Transcript Chapter 10

Chapter 19
Economic Change and the Crisis of
the 1890s
© 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved.
Economic Growth
• 15 years between 1878 – 1893: U.S.
economy grew at one of the fastest rates in
history
• Growth in manufacturing:
– 180% increase
• Agriculture:
– 26% increase
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Value Added by Economic Sector, 1869-1899 (In 1879 Prices)
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Railroads
• Railroads: single most important agent of
economic growth
• Railroad “pools” and other sources of resentment
• Patrons of Husbandry or Grange (1867)
– "Granger laws"
– Munn v. Illinois (1877)
• Interstate Commerce Act (1887)
– Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
• Standard time zones
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Technology
• Advancements in:
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Railroads
Steel Mills
Telephone
Electricity: light and the generator
Typewriter
Elevators and skyscrapers
Entertainment: phonographs and motion picture
Household items: refrigerators, washing machines
Internal Combustion engine leads to automobiles and
first flight (Wright Brothers)
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The American Middle Class
• Middle class achieves class consciousness
• Tries to recreate nation in their image
Philadelphia Centennial
Exposition
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American inventions on display
Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone
Christopher Sholes and the typewriter
Corliss Steam Engine
Fair demonstrated that the antebellum
Market Revolution had become industrial
Gilded Age Cities
• Urbanization increased
– U.S. 20% urban in 1860, 40% in 1900
• Streetcars allow urban growth beyond
“walking city”
• Great disparities of wealth in cities
• Suburbs for middle class
• Public vs. private utilities and urban
services
American Museum
• Museums move from warehouse of
curiosities to ornate display of fine art and
scientific artifacts
– Natural History Museum in New York
– Field Museum in Chicago
• Labor groups pressure museums to open on
Sundays
• Middle class decorum maintained
The Department Store and Mail
Order Catalogs
• Department stores replace small, single item shops
– John Wanamaker’s Philadelphia 1876
• Mail Order catalogs bring department experience
to rural areas
– Montgomery Ward
– Sears Roebuck
• Chain Stores
– A&P
– Woolworth’s
• All required standardization of goods
Advertising and magazines
• Advertising becomes a major industry
• Magazines
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Primary method of advertising distribution
Pioneered artistic style like Realism
Pioneered literary forms like short stories
Made important technical breakthroughs for media like
photo reproduction and printing
• Newspapers
– Sunday editions and comic strips
African-American Middle Class
Culture
• Segregation forces Blacks to organize their
own economic and social institutions
• The Colored American
• Frances E. Harper
• Paul Laurence Dunbar
• W. E. B. Du Bois
The New Woman
• Women challenge “separate spheres” in generation
after the Civil War
• More women obtain high school and college
degrees
• Women begin to work in professional and white
collar occupations
– Work put women away from supervision of male family
members
– Wages gave them some independence
• Women and volunteer associations
– Settlement Houses and YWCA
World’s Columbian Exposition
• Chicago 1893: culmination of the middle
class revolution
• White City— middle class ideal for future
of America
• Midway Plaisance
– Sol Bloom
– Ferris Wheel
Wealth and Inequality
• Gulf between rich and poor widened
dramatically
• Thorstein Veblen and Conspicuous
Consumption
– The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)
• “Robber barons“
– Criticism was of power, not wealth
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Real Wages of Workers and per capita Income of
all Americans, 1870-1900
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The Antitrust Movement
• Standard Oil Trust
• John Sherman and the Sherman Antitrust
Act (1890)
– “Restraint of trade”
• U.S. v. E. C. Knight Company (1895)
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Labor Strife
• Labor discontent
– U.S. had world’s highest rate of industrial accidents
– Decline in status of craft labor
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National Labor Union (1866)
Bureau of Labor (1884)
Labor Day (1894)
Molly Maguires
Greenback-Labor Party
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The Great Railroad Strike of
1877
• Railroad wage cuts
– Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
• 10 states call out militia
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The Knights of Labor
• Terence V. Powderly and the Knights of Labor
(1869)
• Rank and file wanted to concentrate on
improvement in bread and butter issues
• Leadership wanted alternative to wage system
• Although leadership opposed strikes, Knights
greatest triumphs were through strikes
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Haymarket
• National general strike for 8 hour day 5-1-1886
• McCormick strike, police kill 4 strikers 5-3-1886
• Protest of killings at Haymarket Square 5-4-1886
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Anarchists
Bomb kills 10, 6 police
8 Anarchist tried for murder
Knights of Labor caught in anti-labor backlash
• American Federation of Labor (1886)
– Samuel Gompers
– Accepted capitalism and wage system
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Henry George
• Progress and Poverty (1879)
• Land monopoly is source of wealth
disparity
• Solution: 100% tax on “unearned
increment” of land value
• Sensitized generation that become the
Progressives to social issues
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Edward Bellamy
• Looking Backward (1887)
• Social Gospel and Christian Socialism
– Aid to poor as important as saving souls
– Settlement houses
– Contributed to rise of Progressives
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The Homestead Strike
• Carnegie Steel Company
• Henry Clay Frick
• Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and
Tin Workers
• Lockout vs. sitdown 1892
• Pinkertons and state militia break strike
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The Depression of 1893-1897
• Panic of 1893
– Reading Railroad
– National Cordage Company
• Jacob Coxey
– End depression with road building
– "Coxey's army"
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The Pullman Strike
• George Pullman
• Company town
• Pullman cuts wages, but keeps rents and store
price the same
• American Railway Union (ARU)
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Eugene V. Debs
Success in spring 1894 against Great Northern Railroad
Sympathy strike with Pullman workers
Federal troops sent, 34 die
Strike broken, Debs jailed
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Farmers’ Movements
• Settlers fill plains states in generation after Civil
War
• Agricultural challenges for farming in the west
– Severe weather was devastating
– Precipitation swings “in God we trusted, in Kansas we
busted”
– Isolation and loneliness for farm families
• Global agricultural glut in wheat and cotton by
1880s
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Credit and Money
• Deflation hurt farmers in debt
– “Greenbacks"
• Public Credit Act (1869)
• Specie Resumption Act (1875)
• Effects mixed
– Facilitated overall economic growth
– Hurt rural economies of South and West
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Wholesale and Consumer Price Indexes, 1865-1897
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The Greenback and Silver
Movements
• Greenback Party
– "the Crime of 1873"
• Bland-Allison Act (1878)
• “Free Silver”
• Sherman Silver Purchase Act (1890)
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The Farmers’ Alliance
• Farmers' Alliance
– Marketing cooperatives
– Ocala, Florida demands (1890)
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Graduated income tax
Direct election of Senators
Free silver
Government control of railroads, telegraph, and telephone
industry
• Subtreasury Plan
• People's Party
– Populists
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The Rise and Fall of the People’s
Party
• Support for Populists strong in Plains and
mountain states
• Leonidas L. Polk
• Omaha platform (1892)
– Mirrors Ocala demands
• James B. Weaver
• Results
– Gain control of some Western legislatures
– Defeated by racial demagoguery in the South
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The Silver Issue
• William Jennings Bryan
– “Cross of gold" speech
– Democratic nominee
• Populist dilemma
– Democratic whale swallowed the Populist fish
in 1896
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The Election of 1896
• Republicans and William McKinley
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Preferred tariff campaign
Bryan is irresponsible inflationist
Mark Hanna
"front porch campaign"
• 1896 election most impassioned in a generation
• Section pattern: South and West vs. North
• International gold discoveries reverse deflation,
prosperity returns
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Conclusion
• 1890s in America:
– American Past: large rural and agricultural
economy
– American Future: cities and commercialindustrial economy
• Social and Political upheavals
– Economic changes and the widening gap
between rich and poor
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