Chapter 17
C.
The Crisis of the 1890s S#1
I. The Economic Crisis Descends S #J3
A. Financial Panic hit Wall Street in 1893.
-began
with the withdrawal of British investments in US railroads but soon touched
entire economy – 600 banks and 15,000 businesses, loss
of 3 million jobs, more than 20 percent of labour force.
1. Brought on wave of suicides,
insanity, and crime.
2. Many blamed individual poverty on
character deficiencies.
-with
some subtlety, papers explained the human tragedy as “Hard Luck Stories”
-some
religious leaders, more blunt, asserted that “No man in
this land suffers from poverty,” Reverend
Henry Ward Beecher told an affluent congregation in
3. Others recognized that society
was to blame and tried to help.
-
S #4 B. Work was scarce and competition for jobs was
keen.
1. Public outcry increased over
foreigners competing with citizens for jobs.
-the
anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic American Protection Association (APA),
founded during the 1880s, won wide support in northern cities, often aligning
with Republican political groups against pro-Democratic immigrants.
2. Some states went so far as to ban
foreign-born from public work.
S#J6 3. Ohio Businessman Jacob Coxey,
unemployed organizer, led march on
S#B5 4. Pullman strike in
-workers there made railway sleeping cars, lived in company
owned homes (over slashed wages of 33 per cent) while other prices such as rent
continued unchanged.
-Eugene
V. Debs, American Railway Union, had won a strike in
-strikebreakers
were hired by company officials, Attorney General Richard Olney, (a former
railroad lawyer), obtained a court injunction against the union on the grounds
that the strike interrupted delivery of US mail.
-President
Cleveland responded by calling out federal troops to suppress the strike. It
ended in violence, a dozen workers dead, countless injured and property
damaged.
-in the
aftermath the union was crushed, blacklists were made blocking the reemployment
of 75 percent of the strikers, Debs went to jail for six months, he studied and
eventually in 1901 helped for the American socialist party.
5. It was clear at
S#J7 C. The depression dominated
national politics.
1. Democrat Grover Cleveland’s administration blamed depression on coinage of silver.
2. Repealed
-this
step simply focussed public attention on the country’s money supply, but did nothing to stop the flow of gold to
European banks.
3. Arrangement with bankers in 1895
saved national treasury but at high cost
-Banks
extended loans to the federal government for discounted bonds and halted the
gold drain, but also made substantial profit in reselling US securities.
4. To off-set the Depression,
further measures introduced such as the Wilson-Gorman Tariff in 1894 which
raised duties and called for income tax – 2
percent on earnings over $4,000. However, the following year the Supreme Court
ruled the tax provision unconstitutional: “The
present assault on capital is but the beginning,” declared
Court. “It will be the stepping-stone... till
our political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich: a war
constantly growing in intensity and bitterness.”
The bias
of courts overwhelmingly apparent, injunctions against strikers allowed in Debs
case, disallowed state laws limiting women and children’s labour to eight hour days, and ruled that the Sherman
Anti-Trust Act, which regulated interstate commerce, did not apply to
manufacturing companies.
-in 1894
congressional elections many voters deserted Cleveland and the Democrats,
widespread fraud and pleas for white supremacy kept them in power in the South
- poverty among agricultural workers
attracted support for Populists, but their strength was limited, and even
silver Democrats and Populists combined could not over-come the anti-Cleveland
Republican majority.
S#8 D. Election of 1896 focussed on
money issue.
1. Republicans nominated
-the
party was dominated by eastern bankers like J.P. Morgan and industrialists like
Mark Hanna, and ran a campaign platform defending the gold standard and
promising to restore financial stability, business prosperity and economic
growth.
2. Democrats, met in Chicago,
nominated Nebraska politician William Jennings Bryan, staunch supporter of free
silver, a 36 year old, a two-term veteran of congress, whose campaign attempted
to depict him as a populist speaking for “the plain
people of this country” against
the monied city interests.
- In
defiance of Republicans who supported the gold standard
3. Populists, themselves, were
undecided on best course of action in election.
-they met
in
a. Some advocated
independent course, others called for fusion with Democrats.
-However,
support for the radical planks within the movement were dropped during the
campaign (such as government control of railroads, agricultural warehouses).
b. They ended up backing
c. With campaign
focussed on silver, party’s other
reforms were forgotten.
4. Bryan-McKinley match up set new
electoral precedents.
a.
b. McKinley ran
front-porch campaign managed by Marc Hanna.
-the 1896
campaign was a modern one because Hanna showed voters how the candidates stood
on issues relating to their own self-interest.
5. Class tensions and fears played
big role in campaign.
S#9 6. McKinley won by 500,000
votes with record-high voter turnout.
-Bryan
6.5 million, McKinley over 7 million, populists just 300,000.
-split
was such that Bryan carried the Democratic South, Rockey Mountain Silver
States, and the Great Plains, — areas
hit by the Depression – also won
north of the Mason-Dixon Line and east of the Mississippi River
-McKinley
– mid west farm vote, as well as big cities, winning the
middle class conservatives, non-Irish immigrants and urban labour. S#10.
S #11.
II. Reconstructing the National Prosperity
A. McKinley administration ushered in era of prosperity.
-it delivered on its campaign election promise of seeking business stability:
1. Dingley Tariff of 1900 set
highest duties yet.
2. 1900 Currency Act established
gold standard as basis of nation's economy.
3.. Economic prosperity helped lead to McKinley's reelection
in 1900
-In 1900
the McKinley -
S#12 B. The return of prosperity
brought about a revolution in business practices– The
Emergence of Mass Marketing.
1. Large retail stores challenged
small local merchants. – they
enjoyed double advantages
a. Could buy in bulk and
accelerate the rate of product turnover.
b. Could afford better
store locations.
2. Large stores encouraged idea of
constant change – essentially fashion – to encourage
turnover.
3. Consumption as way to measure and
advertise one's class position.
-
-Theodore Dreiser on of the new
‘realist’ writers
depicted youthful ambition, as well as the dangers of seduction on the urban
frontier, in his novel Sister Carrie (1900).
S#13, “The
Denver dry goods company boasted a shopping area 400 feet long rivalling today’s malls”
S #14 C. Advertising linked consumer desire with
allure of merchandise.
1. Mass magazines and newspapers
perfect vehicles for colorful sales pitches.
-new
printing techniques, the perfection of halftone photographic reproductions, and
sensational stories, jolted the circulation of dailies.
-reports
like Jacob Riis wrote serial exposes of urban squalor,
-by mid
1890s Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William
Randolph Hearst’s competing New York Journal had a combined daily
readership of more than 1 Million.
– 1894 ads
switched from narrow columns to full page display ads.
-new look
– “visual
ads” broadened access to borderline literates
2. Marketing transformed from sales
of products to invention of desires.
3. Outdoor billboards and electric
signs with flashing lights dotted landscape.
-Heinz’s 45-foot green-bulb pickle in New York pushed product
identity
4. Downtown retailers designed
lavish window displays to lure consumers inside and incandescent advertising. S
#15 .
S #16.
III. Gender and Identity in the Corporate Age
A. Advertising created new identity images and blurred class
and ethnic lines.
1. Ideas of ideal body type changed,
as did conceptions of beauty.
-uniformed
standards of beauty and taste were epitomised in poster images of Charles
Dana Gibson’s girls. S #17.
-photographic
displays of corsets, which bound the female body like an hourglass added a
sexualized dimension to advertising and encouraged purchase.
2. Fat and flab became signs of
slothful ease; skinny was a new sign of beauty.
S #18 B. A distinct youth culture
began to emerge during this period.
-leisure
consumption emerged as the primary element of urban youth culture.
1. For urban youth, based primarily
on purchase of recreational entertainment.
2. Fashionable clothing, live music,
penny arcades all popular.
3. Among the middle class, adulthood
was delayed for school and job training.
4. Middle-class youth therefore
experienced a period of extended adolescence.
5.
Declining birth rates among white anglo-saxons saw middle class commentators
writing about male virility. Men were encouraged to avoid sex and the proposed
remedy according to Theodore Roosevelt was The Strenuous Life. The
pursuit of self discipline through aggressive sports would strengthen warrior
virtues and renew Anglo-Saxon vitality.
S #19
6.
Indoctrination also encouraged select reading among youth.
S #20 C. Women sought to exercise
their social responsibility in a variety of ways.
1. Women's Christian Temperance
Union crusaded against alcohol, as did the Anti-Saloon League (1893).
2. Others pushed for inspection of
food, child labor laws, and infant health clinics.
a. General Federation of
Women's Clubs
b. National Congress of
Mothers
3. Settlement house movement,
pioneered by Hull House, established in 1889.
a. Co-founded by Jane
Addams and Ellen Starr.
b. Hoped to educate,
assimilate, and assist struggling urban immigrants.
c. Also involved in
sanitation reform, child/women's labor laws, court reform.
`-influenced
by English reformers, settlement houses attracted middle class college
graduates, especially women, and numbered over 100 by 1900 and in most major US
cities/
-for
reformers, the settlement societies created a community — half domestic family, half college dormitory – which permitted same-sex friendships, sometimes called “Boston marriages” to
flourish. S #21
4. The women's suffrage movement
experienced a revitalization as a consequence of the social reform movement.
a. National American
Woman Suffrage Association formed in 1890.
-result
of the merging of rival groups, headed by feminist pioneers Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.
b. Some agitation for
constitutional amendment; also push for local action.
c. Populist party
welcomed women's participation and several women ran for office as populist
candidates
-In NYC,
reformers organized the Women’s
Municipal League, which campaigned for mayoral candidates opposed to graft and
organized prostitution.
d. By this juncture four
western states had granted women's suffrage.
-(Wyoming,
Utah, Colorado, Idaho)
D. Issues of sexual equality remained central to problems of
race.
1. Repeated accusations of black men
raping/assaulting white women.
2. Became very serious problem in
the south, where the punishment was lynching.
- in 1892
lynch mobs killed 241 African Americans
3. Myth of the black rapist allowed
whites to enforce their political power.
4. Sexual domination of black women
by white men proved white superiority.
S #22 E. Racial segregation
reinforced the political disenfranchisement of blacks in the south.
1. In 1890 Mississippi was first to
adopt rules to keep blacks from voting; others followed. Skirting the
principles in the 15th Amendment, the state approved a variety of
measures to exclude blacks from the vote: poll taxes, ‘grandfather clauses’ – only those whose grandfathers had voted given right, ‘understanding tests’ – required voters to interpret constitutional texts and gave
local officials right to judge their accuracy, – all
white primary elections which allowed ‘private’ political parties to exclude non-whites.
-consequence,
in Louisiana, African American voting fell by 96 percent from 130,000 in 1896
to 5,000 in 1900, in Alabama only 1 percent of blacks qualified, Virginia 5
percent, Mississippi and Georgia less than ½ of 1
percent.
2. Booker T. Washington, head of
Tuskegee Institute, emerged as main spokesperson for black accommodation.
-he
shrewdly juggled the need to calm white fears while seeking modest gains
a. Advocated education
in the self-supporting crafts, such as carpentry.
b. Only way to obtain
financial support from northern white philanthropists.
c. Invited to address Cotton
States Exposition in Atlanta in 1895 which was an unprecedented move.
F. Not all blacks, however, shared Washington's passivity.
S #23 1. Challenge to segregation went all the way to the Supreme Court.
-Homer
Plessy, one-eighth Negro deliberately entered a white railroad car to violate a
law that mandated “equal but separate accommodations for
white and coloured races”
-arrested
and convicted in Louisiana
a. Supreme Court, Plessy
v. Ferguson (1894) accepted separate but equal facilities. – upheld the principle in 1896.
b. Did affirm rights of
African Americans to equal citizenship.
-two
years later courts extended citizenship to US born children of Chinese
immigrants, even though Asian born residents were not permitted to become
citizens.
-Chinese
citizens were eventually declared “coloured” and barred also from white facilities.
2. Harvard-educated intellectual W.
E. B. DuBois explored difficulty of being black in America.
-in an
essay “Striving of the Negro People,” first published the year after the Plessy ruling and
reprinted in Souls of Black Folk (1903) DuBois explored the idea of
enforced ‘double-consciousness’ – two
waring ideals within one dark body: An American and a Negro
a. Dual identity made
full assimilation difficult.
b. Reluctant to break
with Washington, at least for the time being.
G. The limits of assimilation also applied to Native
Americans.
1. White expansion across the west
continued despite Native land claims.
2. Federal government did nothing to
help.
3. Both greed and prejudice used to
justify lack of sympathy for Native Americans.
4. Government agreed to fund
education, but only in segregated schools. S #24 - Sioux at Carlisle
School
S #25, IV. The Road to Empire
A. Great range of factors impelling United States to a more
active foreign policy.
1. Sense of Anglo-Saxon superiority – Manifest Destiny– fueled
interest in overseas expansion.
2. Protestant missionary desire to
save souls of other peoples.
3. Depression of 1890s underscored
need for foreign markets.
-recognizing
the importance of trade – Alfred
Thayer Mahan published a widely read book, The Influence of Sea Power
Upon History (1890) – he
emphasized the need to establish naval bases to protect access to markets once
they were secured.
S #26 B. Confluence of factors led
United States to seek commercial empire.
1. Desire for naval base in Samoan
Islands almost led to war with Germany in 1889 which had similar imperial
designs.
2. Mediation of boundary dispute
between Venezuela and British Guiana in 1895 close to the site of a future
canal saw Richard Olney, Grover Cleveland’s Secretary
of State invoke the Monroe Doctrine, forbidding European interference in the
Western Hemisphere, the administration threatened war – Britain had a smaller stake in the region and accepted
arbitration.
3. U.S. residents in Hawaii petitioned
for statehood in 1893 and 1897.
-joined
in 1898
- US saw
its sugar plantations threatened by Japanese interests and its 30,000 contract
labourers (one-fifth of the islands population).
-strategic
and economic importance led McKinley to reverse Cleveland’s policy and urged ratification of treaty of annexation. – Hawaiian islands were annexed in 1898.
C. The Spanish-American War in 1898 was proof of the
nation's new international vision.
1. Ostensibly to bring order to
Cuba, a Spanish colony wracked by revolution.
-pressure
applied on Cleveland by US newspaper magnates lead by Hearst and Pulitzer to
intervene on behalf of the rebels battling Spain.
-both
Cleveland and McKinley, the last Civil War President were reluctant,
-as
political pressures increased, and conditions deteriorated in Cuba, US economic
interests were jeopardized
-McKinley
sent the battleship Maine to Havana but a mysterious explosion destroyed
the ship, killed 200 and believing that it was Spanish mines – McKinley promptly delivered a war message in April 1898 and
Congress responded by recognizing Cuban independence and authorizing military
force to expel Spain from the colony.
-military
victory came easy in Cuba, a month-long, 400 US deaths in combat (although over
5000 eventually died of yellow fever).
-Theodore
Roosevelt became the most celebrated fighter, organized a cavalry known as the
Rough Riders, and his much publicized charge up Cuba’s San Juan Hill eventually superceded Custer’s last stand in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West pageant.
-US
promised that they would pull out of Cuba, had no desire to become an Imperial
power. They lied and remained to protect their investments.
-Hence
herein lies the origins of US rights negotiated and sponsored by Senator
Orville Platt, that provided for the withdrawal of US troops, only after Cuba
accepted limited sovereignty – a right
to meddle in Cuban affairs and to construct a naval base at Guantanamo Bay.
2. Great U.S. victory; secured Guam,
Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.
-Puerto
Ricans received rights of US citizenship, though only nonvoting representation
in Washington. In this way the US established its dominance in the Caribbean
-At
Manila, the US Pacific Fleet under Admiral George Dewey destroyed the Spanish
navy in a single day and US forces quickly overtook the capital.
-Spain
accepted defeat in the region and for 20 million sold these countries to the
US.
a. Four-year struggle to
subdue Philippine attempts under half-Chinese Philippine nationalist Emilio
Aguinaldo to secure independence ensued.
b. Generated significant
anti-imperialist sentiment at home.
c.
-ultimately
the idea of giving
V. Entering the Global Arena--New Interest in
1. Acquisition of
2.
3.
4. Emerged as major player in world
politics.
5. As twentieth century began, new
