Transcript The history of the United States 1877-1945

Lecture 2
Society and poltics in the post-Civil War years
CITY LIFE
 The rise of the new elite (underside v. elite)
 Elite neighborhoods (Nob Hill in San Francisco)
 The rise of urban middle class (educated professionals,
white collar workers, shopkeepers)
 Modernization of home life (central heating,
refrigeration, electric lighting)
CITY LIFE
 Commercially prepared foods (Campbell Soup, Quaker
Oats, Canada Dry ginger ale)
 Changing structure of the day (no cock crow, noon-day
meal disappears or loses significance, women have
more time for self-development)
 Victorian mores (discipline, prudishness, sobriety,
industriousness, self-control)
 Chicago Vice Commission
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
 Temperance movement –Women’s Christian
Temperance Movement
 Nativist considerations (anti-German, anti-Irish)
 Suffrage movement
 Susan B. Anthony (National American Women’s
Suffrage Association-1890)
LEADING IDEOLOGIES
 Social Darwinism-natural selection, survival of the
fittest,
 Herbert Spencer- no governmental interference is
necessary in the workings of society
 Pragmatism: William James, John Dewey-cash value of
an idea, philosophy of business expansion and
enterprise
SOCIAL CRITICS
Conspicuous consumption
Thorsten Veblen: Theory of the Leisure Class-wealthy do
not provide value
Jacob Riis: How the Other Half Lives-description of
tenement living
POLITICS IN THE CITY
 Corruption (party caucuses choose Senators)
 Political Machine: providing social services in return
for votes
 Boss System- Boston’s Tammanny Hall, Daley in
Chicago
 Strong mayor type of local government
 Early form of social services
SOCIAL ILLS
 Economic injustice (low pay, over 10 hour workday)
 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (1913)
 -Struggle against vices (prostitution, alcoholism,
obscenity)
 Child labor
 Chicago Vice Commission
PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT
 A reform movement 1900-1917
 Aim: to cure the ill effects of the American Industrial
Revolution (1865-1915)
 Gentlemen reformers (mugwumps)
 Muckrakers –documentary journalists, writers
revealing social problems-Upton Sinclair, The Jungle
(1906)
DIRECT DEMOCRACY
 Seventeenth Amendment-direct election of U.S,
Senators
 Sixteenth Amendment-income tax
 Initiative (petition, enough signatures, issue on ballot)
 Referendum (binding, non-binding)
 Recall (removal of elected officials, but only on local
level)
REFORMING URBAN POLITICS
 Weak mayor system, elimination of the boss system
(strong mayor)
 Professional city managers (not connected to political
parties)
 Weakening the role of the party
 Moving against the trusts, Monopoly-one firm
controlling the market
 1890: Sherman Anti-Trust Act
 1906: Food and Drug Act
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
 Born in 1858
 Early traumas, loss of wife, adventures in the West
 Domestic progressive,
 Improves race relations, denounces lynching
 Invites Booker T. Washington to White House
THE SQUARE DEAL
 Fight against monopolies Trust buster
 1904: breaks up the Northern Securities Trust
 Interferes in labor relations, settles the anthracit coal
strike of 1902
 Starts the conservation movement
 Emphasizes progressive conservatism