresidentAbraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act.This act provided for the construction of a transconti-nental railroad by two corporations, the UnionPacific and the Central Pacific railroad companies. To encourage rapid construction, the governmentoffered each company land along its right-of-way.Feverish competition between the two companiesdeveloped as each sought to obtain as much publicland and money as possible. On May 10, 1869, sevenyears after the act was signed, hundreds of spectators

Reading Check

Inventions of the Late 1800s The incandescent lightbulb, the telephone, the phono-graph, and the gasoline-powered car were some of the inventions that changed the lives ofAmericans. What effect did these and other inventions have on the American economy?

History


gathered at Promontory Summit, Utah, as dignitarieshammered gold and silver spikes into the final railsthat joined the rails and completed the first transcon-tinental railroad.

Railroads Spur Growth The transcontinental rail-road was the first of many lines that began to criss-cross the nation after the Civil War. This expansionspurred American industrial growth. By linking thenation, railroads helped increase the size of marketsfor many products. Huge consumers themselves, therailroads also stimulated the economy by spendingextraordinary amounts of money on steel, coal, tim-ber, and other necessities.

The railroads, which by 1865 consisted of hun-dreds of small unconnected lines, began consolidat-ing. Large integrated railroad systems were able toshift cars from one section of the country to anotheraccording to seasonal needs and in order to speedlong-distance transportation. To improve reliability,in 1883 the American Railway Association dividedthe country into four time zones, in which the sametime would be kept. The new rail systems, along withmore powerful locomotives, made railroad operationso efficient that the average rate per mile for a ton of

freight dropped from two cents in 1860 to three-fourths of a cent in 1900.

The nationwide rail network helped uniteAmericans in different regions. The Omaha DailyRepublican observed in 1883 that railroads had “madethe people of the country homogeneous, breakingthrough the peculiarities and provincialisms whichmarked separate and unmingling sections.” This wasa vast overstatement, but it recognized a significantcontribution that railroads made to the nation.

The Land Grant System Building and operatingrailroad lines, especially across the vast unsettledregions of the West, often required more money thanmost private investors could raise on their own. Toencourage railroad construction, the federal govern-ment gave land grants to many railroad companies.Railroads would then sell the land to settlers, realestate companies, and other businesses to raise themoney they needed to build the railroad.

In the 1850s, the federal government granted indi-vidual states more than 28 million acres of publiclands to give to the railroads. After the PacificRailway Acts of 1862 and 1864, the government gavethe land directly to the railroad companies.

Lambert Equal-Area projection600 kilometers0

600 miles0

N

SEW

80°W

70°W

110°W

120°W

50°N

40°N

30°N

20°N

Gulf of Mexico

ATLaNTicOcean

PaCIFicOcean

Boston

Chicago

San Francisco Washington, D.C.

New York City

Railroads, 1870 and 1890

Source: Historical Statistics of the United States:Colonial Times to 1970.

Tota

l Mile

s of R

ailro

ad O

pera

ting

(in th

ousa

nds)

175

150

125

100

75

50

25

0

Miles of Track, 1870–1890

189018851880Year

18751870

Pacific Time ZoneMountain Time ZoneCentral Time ZoneEastern Time ZoneRailroads built by 1870Railroads built by 1890

*Time zones and borders shown as of 1890

1. Interpreting Maps What part of the United States sawthe greatest expansion in rail lines by 1890?

2. Applying Geography Skills In which time zone did theCentral Pacific originate?


The federal land grant system awarded railroadcompanies more than 120 million acres of land, anarea larger than New England, New York, andPennsylvania combined. Several railroad companies,including the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific,earned enough money from the government’s gener-ous land grants to cover much of the cost of buildingtheir lines.

Robber Barons The great wealth many railroadentrepreneurs acquired in the late 1800s led to accu-sations that they had built their fortunes by swin-dling investors and taxpayers, bribing governmentofficials, and cheating on their contracts and debts.Bribery occurred frequently in this era, partlybecause the state and federal governments were sodeeply entangled in funding the railroads.

When the existence of corruption in the railroadindustry became public, it created the impressionthat all railroad entrepreneurs were robber barons—people who loot an industry and give nothingback—but the term was not always deserved. Onerailroad entrepreneur who was clearly not a robberbaron was James J. Hill. Hill built and operated theGreat Northern Railroad from St. Paul, Minnesota, toEverett, Washington, without any federal land grantsor subsidies. The Great Northern became the mostsuccessful transcontinental railroad and the only onethat was not eventually forced into bankruptcy.

Describing How did the railwayshelp in the industrialization of the United States?

Reading Check

The Rise of Big Business

Big business assumed a more prominent rolein American life following the Civil War.

Reading Connection In a typical day, what products doyou use that have been made by corporations? Read on tolearn about the emergence of corporations in the late 1800s.

Before the Civil War, the personal wealth of a fewpeople operating in partnership financed most busi-nesses, including many early factories. Most manu-facturing enterprises were very small. By 1900,everything had changed. Big businesses dominatedthe economy, operating vast complexes of factories,warehouses, offices, and distribution facilities.

The Role of Corporations Big business wouldnot have been possible without the corporation. Acorporation is an organization owned by many peo-ple but treated by law as though it were a single per-son. The people who own the corporation are calledstockholders because they own shares of ownershipcalled stock. Issuing stock allows a corporation toraise large amounts of money for big projects whilespreading out the financial risk.

Before the 1830s, corporations needed charters bystate legislatures. Beginning in the 1830s, states beganpassing general incorporation laws, allowing compa-nies to become corporations and issue stock withoutsuch charters. With the money they raised from thesale of stock, corporations could invest in new tech-nologies, hire a large workforce, and purchase manymachines, greatly increasing their efficiency.

Small businesses with high operating costs foundit difficult to compete against large corporations. Atthe time, many people criticized corporations for cut-ting prices and negotiating rebates, believing thatcorporations were behaving unethically. Still, manysmall companies were forced out of business.

The Consolidation of Industry To increase man-ufacturing efficiency even further, some businessowners went one step further in building their busi-ness. One example is Andrew Carnegie, a Scottishimmigrant who rose from bobbin boy in a textile


Big Business Takes Over Large companies, such as Standard Oil, ownedby John D. Rockefeller, could negotiate rebates from railroads that wanted hisbusiness. How did large business manage to dominate the economy?

Analyzing Political Cartoons

factory to owner of a steel company in Pittsburgh.Carnegie began the vertical integration of the steelindustry. A company with vertical integration ownsall of the different businesses on which it depends forits operation. Instead of paying companies for coal,lime, and iron, Carnegie’s company bought coalmines, limestone quarries, and iron ore fields.

Successful business leaders like Carnegie alsopushed for horizontal integration, or combiningmany firms engaged in the same type of businessinto one large corporation. Horizontal integrationtook place frequently as companies competed. Whena company began to lose market share, it would oftensell out to competitors to create a larger organization.By 1880, for example, a series of buyouts had enabledStandard Oil, a company owned by John D.Rockefeller and his associates, to gain control ofapproximately 90 percent of the oil refining industryin the United States. When a single companyachieves control of an entire market, it becomes amonopoly. Opponents feared monopolies becausethey believed that a company with a monopoly couldcharge whatever it wanted for its products. Thosewho supported monopolies believed that monopo-lies had to keep prices low because raising priceswould encourage competitors to reappear and offerthe products for a lower price.

By the late 1800s, many Americans had grownsuspicious of large corporations and monopolies. Topreserve competition and prevent horizontal integra-tion, many states made it illegal for one company toown stock in another without specific permissionfrom the state legislature. In 1882 Standard Oilformed the first trust, a new way of merging busi-

nesses that did not violate the laws against owningother companies. A trust is a legal concept that allowsone person to manage another person’s property. Theperson who manages another person’s property iscalled a trustee. This arrangement enabled theStandard Oil trustees to control a group of companiesas if they were one large merged company.

Many companies also created new organizationscalled holding companies. A holding company doesnot produce anything itself. Instead, it owns the stockof companies that produce goods, effectively merg-ing them into one large enterprise.

Explaining What techniques didcorporations use to consolidate their industries?

Unions

In an attempt to improve their working con-ditions, industrial workers came together to formunions in the late 1800s.

Reading Connection What do you think would moti-vate workers to form unions? Read on to learn why governmentand industry opposed early unions.

While workers saw some improvements in theirlives, they also faced many difficulties. Their earlyattempts at unionization, however, were met withstrong opposition.

Reading Check


Vertical Integration Horizontal Integration

Independent Oil Refineries

U.S. Oil Company

Purchase of CompetingCompanies in Same Industry

Cattle

Slaughterhouse

Refrigerated Railroad Cars

Purchase of Companiesat All Levels of Production

Cooled Warehouses

Meat Packing Plants

Delivery Wagons

Ace MeatIndustries

Horizontal and vertical integration were the two mostcommon business combinations in the late 1800s.Evaluating Which combination do you think wouldyield the most efficient business? Why?

Working in the United States Industrializationbrought about a dramatic rise in the standard of livingfor all Americans. While only a few entrepreneursbecame rich, real wages earned by the average workerrose by about 50 percent between 1860 and 1890.Despite these improvements, the uneven division ofincome between the working class and the wealthycaused resentment among workers.

In addition, life for workers in industrial Americawas difficult. As machines replaced skilled labor,work became monotonous. Workers had to performhighly specific, repetitive tasks and could take littlepride in their work. Working conditions also oftenwere unhealthy and dangerous. Workers breathed inlint, dust, and toxic fumes. Heavy machines lackingsafety devices caused a high number of injuries.

Eventually, many workers decided they needed toorganize unions to improve their working conditions.With a union, they could bargain collectively to nego-tiate higher wages and better working conditions.

Opposition to Unions Workers who wanted toorganize a union faced several major problems.There were no laws giving workers the right toorganize or requiring owners to negotiate withthem. Courts frequently ruled that strikes were“conspiracies in restraint of trade,” for which laborleaders might be fined or jailed.

Unions also suffered from the perception that theythreatened American institutions. In the late 1800s,the ideas of Karl Marx, called Marxism, had becomevery influential in Europe. Marx argued that the

basic force shaping capitalist society was the classstruggle between workers and owners. He believedthat workers would eventually revolt, seize control ofthe factories, and overthrow the government.Ultimately, Marx thought, the state would witheraway, leaving a Communist society where classes didnot exist. Marxism strongly shaped the thinking ofEuropean unions.

As Marxist ideas spread in Europe, tens of thou-sands of European immigrants began arriving in theUnited States. Anti-immigrant feelings already werestrong in the United States. As people began to associ-ate immigrant workers with revolution, they becameincreasingly suspicious of unions. These fears, as wellas the government’s duty to maintain law and order,often led officials to use the courts, the police, andeven the army to crush strikes and break up unions.

The Struggle to Organize As early as the 1830s,craft workers began forming trade unions limited topeople with specific skills. Employers were oftenforced to recognize and negotiate with these tradeunions because they represented workers whoseskills they needed. However, employers generallyregarded unions as illegitimate conspiracies thatinterfered with their property rights. Owners of largecorporations particularly opposed industrial unions,which united all craft workers and common laborersin a particular industry. Although workers attemptedon many occasions to create large industrial unions,they rarely succeeded.

Companies used several techniques to preventunions from forming. They required workers to takeoaths or sign contracts promising not to join a union,and they hired detectives to go undercover and iden-tify union organizers. Workers who tried to organizea union or strike were fired and placed on a black-list—a list of “troublemakers.” Once blacklisted, alaborer could get a job only by changing residence,trade, or even his or her name.

If workers formed a union, companies often useda lockout to break it. They locked workers out of theproperty and refused to pay them. If the union calleda strike, employers would hire replacement workers,or strikebreakers, also known as scabs.

In many cases the confrontations with owners andthe government led to violence and bloodshed. A riotat Haymarket Square in Chicago led to the eventualdiscrediting of the Knights of Labor, the first nation-wide industrial union. Two strikes, the Great RailroadStrike of 1877 and the Pullman Strike of 1894, involvedrail workers who responded to wage cuts. Both times,the army was sent to restore order.

Unsafe Working Conditions Workers in the late 1800s often faced unsafeworking conditions. Many began to join labor unions in an attempt to improvethese conditions. What unsafe conditions does this photograph of a steelmill show?

History


The American Federation of LaborAlthough large-scale industrial unionsgenerally failed in the late 1800s, tradeunions continued to prosper. In 1886delegates from over 20 of the nation’strade unions organized the AmericanFederation of Labor (AFL). The AFL’sfirst leader was Samuel Gompers. Hisapproach to labor relations, which hecalled “plain and simple” unionism,helped unions to become accepted inAmerican society.

Gompers believed that unionsshould stay out of politics. He waswilling to use the strike but preferred to negotiate.Under Gompers’s leadership, the AFL had threemain goals. First, it tried to convince companies torecognize unions and to agree to collective bargain-ing. Second, it pushed for closed shops, meaningthat companies could only hire union members.Third, it promoted an eight-hour workday.

By 1900 the AFL was the biggest union in the coun-try, with over 500,000 members. Still, at that time, theAFL represented less than 15 percent of all non-farmworkers. All unions represented only 18 percent. As the1900s began, the vast majority of workers remainedunorganized, and unions were relatively weak.

Working Women By 1900 women made up morethan 18 percent of the labor force. The type of jobswomen did outside the home in the late 1800s andearly 1900s reflected society’s ideas about what

constituted “women’s work.” Roughlyone-third of women worked as domesticservants. Another third worked asteachers, nurses, sales clerks, and secre-taries. The remaining third wereemployed in light industrial jobs thatpeople believed appropriate to theirgender. Many worked in the garmentindustry and food processing plants.

Women received less pay than meneven when they performed the samejobs. It was assumed that a woman hada man helping to support her, eitherher father or her husband, and that a

man needed higher wages to support a family. Forthis reason, most unions, including the AFL,excluded women.

In 1903 two women, Mary Kenney O’Sullivan andLeonora O’Reilly, decided to establish the Women’sTrade Union League (WTUL), the first national asso-ciation dedicated to promoting women’s labor issues.The WTUL pushed for an eight-hour work day, thecreation of a minimum wage, an end to evening workfor women, and the abolition of child labor.

Comparing What specific prob-lems did workers want to remedy by forming unions?

Reading Check


Checking for Understanding1. Vocabulary Define: gross national

product, entrepreneur, laissez-faire,practice, distribution, corporation, hori-zontal integration, vertical integration,monopoly, concept, Marxism, industrialunion, closed shop.

2. People and Terms Identify: AlexanderGraham Bell, Thomas Alva Edison,Pacific Railway Act, Andrew Carnegie,American Federation of Labor, SamuelGompers.

3. Identify the major inventions thathelped spur economic growth.

Reviewing Big Ideas4. Explaining What impact did the devel-

opment of large businesses have on theeconomy of the United States?

Critical Thinking5. Synthesizing

What role did the federal governmentplay in increasing industrialization inthe United States after the Civil War?

6. Analyzing Why did attempts in the late1800s to form labor unions fail?

7. Organizing Use a graphic organizersimilar to the one below to list waysbusiness leaders in the late 1800s triedto eliminate competition.

Analyzing Visuals8. Study the map and graph on railroads

and miles of track on page 247. Thenmake up a quiz of at least five questionsbased on the information presented.

CA HI2; HI3

Writing About History9. Persuasive Writing Imagine that you

are an American worker living in one ofthe nation’s large cities. Write a letter toa friend explaining why you support oroppose the work of labor unions.

CA 11WA2.3b

Attempts toEliminate Competition

Samuel Gompers➤


tav.mt.glencoe.com




Investigating Standard Oil

John D. Rockefeller

Question: To what advantages, orfavors, or methods of manage-ment do you ascribe chiefly thesuccess of the Standard OilCompany?

Answer [Rockefeller]: I ascribe thesuccess of the Standard to its con-sistent policy to make the volumeof its business large through themerits and cheapness of its prod-ucts. It has spared no expense infinding, securing, and utilizingthe best and cheapest methods ofmanufacture. It has sought for thebest superintendents and work-men and paid the best wages. Ithas not hesitated to sacrifice oldmachinery and old plants for newand better ones. It has placed itsmanufactories at the pointswhere they could supply marketsat the least expense. It has notonly sought markets for its prin-cipal products, but for all possibleby-products, sparing no expensein introducing them to the public.

It has not hesitated to invest mil-lions of dollars in methods ofcheapening the gathering anddistribution of oils by pipe lines,special cars, tank steamers, andtank wagons. . . .

Question: What are, in your judg-ment, the chief advantages fromindustrial combinations—(a)financially to stockholders; (b) tothe public?

Answer: All the advantages whichcan be derived from a coopera-tion of person and aggregation ofcapital. . . . It is too late to argueabout advantages of industrialcombinations. They are a neces-sity. And if Americans are to havethe privilege of extending theirbusiness in all the States of theUnion, and into foreign countriesas well, they are a necessity on alarge scale, and require theagency of more than one corpora-tion. Their chief advantages are:

1. Command of necessary capital.2. Extension of limits of business.3. Increase the number of per-

sons interested in the business.4. Economy in the business.5. Improvements and economies

which are derived from knowl-edge of many interested per-sons of wide experience.

6. Power to give the publicimproved products at lessprices and still make a profitfrom stockholders.

7. Permanent work and goodwages for laborers.

Cartoon criticizing Standard Oil

Standard Oil stock

By the 1880s, the Standard Oil Company, under the direction of John D.Rockefeller and his associates, had gained control of more than 90 per-cent of the oil refining business in the United States. Did Standard Oil

use unfair tactics? The United States Industrial Commission investigated, call-ing Rockefeller himself to testify. Rockefeller said his success was due to theefficiency of his company. George Rice, an independent refiner from Marietta,Ohio, told the Industrial Commission that Standard Oil’s advantage was crim-inal collusion with the railroads. Was he right? You’re the historian.

Read the following excerpts from the Industrial Commission hearings of 1899. Then complete the questions and activities on the next page.


Oil derricks

Understanding the Issue1. What potential advantages could

companies like Standard Oil offerconsumers?

2. What did George Rice believe to bethe reason Standard Oil was sosuccessful?

3. How would you assess the credibilityof the two accounts?

Activities1. Investigate Today many industries,

unions, and special interest groupslobby Congress for favorable legisla-tion. What are the most powerfulgroups? How do they operate?

2. Check the News Are there any com-panies that recently have been inves-tigated for unfair or monopolisticpractices? Collect headlines and newsarticles and create a bulletin boarddisplay.

I am a citizen of the United States.. . . Producer of petroleum formore than 30 years, and a refinerof same for 20 years, but my refin-ery has been shut down duringthe past 3 years, owing to thepowerful and all-prevailingmachinations of the Standard OilTrust, in criminal collusion andconspiracy with the railroads todestroy my business of 20 years ofpatient industry, toil, and moneyin building up, wholly by andthrough unlawful freight discrim-inations. I have been driven frompillar to post, from one railwayline to another, for 20 years, in theabsolutely vain endeavor to getequal and just freight rates withthe Standard Oil Trust, so as to beable to run my refinery at any-thing approaching a profit, butwhich I have been utterly

unable to do. I have had to conse-quently shut down, with my busi-ness absolutely ruined and myrefinery idle. This has been a verysad, bitter, and ruinous experi-ence for me to endure, but I haveendeavored to the best of my cir-cumstances and ability to combatit the utmost I could for many along waiting year, expecting reliefthrough the honest and properexecution of our laws, which haveas yet, however, never come. . . .

Outside of rebates or freight dis-criminations I had no show withthe Standard Oil trust, because oftheir unlawfully acquired monop-oly, by which they could tem-porarily cut only my customers’prices, and below cost, leaving thebalance of the town, nine-tenths,uncut. This they can easily dowithout any appreciable harm to

their general trade, and thus effec-tually wipe out all competition, asfully set forth. Standard Oil pricesgenerally were so high that Icould sell my goods 2 to 3 cents agallon below their prices andmake a nice profit, but these sav-age attacks and cuts upon mycustomers’ goods, and their con-sequent loss, plainly showedthem their power for evil, and theuselessness to contend againstsuch odds, and they would buyno more of my oil. . . .

Guide to Reading

ConnectionIn the previous section, you learnedabout the growth of industrialization, bigbusiness, and labor unions. In this sec-tion, you will discover how immigrationaffected the United States and how thecountry shifted to a more urban society.

• After the Civil War, millions of immi-grants from Europe and Asia settled in the United States. (p. 255)

• During the three decades following the Civil War, the United States trans-formed rapidly from a rural nation to a more urban one. (p. 258)

Content Vocabularynativism, tenement, political machine, graft

Academic Vocabularyinduce, commission

People and Terms to IdentifyChinese Exclusion Act, William M. “Boss” Tweed

Places to LocateEllis Island, Angel Island

Reading Objectives• Analyze the effects of immigration

on national policy.

• Evaluate the changes that cities experienced because of the increasedpopulation.

Reading StrategyAs you read about urbanization in theUnited States in the late 1800s, completea graphic organizer similar to the onebelow by filling in the problems peoplein the nation’s urban areas faced.

Preview of Events

Immigration andUrbanization


Problems inUrban Areas

1882Chinese Exclusion Act passed

1885First steel girder constructionused in building in Chicago

1887American ProtectiveAssociation founded

1892Ellis Island immigrationcenter opens

1890Jacob Riis publishes Howthe Other Half Lives

✦1885✦1880 ✦1890 ✦1895

11.2.4 Analyze the effect of urban political machinesand responses to them by immigrants and middle-class reformers.

11.3.3 Cite incidences of religious intolerance in theUnited States (e.g., persecution of Mormons, anti-Catholic sentiment, anti-Semitism).

. The Big Idea ,The Industrial Revolution changed the face of America. In the three decadesfollowing the Civil War, the population of urban areas in the United States approxi-mately tripled. Millions of immigrants came to the United States in search of betterlives and jobs created by the Industrial Revolution. Many people in rural areas alsomigrated to the cities to find better-paying jobs and the modern conveniences city lifeoffered. New materials for buildings and bridges spurred construction and requiredmore workers. The increase in immigrants eventually led to feelings of nativism andbans on immigration. As city populations increased, overcrowding became a prob-lem. People lived in cramped tenements with poor ventilation. Crime was common,and diseases spread quickly in the crowded and unclean streets and buildings.Political machines developed as a way to address some of these problems.


11.1.4 Examine the effects of theCivil War and Reconstruction and ofthe Industrial Revolution, includingdemographic shifts and the emergencein the late 19th century of the UnitedStates as a world power.

11.2 Students analyze the relationshipamong the rise of industrialization, large-scale rural-to-urban migration, and mas-sive immigration from Southern andEastern Europe.

11.2.1 Know the effects of industrializationon living and working conditions, includingthe portrayal of working conditions and foodsafety in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

11.2.2 Describe the changing landscape,including the growth of cities linked by industryand trade, and the development of cities dividedaccording to race, ethnicity, and class.

11.2.3 Trace the effect of the Americanizationmovement.

Immigration

After the Civil War, millions of immigrantsfrom Europe and Asia settled in the United States.

Reading Connection Think about the ethnic compositionof your community. What groups are represented? Read on tolearn about the neighborhoods in which immigrants to theUnited States settled in the late 1800s.

By 1900, more than half of all immigrants in theUnited States were eastern and southern Europeans,including Italians, Greeks, Poles, Slavs, Slovaks,Russians, and Armenians.

Samuel Goldwyn was born in Warsaw, Poland, in1879. His family lived in a tiny two-room apartment.As Jews the Goldwyn family feared the pogroms—anti-Jewish riots—that often erupted in the city. At age 16,Goldwyn set out for America, first walking 500 miles tothe port of Hamburg, Germany. When he arrived inthe United States, Goldwyn worked as a floor sweeperand then as a cutter in a glove factory, putting in 13-hour days. At night, he went to school. Within twoyears he was a foreman in the factory, and soon afterhe became a successful glove salesman.

In 1913 Goldwyn visited a nickelodeon, an earlymovie theater. As he watched the film, he becameconvinced that this new industry would grow intosomething big. He used his savings to set up a filmcompany, and in 1914 he released his first movie. The film was an instant success. During his career,Goldwyn helped found three film companies:Paramount Studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM),and United Artists. All three companies still makemovies today. Looking back on his rise from poverty towealth, Goldwyn commented:

“When I was a kid . . . the only place I wanted to gowas America. I had heard them talking about America,about how free people were in America. . . . Even thenAmerica, actually only the name of a faraway country,was a vision of paradise.”

—adapted from Goldwyn: A Biography

Many of the 14 million immigrants who came tothe United States between 1860 and 1900 were eastern

European Jews. Like Samuel Goldwyn, they came tomake a new life for themselves.

Europeans Flood Into the United StatesEuropeans abandoned their homelands and headedto the United States for many reasons. Many poorrural farmers came simply because the United Stateshad plenty of jobs available and few immigrationrestrictions. Others moved to avoid forced militaryservice, which in some nations could last for manyyears. Some, especially Jews living in Poland andRussia, fled to avoid religious persecution.

By the late 1800s, most European governmentshad made moving to the United States easy.Immigrants were allowed to take their savings withthem, and most countries had repealed old laws thathad forced peasants to stay in their villages and hadbanned skilled workers from leaving the country.

Getting to the United States was often very diffi-cult. Most immigrants booked passage in steerage,the most basic and cheapest accommodations on asteamship. In steerage, passengers faced “crowdseverywhere, ill smelling bunks, [and] uninvitingwashrooms,” as one observer put it. At the end of a14-day journey, the passengers usually disembarkedat Ellis Island in New York Harbor, which served asthe processing center for many immigrants arrivingon the East Coast after 1892. Most immigrants passedthrough Ellis Island in about a day. In Ellis Island’s


Samuel Goldwyn

➤

enormous hall, crowds of immigrants filed past doctors for an initial inspection. “Whenever a casearoused suspicion,” an inspector wrote, “the alienwas set aside in a cage apart from the rest . . . and hiscoat lapel or shirt marked with colored chalk” toindicate the reason for the isolation. Newcomers whofailed the inspection might be separated from theirfamilies and returned to Europe.

Those immigrants who stayed often settled inlarger cities. By the 1890s, they made up significantpercentages of some of the country’s largest cities,including New York, Chicago, Milwaukee, andDetroit. In the cities, immigrants lived in neighbor-hoods that were often separated into ethnic groups,such as “Little Italy” or the Jewish “Lower East Side”in New York City. There they spoke their native lan-guages and re-created the churches, synagogues,clubs, and newspapers of their homelands. Jacob Riis,a Danish-born journalist, observed in 1890 that a map

of New York City, “colored to designate nationalities,would show more stripes than on the skin of a zebra.”

How well immigrants adjusted depended partlyon how quickly they learned English and adapted toAmerican culture. Immigrants also tended to adjustwell if they had marketable skills or money, or if theysettled among members of their own ethnic group.

As many as one in three immigrants returned toEurope shortly after coming to the United States.Some had never planned to stay and had come sim-ply to make a little money before returning home.

Asian Immigration to America Chinese immi-grants began crossing the Pacific to arrive in theUnited States in the mid-1800s. By that time, China’spopulation had reached about 430 million, and the


Mercator projection1500 kilometers0

1500 miles0

N

S

EW

0°60°W90°W120°W150°W180°150°E

30°N

30°S

0°

ARCTIC CIRCLE

TROPIC OF CAPRICORN

TROPIC OF CANCER

EQUATOR

“Old” ImmigrantsNorthern & Western Europe

“New” ImmigrantsSouthern & Eastern Europe

PaCIFicOcean

AtLaNTicOcean

28,409

215,451

Asian Immigrants

7,876

,122

10,961,744Total

3,085,622

Latin AmericanImmigrants

91,792

CanadianImmigrants

820,669

243,860Total

UNITED STATES

CANADA

CHINA

JAPAN

SOUTHAMERICA

AFRICA

EUROPE

ASIA

ALASKAU.S.

AUSTRALIA

MEXICO

Ellis IslandAngel Island

Imm

igra

nts (

thou

sand

s)

1870 1880 1890 1900

100

200

300

400

500

Year

Immigration, 1870–1900

Plenty of land & plenty of workHigher standard of livingDemocratic political systemOpportunity for social advancement

Pull Factors

Farm poverty & worker uncertaintyWars & compulsory military servicePolitical tyrannyReligious oppression

Push Factors

“Old” and “New” Immigrants, 1870–1900

From northern and western EuropeFrom southern and eastern EuropeFrom the AmericasFrom Asia

1. Analyzing Maps From which region did the majority ofU.S. immigrants come?

2. Applying Geography Skills In what year did immigra-tion from northern and western Europe peak?

country was suffering from severe unemployment,poverty, and famine.

The 1848 discovery of gold in California began tolure Chinese immigrants to the United States. Then,in 1850, the Taiping Rebellion erupted in their home-land. This insurrection against the Chinese govern-ment took some 20 million lives and caused suchsuffering that thousands of Chinese left for theUnited States. In the early 1860s, as the CentralPacific Railroad began construction of its portion ofthe transcontinental railroad, the demand for rail-road workers further increased Chinese immigration.

Chinese immigrants settled mainly in westerncities, where they often worked as laborers or ser-vants or in skilled trades. Others worked as mer-chants. Because native-born Americans kept themout of many businesses, some Chinese immigrantsopened their own.

Another group of Asians, the Japanese, also immi-grated to the United States. Until 1910, however, theirnumbers remained small. Between 1900 and 1908,this number increased. Large numbers of Japanesemigrated to the United States as Japan began build-ing both an industrial economy and an empire. Bothdevelopments disrupted the economy of Japan andcaused hardships for its people, thus stimulatingemigration.

Until 1910 Asian immigrants arriving in SanFrancisco first stopped at a two-story shed at thewharf. As many as 500 people at a time were oftensqueezed into this structure, which Chinese immi-grants from Canton called muk uk, or “wooden house.”

In January 1910, California opened barracks onAngel Island to house andprocess the Asian immigrants.Most of the immigrants wereyoung males in their teens or twenties, who nervouslyawaited the results of theirimmigration hearings in dormi-tories packed with double ortriple tiers of bunks. Thisunpleasant delay could last formonths. On the walls of thedetention barracks, the immi-grants wrote anonymous poemsin pencil or ink. Some evencarved their verse into the wood.

The Resurgence of Nativism Eventually, thewave of immigration led to increased feelings ofnativism on the part of many Americans. Nativism isa preference for native-born people and a desire tolimit immigration. In the 1840s and 1850s, it hadfocused primarily on Irish immigrants. Now anti-immigrant feelings focused on Asians, Jews, andeastern Europeans.

Nativists opposed immigration for various rea-sons. Some feared that the influx of Catholics fromIreland and southern and eastern Europe wouldswamp the mostly Protestant United States and givethe Catholic Church too much power in theAmerican government. Many labor unions alsoopposed immigration, arguing that immigrantswould work for low wages or accept work as strike-breakers, thus undermining American-born workers.

In the Northeast and Midwest, increased feelingsof nativism led to the founding of two major anti-immigrant organizations. The American ProtectiveAssociation was formed in 1887 to stop Catholicimmigration. Its memberhsip declined after the eco-nomic recession of 1893 ended. In the West, DenisKearney—himself an Irish immigrant—organizedthe Workingman’s Party of California in the 1870s tofight Chinese immigration. The party won seats inCalifornia’s legislature and made opposition toChinese immigration a national issue.

Such concern over unchecked immigration stimu-lated the passage of a new federal law. Enacted in1882, the law banned convicts, paupers, and the men-tally disabled from immigrating to the United States.The new law also placed a 50¢ head tax on each

Angel Island Over 200,000 immigrantsfrom Japan and China arrived on the WestCoast during the late 1800s.

Urbanization

During the three decades following the CivilWar, the United States transformed rapidly from a ruralnation to a more urban one.

Reading Connection Do you currently live in an urban,rural, or suburban area? In which of these kinds of areas doyou hope to live 10 years from now? Why? Read on to learnwhat life was like in the late 1800s for residents of urbancommunities in the United States.

During the three decades after the Civil War, theurban population of the United States—those liv-ing in towns with a population of 2,500 or more—grew from around 10 million in 1870 to more than


Two Views of ImmigrationThe history of immigration to the United States has been both

celebrated and criticized. Many millions of immigrants arrived inthe United States in the late 1800s. The newcomers sought oppor-tunity, enriched American culture, and caused concerns. Here,two political cartoons address the immigration issue.

Anti-Immigration

“Columbia’s Unwelcome Guests” shows another view ofimmigration. In this 1885 cartoon, the figure of Columbiabars entry to anarchists, Socialists, and Communists whoenter from the sewers of Europe’s darker society. Some ofthe inscriptions on the column pedestal beside Columbiaread “Anarchy is not liberty,” and “When a Man’s Rights End,His Neighbor’s Begin.”

Pro-Immigration

Uncle Sam plays the role of Noah in this cartoon. Asimmigrants file two by two into the safety of the ark, theyleave behind the dangers of Europe that are darkening thesky. A sign lists some reasons people came to the UnitedStates to begin a new life.

Learning From History

1. According tothe cartoon, why were people con-cerned about immigrants coming tothe United States?

2. Which cartoon best expresses yourown views on immigration today?Why?

CA CS3; HI1; HI3

newcomer. That same year, Congress passed theChinese Exclusion Act. This law barred Chineseimmigration for 10 years and prevented the Chinesealready in the country from becoming citizens. TheChinese in the United States protested that whiteAmericans did not oppose immigration by Italians,Irish, or Germans. Some Chinese organized letter-writing campaigns, petitioned the president, andeven filed suit in federal court.

All efforts proved fruitless. Congress renewed theChinese Exclusion Act in 1892 and then made it per-manent in 1902. In 1890 the number of Chinese livingin the United States totaled 105,000. By 1900 thatnumber had dropped to just above 74,000. In the 40 years after the passage of the act, the Chinese pop-ulation in the United States continued to decrease.The act was not repealed until 1943.

Explaining Why did nativistsoppose immigration?

Reading Check

The Technology of Urbanization

New York City’sFlatiron Building

Before the mid-1800s, few buildings exceeded four or five stories. Tomake wooden and stone structures taller required enormously thick wallsin the lower levels.

By the late 1800s, steel companies were making girders capable ofbearing a building’s weight. Walls no longer had to support the building—a steel frame skeleton was all that was needed. Meanwhile, Elisha Otisinvented the safety elevator in 1852, and by the late 1880s, the first elec-tric elevators had been installed, making tall buildings practical.

Steel also changed the way bridges were built. New technologyenabled engineers to suspend bridges from steel towers using cables alsomade of steel. Using this technique, John A. Roebling, a German American

engineer, designed NewYork’s Brooklyn Bridge—the largest suspensionbridge in the world at thetime it was completed in 1883.

Brooklyn Bridgeunder construction

30 million in 1900. New York City alone, which hadover 800,000 inhabitants in 1860, grew to almost 3.5million by 1900. In 1840 the United States had only 131cities; by 1900 that number had risen to over 1,700.

The Growth of American Cities Most of theimmigrants who poured into the United States in thelate 1800s lacked the money to buy farms and theeducation to obtain higher-paying jobs. Theyremained in the nation’s growing cities, where theytoiled long hours for little pay in the rapidly expand-ing factories. Despite the harshness of their newlives, most immigrants found that the move had stillimproved their standard of living.

The United States offered immigrants a chance atsocial mobility, or moving upward in society.Although only a few immigrants rose from povertyto great wealth, many seized the opportunities theAmerican system offered and rose from the workingclass to the middle class. Although some immigrantsfaced prejudice, most Americans accepted the ideathat people in the lower classes could rise in society.

Many rural Americans also began moving to thecities at this time. Farmers moved to the cities becauseurban areas offered more and better-paying jobs thandid rural areas. Cities had much to offer, too—bright

lights, running water, and modern plumbing, plusmany things to do and see, including museums, libra-ries, and theaters.

The New Urban Environment As millions ofpeople flooded into the nation’s cities, engineers andarchitects developed new approaches to housing andtransporting such a large number of people. Demandraised the price of land, inducing owners to growupward rather than outward. Soon, tall steel framebuildings called skyscrapers began to appear onAmerican skylines. Chicago’s ten-story HomeInsurance Building, built in 1885, was the first sky-scraper, but other buildings quickly dwarfed it. NewYork City boasted more skyscrapers than any othercity in the world. With limited land, New Yorkershad to build up, not out.

Various kinds of mass transit developed in the late1800s to move huge numbers of people around citiesquickly. In 1890 horsecars—railroad cars pulled byhorses—moved about 70 percent of urban traffic inthe United States. More than 20 cities, beginning withSan Francisco in 1873, installed cable cars, whichwere pulled along tracks by underground cables. In1887 engineer Frank J. Sprague developed the electrictrolley car.

In the largest cities, congestion became so bad thatengineers began looking for ways to move mass tran-sit off the streets. Chicago responded by building anelevated railroad, while Boston, followed by NewYork, built America’s first subway systems.

Separation by Class In the growing cities, wealthypeople and the working class lived in different partsof town. So too did the middle class. The boundariesbetween neighborhoods can still be seen in manycities today.

During the last half of the 1800s, the wealthiestfamilies established fashionable districts in the heartsof cities. Americans with enough money couldchoose to construct a feudal castle, an English manorhouse, or a Tuscan villa. In New York, CorneliusVanderbilt’s grandson commissioned a $3 millionFrench château equipped with a two-story diningroom and a marble bathroom.

American industrialization also helped create agrowing middle class. The nation’s rising middleclass included doctors, lawyers, engineers, managers,

social workers, architects, and teachers. It was typicalfor many people in the emerging middle class tomove away from the central city. Some took advan-tage of the new commuter rail lines to move to“streetcar suburbs.” During this period, middle-classsalaries were about twice that of the average factoryworker. In 1905 a college professor earned a middle-class salary of $1,100.

In New York City, three out of four residentssqueezed into tenements, dark and crowded multi-family apartments. To supplement the averageindustrial worker’s annual income of $490, manyfamilies sent their young children to work in factoriesor rented precious space to a boarder.

Urban Problems and Politics Especially for theworking poor, city living posed threats such as crime,violence, fire, disease, and pollution. Native-bornAmericans often blamed immigrants for the increasein crime and violence. In reality, the crime rate forimmigrants was not significantly higher than that forother Americans.


MOMENTinHISTORYTEEMING TENEMENTSThe swelling tide of immigra-tion to U.S. cities in the late1800s led to deplorable livingconditions and almost unbear-able congestion. By 1890, morethan two-thirds of New York’s1.5 million residents lived inovercrowded apartment build-ings called tenements. On theLower East Side, one of themost densely populated areasin the world, people frequentedvibrant outdoor markets suchas this one on Hester Street for goods from eggs to rugs topots and pans. Gossip, haggling,and cries of street peddlers—mostly in Yiddish in this Jewishneighborhood—echoed downthe street from dawn to dusk.

Alcohol contributed to violent crime. Danishimmigrant Jacob Riis, who documented slum life inhis 1890 book How the Other Half Lives, accusedsaloons of “breeding poverty,” corrupting politics,bringing suffering to the wives and children ofdrunkards, and fostering “the corruption of thechild” by selling beer to minors.

Improper sewage disposal contaminated citydrinking water and triggered epidemics of typhoidfever and cholera. Though flush toilets and sewersystems existed in the 1870s, pollution remained asevere problem as horse waste was left in the streets,smoke belched from chimneys, and soot and ashaccumulated from coal and wood fires.

A new kind of political system, the politicalmachine, developed to meet these urban problems.This system provided essential city services in returnfor political power. The political machine, an infor-mal political group designed to gain and keep power,came about partly because cities had grown muchfaster than their governments. New city dwellersneeded jobs, housing, food, heat, and police protec-tion. In exchange for votes, political machines andthe party bosses who ran them eagerly providedthese necessities. The payoff for party bosses came onElection Day. Urban immigrant groups, whichwielded tremendous voting strength, voted in over-whelming numbers for the political machines.

The party bosses who ran the political machinesalso controlled the city’s finances. Many machinepoliticians grew rich as the result of fraud or graft—getting money through dishonest or questionablemeans. Outright fraud occurred when party bossesaccepted bribes from contractors, who were sup-posed to compete fairly to win contracts to buildstreets, sewers, and buildings. Corrupt bosses also

sold permits to their friendsto operate public utilities,such as railroads, water-works, and power systems.

Tammany Hall, the NewYork Democratic politicalmachine, was the most famous such organization.William M. “Boss” Tweedwas its corrupt leader duringthe 1860s and 1870s. Tweed’scorruption led him to prisonin 1874.

Other cities’ machinescontrolled all the city services, including the policedepartment. For example, St. Louis’s boss neverfeared arrest when he called out to his supporters atthe police-supervised voting booth, “Are there anymore repeaters out here that want to vote again?”Based in Kansas City, Missouri, the Pendergast broth-ers, James and Thomas, ran state and city politicsfrom the 1890s until the 1930s.

Opponents of political machines, such as politicalcartoonist Thomas Nast, blasted bosses for their cor-ruption. Defenders countered that city and state gov-ernments were ineffective. Machines providednecessary services and helped to assimilate themasses of new city dwellers.

Evaluating How did the influx ofimmigrants affect the cities?

Reading Check


Checking for Understanding1. Vocabulary Define: nativism, commis-

sion, tenement, political machine, graft.2. People and Terms Identify: Chinese

Exclusion Act, William M. “Boss” Tweed.3. Places Locate: Ellis Island, Angel Island.4. Describe where most immigrants to the

United States settled in the late 1800s.

Reviewing Big Ideas5. Comparing What impact did industri-

alizaton have on the working class, themiddle class, and the wealthy in the late1800s?

Critical Thinking6. Analyzing What problems could arise

in cities in which political machinescontrolled all services?

7. Organizing Complete a graphic organ-izer similar to the one below by listingreasons nativists opposed immigrationto the United States.

Analyzing Visuals8. Examining Photographs Study the pho-

tographs on page 259 of the BrooklynBridge and Flatiron Building. Why was itadvantageous to construct taller build-ings rather than purchase more land?

Writing About History9. Persuasive Writing Imagine that

you are a newspaper editor in the late1800s. Write an editorial in which yousupport or oppose political machines.Include reasons to support your position. CA 11WS1.2; 11WA2.4

Reasons to Oppose Immigration

Student WebActivity Visit theAmerican Vision:Modern Times Web siteatand click on StudentWeb Activities—Chapter 3 for an activ-ity on urbanization.

tav.mt.glencoe.com

HISTORY


tav.mt.glencoe.com




Geography&History

Chicago’s apartment buildings, or tenements,were squeezed onto lots that measured 25 by 125 feet (7.6 by 38.1 m). These lots typically held three families and their boarders. Unlike New York City’s tenements, most were only two or three stories tall.

Bohemian

Chinese

English speaking

French Canadian

French

German

Irish

Italian

Polish

Russian

Scandinavian

Swiss

Non-residential

The Hull House NeighborhoodS. HALSTED STREET

HULLHOUSE

S. DES PLAINES STREET

S. JEFFERSON STREET

S. CLINTON STREET

W. 12th

ST

RE

ET

BU

NK

ER

ST

RE

ET

DE

KO

VE

N S

TR

EE

T

W. TA

YLO

R S

TR

EE

T

FOR

QU

ER

ST

RE

ET

EW

ING

ST

RE

ET

W. P

OLK

ST

RE

ET


LEARNING FROM GEOGRAPHY

1. How did the location of Chicago influence its development?

2. Pose and answer five questionsabout the geographic distribution and patterns shown on this model.

newcomers.The inset map at left—an enlargement of the highlighted rec-tangle on the lithograph—shows theHull House neighborhood inChicago’s West Side in 1893.HullHouse was established by socialreformer Jane Addams to “investigateand improve the conditions in theindustrial districts of Chicago.” Theneighborhood was one of the city’spoorest. Its tenement buildings were disease-ridden and dangerous,crowding about 270 residents intoeach acre. Jane Addams wrote:“Thestreets are inexpressibly dirty, thenumber of schools inadequate, sani-tary legislation unenforced, the streetlighting bad, the paving miserable andaltogether lacking in the alleys.”

The neighborhood was also one of the most ethnically diverse.As the inset shows, the bewilderednew immigrants tended to settle in enclaves that had already been established by others from theirhomeland.They banded together asthey learned about the ways of thenew land.Many immigrants foundcomfort in social life centered on the church or synagogue.Youngerimmigrants were more eager to abandon their old customs.Many of them quickly adopted Americanclothes and manners, learned to speak English, and tried to makeAmerican friends.

ImmigrantsArrive InChicago

Amajor port and a con-duit for the nation’seast-west rail travel,Chicago was a boom-ing industrial center

for the lumber,grain,meatpacking,and mail-order businesses at the endof the 1800s. Since the early 1870s,more ships had been docking inChicago than in New York,Baltimore,Philadelphia,Charleston,and SanFrancisco combined.The city’s expan-sion was phenomenal. In 50 years, itgrew from a modest frontier town tothe second-largest city in the country.

Immigrants swarmed into Chicagoseeking jobs.Poles found workslaughtering livestock; Irish layingrailroads;Russian and Polish Jewsmaking clothes; Swedes constructingbuildings and Italians forging steel.Women established boardinghouses,took in sewing to do at home,andworked in factories. In most factories,the hours were long and the workingconditions difficult:noisy,hot,grimy,and overcrowded.By the beginning ofthe 1900s, three-fourths of the peoplein this teeming metropolis wereEuropean immigrants and theirAmerican-born children.

Ethnic neighborhoods dotted the city, as did blocks of tenementsthrown up to house the flood of

A visiting nurse putsdrops in an infant’seyes. Crowded condi-tions threatened thehealth of many of theimmigrants inChicago’s tenements.

263

Guide to Reading

ConnectionIn the previous section, you learnedabout the effects of population growth inthe cities. In this section, you will dis-cover the effects of industrialization andurbanization on society and efforts forsocial reform.

• Industrialization and urbanizationchanged American society’s ideas andculture in the late 1800s. (p. 265)

• The pressing problems of the urbanpoor in the late 1800s and early 1900sstimulated attempts to reform industrialsociety. (p. 267)

Content Vocabularyindividualism, Social Darwinism, philan-thropy, settlement house,Americanization

Academic Vocabularyevolve, function

People and Terms to IdentifyGilded Age, Herbert Spencer, SocialGospel, Dwight L. Moody, Booker T.Washington

Reading Objectives• Evaluate the influence of Social

Darwinism and the Social Gospel movement on American society.

• Analyze the efforts of early reformersto help the urban poor.

Reading StrategyComplete a graphic organizer similar tothe one below by filling in the main ideaof each of the theories and movementslisted.

Preview of Events

Early Reforms in a Gilded Age


1881Booker T. Washingtonfounds Tuskegee Institute

1884Mark Twain publishesHuckleberry Finn

1889Jane Addams founds Hull House

1899Scott Joplin publishes“The Maple Leaf Rag”

✦1880 ✦1890 ✦1900

Theory or Movement Main Idea

Social Darwinism

Laissez-Faire

Gospel of Wealth

Social Gospel

11.3.2 Analyze the great religious revivals and theleaders involved in them, including the First GreatAwakening, the Second Great Awakening, the Civil Warrevivals, the Social Gospel Movement, the rise of

Christian liberal theology in the nineteenth century,the impact of the Second Vatican Council, and the riseof Christian fundamentalism in current times.

. The Big Idea ,People react to periods of breathtaking social and cultural change in differ-ent ways. Historians refer to the late 1800s as the Gilded Age. While everythingseemed shiny and golden on the outside, underneath was a society filled withpoverty, crime, and a large disparity between the rich and the poor. New philoso-phies, such as individualism and Social Darwinism, stressed the importance of indi-vidual responsibility and hard work to become successful in life. While these ideaswere popular, many people became convinced that reform was needed to help endcorruption and to assist people in need. Several reform movements began during thistime. The Social Gospel movement attempted to reform society based on biblicalideas and beliefs. Other reform efforts included the development of settlementhouses, better public education and vocational training, and public libraries.


11.1.4 Examine the effects of the CivilWar and Reconstruction and of the

Industrial Revolution, including demo-graphic shifts and the emergence in thelate 19th century of the United States as

a world power.

11.2.3 Trace the effect of theAmericanization movement.

11.2.4 Analyze the effect of urban politi-cal machines and responses to them by

immigrants and middle-class reformers.

11.2.7 Analyze the similarities and differ-ences between the ideologies of Social

Darwinism and Social Gospel (e.g., usingbiographies of William Graham Sumner,

Billy Sunday, Dwight L. Moody).

11.3.1 Describe the contributions of various religious groups to American civic principles and

social reform movements (e.g., civil and humanrights, individual responsibility and the work ethic,

antimonarchy and self-rule, worker protection,family-centered communities).

The Gilded Age

Industrialization and urbanization changedAmerican society’s ideas and culture in the late 1800s.

Reading Connection Which scientist came up with theconcept of “survival of the fittest” among animal species, andwhat does this phrase mean? Read on to find out how thenotion of “survival of the fittest” was applied to human society.

In 1873 Mark Twain and Charles Warner co-authored a novel about American politics and societyentitled The Gilded Age. Historians later adopted theterm and applied it to the era in American historythat begins about 1870 and ends around 1900. Thiswas a time of tremendous change, in which old ideasof society and culture no longer seemed to apply.

In 1872, at the age of 32, William Graham Sumnerbecame a professor of political and social science atYale College. Sumner’s classes were very popular. Oneof his students, William Lyon Phelps, illustratedSumner’s tough, no-nonsense approach with thisexample of a class discussion:

Student: “Professor, don’t you believe in any govern-ment aid to industries?”

Sumner: “No! It’s root, hog, or die.”

Student: “Yes, but hasn’t the hog got a right to root?”

Sumner: “There are no rights. The world owesnobody a living.”

Student: “You believe then, Professor, in only onesystem, the contract-competitive system?”

Sumner: “That’s the only sound economic system. All others are fallacies.”

Student: “Well, suppose some professor of politicaleconomy came along and took your jobaway from you. Wouldn’t you be sore?”

Sumner: “Any other professor is welcome to try. If hegets my job, it is my fault. My business is toteach the subject so well that no one cantake the job away from me.”

—adapted from Social Darwinism in American Thought

Professor Summner was only one of many voicesthat reflected new ideas about people and how theyfit into the new industrial society.

A Changing Culture The decades after the CivilWar were in many ways a time of marvels. Amazingnew inventions led to rapid industrial growth. Citiesexpanded to sizes never seen before. Masses ofworkers thronged the streets. Skyscrapers reached tothe sky, and electric lights banished the darkness.Newly wealthy entrepreneurs built spectacularmansions.

By calling this era the Gilded Age, however,Twain and Warner were sounding an alarm. Some-thing is gilded if it is covered with gold on the out-side but made of cheaper material inside. A gildedage might appear to sparkle, but Twain, Warner, andother writers sought to point out that beneath thesurface lay corruption, poverty, crime, and great dis-parities in wealth between the rich and the poor.

Whether the era was golden or merely gilded, it was certainly a time of great cultural activity.Industrialism and urbanization altered the wayAmericans looked at themselves and their society,and these changes gave rise to new values, new art,and new forms of entertainment.


“The worldowes nobody a living.”

—William Graham Sumner

Social Darwinism Herbert Spencer’s application of the theory of evolutionto human society found many followers. How did industrial leaders react tothis theory?

History

One of the strongest beliefs of the era—and one that remains strong today—was the idea ofindividualism. Many Americans firmly believed thatno matter how humble their origins, they could risein society and go as far as their talents and commit-ment would take them. No one expressed the idea ofindividualism better than Horatio Alger. Alger, a for-mer minister who eventually left the clergy, wrotemore than 100 “rags-to-riches” novels, in which apoor person goes to the big city and becomes success-ful. Many young people who read these inspiringtales concluded that no matter how many obstaclesthey faced, success was possible.

Social Darwinism Another powerful idea of theera was Social Darwinism, which strongly reinforcedthe idea of individualism. English philosopherHerbert Spencer first proposed this idea. HistorianJohn Fiske, political scientist William GrahamSumner, and the magazine Popular Science Monthly allpopularized it in the United States.

Philosopher Herbert Spencer applied CharlesDarwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection tohuman society. In his 1859 book, On the Origin ofSpecies by Means of Natural Selection, Darwin arguedthat plant and animal life had evolved over the yearsby a process he called natural selection. In thisprocess, those species that cannot adapt to theenvironment in which they live gradually die out,while those that do adapt thrive and live on.

Spencer took this biological theory, intended toexplain developments over millions of years, andargued that human society also evolved throughcompetition and natural selection. He argued thatsociety progressed and became better because onlythe fittest people survived.

Spencer and others who shared his views becameknown as Social Darwinists, and their ideas wereknown as Social Darwinism. “Survival of the fittest”became the catchphrase of their philosophy. By 1902over 350,000 copies of Spencer’s books had been soldin the United States.

Social Darwinism paralleled the economic doc-trine of laissez-faire that opposed any governmentprograms that interfered with business. WilliamGraham Sumner, for example, argued in numerousessays that competition would eliminate those whocould not adapt. Not surprisingly, industrial leaderslike John D. Rockefeller heartily embraced the theoryof Social Darwinism. Rockefeller maintained thatsurvival of the fittest, as demonstrated by the growthof huge businesses like his own Standard Oil, was“merely the working out of the law of nature and thelaw of God.”

Rockefeller may have appreciated Spencer’sinterpretation of evolution, but Darwin’s conclu-sions about the origin of new species frightened andoutraged many devout Christians as well as someleading scientists. They rejected the theory of evolu-tion because they believed it contradicted theBible’s account of creation. Some American scholarsand ministers, however, concluded that evolutionmay have been God’s way of creating the world.Henry Ward Beecher of Plymouth Church inBrooklyn called himself a “cordial Christian evolu-tionist.” Beecher accepted Spencer’s ideas of SocialDarwinism and championed the success ofAmerican business.

A wealthy and prominent business leader,Andrew Carnegie believed whole-heartedly in SocialDarwinism and laissez-faire. At the same time, hethought that those who profited from society owed itsomething in return. Carnegie attempted to extendand soften the harsh philosophy of Social Darwinism


with the Gospel of Wealth. This philosophy held thatwealthy Americans bore the responsibility of engag-ing in philanthropy—using their great fortunes tofurther social progress. Carnegie himself, for exam-ple, donated millions of dollars as the “trustee andagent for his poorer brethren.” Other industrialistsalso contributed to social causes. ; (See page 975 formore information on the Gospel of Wealth.)

Realism Just as Darwin had looked at the naturalworld scientifically, a new movement in art and liter-ature known as realism attempted to portray peoplerealistically instead of idealizing them as romanticartists had done. Realist painters rejected the ideal-istic depictions of the world of the earlier 1800s.Thomas Eakins, for example, painted PresidentHayes working in shirtsleeves instead of in more tra-ditional formal dress.

Writers also attempted to capture the world asthey saw it. Mark Twain gave his readers a piercingview of American society in the pre–Civil War era inhis 1884 masterpiece, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.Twain was lauded to have written a true Americannovel, in which the setting, subject matter, characters,and style were unmistakably American. Henry Jamesand Edith Wharton gave their readers stark and real-istic portrayals of the upper class.

Popular Culture Industrialization improved thestandard of living for many people, enabling them tospend money on entertainment and recreation.Increasingly, urban Americans, unlike rural people,divided their lives into separate units—that of workand home. Saloons played a major role in the life of male workers. Working-class families or singleadults who sought excitement and escape could go toamusement parks such as New York’s Coney Island.

Spectator sports such as baseball, football, and thenew game of basketball gained popularity. Withwork becoming less physically strenuous, peoplealso looked for leisure activities that involved physi-cal exercise. Lawn tennis, golf, and croquet becamepopular.

The many people living in cities provided largeand eager markets for other types of entertainment.Vaudeville offered a hodgepodge of animal acts,acrobats, gymnasts, and dancers. Like vaudeville,ragtime music, which was based on the patterns ofAfrican American music, echoed the hectic pace ofcity life.

Summarizing What was the mainidea of Social Darwinism?

Reading Check

The Rebirth of Reform

The pressing problems of the urban poor inthe late 1800s and early 1900s stimulated attempts toreform industrial society.

Reading Connection Have you ever participated in afood drive or other community activity to help those in need?Read on to learn how reformers tried to better people’s lives.

The tremendous changes brought about by indus-trialism and urbanization—along with mountingopposition to corrupt political machines—triggered adebate among Americans as to how best to addresssociety’s problems. While many Americans embracedthe ideas of individualism and Social Darwinism, oth-ers argued that society’s problems could be fixed onlyif Americans and their government began to take amore active role in regulating the economy and help-ing those in need.

Urban Poverty The impoverished lifestyle of many Americans like this motherand child in Chicago was a growing concern among social reformers. Whatorganizations were created to help the urban poor?

History


Social Criticism In 1879 journalist Henry Georgepublished Progress and Poverty, which quickly becamea national bestseller. George observed that despiteindustrial and social progress, “the gulf between theemployed and the employer is growing wider. . . .[A]s liveried carriages appear, so do barefoot chil-dren.” George offered a simple solution of land own-ership and a “single tax” to make society more equaland also provide the government with enough moneyto help the poor. Economists have since rejectedGeorge’s economic theory. His real importance toAmerican history is that he raised questions aboutAmerican society and led the way in challenging theideas of Social Darwinism and laissez-faire econom-ics. Many future reform leaders first became inter-ested in reform because of George’s book.

Lester Frank Ward reached a different conclusionabout Social Darwinism than George in his bookDynamic Sociology. Ward’s ideas, known as ReformDarwinism, stated that people had succeeded in theworld not because of their ability to compete butbecause of their ability to cooperate. Government, heargued, could regulate the economy, cure poverty,and promote education more efficiently than couldcompetition in the marketplace.

Other critics, such as Edward Bellamy, were moreextreme in their ideas. Bellamy described an idealsociety based on socialism in Looking Back, 2000–1887.The ideas of people such as George, Ward, andBellamy helped shape the thinking of Americanreformers in the late 1800s.

Criticism of industrial society also appeared in lit-erature in a new style of writing known as natural-ism. Writers such as Stephen Crane, Frank Norris,Jack London, and Theodore Dreiser described thepower of the natural environment over civilizationand told of people whose lives were destroyedthrough no fault of their own.

Helping the Urban Poor Some critics of indus-trial society became actively involved in reformmovements. From about 1870 until 1920, reformers inthe Social Gospel movement strove to improve con-ditions in cities according to the biblical ideals ofcharity and justice. An early advocate of the SocialGospel, Washington Gladden, a minister fromColumbus, Ohio, tried to apply what he called“Christian law” to social problems. During a coalstrike in 1884, for example, Gladden preached aboutthe “right and necessity of labor organizations,”

Social Conditions: Past and Present

Sources: Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970;Statistical Abstract of the United States.

050

400350300250200150100

Death Rates for Specific Causes(per 100,000 people)

Influe

nza a

nd

pneu

monia

Gastriti

s and

coliti

s

Malign

ant

tumor

Cardiov

ascula

r

proble

ms

Tube

rculos

is

1900 1997

Source: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970;Statistical Abstract of the United States.

100

80

47.3

76.1

46.6 48.7

79.7

32.5

66.1

33.5

74.273.9

60

40

20

0

AfricanAmericanFemale

AfricanAmerican

Male

WhiteFemale

WhiteMale

Total

In Y

ears

1900 1997

Life Expectancy

Sources: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970;Statistical Abstract of the United States.

69%Graduated

6.4%Graduated

31%Did Not

Graduate93.6%Did Not

Graduate

1900 1997

High School Graduation Rates

1. Analyzing Graphs How many people per 100,000died of tuberculosis in the year 1900?

2. Understanding Cause and Effect Collectively, whatdo these graphs tell you about social conditions as thetwentieth century progressed?

despite the fact that his congregation included topofficers of the coal company. Walter Rauschenbusch,a later leader of the movement, believed that compe-tition was the cause of many social problems, causinggood people to behave badly. Other ministersopposed certain reform movements. For example,Billy Sunday, a former professional baseball player, innumerous revivals warned people of alcohol. At thesame time, he denounced reforms that he thoughtwould threaten traditional society, such as laborunions and women’s rights.

The efforts of leaders like Gladden and Rauschen-busch inspired many organized churches to expandtheir missions. These churches began to take on com-munity functions designed to improve society, suchas social programs, day care, and helping the poor.The combination of religious faith and interest inreform nourished the growth of the ChristianMission, a social welfare organization that becameknow as the Salvation Army in 1878. It provided prac-tical aid and religious counseling to the urban poor.

Founded in England, the Young Men’s ChristianAssociation (YMCA) tried to help industrial workersand the urban poor by organizing Bible studies,prayer meetings, citizenship training, and fitnessactivities. One prominent organizer of the American

YMCA was Dwight L. Moody, the president of theChicago YMCA in the late 1860s. A gifted preacherand organizer, Moody organized revival meetings inother American cities. In 1870 Moody met Ira Sankey,a hymn writer and singer. Together they introducedthe gospel hymn into worship services in the UnitedStates and Great Britain. Moody strongly supportedcharities that helped the poor, but he rejected boththe Social Gospel and Social Darwinism. He believedin helping the poor by redeeming their souls andreforming their character.

The settlement house movement, in some ways anoffshoot of the Social Gospel movement, attractedidealistic reformers who believed it was theirChristian duty to improve living conditions for thepoor. During the late 1800s, reformers such as JaneAddams established settlement houses in poorneighborhoods. In these establishments, middle-classresidents lived with and helped poor residents,mostly immigrants, by providing everything frommedical care and English classes to hot lunches forfactory workers. Addams, who opened the famousHull House in Chicago in 1889, inspired many moresuch settlements across the country. Their effortshelped shape the social work profession, in whichwomen came to play a major role.


i n H i s t o r y

Booker T. Washington1856–1915

Born enslaved on a plantation inVirginia, Booker T. Washington spenthis childhood working in the coalmines of West Virginia. At age 16 heheard about the Hampton Institute inVirginia, where African Americanscould learn farming or a trade. With little money in his pockets, Washingtonleft home and walked nearly 500 milesto the school, where he was able towork as a janitor to pay for his education.

After Washington completed his degree, Hampton hired him asan instructor in 1879. Two years later, Hampton’s founder, SamuelArmstrong, asked Washington to organize an agricultural andindustrial school for African Americans in Tuskegee, Alabama. TheTuskegee Institute’s beginnings were modest. As Washingtonrecalled, it began with 40 students and a “dilapidated shanty.” By1915 the school had over 100 buildings, about 2,000 students, andan endowment of nearly $2 million. Washington himself became a nationally known spokesperson for the African American community.

George WashingtonCarver1864–1943

At about 10 years of age, GeorgeWashington Carver left his home inMissouri and began traveling on hisown. He worked as a servant, hotelclerk, laundry worker, and farmhand inorder to get a formal education. In 1894he graduated from the Iowa StateCollege of Agriculture and MechanicalArts. Two years later, he became the director of agriculturalresearch at the Tuskegee Institute, where he began experimentingwith various crops.

To help Southern sharecroppers overcome their problems ofdepleted soil, poverty, and poor nutrition, Carver urged them toplant peanuts and soybeans. These plants restored the soil’s nitro-gen while providing extra protein in the farmers’ diets. To makepeanut farming profitable, Carver developed over 300 industrialuses for peanuts, including flour, inks, dyes, wood stains, soap,and cosmetics. By 1940 his research had made the peanut theSouth’s second most lucrative crop after cotton.

Public Education As the United States becameincreasingly industrialized and urbanized, it neededmore workers who were trained and educated. In1870 around 6,500,000 children attended school. By1900 that number had risen to over 17,300,000. Publicschools were often crucial to the success of immi-grant children. It was there the children usuallybecame knowledgeable about American culture, aprocess known as Americanization. To assimilatenewcomers into American culture, schools taughtimmigrant children English, American history, andthe responsibilities of citizenship. They also tried to instill discipline and a strong work ethic, valuesconsidered important to the nation’s progress.Americanization could also pose a problem for immi-grant children, however, because sometimes parentsworried that it would make the children forget theirown cultural traditions.

While grammar schools provided basic education,vocational and technical education in high schoolsprepared students for specific trades. College atten-dance also rose during this time, aided by the MorrillLand Grant Act. This Civil War–era law gave federalland grants to states for the purpose of establishingagricultural and mechanical colleges. Private collegesgave access to education for women, whose educa-tional opportunities lagged behind men’s.

Not everyone had access to school. In the rush tofund education, cities were way ahead of rural areas.Many African Americans, also, did not have equaleducational opportunities. To combat this discrimi-nation, some African Americans started their ownschools. The leader of this movement was Booker T.Washington, who founded the Tuskegee Institute inAlabama in 1881.

Like public schools, free libraries also made educa-tion available to city dwellers. One of the strongestsupporters of the public library movement wasindustrialist Andrew Carnegie, who donated mil-lions of dollars toward the construction of librariesall across the United States. These libraries, as well asthe various educational and social reform move-ments that arose in the late 1800s, helped people cope with the harsher aspects of a newly industri-alized society.

Explaining How did the UnitedStates try to Americanize immigrants?

Reading Check


Check for Understanding1. Vocabulary Define: individualism,

evolve, Social Darwinism, philanthropy,settlement house, Americanization.

2. People and Terms Identify: Gilded Age,Herbert Spencer, Social Gospel, DwightL. Moody, Booker T. Washington.

3. Describe how changes in art and litera-ture reflected the issues and character-istics of the late nineteenth century.

Reviewing Big Ideas4. Comparing How did the Social

Darwinists and members of the SocialGospel movement differ in their views ofindividuals in the industrialized society?

Critical Thinking5. Analyzing Do

you think members of the Social Gospelmovement and other reformers weresuccessful in helping the urban poor?Explain.

6. Organizing Complete a graphic organ-izer similar to the one below to showhow Social Darwinism paralleled theeconomic doctrine of laissez-faire.

Analyzing Visuals7. Examining Photographs Study the

photograph on page 267 of the motherand child. What do you notice in thisphotograph that reflects the plight ofimpoverished Americans?CA HR4; HI3

Writing About History8. Descriptive Writing Take on the role

of an immigrant in the late 1800s. Writea diary entry in which you describeyour feelings about your childrenbecoming Americanized while attending the local public school.

CA 11WS1.2; 11WA2.4

Social Darwinism Laissez-faire

Carnegie Library, Shelbyville, Indiana➤


tav.mt.glencoe.com



Guide to Reading

ConnectionIn the previous section, you learnedabout efforts to reform society. In this sec-tion, you will discover how politics oftenhindered reform efforts and how AfricanAmericans faced increasing discrimination.

• From 1877 to 1896, Republicans andDemocrats were so evenly matchedthat only a few reforms were possibleat the national level. (p. 272)

• Farmers in economic crisis embraced anindependent political movement calledpopulism that emerged in the 1890s tochallenge the two major parties. (p. 275)

• In the late 1800s, Southern statespassed laws that denied AfricanAmericans the right to vote andimposed segregation. (p. 279)

Content Vocabularypopulism, inflation, deflation, graduatedincome tax, poll tax, grandfather clause,segregation, Jim Crow laws

Academic Vocabularyvolume, prospective

People and Terms to IdentifyStalwart, Pendleton Act, InterstateCommerce Act, Grange, People’s Party,William Jennings Bryan, Ida B. Wells,W.E.B. DuBois

Reading Objectives• Explain why the Republicans and

Democrats were so evenly matchedduring this period and why the People’sParty gained support.

• Discuss how African Americans in theSouth were disfranchised and how seg-regation was legalized.

Reading StrategyTaking Notes As you read about thestalemate between Republicans andDemocrats, the emergence of Populists,and the rise of segregation in the late1800s, use the major headings of the section to create an outline similar to the one below.

Preview of Events

Politics and Reform


Politics and ReformI. Stalemate in Washington

A.B.C.D.

✦1880 ✦1890 ✦1895✦1875 ✦1885

1877Interstate Commerce Act adopted

1877Florida initiatesJim Crow laws

1890Sherman Antitrust Actadopted

1892National People’sParty formed

1896Plessy v. Ferguson creates“separate but equal” doctrine

. The Big Idea ,People react to periods of breathtaking social and cultural change in differentways. In the late 1800s, division between the Democrats and Republicans and corrup-tion in politics prevented lawmakers from addressing many of the nation’s problems.Following the election of President Cleveland, economic issues took prominence over thenation’s concerns about political corruption. Farmers began to organize to protest hightariffs, which increased the cost of manufactured goods they needed and made it moredifficult to sell goods overseas. They embraced a new political movement called pop-ulism and created the People’s Party in an effort to work for laws to protect their inter-ests. Populism and the People’s Party, however, slowly lost momentum. AfricanAmericans, particularly in the South, faced increasing discrimination and violence. In thelate 1800s, Southern states began denying African Americans the right to vote andenforced segregation. Several African Americans became prominent when they spokeout against discrimination and worked to obtain the right to vote.


11.1.4 Examine the effects of theCivil War and Reconstruction and ofthe Industrial Revolution, includingdemographic shifts and the emergencein the late 19th century of the United

States as a world power.

11.2.4 Analyze the effect of urban politi-cal machines and responses to them byimmigrants and middle-class reformers.

11.2.8 Examine the effects of political programs and activities of Populists.

11.10.2 Examine and analyze the keyevents, policies, and court cases in the evolution of civil rights, including Dred Scott v. Sanford, Plessy v. Ferguson, Brownv. Board of Education, Regents of theUniversity of California v. Bakke, andCalifornia Proposition 209.

Stalemate in Washington

From 1877 to 1896, Republicans andDemocrats were so evenly matched that only a fewreforms were possible at the national level.

Reading Connection What U.S. presidents have beenassassinated? Read on to learn how the nation and the Congressresponded to the killing of President James Garfield.

Many Americans believed that political reformswere necessary to make government more efficient.At the heart of their concerns was the spoils system.

After the election of President James A. Garfield in1880, many of his supporters tried to claim the “spoilsof office”—the government jobs that follow an electionvictory. One of these job-seekers was Charles Guiteau.In the spring of 1881, Guiteau made daily trips to theWhite House or State Department, repeatedly askingfor a job. Finally, on the night of May 18, he had acrazed inspiration: “[I]f the president was out of theway,” he thought, “everything would go better.” UnlikeGarfield, Guiteau reasoned, Vice President ChesterArthur was comfortable with the old spoils system.Arthur would give him the position he deserved. OnJuly 2, 1881, Guiteau shot President Garfield in a trainstation near Capitol Hill. In a note left behind, Guiteaustated:

“The President’s tragic death was a sad necessity,but it will unite the Republican party and save theRepublic. . . . I had no ill-will toward the President. Hisdeath was a political necessity. I am a lawyer, theolo-gian, and politician. I am a Stalwart of theStalwarts. . . .”

—quoted in Garfield

For many, the assassination of President Garfieldhighlighted the need for changes. Although Congressenacted civil service reform, few new policies wereintroduced in the 1870s and 1880s because Republicansand Democrats were so closely tied in elections.

Cleaning Up Politics Traditionally, under thespoils system, or patronage, government jobs went tosupporters of the winning party in an election. ManyAmericans believed that the spoils system prevented


lawmakers from addressing the nation’s issues andcorrupted those who worked for the government. Bythe late 1870s, a movement to reform the civil servicebegan to build support.

Republican President Rutherford B. Hayes attackedthe practice of patronage by appointing reformers tohis cabinet and replacing officials who owed their jobsto party bosses. His actions infuriated the “Stalwarts,”as newspapers called local bosses of Republican polit-ical machines. The Stalwarts accused Republicanreformers, whom they labeled the “Halfbreeds,” ofbacking reform simply to create openings for theirown supporters.

Despite their disagreements, the Republicans nom-inated a mixed ticket—Halfbreed James Garfield forpresident and Stalwart Chester A. Arthur for vicepresident. The ticket managed to win the election, buta few months into his presidency, Garfield wasassassinated.

Garfield’s assassination further excited public opin-ion against the spoils system. In 1883 Congressresponded by passing the Pendleton Act, which setup a civil service system with appointments of candi-dates based on examinations. Under President Arthur14,000 jobs (about one-tenth of the total) came underthe control of the civil service. The federal governmenthad finally begun to shift away from the spoils system.

National Tragedy A newspaper artist captured the attack on PresidentGarfield. Why was Charles Guiteau obsessed with the idea of killingthe president?

History

Library of Congress

Two Parties, Neck and Neck Although manypeople thought corruption prevented lawmakersfrom addressing the nation’s problems, few new poli-cies were introduced in the 1870s and 1880s. Duringthose years, the Republicans and Democrats wereevenly divided and had to share power. TheRepublicans had a voting edge in New England andthe Midwest and the support of big business andGreat Plains farmers. The Democrats dominated theSouth and enjoyed strong support in big cities withlarge Catholic and immigrant populations.

From 1877 to 1896, these voting patterns gave theDemocrats an edge in the House of Representatives,where voters in each congressional district electedmembers directly. The Republicans had the upperhand in the Senate, because state legislatures chosesenators and Republicans generally controlled amajority of state governments.

Both parties were well organized to turn out thevote in elections, and narrow margins decided mostpresidential elections between 1876 and 1896. Twiceduring this period, in 1876 and 1888, a candidate lostthe popular vote but won the election. This happenedbecause even if candidates win several states by slimpopular vote margins, they still receive all the elec-toral votes in those states. These narrow victoriesthen give the candidate an Electoral College majority,regardless of the overall popular vote count.

Although Republicans won four of the six presi-dential elections between 1876 and 1896, the presi-dent often had to contend with a House controlled byDemocrats and a Senate dominated by Republicanswho did not always agree with him on the issues.Furthermore, this was an era when local politicalbosses, not the president, controlled the party. Thenearly even division of power produced politicaldeadlock at the federal level.

The Election of 1884 As the election of 1884approached, Democrats saw their best chance to winthe White House since before the Civil War. Theynominated New York Governor Grover Cleveland, anopponent of Tammany Hall, the corrupt Democraticpolitical machine in New York City. Cleveland’sRepublican opponent was James G. Blaine, a formerspeaker of the House of Representatives who waswildly popular among party workers.

The campaign was sensational and frenzied.Because so many voters believed corruption was themain problem in American government, theyfocused their attention on the personal morals of thecandidates. Blaine had been accused during theCrédit Mobilier scandal of profiting financially from


13

11

7

5

22 15

13

2330

126

1112

912

4

36

44 6

14

4

69

3

8

13

10

8

7

1693

3

3

8

13

9

IOWA

WIS.

MINN.DAKOTA

TERR.

MONT.TERR.

WYO.TERR.

IDAHOTERR.

WASH.TERR.

UTAHTERR.

ARIZ.TERR. N.M.

TERR.UNORG.TERR.

NEBR.ILL. IND.

KY.

OHIOPA.

VA.W.VA.

N.C.TENN.

S.C.GA.

FLA.

N.Y.

N.H.VT. ME.

MASS.

R.I.

CONN.N.J.

DEL.

MD.

MICH.

ALA.

LA.

ARK.

MO.KANS.COLO.

NEV.

OREG.

CALIF.

TEXAS

MISS.

The Election of 1884

Republican4,850,293182

CandidateElectoral

VotePopular

Vote Party

Blaine

Presidential Election, 1884

Cleveland 219 4,879,507 Democrat

Campaign ribbon

1. Interpreting Maps What regions did Blaine carry?2. Applying Geography Skills Which three states do you

think each candidate most hoped to win? Why?

a political favor he did for the Union Pacific Railroadwhile serving as Speaker of the House in the 1870s.Some Republican reformers were so unhappy withBlaine that they abandoned their party and sup-ported Cleveland. These renegade reformers becameknown as ”Mugwumps,” from an Algonquian wordmeaning “great chiefs.”

Cleveland, a bachelor, also faced moral criticismduring the campaign when a newspaper revealedthat he had fathered a child 10 years earlier. Aidesasked Cleveland how they should respond toreporters seeking to know more about this story, andhe replied, “Tell the truth.” By admitting to thecharge, Cleveland preserved his reputation for hon-esty and retained the support of many Mugwumps.

Blaine hoped that he could make up for the loss ofthe Mugwumps by persuading Roman Catholics todefect from the Democratic Party. His mother was anIrish Catholic, and there were half a million IrishAmericans in New York state alone at the time.During the campaign, however, Blaine met with aProtestant minister who denounced the DemocraticParty for its ties to Catholicism. Because Blaine wasslow to criticize the remark, he lost most of the IrishAmerican vote. To make matters worse for Blaine,many pro-temperance Republicans in upstate NewYork backed the candidate of the Prohibition Party,which was dedicated to banning the sale of alcohol.Cleveland won New York by a margin of about 1,000votes out of more than 1,000,000 cast, and his victoryin that state decided the election.

Commerce, Trusts, and Tariffs Economic issuessoon overshadowed the debate about politicalreform. With greater industrialization and thegrowth of the labor movement, unrest among work-ers was mounting across the country, and manystrikes occurred in this period. The power of largecorporations also concerned Americans. In particu-lar, small businesses and farmers had become angryat the railroads. While large corporations such asStandard Oil were able to negotiate rebates—or par-tial refunds—and lower rates because of the volumeof goods they shipped, others were forced to paymuch higher rates. Although the high fixed costs andlow operating costs of railroads caused much of thisproblem, many Americans believed railroads weregouging customers.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans movedquickly at the federal level to address these problems.Both parties believed that government should notinterfere with corporations’ property rights, whichcourts had held to be the same as those of individuals.Public pressure finally forced Congress to enact theInterstate Commerce Act creating the InterstateCommerce Commission (ICC). This act was the firstfederal law designed to regulate interstate commerce.

Congress could not agree on tariffs, though. Hightariffs had helped protect weak domestic manufac-turing after the Civil War. Many questioned thenecessity of maintaining high tariffs in the 1880s,when large American companies were fully capableof competing internationally. In December 1887,Democratic President Grover Cleveland, who hadwon a highly contested election three years earlier,proposed lowering tariffs. The House, with aDemocratic majority, passed moderate tariff reduc-tions, but the Republican-controlled Senate rejectedthe bill. With Congress deadlocked, tariff reductionbecame a major issue in the election of 1888.

Republicans Regain Power In the 1888 presiden-tial campaign, the Republicans and their presidentialcandidate, Benjamin Harrison, received large contri-butions from industrialists who benefited from tariffprotection. Grover Cleveland and the Democratscampaigned against unnecessarily high tariff rates,arguing that these taxes effectively raised the pricesof manufactured goods. In one of the closest races inAmerican history, Harrison lost the popular vote butwon the electoral vote with narrow victories in NewYork and Indiana.

The election of 1888 gave the Republicans controlof both houses of Congress as well as the WhiteHouse. Using this power, the party passed legislation


Difficult Passage In Greek mythology, Scylla and Charybdis were sea mon-sters who threatened the hero Odysseus from opposite sides of a narrow strait.Why do you think the artist chose this image for Grover Cleveland in 1886?

Analyzing Political Cartoons

Populist Territory This farm family in Nebraska represents the kind of people who typically supportedpopulism. Why did farmers dislike Eastern bankers?

History

to address points of national concern. One majorpiece of legislation, introduced by RepresentativeWilliam McKinley of Ohio, was a tariff bill that cuttobacco taxes and tariff rates on raw sugar but greatlyincreased rates on other goods, such as textiles, todiscourage people from buying those imports. TheMcKinley Tariff lowered federal revenue and trans-formed the nation’s budget surplus into a budgetdeficit.

The Republican-controlled Congress alsoresponded to popular pressure to do somethingabout the power of trusts. Senator John Sherman ofOhio introduced the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890,which declared illegal any “combination in the formof trust . . . or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or com-merce among the several States.” The courts wereresponsible for enforcement, however, and judgessaw nothing in this vaguely worded legislation thatrequired them to make big companies change theway they did business. In the years following pas-sage of the act, businesses formed trusts and combi-nations at a great rate.

Explaining Why were so few newpolicies introduced at the federal level in the 1870s and 1880s?

Reading Check

Populism

Farmers in economic crisis embraced anindependent political movement called populism thatemerged in the 1890s to challenge the two majorparties.

Reading Connection In what ways do today’s politicalparties serve the interests of individual citizens? Read on tolearn why a new political party, the Populists, was formed inthe late 1800s to address the needs of farmers.

As the midterm congressional election of 1890approached, some Americans concluded that thetwo-party system was incapable of solving thenation’s problems. That conviction was strongestamong farmers, who faced an economic crisis thatdeveloped in the years immediately following theCivil War.

Unrest in Rural America In those years, farmerswere producing more crops, but greater supplytended to lower prices. At the same time, high tariffsincreased the cost of the manufactured goods farmers

needed and made it harder for farmers to sell theirgoods overseas. Farmers also felt victimized by largeand faraway entities: the banks from which theyobtained loans and the railroads that set their ship-ping rates. They doubted that either the Democratsor the Republicans would respond to their concerns.Instead, farmers embraced populism, a movement toincrease farmers’ political power and to work for leg-islation in their interest.

One problem that greatly concerned farmers wasthe nation’s money supply. To help finance the Unionwar effort, the United States Treasury had greatlyexpanded the money supply by issuing millions ofdollars in greenbacks—paper currency that couldnot be exchanged for gold or silver coins. This rapidincrease in the money supply without an accompa-nying increase in goods for sale caused inflation, or adecline in the value of money. As the paper moneylost value, the prices of goods soared.

After the Civil War, the United States had threetypes of currency in circulation—greenbacks, goldand silver coins, and national bank notes backed bygovernment bonds. To bring inflation under control,the federal government stopped printing greenbacksand began paying off its bonds. In 1873 Congress alsodecided to stop making silver into coins. These deci-sions meant that the United States did not have a largeenough money supply to meet the needs of the coun-try’s growing economy. As the economy expanded,deflation—an increase in the value of money and adecrease in the general level of prices—began. Asmoney increased in value, prices began to fall.

Deflation hit farmers especially hard. Most farm-ers had to borrow money for seed and other suppliesto plant their crops. Because money was in short sup-ply, interest rates began to rise, which increased theamount farmers owed.

Many farmers concluded that Eastern bankers hadpressured Congress into reducing the money supply.They began to call for the printing of more green-backs and the minting of silver coins. Farmers real-ized that if they were going to convince thegovernment to meet their demands, they needed toorganize. In increasing numbers they joined the firstnational farm organization, the Patrons ofHusbandry, better known as the Grange. Grangerstried to create cooperatives—marketing organiza-tions that helped farmers by pooling crops and hold-ing them off the market in order to force up pricesand by negotiating better shipping rates with the rail-roads. The Grange’s cooperatives ultimately failed,partly because they were too small to have any effecton prices, and partly because Eastern businesses andrailroads considered them to be similar to unions—illegitimate conspiracies in restraint of trade—andrefused to do business with them.

Meanwhile, several Western states passed“Granger laws” setting maximum rates and prohibit-ing railroads from charging more for short hauls thanfor long ones. The railroads fought back by cuttingservices and refusing to lay new track until the lawswere repealed. Then the 1886 Supreme Court ruling inWabash v. Illinois greatly limited the states’ ability toregulate railroads by ruling that states could not regu-late commerce that crossed state lines. ; (See page 1007for more information on Wabash v. Illinois.)

The Farmers’ Alliance By the late 1870s, member-ship in the Grange had started to fall, and a neworganization, the Farmers’ Alliance, took its place.Alliance leaders hoped that by establishing verylarge cooperatives, called exchanges, they could forcefarm prices up and make loans to farmers at lowinterest rates. Despite their temporary success, thelarge cooperatives failed. In many cases, wholesalers,manufacturers, railroads, and bankers discriminatedagainst them, making it difficult for them to stay inbusiness. The exchanges also failed because theywere still too small to dramatically affect worldprices for farm products.

By 1890 the failure of the Alliance to fix farmers’problems had started a power struggle within theorganization. Some Alliance leaders, particularly inthe Western states, wanted to form a new party andpush for political reforms. Members of the Kansas


Farmers’ Alliance This small band of farmers met in a cabin inLampasas County, Texas, to form the Farmers’ Alliance.

Alliance formed the People’s Party, also known asthe Populists, and nominated candidates to run forCongress and the state legislature. Most Southernleaders of the Alliance did not want to undermine theDemocrats’ control of the South. Instead, theyendorsed candidates who supported their demands.

The Rise of Populism In 1890 members of theFarmers’ Alliance met in Ocala, Florida, and issuedwhat came to be known as the Ocala Demands. Thesedemands called for the free coinage of silver, an endto protective tariffs and national banks, tighter regu-lation of the railroads, and direct election of senatorsby voters instead of by state legislatures.

To discourage farmers from voting for Populists,the Republicans in Congress, led by Senator JohnSherman, pushed through the Sherman SilverPurchase Act of 1890. This act authorized the UnitedStates Treasury to purchase 4.5 million ounces of sil-ver per month. It put more money into circulationand may have reduced the deflation slightly, but itdid little to help the farmers.

The midterm elections of 1890 seemed to suggestthat farmers’ strategies had worked. In the South,several states had pro-Alliance governors and statelegislatures, and over 40 Democrats who supportedthe Alliance program were elected to Congress. ThePeople’s Party did equally well in the West.

Despite their promises, few Democrats followedthrough by supporting the Alliance program, eitherat the state or the federal level. In May 1891, Westernpopulists met with some labor and reform groupsand endorsed the creation of a new national People’sParty to run candidates for president. By early1892 many Southern farmers had also reached thepoint where they were willing to break with theDemocratic Party and join the People’s Party.

A Populist for President In July 1892, the newlyorganized People’s Party nominated James B. Weaverto run for president. At their convention in Omaha,Nebraska, party members endorsed a platform, orprogram, that spelled out the party’s positions instrong terms. The platform denounced the govern-ment’s refusal to coin silver and called for a return tounlimited coinage of silver, federal ownership of rail-roads, and a graduated income tax, one that taxedhigher earnings more heavily.

Above all, the Populists wanted government todefend the public against what they saw as greedyand irresponsible private interests. The Omaha plat-form took positions popular with labor, includingcalling for an eight-hour workday, restricting immi-

gration, and denouncing strikebreaking. Still, mosturban workers preferred to remain within theDemocratic Party.

Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland, whowanted to return to the White House after his closedefeat in 1888, won with the support of Northerncities and the South. He had 277 votes in theElectoral College, compared to 145 for his Repub-lican opponent Benjamin Harrison. The Populistcandidate, James Weaver, did remarkably well, win-ning four states and splitting two others for a total of22 electoral votes.

Not long after Cleveland’s inauguration in 1893, thenation plunged into the worst economic crisis it hadever experienced. The panic began in March when thePhiladelphia and Reading Railroads declared bank-ruptcy. Many railroads had expanded too rapidly inthe period before the panic and now found it hard torepay their loans. The stock market on Wall Streetcrashed, and banks closed their doors. By 1894 theeconomy was deep in a depression, with approxi-mately 18 percent of the workforce unemployed.

The Panic of 1893 also created a crisis for theUnited States Treasury. Many American andEuropean investors who owned U.S. governmentbonds began cashing in their bonds for gold, leavingthe federal government’s gold reserves at a danger-ously low level. Unlike many Democrats, PresidentCleveland believed the United States should usegold, not silver or paper money, as the basis for itscurrency. In an effort to protect the government’sreserves, in June 1893 he pushed through the repeal

Populist Farmers When attempts to organize support organizations failed,farmers began to turn to populism. Why did farmers and other populists forma new party?

History

of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which hadallowed the exchange of silver for gold. Cleveland’sactions split the Democratic Party into two factions:goldbugs, who believed American currency shouldbe based only on gold, and silverites, who believedcoining silver in unlimited quantities would solvethe nation’s economic crisis.

The Election of 1896 As the election of 1896approached, leaders of the People’s Party decided tomake the silver issue the focus of their campaign.They also decided to hold their convention after theRepublican and Democratic conventions. Theybelieved the Republicans would endorse a gold stan-dard, which they did. They also expected theDemocrats to nominate Cleveland again and hopedthat when the People’s Party strongly endorsed sil-ver, pro-silver Democrats would abandon their partyand vote for the Populists in large numbers.

Unfortunately for the Populists, their politicalstrategy failed. The Democrats did not waver on thesilver issue. Instead, they nominated WilliamJennings Bryan, a strong supporter of silver. Whenthe Populists gathered in St. Louis for their own con-vention, they faced a difficult choice: endorse Bryanand risk undermining their identity as a separateparty, or nominate their own candidate and risk split-ting the silver vote. They eventually decided to sup-port Bryan.

Bryan waged an unusually energetic campaign forthe presidency, traveling thousands of miles andmaking 600 speeches in 14 weeks. In sharp contrast,

Republican William McKinley, a former governorand member of Congress, conducted what the news-papers called his “Front-Porch Campaign” by meet-ing with various delegations that came to visit him athis Canton, Ohio, home.

The Republicans campaigned against theDemocrats by blaming Cleveland’s administrationfor the depression and promising workers thatMcKinley would provide a “full dinner pail.” Thismeant a lot more to most urban workers than theissue of silver money. At the same time, most busi-ness leaders supported the Republicans, convincedthat unlimited silver coinage would ruin the country.Many employers warned their workers that if Bryanwon, businesses would fail, unemployment wouldrise, and wages would be cut.

McKinley’s reputation for moderation on laborissues and tolerance toward different ethnic groupshelped improve the Republican Party’s image withurban workers and immigrants. When the votes werecounted, McKinley had won a decisive victory. Hecaptured 51 percent of the popular vote and had awinning margin of 95 electoral votes—hefty num-bers in an era of tight elections. By embracing pop-ulism and its rural base, Bryan and the Democratslost the more populous Northern industrial areaswhere votes were concentrated.

Opposition to the gold-based currency dwindledduring McKinley’s time in office. The depression wasover, and prospectors found gold in Canada in 1896and in Alaska in 1898. That wealth, combined withnew gold strikes in South Africa and other parts of theworld, increased the money supply without turning tosilver. This meant that credit was easier to obtain andfarmers were less distressed. In 1900 the United Statesofficially adopted a gold-based currency.


Campaigns in Contrast In 1896 Democrat William Jennings Bryan (left)ran an energetic campaign for president, traveling far and wide. RepublicanWilliam McKinley (right) campaigned from the front porch of his Canton,Ohio, home. How did their campaign styles work out?

History

When the silver crusade died out, the Populistslost their momentum. Their efforts to ease the eco-nomic hardships of farmers and to regulate big busi-ness had not worked. Some of the reforms theyfavored, however, including the graduated incometax and some governmental regulation of the econ-omy, came about in the next century.

Explaining What were the maingoals of the Populist Party?

The Rise of Segregation

In the late 1800s, Southern states passedlaws that denied African Americans the right to voteand imposed segregation.

Reading Connection What is a “loophole”? Think of aloophole from which you may have benefited or suffered. Then read on to learn how Southern racists used a loophole in the Fifteenth Amendment to prevent African Americans from voting.

After Reconstruction, many African Americans inthe rural South lived in conditions that were littlebetter than slavery. They were technically free, butfew escaped from grinding poverty. Most were share-croppers, landless farmers who had to hand over tothe landlord a large portion of their crops to cover thecost of rent, seed, tools, and other supplies. They hadbarely enough income to survive, and they werealways in debt.

Resistance and Repression Many African Americans eventually left farming and sought jobs in Southern towns or headed west to claimhomesteads. In 1879, 70-year-old Benjamin“Pap” Singleton, himself formerly enslaved,organized a mass migration of thousandsof African Americans from the rural Southto Kansas. The newspapers called it “an Exodus,” like the Hebrews’ escapefrom Egyptian bondage. The migrantsthemselves came to be known as“Exodusters.”

Reading Check

While some African Americans fled the South,others joined with poor white farmers who had cre-ated the Farmers’ Alliance. In 1886 they created theColored Farmers’ National Alliance. When thePopulist Party formed in 1891, many AfricanAmerican farmers became members. They hopedthat the new People’s Party would unite poor whitesand poor blacks to challenge the Democratic Party’spower in the South. Populism posed a new challengeto the Democratic Party in the South. If enough poorwhites left the party and joined with AfricanAmerican Populists, the new coalition might becomeunbeatable.

To win back the poor white vote, Democratic lead-ers began appealing to racism. They warned whitesthat support for Populists or joint Republican-Populist parties would return the South to “BlackRepublican” rule similar to Reconstruction. Electionofficials also began using various methods to make itharder and harder for African Americans to vote.

Disfranchising African Americans The FifteenthAmendment prohibited states from denying citizensthe right to vote on the basis of “race, color, or previ-ous condition of servitude.” However, it did not barthe governments from requiring that citizens be liter-ate or own property in order to vote. Using this loop-hole, Southern states began imposing restrictions thatbarred nearly all African Americans from voting.

Mississippi took this step first in 1890 by requiringthat all citizens registering to vote pay a poll tax of$2, a sum beyond the means of most poor AfricanAmericans. Mississippi also instituted a literacy test,requiring that prospective voters be able to read orunderstand the state constitution. Few AfricanAmericans were able to read, and even those who

A Kansas Home Many African Americansleft the rural South to find a new life. Theyusually began with very little. Why werethey called Exodusters?

History

could often failed the literacy test because local offi-cials deliberately picked complicated passages. OtherSouthern states adopted similar restrictions. Theresults were devastating, with the numbers ofAfrican Americans registered to vote dropping to afew thousand in several states.

The number of white voters also fell significantly.Local Democratic Party leaders were not sorry toexclude poor whites, because they had helped fuelthe Populist revolt. Some states gave whites a specialbreak with the so-called grandfather clause, byallowing any man to vote if he had an ancestor whoappeared on voting rolls.

Legalizing Segregation In the late 1800s, discrim-ination was not confined to the South. AfricanAmericans in the North had often been barred frommany public places used by whites. In the South, segregation, or separation of the races, was differentbecause laws enforced and perpetuated the discrimi-nation. The statutes enforcing segregation wereknown as Jim Crow laws.

In 1883 the Supreme Court set the stage for legal-ized segregation by overturning the Civil Rights Act of1875. That law had prohibited keeping people out ofpublic places on the basis of race, and it also prohib-ited racial discrimination in selecting jurors. TheSupreme Court decision stated that since theFourteenth Amendment only provided that “no state”could deny citizens equal protection under the law,only state actions were subject to challenge. Privateorganizations and businesses, such as hotels, theaters,and railroads, were free to practice segregation.

Encouraged by this ruling and by the decline ofcongressional support for civil rights, Southern statespassed a series of laws that enforced segregation invirtually all public places. Southern whites andAfrican Americans could no longer ride together inthe same railroad cars, eat in the same dining halls, oreven drink from the same water fountains.

In 1892 an African American named Homer Plessychallenged a Louisiana law that forced him to ride ina separate railroad car from whites. He was broughtto trial before criminal court judge John H. Ferguson,who rejected Plessy’s argument that the law wasunconstitutional. In 1896 the Supreme Court, inPlessy v. Ferguson, upheld the Louisiana law andexpressed a new legal doctrine endorsing “separatebut equal” facilities for African Americans. ; (Seepage 964 for more information on Plessy v. Ferguson.) The rul-ing established the legal basis for discrimination inthe South for more than 50 years to come. While pub-lic facilities for African Americans in the South werealways separate, they were far from equal. In manycases, they were inferior.

African American Response African Americansfaced more than legal segregation. In the late 1800s,mob violence increased. Between 1890 and 1899,mobs carried out an average of 187 lynchings—exe-cutions without proper court proceedings—eachyear. Over 80 percent of the lynchings occurred in theSouth, and nearly 70 percent of the victims wereAfrican Americans. Ida B. Wells, a fiery youngAfrican American woman from Tennessee, launcheda fearless crusade against lynching in 1892. Shepointed out that greed, not just racial prejudice, wasoften behind these brutal acts. Although Congressrejected an anti-lynching bill, the number of lynch-ings decreased significantly in the 1900s due in greatpart to the efforts of activists such as Wells.

Booker T. Washington, an influential educator, pro-posed that African Americans concentrate on achiev-ing economic goals rather than legal or political ones.He summed up his views in an 1895 speech known as


Crusading Journalist Ida B. Wells, seen here with her son, campaignedfiercely against lynching in the 1890s. What two factors did Wells believeto be behind lynchings?

History

the Atlanta Compromise. In this address, Washingtonurged African Americans to postpone the fight forcivil rights and instead concentrate on preparingthemselves educationally and vocationally for fullequality:

“The wisest among my race understand that theagitation of questions of social equality is theextremest folly, and that the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result ofsevere and constant struggle rather than of artificialforcing. . . . It is important and right that all privilegesof the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges.”

–adapted from Up From Slavery

The Atlanta Compromise speech provoked astrong challenge from W.E.B. Du Bois, the leader of anew generation of African American activists bornafter the Civil War. Du Bois pointed out in his 1903book The Souls of Black Folk that white Southernerscontinued to strip African Americans of their civilrights. African Americans could regain lost groundand achieve full equality only by demanding theirrights—especially the right to vote. “[V]oting is nec-essary to proper manhood,” Du Bois wrote, addingthat “color discrimination is barbarism.” In the yearsthat followed, many African Americans worked towin the vote and end discrimination. The strugglewould prove to be a long one.

Identifying How did Southernstates restrict African American voting rights in the 1890s?

Reading Check


Checking for Understanding1. Vocabulary Define: volume, populism,

inflation, deflation, graduated incometax, poll tax, prospective, grandfatherclause, segregation, Jim Crow laws.

2. People and Terms: Identify: Stalwart,Pendleton Act, Interstate Commerce Act,Grange, People’s Party, William JenningsBryan, Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. DuBois.

3. Describe the events leading to thePendleton Act.

Reviewing Big Ideas4. Explaining Why were the Republicans

and Democrats not effective, and whydid the Populists gain support in thelate 1800s?

Critical Thinking5. Examining After Reconstruction, why

did many African Americans in theSouth live in conditions that were littlebetter than slavery?

6. Organizing Use a graphic organizersimilar to the one below to identify theorganizations that formed to help farm-ers and their goals.

7. Analyzing Photographs Examine thephotograph of an “Exoduster” family onpage 279. Pose questions about thephotograph to your classmates in a quiz and then have them answer thequestions.

Writing About History8. Persuasive Writing Imagine you sup-

port the Populist Party and that youhave been asked to write copy to beused in a campaign poster for yourparty’s candidates. Include a slogan thatprovides reasons for people to supportthe Populists.

African American Activist W.E.B.Du Bois opposed the Atlanta Compromise.What issue was of particular concern toDu Bois?

“color discriminationis barbarism”

—W.E.B. Du Bois

Organization Goals

History


tav.mt.glencoe.com



N O T E B O O K

V E R B A T I MV E R B A T I M

EyewitnessEyewitness

“Tell ’em quick, and tell ’em often.” WILLIAM WRIGLEY,soap salesman and promoter of chewing gum,

on his marketing philosophy

“A pushing, energetic, ingenious person, always awake and trying

to get ahead of his neighbors.” HENRY ADAMS,historian, describing the average New Yorker or Chicagoan

“We cannot all live in cities, yet nearly all seem determined to do so.”HORACE GREELEY,newspaper editor

BR

OW

N B

RO

THE

RS

INDICATORS:

Livin’ in the CityMoving off the farm for a factoryjob? Sharpen your pencil. You’ll need to budget carefully to buy all you will need.

Here are the numbers for aGeorgia family of four in 1890.The husband is a textile worker,and the wife works at home. Thereis one child, age 4, and a boarder.They share a two-room, wood-heated, oil-lighted apartment.

INCOME: (annual)husband’s income . . . . . . .$312.00boarder’s rent . . . . . . . . . . . .10.00TOTAL INCOME . . . . . . . . .$322.00

EXPENSES: (annual)medical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$65.00furniture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46.90clothing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46.00rent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21.00flour/meal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25.00hog products . . . . . . . . . . . . .17.00other meat . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13.00vegetables . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13.00lard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6.50potatoes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6.40butter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5.00sugar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4.00charitable donations . . . . . . . .6.10vacation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3.25alcohol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3.25tobacco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3.00molasses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2.00other food . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27.80miscellaneous . . . . . . . . . . . .68.20TOTAL EXPENSES . . . . . . .$382.40


In his exposé of urban poverty, How the Other Half Lives (1890), JACOB RIIS documented the living conditions in New York City tenements:

“The statement once made a sensation that between seventy and eightychildren had been found in one tenement. It no longer excites evenpassing attention, when the sanitary police report counting 101 adultsand 91 children in a Crosby Street house, one of twins, built together.The children in the others, if I am not mistaken, numbered 89, a total of 180 for two tenements! Or when midnight inspection in MulberryStreet unearths a hundred and fifty “lodgers” sleeping on filthy floors intwo buildings. In spite of brown-stone fittings, plate-glass and mosaicvestibule floors, the water does not rise in summer to the second story,while the beer flows unchecked to the all-night picnics on the roof. Thesaloon with the side-door and the landlord divide the prosperity of theplace between them, and the tenant, in sullen submission, foots the bill.”

MilestonesON THE RUN, 1881. THE JESSEJAMES GANG, after robbing aChicago, Rock Island, and Pacifictrain near Winston, Missouri, and killing the conductor and a passenger.

OVERTURNED, 1878. By theSupreme Court, a Louisiana courtdecision that awarded damages to an African American womanwho had been refused admissionto a steamship stateroom reservedfor whites.

PLAGUED BY GRASSHOPPERS,1874. THE AMERICAN GREATPLAINS. Insect swarms a milewide blot out the midday sun.Two inches deep on the ground,they leave “nothing but themortgage,” as one farmer put it.

CELEBRATED IN EUROPE, 1887.ANNIE OAKLEY, star of BuffaloBill’s Wild West Show. Oakleyshot a cigarette from the lips of Crown Prince Wilhelm ofGermany. Years later, when theU.S. goes to war against KaiserWilhelm, Oakley will quip: “Iwish I’d missed that day!”

REMOVED, 1884. IDA B.WELLS, journalist and formerslave, from a ladies coach on atrain. Wells refused to move to the smoking car where AfricanAmericans were to be seated.

ESTABLISHED, 1883. STANDARDTIME. To accommodate therailroad system, noon will nolonger be the moment in a givenlocality when the sun standshighest in the sky but, instead will be standard across four timezones. Set your watches!

ARRESTED, 1872. SUSAN B.ANTHONY, for casting a ballot in Rochester, New York. Anthonyargued that the Fourteenth andFifteenth Amendments applied to women.

N U M B E R SN U M B E R S

BR

OW

N B

RO

THE

RS

1 in 12 Americans living incities of 100,000 or more in 1865

1 in 5 Americans living in cities in 1896

522 Inhabitants in a one-acre area in the Bowery, New York City

$2 Daily wage for a farmlaborer, New York, 1869

$4 Daily wage for a plumber, New York City, 1869

50¢ Price of a pair of boy’sknee pants, a parasol, buttonboots, or a necktie (1870s)

$8 Price of a “Fine All-WoolSuit,” 1875

$3 Box seat for four atGilmore’s Concert Garden in New York City

4¢ Price for one pound of fancy white rice, 1896

25¢ Admission to “Barnum’sAmerican Museum” (featuringthe smallest pair of humanbeings ever seen!), 1896

Jesse James

A crowded New York City street

Susan B. Anthony

BR

OW

N B

RO

THE

RS

BR

OW

N B

RO

THE

RS


T H E G I L D E D A G E : 1 8 6 5 – 1 8 9 6

SOURCE 1Henry George worked as a journalist in San Francisco. He was puzzled by the existence of extreme wealth andextreme poverty side by side in the United States. Georgewrote Progress and Poverty in 1879 to argue for economicand social reform.

At the beginning of this marvelous era it was naturalto expect, and it was expected, that labor-saving inven-tions would lighten the toil1 and improve the condi-tion of the laborer; that the enormous increase in thepower of producing wealth would make real poverty athing of the past. Could a man of the last century . . .have seen, in a vision of the future, the steamship tak-ing the place of the sailing vessel, the railroad train ofthe wagon, the reaping machine of the scythe2, thethreshing machine of the flail3; . . . could he have con-ceived of the hundred thousand improvements whichthese only suggest, what would he have inferred as tothe social condition of mankind? . . .

Plainly, in the sight of the imagination, he wouldhave beheld these new forces elevating society from itsvery foundations, lifting the very poorest above thepossibility of want, exempting the very lowest fromanxiety for the material needs of life. . . .

Now, however, we are coming into collision withfacts which there can be no mistaking. From all parts ofthe civilized world come complaints of industrial depres-sion; of labor condemned to involuntary idleness. . . . Allthe dull, deadening pain, all the keen, maddeninganguish, that to great masses of men are involved in thewords “hard times,” afflict the world to-day. . . .

. . . Where the conditions to which material progresseverywhere tends are most fully realized—that is to say,where population is densest, wealth greatest, and themachinery of production and exchange most highlydeveloped—we find the deepest poverty, the sharpeststruggle for existence, and the most of enforced idleness.

SOURCE 2David A.Wells was a scientist and economist. He was one of the first Americans to notice that machines were takingthe jobs of workers. In his 1889 book Recent EconomicChanges,Wells discussed how advances in technology hadbegun to change society.

Americans struggled to respond to the rapid industrialization of the United States in the yearsafter the Civil War. As business profits grew, many workers were faced with losing their jobs tomachines or working in factories under stressful, monotonous, or dangerous conditions.


Henry George➤

➤1toil: work2scythe: farm tool with a cutting blade3flail: farm tool that pounds

[A]s a result of this change in the methods of pro-duction . . . the individual no longer works as inde-pendently as formerly, but as a private in the ranks,obeying orders, keeping step, as it were, to the tap ofthe drum, and having nothing to say as to the plan ofhis work, of its final completion, or of its ultimate useand distribution. In short, the people who work in themodern factory are, as a rule, taught to do one thing—to perform one, and generally a simple, operation; andwhen there is no more of that kind of work to do, theyare in a measure helpless. The result has been that theindividualism or independence of the producer inmanufacturing has been in a great degree destroyed,and with it has also in a great degree been destroyedthe pride which the workman formerly took in hiswork—that fertility4 of resource which formerly was aspecial characteristic of American workmen, and thatelement of skill that comes from long and varied prac-tice and reflection and responsibility. . . .

SOURCE 3:Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-born “King of Steel,”was the nation’s biggest industrialist in the late 1800s.He was also industry’s most famous spokesperson, typi-cally celebrating competition and the benefits of life inthe United States. Carnegie wrote TriumphantDemocracy, a best-seller, in 1886.

A community of toilers with an undeveloped conti-nent before them, and destitute of the refinements andelegancies of life—such was the picture presented bythe Republic sixty years ago. Contrasted with that oftoday, we might almost conclude that we were uponanother planet and subject to different primary condi-tions. The development of an unequaled transportationsystem brings the products of one section to the doorsof another, the tropical fruits of Florida and California toMaine, and the ice of New England to the Gulf States.Altogether life has become vastly better worth livingthan it was a century ago.

Among the rural communities, the change in theconditions is mainly seen in the presence of labor-saving devices, lessening the work in house and field.Mowing and reaping machines, horse rakes, steamplows and threshers, render man’s part easy andincrease his productive power. Railroads and high-ways connect him with the rest of the world, and heis no longer isolated or dependent upon his petty vil-lage. Markets for his produce are easy of access andtransportation swift and cheap. If the roads through-out the country are yet poor compared with those ofEurope, the need of good roads has been renderedless imperative by the omnipresent railroad. . . .


Andrew Carnegie➤

➤4fertility: ability to produce great amounts

Source 1: What did George believe should have hap-pened as the result of technological improvements?

Source 2: According to Wells, how did the life ofthe individual worker change?

Source 3: According to Carnegie, how has lifeimproved for Americans?

Comparing and Contrasting SourcesDo George, Wells, and Carnegie agree or disagreeabout the life of the industrial worker? Explain.

CA HR2; HR4

1860 1862 Homestead Act

The Birth of Modern America

John D. Rockefeller buysfirst oil refinery

1889 Jane Addams foundsHull House

1892 Ellis Island immigrationcenter opensNational People’s Party formed

1890 Wounded Knee Massacre

Florida initiates Jim Crow laws

Sherman Antitrust Actadopted

1896 Plessey v. Ferguson creates“separate but equal” doctrine

1876 Alexander Graham Bellinvents telephone

1869 First transcontinentalrailroad completed

1886 American Federation ofLabor founded

1877 Interstate Commerce Actadopted

1870

1880

1890

1900

1882 Chinese Exclusion Act

✦✦

✦✦

✦

Reviewing Academic VocabularyOn a sheet of paper, use each of these terms in a sentence thatreflects the term’s meaning in the chapter.

19. extract20. adapt21. distribution

22. concept23. commission24. evolve

25. volume26. prospective

Reviewing the Main IdeasSection 127. What government act provided an incentive for people to

farm the Great Plains?

Section 228. Why did workers try to organize labor unions in the United

States in the late 1800s?

Section 329. What attempts did nativist groups make to decrease immi-

gration to the United States in the late 1800s?

Section 430. What movements in the late 1800s addressed urban

problems?

Section 531. What was the significance of the Supreme Court’s ruling in

Plessy v. Ferguson?

Critical Thinking32. Comparing and Contrasting Reread

Section 4 of this chapter. Identify the signal words and textthat compare information in the text. Then do the same forthe signal words and text that contrast information.

33. Civics What methods did political machines use to buildsupport in the late 1800s?

34. Explaining Why was the type of currency used in the UnitedStates an important issue to farmers in the late 1800s?

35. Organizing Use a graphic organizer similar to the onebelow to list the factors that led to making the United States an industrial nation.

Reviewing Content VocabularyOn a sheet of paper, use each of these terms in a sentence.

1. homestead2. gross national product3. laissez-faire4. corporation5. monopoly6. Marxism7. industrial union8. closed shop9. tenement

10. political machine11. Social Darwinism12. populism13. inflation14. deflation15. graduated income tax16. poll tax17. grandfather clause18. Jim Crow laws

Factors Leading toIndustrialization

286

Standards 11.1.4, 11.2, 11.2.1, 11.2.2, 11.2.3, 11.2.4, 11.2.5, 11.2.6, 11.2.7, 11.2.8, 11.3.1, 11.3.2, 11.3.3, 11.6.5, 11.10.2


Self-Check QuizVisit the American Vision—Modern Times Web site at

and click on Self-Check Quizzes —Chapter 00 to access your knowledge of the chapter content.tav.mt.glencoe.com

HISTORY

Standard 11.6.5: Trace the advances and retreats of organ-ized labor, from the creation of the American Federation ofLabor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations to currentissues of a post-industrial multinational economy, includingthe United Farm Workers in California.

Standards Practice

Writing About History36. Interpreting Maps Review the

map titled “Major Industries” on page 245. Who made thismap? What is the purpose of the map? How does the mapsupport the section?

37. The United States had an advantage in industri-alizing due to its resources and large workforce. Whatresources did the nation have? Why was its workforce large?

38. Descriptive Writing Imagine that you are a newspaper edi-tor in the late 1800s. Write an editorial in which you supportthe philosophy of Social Darwinism or Social Gospel. Identifysimilarities and differences in the ideologies. Include reasonsto support your position.

39. Interpreting Primary Sources Americans like Ida Tarbellcriticized large corporations such as the Standard OilCompany. In the following excerpt from History of theStandard Oil Company, she warns of the results ofRockefeller’s business practices on the nation’s morality.Read the excerpt and answer the questions that follow:

“Very often people who admit the facts, who are will-ing to see that Mr. Rockefeller has employed force andfraud to secure his ends, justify him by declaring, ‘It’sbusiness.’ That is, ‘It’s business’ has come to be a legiti-mate excuse for hard dealing, sly tricks, special privileges.

As for the ethical side, there is no cure but in an increas-ing scorn of unfair play. . . . When the businessman whofights to secure special privileges, to crowd his competi-tor off the track by other than fair competitive methods,receives the same summary disdainful ostracism by hisfellows that the doctor or lawyer who is ‘unprofes-sional,’ the athlete who abuses the rules, receives, weshall have gone a long way toward making commerce afit pursuit for our young men.”

—quoted in Readings in American History

a. According to Tarbell, what practices had Rockefeller usedto establish the Standard Oil Company?

b. In what way did Tarbell believe the attitudes of the Americanpeople contributed to Rockefeller’s business practices?

CA 11WS1.1

CA CS3

7

5

6

4

3

2

1

0

Total populationincreaseImmigration

Peop

le (i

n m

illio

ns)

1861–1865

1866–1870

1871–1875

1876–1880

1881–1885

1886–1890

1891–1895

1896–1900

YearSource: Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970.

Immigration’s Contribution toPopulation Growth, 1860–1900

Geography and History40. The graph above shows how much immigration contributed

to population growth in the United States between 1860 and1900. Study the graph and answer the questions below.a. Interpreting Graphs By about how much did the popula-

tion of the United States increase between 1861 and 1900?

b. Understanding Cause and Effect What is the relation-ship between immigration and population increase?

Self-Check QuizVisit the American Vision: Modern Times Web site at

and click on Self-Check Quizzes—Chapter 3 to assess your knowledge of chapter content.

HISTORY

tav.mt.glencoe.com

Directions: Choose the best answer to the following question.

Labor unions were formed in order to

A protect factory owners and improve workers’ wages.

B improve workers’ wages and make factories safer.

C make factories safer and prevent lockouts.

D prevent lockouts and fight deflation.

41.


the birth of modern america · the industrial revolution changed the face of america. ... 1896 •...

Documents