Journal #1

In this first journal activity, you may write about any topic(s) of your choice, but it is best to use the textbook to study.

• For this activity, topics should address content covered in Chapters 16 – 21 in the textbook.
  • It is expected that, at a minimum, you are reading the assigned textbook chapters.
  • You are encouraged to read collateral historical writings on topics covered in the textbook.
• This activity will consist of 10 separate journal entries
• *****No more than three entries per lesson(Lesson 1 is Chapter 16, Lesson 2 is Chapter 17 and 18, Lesson 3 is chapter 19, Lesson 4 is Chapter 20 and 21).*******
• Each separate entry should:
  • contain a minimum of 120 words.
  • consist of a summary, paraphrase, and synthesis of material you are reading/studying in this course.
  • be written in your own words – do not quote the work of others verbatim.
  • discuss the subject matter that you are studying – do not simply agree/disagree.
• Your study involves, first and foremost, learning the nation’s past; doing so requires a review of previously published studies, so you are encouraged to conduct research using outside resources, but be sure to draft your journal entries in your own words.
  • Direct quotations should not be used; citations are not necessary.
  • Do not copy/paste information from any source.
  • No citations

  ***Uploaded are chapters 16-21****

16  A m e r i c a’s G i l d ed A g e 1870–1890 FOCUS QUESTIONS • What factors combined to make the United States a mature industrial society after the Civil War? • How was the West transformed economically and socially in this period? • Was the Gilded Age political system effective in meeting its goals? • How did the economic development of the Gilded Age affect American freedom? • How did reformers of the period approach the problems of an industrial society? An immense crowd gathered in New York Harbor on October 28, 1886, for the dedication of Liberty Enlightening the World, a fitting symbol for a nation now wholly free. The idea for the statue originated in 1865 with Édouard de Laboulaye, a French educator and the author of several books on the United States, as a response to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The statue, de Laboulaye hoped, would celebrate both the historic friendship between France and the United States and the triumph, through the Union’s victory in the Civil War, of American freedom. Measuring more than 150 feet from torch to toe and standing atop a huge pedestal, the edifice was the tallest man-made structure in the Western Hemisphere. It exceeded in height, newspapers noted with pride, the Colossus of Rhodes, a wonder of the ancient world. In time, the Statue of Liberty, as it came to be called, would become Americans’ most revered national icon. For over a century it has stood 186091_16_592-636_r1_sd.indd 592 05/08/13 9:04 PM What factors combined to make the United States a mature industrial society after the Civil War? 593 as a symbol of freedom. The statue has offered welcome to millions of immigrants—the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” celebrated in a poem by Emma Lazarus inscribed on its base in 1903. In the years since its dedication, the statue’s familiar image has been reproduced by folk artists in every conceivable medium and has been used by advertisers to promote everything from cigarettes and lawn mowers to war bonds. As its use by Chinese students demanding democracy in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 showed, it has become a powerful international symbol as well. The year of the statue’s dedication, 1886, also witnessed the “great upheaval,” a wave of strikes and labor protests that touched every part of the nation. The 600 dignitaries (598 of them men) who gathered on what is now called Liberty Island for the dedication hoped the Statue of Liberty would inspire renewed devotion to the nation’s political and economic system. But for all its grandeur, the statue could not conceal the deep social divisions and fears about the future of American freedom that accompanied the country’s emergence as the world’s leading industrial power. Nor did the celebrations address the crucial questions that moved to the center stage of American public life during the 1870s and 1880s and remained there for decades to come: What are the social conditions that make freedom possible, and what role should the national government play in defining and protecting the liberty of its citizens? T H E S E C O N D I N DU ST R I A L R E V O LU T I O N c etween the end of the Civil War and the early twentieth century, the United States underwent one of the most rapid and profound economic revolutions any country has ever experienced. There were numerous causes for this explosive economic growth. The country enjoyed abundant natural resources, a growing supply of labor, an expanding market for manufactured goods, and the availability of capital for investment. In addition, the federal government actively promoted industrial and agricultural development. It enacted high tariffs that protected American industry from foreign competition, granted land to railroad companies to encourage construction, and used the army to remove Indians from western lands desired by farmers and mining companies. B T H E I N D U ST R I A L E C O N O M Y The rapid expansion of factory production, mining, and railroad construction in all parts of the country except the South signaled the transition from Lincoln’s America—a world centered on the small farm and artisan 186091_16_592-636_r1_sd.indd 593 05/08/13 9:04 PM 594 Ch. 16: AMERICA’S GILDED AGE workshop—to a mature industrial society. Americans of the late nineteenth century marveled at the triumph of the new economy. “One can hardly believe,” wrote the philosopher John Dewey, “there has been a revolution in history so rapid, so extensive, so complete.” By 1913, the United States produced one-third of the world’s industrial output— more than the total of Great Britain, France, and Germany combined. Half of all industrial workers now labored in plants with more than 250 employees. On the eve of the Civil War, the first industrial revolution, centered on the textile industry, had transformed New England into a center of manufacturing. But otherwise, the United States was still primarily an agricultural nation. By 1880, for the first time, the Census Bureau found a majority of the workforce engaged in non-farming jobs. The traditional dream of economic independence seemed obsolete. By 1890, twothirds of Americans worked for wages, rather than owning a farm, business, or craft shop. Drawn to factories by the promise of employment, a new working class emerged in these years. Between 1870 and 1920, almost 11 million 186091_16_592-636_r1_sd.indd 594 T H E SE C ON D I N DUS T R I A L R E VOLU T ION CHRONOLOGY 1872 Crédit Mobiler scandal 1873 Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s Gilded Age 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn 1877 Reconstruction ends Munn v. Illinois Great Railroad Strike 1879 Henry George’s Progress and Poverty 1883 Civil Service Act Railroads create time zones William Graham Sumner’s What Social Classes Owe to Each Other 1884 Elk v. Wilkins 1886 Haymarket affair Wabash v. Illinois 1887 Interstate Commerce Commission created Dawes Act 1888 Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives Massacre at Wounded Knee 1894 Henry Demarest Lloyd’s Wealth against Commonwealth 1895 United States v. E. C. Knight Co. 1896 Utah gains statehood 1899 Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class 1905 Lochner v. New York 05/08/13 9:04 PM What factors combined to make the United States a mature industrial society after the Civil War? 595 Americans moved from farm to city, and another 25 million immigrants arrived from overseas. Most manufacturing now took place in industrial cities. New York, with its new skyscrapers and hundreds of thousands of workers in all sorts of manufacturing establishments, symbolized dynamic urban growth. After merging with Brooklyn in 1898, its population exceeded 3.4 million. The city fi nanced industrialization and westward expansion, its banks and stock exchange funneling capital to railroads, mines, and factories. But the heartland of the second industrial revolution was the region around the Great Lakes, with its factories producing iron and steel, machinery, chemicals, and packaged foods. Pittsburgh had become the world’s center of iron and steel manufacturing. Chicago, by 1900 the nation’s second-largest city, with 1.7 million inhabitants, was home to factories producing steel and farm machinery and giant stockyards where cattle were processed into meat products for shipment east in refrigerated rail cars. Smaller industrial cities also proliferated, often concentrating on a single industry—cast-iron stoves in Troy, New York, silk in Paterson, New Jersey, furniture in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Table 16.1 I N D I C A T O R S O F E C O N O M I C C H A N G E , 1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0 1870 1900 1920 Farms (millions) Land in farms (million acres) Wheat grown (million bushels) 2.7 408 254 5.7 841 599 6.4 956 843 Employment (millions) In manufacturing (millions) 14 2.5 28.5 5.9 44.5 11.2 Percentage in workforcea Agricultural Industryb Trade, service, administrationc 52 29 20 Railroad track (thousands of miles) Steel produced (thosuands of tons) 53 0.8 258 11.2 407 46 GNP (billions of dollars) Per capita (in 1920 dollars) 7.4 371 18.7 707 91.5 920 Life expectancy at birth (years) 42 47 27 44 27 54 a Percentages are rounded and do not total 100. Includes manufacturing, transportation, mining, and construction. c Includes trade, finance, and public administration. b 186091_16_592-636_r1_sd.indd 595 05/08/13 9:04 PM 596 Ch. 16: AMERICA’S GILDED AGE T H E SE C ON D I N DUS T R I A L R E VOLU T ION R A I L R O A D S A N D T H E N AT I O N A L M A R K E T The railroad made possible what is sometimes called the “second industrial revolution.” Spurred by private investment and massive grants of land and money by federal, state, and local governments, the number of miles of railroad track in the United States tripled between 1860 and 1880 and tripled again by 1920, opening vast new areas to commercial farming and creating a truly national market for manufactured goods. In 1886, the railroads adopted a standard national gauge (the distance separating the two tracks), making it possible for the first time for trains of one company to travel on any other company’s track. By the 1890s, five transcontinental lines transported the products of western mines, farms, ranches, and forests to eastern markets and carried manufactured goods to the West. The railroads reorganized time itself. In 1883, the major companies divided the nation into the four time zones still in use today. The growing population formed an ever-expanding market for the mass production, mass distribution, and mass marketing of goods, essential elements of a modern industrial economy. The spread of national brands like Ivory soap and Quaker Oats symbolized the continuing integration of the economy. So did the growth of national chains, most prominently the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, better known as A & P grocery stores. Based in Chicago, the national mail-order firms Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck & Co. sold clothing, jewelry, farm equipment, and numerous other goods to rural families throughout the country. T H E S P I R I T O F I N N O VAT I O N A remarkable series of technological innovations spurred rapid communication and economic growth. The opening of the Atlantic cable in 1866 made it possible to send electronic telegraph messages instantaneously between the United States and Europe. During the 1870s and 1880s, the telephone, typewriter, and handheld camera came into use. Scientific breakthroughs poured forth from research laboratories in Menlo Park and Orange, New Jersey, created by the era’s greatest inventor, Thomas A. Edison. During the course of his life, Edison helped to establish entirely new industries that transformed private life, public entertainment, and economic activity, including the phonograph, lightbulb, motion picture, and a system for generating and distributing electric power. He opened the first electric generating station in Manhattan in 1882 to provide power to streetcars, factories, and private homes, and he established, among other companies, the forerunner of General Electric to market electrical equipment. The spread of electricity was essential to industrial and urban growth, providing a more reliable and flexible source of power than water or steam. However, it was not Edison 186091_16_592-636_r1_sd.indd 596 05/08/13 9:04 PM 186091_16_592-636_r1_sd.indd 597 Central Pa c cifi Boise Northern Denver rn Pa cifi c MEXICO So uth e 0 0 Houston Chicago Mobile 500 miles 500 kilometers 250 Atlanta Charleston Atlantic Time Zone New York Boston Norfolk Major railroads in 1880 Time zone boundaries Atl an ti c Oce an Baltimore and Ohio Philadelphia York Cen tral Pennsy lvania New Washington, D.C. Pittsburgh Buffalo CANADA Eastern Time Zone Cleveland Detroit Gulf of Mexico New Orleans Memphis St. Louis St. Paul 250 Omaha Kansas City Dallas Pacific Central Time Zone Uni on Pacific Santa Fe El Paso Salt Lake City Helena Mountain Time Zone Phoenix Pacific Time Zone By 1880, the transnational rail network made possible the creation of a truly national market for goods. Pac ific O cean Los Angeles San Francisco Reno Portland Seattle T H E R A I L R OA D N ET WO R K , 18 8 0 Illinois Central 597 05/08/13 9:04 PM 598 Ch. 16: AMERICA’S GILDED AGE T H E SE C ON D I N DUS T R I A L R E VOLU T ION but another inventor, Nikola Tesla, an ethnic Serb born in modern-day Croatia who emigrated to the United States at the age of twenty-eight, who developed an electric motor using the system of alternating current that overcame many of the challenges of using electricity for commercial and industrial purposes. C O M P E T I T I O N A N D C O N S O L I D AT I O N Economic growth was dramatic but highly volatile. The combination of a market flooded with goods and the federal monetary policies (discussed later) that removed money from the national economy led to a relentless fall in prices. The world economy suffered prolonged downturns in the 1870s and 1890s. Indeed, before the 1930s, the years from 1873 to 1897 were known throughout the world as the Great Depression. Businesses engaged in ruthless competition. Railroads and other companies tried various means of bringing order to the chaotic marketplace. They formed “pools” that divided up markets between supposedly competing firms and fixed prices. They established “trusts”—legal devices whereby the affairs of several rival companies were managed by a single director. Such efforts to coordinate the economic activities of independent companies generally proved short-lived, disintegrating as individual firms continued their intense pursuit of profits. To avoid cutthroat competition, more and more corporations battled to control entire industries. Many companies fell by the wayside or were gobbled up by others. The process of economic concentration culminated between 1897 and 1904, when some 4,000 firms vanished into larger corporations that served national markets and exercised an unprecedented degree of control over the marketplace. By the time the wave of mergers had been completed, giant corporations like U.S. Steel (created by financier J. P. Morgan in 1901 by combining eight large steel companies into the first billion-dollar economic enterprise), Standard Oil, and International Harvester (a manufacturer of agricultural machinery) dominated major parts of the economy. THE RISE OF A NDREW CA RNEGIE In an era without personal or corporate income taxes, some business leaders accumulated enormous fortunes and economic power. Under the aggressive leadership of Thomas A. Scott, the Pennsylvania Railroad—for a time the nation’s largest corporation—forged an economic empire that stretched across the continent and included coal mines and oceangoing steamships. With an army of professional managers to oversee its far-flung activities, the railroad pioneered modern techniques of business organization. Another industrial giant was Andrew Carnegie, who emigrated with his family from his native Scotland at the age of thirteen and as a teenager worked 186091_16_592-636_r1_sd.indd 598 05/08/13 9:04 PM What factors combined to make the United States a mature industrial society after the Civil War? 599 in a Pennsylvania textile factory. During the depression that began in 1873, Carnegie set out to establish a “vertically integrated” steel company—that is, one that controlled every phase of the business from raw materials to transportation, manufacturing, and distribution. By the 1890s, he dominated the steel industry and had accumulated a fortune worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Carnegie’s complex of steel factories at Homestead, Pennsylvania, were the most technologically advanced in the world. Carnegie’s father, an immigrant Scottish weaver who had taken part in popular efforts to open the British political system to working-class participation, had instilled in his son a commitment to democracy and social equality. From his mother, Carnegie learned that life was a ceaseless struggle in which one must strive to get ahead or sink beneath the waves. His life reflected the tension between these elements of his upbringing. Believing that the rich had a moral obligation to promote the advancement of society, Carnegie denounced the “worship of money” and distributed much of his wealth to various philanthropies, especially the creation of public libraries in towns throughout the country. But he ran his companies with a dictatorial hand. His factories operated nonstop, with two twelve-hour shifts every day of the year except the Fourth of July. T H E T R I U M P H O F JO H N D. R O C K E F E L L E R If any single name became a byword for enormous wealth, it was John D. Rockefeller, who began his working career as a clerk for a Cleveland merchant and rose to dominate the oil industry. He drove out rival firms through cutthroat competition, arranging secret deals with railroad companies, and fi xing prices and production quotas. Rockefeller began with “horizontal” expansion—buying out competing oil refi neries. But like Carnegie, he soon established a vertically integrated monopoly, which controlled the drilling, refi ning, storage, and distribution of oil. By the 1880s, his Standard Oil Company controlled 90 percent of the nation’s oil industry. Like Carnegie, Rockefeller gave much of his fortune away, establishing foundations to promote education and medical research. And like Carnegie, he bitterly fought his employees’ efforts to organize unions. These and other industrial leaders inspired among ordinary Americans a combination of awe, admiration, and hostility. Depending on one’s point of view, they were “captains of industry,” whose energy and vision pushed the economy forward, or “robber barons,” who wielded power without any accountability in an unregulated marketplace. Most rose from modest backgrounds and seemed examples of how inventive genius and business sense enabled Americans to seize opportunities for success. But their dictatorial attitudes, unscrupulous methods, repressive labor policies, and exercise of 186091_16_592-636_r1_sd.indd 599 05/08/13 9:04 PM 600 Ch. 16: AMERICA’S GILDED AGE T H E SE C ON D I N DUS T R I A L R E VOLU T ION Next!, a cartoon from the magazine Puck, September 7, 1904, depicts the Standard Oil Company as an octopus with tentacles wrapped around the copper, steel, and shipping industries, as well as a state house and Congress. One tentacle reaches for the White House. power without any democratic control led to fears that they were undermining political and economic freedom. Concentrated wealth degraded the political process, declared Henry Demarest Lloyd in Wealth against Commonwealth (1894), an exposé of how Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company made a mockery of economic competition and political democracy by manipulating the market and bribing legislators. “Liberty and monopoly,” Lloyd concluded, “cannot live together.” W O R K E R S ’ F R E E D O M I N A N I N DU ST R I A L A G E Striking as it was, the country’s economic growth distributed its benefits very unevenly. For a minority of workers, the rapidly expanding industrial system created new forms of freedom. In some industries, skilled workers commanded high wages and exercised considerable control over the production process. A worker’s economic independence now rested on technical skill rather than ownership of one’s own shop and tools as in earlier times. What was known as “the miner’s freedom” consisted of elaborate work rules that left skilled underground workers free of managerial supervision on the job.