Transcript Post-Reconstruction

The Rise of the Rail Roads
Technology, Urban Growth, New
Immigration & Big Business
Focus Question’s & Identifications
• How did Americans respond to the depression
that followed the Civil War? And justify the
growing disparity of wealth?
• Negro Rule
Jack Riis
• Irish Bossism
Immigration Legislation
• Nativism
• Gospel of Wealth
• Yellow Peril
Focus Question’s & Identifications
• What factors allowed for the transportation
revolution, or building of a trans-national
railroad?
• 1862 Pacific Rail Road Act
• Immigration
Focus Question’s & Identifications
• What was the impact of an unregulated
industrial growth and the response by farmers
and workers?
• Labor Exploitation
• Pools
• Interstate Commerce Act 1887
• The Grange, Granger Laws, Munn V Illinois
(1877)
• Mark Twain and “The Guilded Age”
Reconstruction Governments
• 11 states, new leadership included poor
whites and blacks
– Modern constitutions that embodied an active
role in government (antithesis of southern
tradition)
– Public schools for blacks and whites
– Modern prisons
– Social reform organizations
– Universal manhood suffrage
1873 Panic
• Worst depression in American history at the
time
– Wages cut repeatedly
• Wall Street Panic of 1873
– Wave of Bankruptcies
– 6,000 businesses failed in 1874 alone
Economic Disparity
• Increasing wealth & evidence of “progress”
– Centennial Exposition
•
•
•
•
Steam Engine
Electricity
Type writer
Telephone
• Further impoverishment & Depression
– 30% unemployment In Massachusettes
– Failure of small business
Explanations for Panic in the South
• The South & its upheaval to blame
– Conservatives argued that it was the inclusion of African Americans in
Public that led to failures
• Propaganda campaign of the “Negro Rule”
– Leadership of migrant northerners (Carpetbaggers) and modest
southern whites (Scalawags) and all blacks
• Weakened business confidence in the south & undermined economic
growth
• Myth of Negro Domination served to discredit the government that had
been selected by the southern masses
• Began to reverse gains made by reconstruction governments
• Bolstered support for the return of white supremacy
“Negro Rule”
• The "Lost Cause"
meant the
restoration of the
virtues, the
economy, and,
particularly, the
social system of
the Old South.
1877 Compromise
• Republican candidate, Ruthford B. Hayes
– Accepted presidency in return for removing troops
from the South
• New politics embraced “regulation of morals”
& return to white supremacy
– “Wealth & Intelligence of the South,” the
Democrats recaptured or “redeemed” the former
confederate states through rhetorical campaigns
against debts, incompetence & corruption
– Myth of the “Negro Rule”
Post Reconstruction Politics
• Nationalist reforming temper of the 1860s
transitioned to reaction of economically
depressed in the 1870s
– Politics turned away from policies of social equity
• African American struggle for rights abandoned
• State Sponsored Education Abandoned
• Women’s suffrage abandoned
African American Exodus
• Early 1870s legislation against terrorism reinterpreted from being criminal acts to the
need for traditional political elites to return to
power
• Antebellum power relations restored
– Exodus to Kansas
• 1879: 10,000’s of African Americans from lower
Mississippi valley fled Klan violence and threat of
practical re-enslavement
Settling the west
• The first Transcontinental Railroad
– 1862 the Pacific Rail Road Act
– authorized the construction of a new transcontinental
link.
– provided grants of land and other subsidies to the Rail
roads
– Congress awarded 170 million acres (half billion dollars
worth)
– By 1893 Minnesota and Washington had deeded a quarter of
their state lands to the Rail roads
– Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, North Dakota and Montana turned over
a fifth of their acreage.
 Railroad company and
government collusion
Central pacific RR
spent $2000 on bribes to
get 9 million acres of free
land & 24 million in bonds
(paid 79 made a profit of
$36 million dollars over the
value)
Union Pacific RR
Given 12 million acres of free
land
Given $27 million in
government bonds
Created Credit Mobilier
company
Gave them $94 million for
what cost $44 million
5
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Rise of the Rail Road Barons
• 1869 Rail Road Executive joined the Union and
Central pacific Rail lines –
– first transcontinental line
– 1873 400 corporations criscrossed the northeast
• Businesses that sold bonds to finance their businesses
ventures
• could not meet their actual costs or fulfill their bond
obligation
– Northern Pacific Securities Bank, Jay Cooke, closed down
Financial Collapse
• Triggered other firms to collapse
• Financial panic ensued
• Stock Market crash – 5 year depression
– Farm prices plummeted, steel furnaces stood idle,
1 of 4 rail roads failed
– In two years 18,000 businesses went bankrupt
• 3 million employees out of work
– Those employed saw their wages repeatedly cut
» Labor protests mounted and industrial violence spread
1873 Panic
• Worst depression in American history at the
time
– Wages cut repeatedly
• Wall Street Panic of 1873
– Wave of Bankruptcies
– 6,000 businesses failed in 1874 alone
4
Human cost:Completing
Irish, Chinese, War
paid
theVeterans
first transcontinental
railroad,
$2 a day
Promontory
1889, 22,000 killed
or injured Point, Utah, May 10, 1869.
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Labor
• Central Pacific employed Chinese workers
• chipped and blasted rail bed out of solid rock in the
sierra Nevada
• preferred Chinese labor
– worked hard for low wages,
– did not drink,
– furnished their own food and tents
» 12,000 graded the road bed while Irish, MexicanAmerican and black workers laid track.
Explanation for Panic in the North
•
Irish Bossism
– Pejorative applied to leaders who control the selection of their political party's
candidates for elected office and dispense patronage without regard for the public
interest.
– The power of a boss turns on his ability to select single-handedly the candidates who will
win an election.
– Indebted elected representatives then turn the reigns of government over to the boss,
who makes policy decisions and uses government jobs and revenue to employ party
loyalists and fund party functions.
–
–
–
Credited for causing the crisis in government and the economy in the North
Irish were poor working class who were succeeding in politics
• Reality
– 65% of industrial workers in 1870 were American Born
– 11% Born in Germany
– 5% From England & Wales
– 12% from Ireland
– 7% Other
Revival of 1850s Nativism
• Service of Irish and African Americans in the war had bolstered claims to full citizenship
• These progressive ideas centered on equality and liberty quickly faded
• Various ethnic groups in the United States scape-goated for the crisis
Explanations for Panic in the West
• “Yellow-Peril”
– 9% of the population, ¼ of the work force were Chinese
– 1880: population 160,000
• Fear of Chinese Domination
– Migrated to Pacific coast 1840-1860s
• Vast majority young men
– Built western Rail Roads
– Provided crucial services in the mining camps
– Formed the work force in western cities (agricultural &
construction)
– Established businesses
“Coolie Labor”
• 1870 shoe Manufacturer in north Adams,
Massachusetts imported 75 Chinese to break
a strike by the Knights of St. Crispin
– They opposed contract labor
– No tone of racial prejudice
– Employers however used Chinese workers as a
bulwark against unionism – aggravated racial
tensions among workers
Railroads
• Railroads: single most important agent of economic
growth
• “pools”
– Technique used by RR to divide up traffic and fix rates,
avoiding competition
– Rate-cutting wars, benefited some shippers, ruined others
3
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
RR & Farmers Associations
• Interstate Commerce Act (1887)
– Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
• Outlawed pools, discriminatory rates, & rebates for
favored shippers
• ICC had minimal enforcement, and federal courts
frequently chose to enforce law
– Rates did decline slowly afterwards
• Standard time zones
– Consequence of RR impact on every day life
– Before 1883 time kept locally by suns meridian in each
locality
• Played havoc with the trains time table, the RR
established standard times zones and established new
time tables
Farmers exploited by high rates
Response: Cooperatives or Patrons
of Husbandry known as “The
Grange”
Marketing groups (Farmer’s
Alliance) to sell crops and buy
supplies
Organize an anti-monopoly to
protect from the RR Monopoly
"Granger laws“
Elected state legislators who
enacted laws
Fixed maximum freight
rates & warehouse
charges
Munn v. Illinois (1877)
RR challenged the laws,
Supreme court ruled that
Poster
advertising
the “gifts”
states
could regulate
businesses
clothes
with a
of
the
Grangers.
public interest including
railroads
Encouraged state regulation
5
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Transformation of the West
Mixed Legacy of Expansion
• In the North American trans Mississippi west
miners, farmers, land speculators and rail road
developers
• Westward re-settlement
– Prairies of
• Iowa
• Minnesota
• Kansas
Protestant Profit & Work Ethic
• Many white families prospered on the plains,
– heedless pursuit of land and profit threatened the
Native American way & environment.
– exploited white, native American, Chinese and
Mexican laborers alike
– Bison nearly exterminated
– Miners skinned the mountainsides in search of
minerals
– Farmers plowed the prairie and built sod houses
Government’s Hand in the “Free
Market”
• Westerners attributed economic gain
– American individualism and self reliance
• Reality: depended heavily on the federal government
– sent troops to clear the lands of native people, to
subjugate them and dispossess them of resources
– promoted the acquisition of farm land through the
Homestead Act of 1862
– Subsidized the construction of the rail road lines
– Eastern banks and foreign capitalists provided investment
capital and eased access to the international markets
• Many chose to view the destruction of indigenous America as
necessary price of civilization and progress
Promoted re-settlement
• The companies recruited settlers and in their
propaganda glorified the west as the new
Garden of Eden.
– One unintended consequence of land promotions
was to make land available to single women.
• 18% of claimants in Wyoming were single women, 1020% in Colorado.
– Kansas having been settled by exo dusters of the
south were now joined by Russian Mennonites in
1905.
The New Middle Class Woman
• Women challenge “separate spheres”
• obtain high school and college degrees
• work in professional and white collar
occupations
– Work puts women away from supervision of
male family members
– Wages gave them some independence
• Women and volunteer associations
15
– Settlement Houses
Rise of the Rail Road Barons
Transformation of the TransMississippi West
Rise of the Rail Road Barons
• 1869 Rail Road Executive joined the Union and
Central pacific Rail lines –
– first transcontinental line
– 1873 400 corporations criscrossed the northeast
• Businesses that sold bonds to finance their businesses
ventures
• could not meet their actual costs or fulfill their bond
obligation
– Northern Pacific Securities Bank, Jay Cooke, closed down
Railroads
• Railroads: single most important agent of economic
growth
• “pools”
– Technique used by RR to divide up traffic and fix rates,
avoiding competition
– Rate-cutting wars, benefited some shippers, ruined others
3
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Farmers Associations
• Farmers exploited by high rates
• Grange (1867)
– Response: Cooperatives or Patrons of Husbandry known as
“The Grange”
• Marketing groups (Farmer’s Alliance) to sell crops and
buy supplies
• Organize an anti-monopoly to protect from the RR
Monopoly
– "Granger laws“
• Elected state legislators who enacted laws
– Fixed maximum freight rates & warehouse charges
– Munn v. Illinois (1877)
• RR challenged the laws, Supreme court ruled that
states could regulate businesses clothes with a public
interest including railroads
• Encouraged state regulation
Interstate Commerce Act (1887)
Interstate Commerce
Commission (ICC)
Outlawed pools,
discriminatory rates, &
rebates for favored
shippers
ICC had minimal
enforcement, and
federal courts
frequently chose to
enforce law
Rates did decline
slowly afterwards
Standard time zones
Consequence of RR impact
on every day life
Before 1883 time kept
locally by suns meridian in
each locality
Played havoc with the
time table,the
the“gifts”
Postertrains
advertising
RR established
of the Grangers.
standard
times zones
and established new
time tables
5
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
4
Completing the first transcontinental railroad,
May 10, 1869.
Human cost: Irish, Chinese, War Veterans
paid $2 a day Promontory Point, Utah,
1889, 22,000 killed or injured
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
 Railroad company and
government collusion
Central pacific RR
spent $2000 on bribes
to get 9 million acres of
free land & 24 million in
bonds (paid 79 made a
profit of $36 million
dollars over the value)
Union Pacific RR
Given 12 million acres of fee
land
Given $27 million in
government bonds
Created Credit Mobilier
company
Gave them $94 million
for what cost $44 million
5
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Financial Collapse
• Triggered other firms to collapse
• Financial panic ensued
• Stock Market crash – 5 year depression
– Farm prices plummeted, steel furnaces stood idle,
1 of 4 rail roads failed
– In two years 18,000 businesses went bankrupt
• 3 million employees out of work
– Those employed saw their wages repeatedly cut
» Labor protests mounted and industrial violence spread
1873 Panic
• Worst depression in American history at the
time
– Wages cut repeatedly
• Wall Street Panic of 1873
– Wave of Bankruptcies
– 6,000 businesses failed in 1874 alone
Transformation of the West
Mixed Legacy of Expansion
• In the North American trans Mississippi west
miners, farmers, land speculators and rail road
developers
• Westward re-settlement
– Prairies of
• Iowa
• Minnesota
• Kansas
Protestant Profit & Work Ethic
• Many white families prospered on the plains,
– heedless pursuit of land and profit threatened the
Native American way & environment.
– exploited white, native American, Chinese and
Mexican laborers alike
– Bison nearly exterminated
– Miners skinned the mountainsides in search of
minerals
– Farmers plowed the prairie and built sod houses
Government’s Hand in the “Free
Market”
• Westerners attributed economic gain
– American individualism and self reliance
• Reality: depended heavily on the federal government
– sent troops to clear the lands of native people, to
subjugate them and dispossess them of resources
– promoted the acquisition of farm land through the
Homestead Act of 1862
– Subsidized the construction of the rail road lines
– Eastern banks and foreign capitalists provided investment
capital and eased access to the international markets
• Many chose to view the destruction of indigenous America as
necessary price of civilization and progress
Settling the west
• The first Transcontinental Railroad
– 1862 the Pacific Rail Road Act
– authorized the construction of a new transcontinental link.
– provided grants of land and other subsidies to the Rail roads
• Labor
– Central Pacific employed Chinese workers
• chipped and blasted rail bed out of solid rock in the sierra Nevada
• preferred Chinese labor
– worked hard for low wages,
– did not drink,
– furnished their own food and tents
» 12,000 graded the road bed while Irish, Mexican-American and black
workers laid track.
Pacific Rail Road Act
• Congress awarded the railroads 170 million
acres, worth over ½ a billion dollars.
– By 1893 Minnesota and Washington had deeded a
quarter of their state lands to the Rail roads
– Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, North Dakota and
Montana turned over a fifth of their acreage.
Promoted re-settlement
• The companies recruited settlers and in their
propaganda glorified the west as the new
Garden of Eden.
– One unintended consequence of land promotions
was to make land available to single women.
• 18% of claimants in Wyoming were single women, 1020% in Colorado.
– Kansas having been settled by exodusters of the
south were now joined by Russian Mennonites in
1905.
RR Influence on Agriculture
• to ensure a quick repayment of money owed
• urged new immigrants to specialize in cash
crops
– wheat on the Northern plains,
– corn in Iowa & Kansas
– cotton and tobacco in Texas.
Accelerated development of the West
• Used to ship army horses and men in the dead
of winter to attack Indians when they were
most vulnerable
• Used to gain quick access to bison, slaughter
• Then used to rapidly settle colonists
Homesteading the Great Plains
• The Homestead Act passed in 1862
– Liberalized land laws
– Encouraged westward settlement
• 160 acres to any individual who would pay a
10 dollar registration fee,
• live on the land for five years and cultivate and
improve on it.
• 400,000 families claimed land 1860 – 1900
Dispossession of Homesteaders
• Agents filed false claims for the choicest locations
– railroads acquired huge holdings
• only 1 of every 9 acres went to pioneers
• Another problem was the 160 acre limit
– Depending on the richness of the soil, a family needed more
than 160 to survive.
• Congress passed the Land Act of 1877, the Timber Culture
act of 1873 and Timber and stone act of 1877
– allowed farmers to buy additional acreage given their terrain.
• Again speculators, timber companies and cattle ranchers
exploited the new legislation to their benefit.
– While half the homesteaders adjusted to life on the frontier, half
also gave up their claims and moved on.
Farming Communities
• farm mechanization and development of new strains of
wheat and corn to boost production dramatically
–
–
–
–
–
–
Steel plows
Wheat planters
Grain binders
Threshers
Windmills
Barbed wire
• cost of land, horses, machinery and seed exceeded the
annual earnings of an industrial worker,
– government supported big business rather than the small
business owners in such endeavors.
• With increased mechanization & government support agribusiness
began to establish itself and hinder small business owners from
proliferating.
Big Business Government
• 1887 President Grover Cleveland , with a huge surplus,
• vetoed a bill providing $100,000 relief to Texas farmers
– to help them buy seed grain during a drought.
• “federal aid in such cases… encourages the expectation of paternal
care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of
our national character”
• Cleveland used surplus to pay off wealthy bond
holders
– at $28 above the $100 value of each
• a gift of 45 million dollars
Small Farmer’s plight
• high mortgage payments
– forced to specialize in cash crops like corn or wheat
• made them dependent on the railroads for shipping
– Charged what they wanted for shipping costs
• put them at the mercy of the international grain markets
shifting prices.
• Plight of mid westerners desperate by the late
1870s
– Dry years of the 1870s
– Grass hopper infestation
• Economic depression
• Farmers could not meet costs of productions
– 25% of farmers lost their homes and became tenants, while
others yet became farmer laborers unable to pay a rent
– 1900 4.5 million farm laborers n the country
Green-backers
• Government helped the bankers and hurt the
farmers
– it kept the amount of money based on gold
steady while the population rose,
– less money was in circulation.
• If a farmer had to pay his debts in dollars, it was hard
to get and by the time bankers got the dollars, they
were worth less
• Farmers movements demanded more money be put in
circulation by printing greenbacks.
Farmer’s Alliance
• Began in Texas
• Southern crop-lien system
– farmer would get things he needed from the
merchant, the use of a cotton gin during harvest time
and other supplies.
– merchant would get a lien or a mortgage on his crop
to pay for needs
– farmer might pay 25% interest
– Farmer would owe more money each year
– Land would be taken, he would become a tenant
Rebellions
• Delhi, LA in 1889
• Gathering of small farmers rode to down and
demolished the stores of merchants
– “to cancel their indebtedness”
Farmers Alliance, 1877
• Height of the Depression
– By 1882 120 sub-alliances in 12 counties
– 1886 100,000 farmers joined in 2,000 suballiances
•
•
•
•
Offered alternatives to the old system
Join the alliance and form cooperatives
Get needed things at lower prices
“bulking” put cotton together and sell it cooperatively
• By 1886 the populist doctrine of “Cleburne
Demands”.
• It was the Farmers Alliance at the core of
what would become known as the populist
movements during the 1880s and 1890s.
1886, Cleburne, Texas
• Alliance drew up the “Clerburne Demands”
• First document of what was becoming the
Populist party
– Called for “such legislation as shall secure to our
people freedom from the onerous and shameful
abuses that the industrial classes are now suffering at
the hands of the arrogant capitalists and powerful
corporations”
• asked that legislation be passed to protect workingmen from
the abuses of capitalists and corporations
» included regulation of RR rates
» a heavy taxation of land held only for speculative purposes
» increase the money supply
Growth of Alliances
• 1887 200,000 members of 3,000 sub-alliances
• 1892 farmer lecturers
– 43 states
– Reached 2 million families
– “most massive organizing drive by any citizen
institution of 19th C America”
• Movement based on ideas
– Cooperation
– Farmers creating their own culture & Political parties
» Georgia 100,000 members in 134 of 137 counties
» Tennessee 125,000 members and 3,600 sub-alliances in 92 of
96 counties
Texas Exchange
• Formed from the alliance
– Handled the selling of the farmers cotton in one
transaction
– Charged less for supplies
– Charged less for land and machinery
– Needed to be able to loan members money
• Scraped together needed capital for exchange to
operate from the farmers
– Collected 80,000, not enough and banks refused to
loan money to the exchange
• Unable to operate, to poor to help themselves it convinced
them of the need of monetary reform
Rise of the Populist/Peoples Party
• 1890 38 alliance people were elected to
congress
– Georgia and Texas elected governors
• Georgia
– Took over democratic party in Georgia
– Won 3/4ths of the state legislature
– Six of its ten congressmen
• Did not wrest real power away from the old political
bodies, but spread new ideas and new spirit
1892, People’s Party Convention
• Pre-amble
• We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral,
political and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot box, the
legislatures, the congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench.
The people are demoralized…The newspapers are subsidized or
muzzled; public opinion silenced; business prostrate, our homes
covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land
concentrating in the hands of the capitalists. The Urban workman are
denied the right of organization for self protection; imported
pauperized labor beats down their wages, a hireling standing
army…established to shoot them down…the fruits of the toil of millions
are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes…From the same prolific
womb of governmental injustice we breed two classes-paupers and
millionaires…
– Nominated james Weaver, Iowa populist and former general in the union
army for president, lost.
Challenging the black-white dichotomy
Revealing class
• From this movement grew a movement out of
the Colored Farmers National Alliance (CFNA)
– encouraged cross-racial alliances
– it cut across boundaries of race to address the real
problem of class.
– Considered breaking down the color barrier to create
real economic and political gain for small land owners
and working classes
– Attempted to create a culture of cooperation, self
respect and economic analysis among the rural labor
movement.
Failure of the Populist Party
• Nativism and Racism dominated and hindered
people from uniting on sufficient levels
• Lure of electoral politics
– Populists allied with the Democratic party and
supported Williams Jennings Bryan in 1896
• Pressure for electoral victory led populism to make deals
with major parties city after city
– Populism lost in electoral politics and its ideals
negotiated, brokered and compromised away
• William McKinley won Presidency of 1896
• Declared war on Spain two years later
Territory to State
• Communities grew large enough to petition congress
to pass an Enabling Act
– Established the territory’s boundaries and authorized an
election to select delegates for a state constitutional
convention.
– Once the constitution was drawn up and ratified by
popular vote, the territory applied to congress for
admission as a state.
•
•
•
•
•
•
Kansas entered the Union 1861
Nevada in 1864
North Dakota , Montana, Washington , 1889
Utah 1896
Oklahoma 1907
Arizona and New Mexico 1912
Consequences of Westward
Settlement
• Ideas of white supremacy, racism and
Nativism
– Established through violence and embedded in
the new American institutions throughout the
west
– Impoverished minority working classes created
– Class system further stratified
– Further concentration of wealth produced
– Rise of agri-business
– Environmental devastation