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Name: Date: Period: Grade:

Mr. Pierre’s U.S. History

Unit 5 Gilded Age and Progressive Era

*Continuation

1. Media Bias and Labor Unions (Pg. 2-5) Complete Date: 4/1/2020

2. Immigration and Urbanization (Pg. 6-9) Complete Date: 4/3/2020

3. Robber barons or Captains of Industry (Pg. 10-13) Complete Date: 4/6/2020

4. Political Cartoons of the Gilded Age (Pg.14-16) Complete Date: 4/8/2020

5. Reform Movements (Pg.17-20)* Complete Date: 4/10/2020

Instructions: Please read carefully all

instructions to every section of this

Assignment. If you have any questions,

please don’t hesitate to email me @

jpierre@bridgeportedu.net

Remember to use your Microsoft Office365 Also, create a schedule that allows for the completion of this assignment, and, and to complete online check Microsoft office 365 for Word

Doc Copy.

Assignment Due Date: April / 10 /2020*

Essential Questions:

Equality: Is there an American Experience? Economic Systems: To what extent does the American economy shape the American experience? Reform Movements: How does people effect change in their society?

*Students, there are only less than 20 pages of assignments, and the continuing

pages are just reading resources.

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Part II: Industrialization & the Gilded Age

Media Bias and Labor Unions

Objective: How can the media influence popular opinion? How does the media influence

politics?

Evaluating Sources

Brain Dump:

1. What or who is the media?

2. What does it mean to be biased?

3. Is the media ever biased?

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Media Bias and Labor Unions in the Gilded Age

Directions: You have been assigned to learn about the Haymarket Riots of 1886 and the Pullman Strike of 1893. Read the historical context and details of the events posted below.

Haymarket Riot Pullman Strike

Why did the laborers strike?

Did the laborers win the strike?

How are the laborers described in the media?

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Haymarket Riot #1 Historical Context: During the gilded age, the steel, railways, and lumber industries, employed many new immigrants from Europe working 60 - 100-hour work weeks over 6 days, with wages as low as $1.50 per day ($37.64 in today’s dollars). In Chicago, German and Bohemian immigrants organized unions to try and demand better working conditions. Many of these organizers were also members of anarchist and socialist parties that believed that capitalism was ruining America and squeezing the working class into poverty while the rich simply became richer. The Chicago industrial workers went on strike on May 1st, 1886 to lobby for an 8-hour workday and higher pay.

Events of the Haymarket Riot: On May 3, 1886, at a rally outside of a factory, union

leader August Spies gave a speech in which he told striking workers to stay calm and

stand by their union, or they would not succeed in their strike for better working

conditions and an 8 hour work day. At the end of his speech, the bell for the end of the

workday rang out, and striking unionists attacked men who had broken the strike and

gone to work. In trying to calm the fights that followed this attack, police opened fire,

killing four demonstrators. The next day, workers held a vigil and rally at Haymarket

Square to protest the police killings. August Spies and fellow union leader Albert

Parsons gave speeches. At the end of the speeches, the police marched towards the

protesters and asked them to break up the rally and go home. As they advanced, gun

shots were exchanged between the protesters and the police, when suddenly a bomb

exploded killing six police officers. The strike quickly came to an end as a result of the

Haymarket riot and an anti-union movement swept through Chicago. The entire labor

and immigrant community in Chicago came under police scrutiny. The strikers did not

win an 8-hour workday until many years later.

Pullman Strike #2 Historical Context: During and after the Civil War, the railway industry dominated the American economy and was the nation’s single largest employer. In Chicago, George Pullman built a different kind of company for manufacturing railroad cars. To produce the cars, he built a manufacturing plant located in a company-owned town on the outskirts of Chicago. The company town was touted as a model community filled with content, well paid workers. During the economic depression of 1893, George Pullman sought to preserve profits by lowering labor costs - so he slashed his workforce by 1,200 workers and cut wages by 25 percent. Workers were required to live in the company town, which meant they rented and bought household provisions from the

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Pullman company. While wages had been slashed, the cost of living in the company town did not change, leading workers to strike.

Events of the Pullman Strike: The Pullman factory workers went on strike and were

joined by the American Railway Union (ARU) and its leader, Eugene Debs. The ARU

supported the strike by refusing to run trains containing Pullman cars. The plan was to

force the railroads to bring Pullman to compromise. Once on strike, the laborers

proceeded to obstruct railroad tracks preventing the transportation of goods and

attracting national attention. The strike affected nearly all of America. The strike was

ended with President Grover Cleveland used the US Marshals and US Army troops to

force the workers to resume their duties. The laborers did not win an improvement in

their working conditions or a pay increase, and the American economy suffered losses

of over $80,000,000 because of the work stoppage.

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Immigration and Urbanization

Immigration: Arriving in America

Objective: How can the corroboration of sources further our understanding of immigrant

inspections in the early 1900’s?

Evaluating Sources

Historical Context: Read the historical context below closely and answer the analysis

questions.

Between 1885 and 1920, approximately 21,000,000 immigrants arrived in America. Roughly 75

percent of them entered through New York Bay and were processed at Ellis Island after the

immigration station opened in 1892.

When Ellis Island opened in 1892, a great change was taking place in patterns of immigration to the

United States. Fewer arrivals after 1890 were coming from northern and western Europe, Germany,

Ireland, Britain and the Scandinavian countries. Instead, more and more immigrants poured in from

southern and eastern Europe. For example, among this new generation of immigrants were Jews

escaping from political and economic oppression in Russia and eastern Europe (some 484,000

arrived in 1910 alone) and Italians escaping poverty in their country. Additionally, immigrants were

pouring in from non-European nations such as Syria, Turkey, and Armenia.

The arrival of immigrants from new parts of the world brought fears of new diseases and new germs

being introduced to the United States. As a result, immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island were first

met by medical officers from the US Public Health Service (USPHS), who examined them for

evidence of “loathsome or dangerous contagious diseases,” which could be grounds for sending

immigrants home. When Ellis Island opened its doors in 1892, there were six physicians. By 1916,

there were 25 physicians and four inspection lines running simultaneously.

During the early years of the 20th century, trachoma, an infectious eye disease that could lead to

blindness if left untreated, became one of the leading reasons for excluding immigrants on medical

grounds. To check for trachoma USPHS officers would flip back immigrants’ eyelids using their

fingers or a buttonhook, an implement originally intended for fastening the small buttons common on

shoes and clothing at the time.

Written using resources from: PBS Newshour, History Channel, and the National Archives

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Analysis Questions:

1. Close Reading: What happened to the pattern of immigration to the United States

after 1890? Why did this lead to the need for medical inspection of immigrants?

2. Close Reading: How did medical inspectors check for trachoma? What does the

use of buttonhooks communicate about how inspectors may have viewed

immigrants?

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Document #2 Analysis: Review the image (s) below carefully and answer the analysis

questions that follow.

Ellis Island, N.Y. Line Inspection of Arriving Aliens (1923) - National Archives

Original image found here

Zoomed In:

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Analysis Questions:

1. Close reading: What do you see in this image?

2. Analysis: What do you think this happening in this image?

.

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Robber barons or Captains of Industry

Objective: Why were the industrialists of the Gilded Age sometimes characterized as

Robber Barons? Why were they sometimes characterized as Captains of Industry?

Using Evidence

Brain Dump: Read the introduction below, then answer the three pre-analysis

questions.

Introduction

During the Gilded Age (1870’s - 1900), the American Economy shifted its focus

from an agricultural based economy to one that was steeped in

industrialization. As a result of the boom of the American economy, a newly

created middle class enjoyed wealth & prosperity. Beyond their reach was an

elite group of wealthy businessmen that controlled much of the economic

interests of the United States. Nearly all of them started out as entrepreneurs,

and amassed large fortunes that would later become wealthy family trusts.

These men, such as John D Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius

Vanderbilt, and Jay Gould, would not only be defined by their wealth, but would

forever be known as “captains of industry” and “robber barons” in studies of

American history.

Pre-Analysis Questions

1. Mr. Rockefeller is sometimes described by historians as a “robber baron”. Does that

sound like a positive or negative characterization to you? Why?

2. Mr. Carnegie is sometimes described by historians as a “captain of industry”. Does that

sound like a positive or negative characterization to you? Why?

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3. If you were a businessman or businesswoman or simply a business leader, would you

rather be described as a robber baron or a captain of industry? Why?

Directions: Students are to do some online research about the listed individuals below, and fill out the appropriate boxes. (i.e. google)

Andrew Carnegie

Industry:

How he acquired wealth:

Treatment of workers:

$$ (Donate / Spend):

Robber Baron or Captain of Industry? Circle on

Evidence:

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JD Rockefeller

Industry:

How he acquired wealth:

Treatment of workers:

$$ (Donate / Spend):

Robber Baron or Captain of Industry? Circle on Evidence:

Vanderbilt

Industry:

How he acquired wealth:

Treatment of workers:

$$ (Donate / Spend):

Robber Baron or Captain of Industry? Circle on

Evidence:

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JP Morgan

Industry:

How he acquired wealth:

Treatment of workers:

$$ (Donate / Spend):

Robber Baron or Captain of Industry? Circle on Evidence:

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Political Cartoons of the Gilded Age

Objectives: What can we learn about the Gilded age from analyzing a variety of political

cartoons? How do political cartoons help document contemporary, historical or political

thought? How do I analyze a political cartoon?

Political Cartoon Analysis Guide

Directions: There are many different ways to analyze political cartoons. Below is one

suggested format or protocol you can use to analyze political cartoons. This protocol

breaks down cartoons into four areas of analysis - visuals, words, actions, and

meaning. Use the sample political cartoon below to complete your analysis.

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Visuals

List the objects or people you see in the cartoon List the symbols you see in the cartoon

Words

List the words or phrases (ignore the help text inserted around

the cartoon)

List the dates or

numbers

Action

Describe the action or actions taking

place

Describe the facial expressions you see on any

characters

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Meaning

1. What do you think the visuals, actions, and words in this cartoon convey? What

is the main idea or message of this political cartoon?

2. Whose opinion or point of view is represented in this cartoon? Whose point of

view is left out of this cartoon?

3. What does this political cartoon tell us about the Gilded Age and/or attitudes

towards Gilded Age industrialists?

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Reform Movements

Progressive Era Reform Movements

Graphic Organizer

What were the reforms of the Progressive Era? Why were they necessary? How did

they impact Americans?

Directions: Attached are three graphic organizers. Use these graphic organizers and the prompts (column titles, labels within the columns) to document the causes and effects of different Progressive Era reform movements and reformers. Use a variety of sources to complete these graphic organizers (your class notes and classwork, textbooks, etc). When you have completed the graphic organizers, use the space below to reflect on the Progressive Era using the guided reflection questions. Finally, use your responses to these questions and completed graphic organizers for the written task.

Guided Reflection Questions:

• Progressive means favoring or promoting change towards new ideas. Based on these graphic organizers, why do you think this time period (1890 - 1915) was known as the Progressive Era?

• Why do you think conservatives, a group of people who do not believe in change and hold strongly to traditional values, were challenged by or didn’t agree with Progressive Era reforms?

• What patterns or themes do you see emerging from the reform movements of the Progressive Era?

• The following were two major campaign issues from the 2016 presidential election. Which of these ideas do you think are progressive? Which do you think is conservative? Why?

o Raising the minimum wage to $15 o Re-investing in coal energy and ending federal grants for solar and wind energy

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Social Reform

Social Reformer Social Reform

Movement

Reform Movement Details

Cause

Effect

Booker T Washington Education of

African Americans

Who:

What:

Jane Addams Social Work Movement

Who:

What:

WEB Du Bois African American

Civil Rights

Who:

What:

Margaret Sanger Women’s Rights

Who:

What:

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Federal Reforms

Federal Reform Reform Details Cause Effect

Sherman Antitrust Act

1890 &

Clayton Antitrust Act 1914

Who:

What:

Pure Food and Drug Act 1906

and 1911 &

Meat Inspection Act

1906

Who:

What:

Department of Labor 1913

Who:

What:

Federal Reserve Act 1913

Who:

What:

16th Amendment

1913

Who:

What:

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Federal Reforms

Federal Reform Reform Details Cause Effect

17th Amendment

1913

Who:

What:

Keating Owen Act

1916

Who:

What:

18th Amendment

1919

Who:

What:

19th Amendment

1919

Who:

What:

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Reading Resources for the above DBQ.

Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois

Booker T Washington | Image from Library of Congress

Born a slave on a Virginia farm, Washington (1856-1915) rose to become one of the most influential African-American intellectuals of the late 19th century. As a child, he worked in a salt furnace and served as a houseboy for a white family. Washington was educated at Hampton Institute, one of the earliest freedmen’s schools devoted to industrial education Growing up during Reconstruction, he came to believe that postwar social uplift of African Americans should not begin with the acquisition of political and civil rights, but instead, economic self-sufficiency. In 1881, he founded the Tuskegee Institute, a black school in Alabama devoted to industrial and moral education and to the training of public school teachers. Washington was also behind the formation of the National Negro Business League 20 years later, and he served as an adviser to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.

Primary Source Document - The Atlanta Compromise (original document): On September 18 1895, Booker T. Washington spoke before a predominantly white audience at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, this speech became known as the “Atlanta Compromise”.

...the opportunity here afforded will awaken among us a new era of industrial progress. Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the top instead of at the bottom; that a seat in Congress or the state legislature was more sought than real estate or industrial skill; that the political convention or stump speaking had more attractions than starting a dairy farm or truck garden. A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal, “Water, water; we die of thirst!” The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” A second time the signal, “Water, water; send us water!” ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” And a third and fourth signal for water was answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding

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the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River. To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say: “Cast down your bucket where you are”... Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions…. Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour, and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities. ... The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized...The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house...

W.E.B Du Bois | Image from Library of Congress

Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois’s family was part of a small free black community who owned land in the state. His ancestors were both white and black. Educated at Fisk University (1885-1888), Harvard University (1888-1896), and the University of Berlin (1892-1894), Du Bois studied with some of the most important social thinkers of his time and then embarked upon a seventy-year career that combined scholarship and teaching with lifelong activism in liberation struggles. He earned fame for the publication of such works as Souls of Black Folk (1903), and was a founding officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and editor of its magazine. Dubois also taught at Wilberforce University and Atlanta University, and chaired the Peace Information Center.

Primary Source Document A - Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others (original document) - The most influential public critique of Booker T. Washington’s policy of racial accommodation and gradualism came in 1903 when black leader and intellectual W.E.B. DuBois published an essay in his collection The Souls of Black Folk.

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Easily the most striking thing in the history of the American Negro since 1876 is the ascendancy of Mr. Booker T. Washington. It began at the time when war memories and ideals were rapidly passing; a day of astonishing commercial development was dawning; a sense of doubt and hesitation overtook the freedmen's sons,—then it was that his leading began. Mr. Washington came, with a simple definite program, at the psychological moment when the nation was a little ashamed of having bestowed so much sentiment on Negroes [during Reconstruction] and was concentrating its energies on Dollars…. ...Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission; but adjustment at such a peculiar time as to make his program unique. This is an age of unusual economic development, and Mr. Washington’s program naturally takes an economic cast, becoming a gospel of Work and Money to such an extent as apparently almost completely to overshadow the higher aims of life... Mr. Washington distinctly asks that black people give up, at least for the present, three things, — First, political power, Second, insistence on civil rights, Third, higher education of Negro youth, — and concentrate all their energies on industrial education, the accumulation of wealth, and conciliation (placating) of the South. This policy has been courageously and insistently advocated for over fifteen years, and has been triumphant for perhaps ten years. As a result of this tender of the palm-branch, what has been the return? In these years there have occurred: 1. The disfranchisement of the Negro. 2. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro. 3. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro. In his failure to realize and impress this last point, Mr. Washington is especially to be criticized. His doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro problem to the Negro’s shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators; when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs…By every civilized and peaceful method we must strive for the rights which the world accords to men, clinging unwaveringly to those great words which the sons of the Fathers would fain forget: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Primary Source Document B - Talented Tenth (original document) - The idea of the talented tenth came from Northern philanthropists who were mostly white. The idea was published by W.E.B Du Bois in his essay the Talented Tenth which appeared in a collection of essays by African American leaders titled The Negro Problem in 1903.

...The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth...How then shall

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the leaders of a struggling people be trained and the hands of the risen few strengthened? There can be but one answer: The best and most capable of their youth must be schooled in the

colleges and universities of the land… I am an earnest advocate of manual training and trade teaching for black boys, and for white boys, too. I believe that next to the founding of Negro colleges the most valuable addition to Negro education since the war, has been industrial training for black boys. Nevertheless, I insist that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men; there are two means of making the carpenter a man, each equally important: the first is to give the group and community in which he works, liberally trained teachers and leaders to teach him and his family what life means; to train him to think and read and understand the classics and philosophy; the second is to give him sufficient intelligence and technical skill to make him an efficient workman; the first object demands the Negro college and college-bred men—not a quantity of such colleges, but a few of excellent quality; not too many college-bred men, but enough to leaven the lump, to inspire the masses, to raise the Talented Tenth to leadership; the second object demands a good system of common schools, well-taught, conventionally located and properly equipped … ...Education and work are the levers to uplift a people. Work alone will not do it unless inspired by the right ideals and guided by intelligence. Education must not simply teach work—it must teach Life. The Talented Tenth of the Negro race must be made leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among their people. No others can do this, and Negro colleges must train men for it. The Negro race, like all other races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men.

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Pure Food and Drugs Act

Artifact A: Labor Commissioner Charles Neill and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury James Reynolds were commissioned by President Theodore Roosevelt to conduct an inspection of the meatpacking industry - this is an excerpt from their findings - National Archives

To the Senate & the House of Representatives: “... This report is preliminary in nature. I submit it to you now because it shows the urgent need of immediate action by the Congress…. The conditions shown by even this short inspection to exist in the Chicago stock yards are revolting. It is imperatively necessary in the interest of health and of decency that they should be radically changed. Under the existing law it is wholly impossible to secure satisfactory results.

1. Condition of the yards: Before entering the buildings, we noted the condition of the yards themselves...the pavement is mostly of brick, the bricks laid with deep grooves between them, which inevitably fill with manure and refuse. The pavement cannot properly be cleaned and is slimy and malodorous...the smell and the bacteria from the manure inevitably end up in the meat products that are to be processed...Abominable as the above named conditions are, the one that affects most directly and seriously the cleanliness of the food products in the frequent absence of any bathroom provisions. Washing sinks are not furnished or are small and dirty. Neither are towels, soap, or toilet paper provided. Men and women return directly from the unsuitable bathrooms to plunge their unwashed hands into the meet to be converted into such food products as sausages, dried beef, and other compounds…

2. Treatment of Meats and Prepared Food Products: Uncleanliness in the handling of products ...In some of the largest establishments, slabs of meat that are sent to the boning room are thrown in a heap on the floor. The workers climb over these haps, select the pieces they wish, and frequently thrown them down upon the dirty floor next to their bench...

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Artifact B: The Bureau of Chemistry inspectors approached their work as detectives on a mission to protect consumers. This photo shows inspectors seizing and inspecting crates of eggs for possible contamination. If they were contaminated, they were to be burned - National Archives

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Artifact C: The Pure Food and Drugs Act: This act made it illegal to ship or receive non adulterated or misbranded food or drugs. To remove foods deemed “filthy, decomposed, or putrid” from the markets, FDA agents had to build scientific and legal cases against them - National Archives

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Artifact D: The Jungle - an excerpt: The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by the American journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair. Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities. As a muckraker, Upton Sinclair published his findings in hopes that the Federal Government would respond.

…Let a man so much as scrape his finger pushing a truck in the pickle rooms, and he might have a sore that would put him out of the world; all the joints in his fingers might be eaten by the acid, one by one. Of the butchers and floors men, the beef-boners and trimmers, and all those who used knives, you could scarcely find a person who had the use of his thumb; time and time again the base of it had been slashed, till it was a mere lump of flesh against which the man pressed the knife to hold it. The hands of these men would be criss- crossed with cuts, until you could no longer pretend to count them or to trace them. They would have no nails, – they had worn them off pulling hides; their knuckles were swollen so that their fingers spread out like a fan. There were men who worked in the cooking rooms, in the midst of steam and sickening odors, by artificial light; in these rooms the germs of tuberculosis might live for two years, but the supply was renewed every hour. There were the beef-luggers, who carried two-hundred-pound quarters into the refrigerator-cars; a fearful kind of work, that began at four o'clock in the morning, and that wore out the most powerful men in a few years. There were those who worked in the chilling rooms, and whose special disease was rheumatism; the time limit that a man could work in the chilling rooms was said to be five years. There were the wool-pluckers, whose hands went to pieces even sooner than the hands of the pickle men; for the pelts of the sheep had to be painted with acid to loosen the wool, and then the pluckers had to pull out this wool with their bare hands, till the acid had eaten their fingers off. There were those who made the tins for the canned meat; and their hands, too, were a maze of cuts, and each cut represented a chance for blood poisoning. Some worked at the stamping machines, and it was very seldom that one could work long there at the pace that was set, and not give out and forget himself and have a part of his hand chopped off…

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Artifact E: Ketchup: Ketchup was one of the first successful processed foods. By 1900 there were over 100 different brands of this popular condiment. Made from fermented tomato cores and skins, canners added vinegar to flavor and preserve it and dyes to make it red. Because the resulting concoction was prone to explode, canners started adding benzoate of soda as a preservative. Henry Heinz proved ketchup could be made without benzoate in a clean factory using ripe tomatoes - National Archives

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Artifact F: Slaughterhouse image: Slaughterhouses were largely unregulated before the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act. Here, a panoramic picture illustrating the beef industry from Chicago shows men without sanitary equipment, using mostly their bare hands, to butcher and slaughter the meat. Many times these laborers worked long hours and made costly mistakes that resulted in the loss of limbs. It was conditions like

these that inspired Upton Sinclair to write the Jungle - Library of Congress

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Artifact G: Branding Smoked Hams: The Meat Inspection Act followed the Pure Food and Drug Act; unlike the Pure Food and Drug Act, this legislation provided for inspection and approval before products went to market. National Archives

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Populist Party Platform

Historical Context

As the United States evolved into an industrial powerhouse in the decades following the Civil War, the growing strength of the railroads and the banks, coupled with the impact of mechanization on agricultural practices, challenged the financial stability of American farmers in ways never before experienced. Inventions such as the McCormick Reaper and steel plows made the work of farmers more efficient but had the side effect of putting many smaller farmers out of business. Other farmers struggled to make the payments on the expensively priced equipment or struggled to pay the high prices charged by the powerful railroad trusts to ferry their product to the larger markets. As a result, they were forced to borrow money to pay for these costs from banks that charged them unfair rates and often kept them in a cycle of debt and poverty. Throughout the 1860’s, 1870s and 1880s, farmers organized collectively, at first locally, and eventually nationally into the Grange Movement and Farmers Alliance, an organization that promoted economic cooperation and broad economic reform to protect the interests of farmers. Both of these movements helped to create the People’s Party, or the Populist Party, which officially established its party platform in Omaha, Nebraska, on July 4, 1892.

From: Gilder Lehrman

Excerpt #1: Introduction (preamble) to Platform (note - words that are bolded and in italics are defined below the reading)

The conditions which surround us best justify our co-operation; 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 bench. The people are demoralized; most of the States have been compelled to isolate the voters at the polling places to prevent universal intimidation and bribery. The newspapers are largely subsidized, or muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrated, homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right to organize for self-protection, imported pauperized labor beats down their wages.... The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; and the possessors of those, in turn, despise the republic and endanger liberty. From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice, we breed the two great classes — beggars and millionaires.

Vocabulary:

Muzzled: silenced Prostrated: overpowered Impoverished: to be forced into a state of poverty Capitalists: wealthy person who uses money to invest in trade and industry for profit Pauperized: to be made into a poor person Colossal: large, gigantic, many in quantity Prolific: plentiful

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Excerpt #2 Populist Party Platform (note - words that are bolded and in italics are defined below the reading)

We declare, therefore: First. —That the union of the labor forces of the United States this day ... shall be permanent and perpetual Second. —Wealth belongs to him who creates it, and every dollar taken from industry without an equivalent is robbery. “If any will not work, neither shall he eat.” The interests of rural and civic labor are the same; their enemies are identical. Third.—We believe that the time has come when the railroad corporations will either own the people or the people must own the railroads, and should the government enter upon the work of owning and managing all railroads, we should favor an amendment to the Constitution by which all persons engaged in the government service shall be placed under a civil-service regulation of the most rigid character, so as to prevent the increase of the power of the national administration by the use of such additional government employees. FINANCE.—We demand a national currency, safe, sound, and flexible, issued by the general government only, a full legal tender for all debts, public and private, and that without the use of banking corporations, a just, equitable, and efficient means of distribution direct to the people...

• We demand a graduated income tax. • We believe that the money of the country should be kept as much as possible in the hands of the

people, and hence we demand that all State and national revenues shall be limited to the necessary expenses of the government, economically and honestly administered.

• We demand that postal savings banks be established by the government for the safe deposit of the earnings of the people and to facilitate exchange.

TRANSPORTATION—Transportation being a means of exchange and a public necessity, the government should own and operate the railroads in the interest of the people. The telegraph, telephone, like the post-office system, being a necessity for the transmission of news, should be owned and operated by the government in the interest of the people, not in the interests of capitalists. LAND. —The land, including all the natural sources of wealth, is the heritage of the people, and should not be monopolized for speculative purposes, and alien [immigrant] ownership of land should be prohibited. All land now held by railroads and other corporations in excess of their actual needs, and all lands now owned by aliens [immigrants] should be reclaimed by the government and held for actual settlers only.

Vocabulary: Perpetual: everlasting Currency: system of money Full legal tender: coins or banknotes considered money Graduated: changes by a scale (in this case, a graduated income tax would mean you paid more as you earned more, paid less if you earned less) Revenues: profits Speculative: involving high risk of loss

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Document 2 Wall St Owns America: Speech by Mary Elizabeth Lease (1890) Mary Elizabeth Lease was a major leader in the Populist Party. At a time when women were

becoming more politically involved, she gave many speeches around the nation on behalf of the Populist Party to gain supporters.

Wall St Owns America (note - words that are bolded and in italics are defined below the reading)

This is a nation of inconsistencies. The Puritans fleeing from oppression became oppressors. We fought England for our liberty and put chains on four million of blacks. We wiped out slavery and our tariff laws and national banks began a system of white wage slavery worse than the first. Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. The West and South are bound and lay themselves before the manufacturing East. Money rules, and our Vice-President [Levi Parsons Morton] is a London banker. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us. We were told two years ago to go to work and raise a big crop, that was all we needed. We went to work and plowed and planted; the rains fell, the sun shone, nature smiled, and we raised the big crop that they told us to; and what came of it? Eight-cent corn, ten-cent oats, two-cent beef and no price at all for butter and eggs-that's what came of it. Then the politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction, when 10,000 little children, so statistics tell us, starve to death every year in the United States, and over 100,000 shop-girls in New York are forced to sell their virtue for the bread their miserly wages deny them .... We want money, land and transportation. We want the abolition of the National Banks, and we want the power to make loans direct from the Government...we will not pay our debts to the loan-shark banks until the Government pays its debts to us. The people are at bay, [so] let the bloodhounds of money who dogged us thus far beware.

Vocabulary:

Miserly: penny-pinching, cheap

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Living Wage

Person Daily Wage Rate* - Manufacturing Industries (1899)

Hourly Wage Rate 1899

Yearly Income - 1899

Estimated (today’s value)

Skilled men $2.25 22 cents an hour

$702 ($20,000)

Unskilled men

$1.23 12 cents an hour

$383 ($11,000)

Skilled women

$1.32 13 cents an hour

$412 ($11,500)

Unskilled women

$0.78 8 cents an hour

$243 ($6800)

In comparison, Andrew Carnegie made approximately $40,000,000 in 1899 ($1,091,062,674 in today’s dollars)

Source: Missouri Bureau of Labor Statistics 1899 *For this daily rate, laborers were expected to work 10 - 14 hours a day, 6 days a week

1. Based on this image, and the information provided in the historical context, what do you think motivated Rev. John A. Ryan to suggest a living wage?

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Source: A Living Wage: Its Ethical and Economic Aspects by Rev. John A. Ryan (New York, 1912) (note: bolded words are defined beneath the excerpt)

“A man’s natural rights are as many and as extensive as are the liberties, opportunities, and possessions that are required for the reasonable maintenance and development of his personality...Some of them, for instance the right to live and the right to marry, are original and primary, inhering in all persons of whatever condition; others are derived and secondary, occasioned and determined by the particular circumstances of particular persons. To the second class belongs the right to a living wage. It is not an original and universal right; for the receiving of wages supposes that form of industrial organization known as the wage system, which has not always existed and is not essential to human welfare…..The right to a living wage is evidently a derived right which is measured and determined by existing social and industrial institutions…. So much for the right to subsistence, to a bare livelihood. By a decent livelihood is meant that amount of the necessities and comforts of life that is in keeping with the dignity of a human being. It has not precise relation to the conventional standard of living that may prevail within any social or industrial class, but describes rather that minimum of conditions which the average person of a given age or gender must enjoy in order to live as a human being should live...in a reasonable degree of comfort...He must have food, clothing and shelter… The obligation of providing the laborer with a Living Wage...rests upon the State...Negatively, liberty is the absence of restraint; positively, it is the power to act and enjoy...the absence of State intervention means the presence of insuperable obstacles to real and effective liberty...Such legislation would secure a wider measure of freedom in larger economic opportunity….the State has both the right and duty to compel all employers to pay a Living Wage.”

Vocabulary

Liberties: freedom over choices to make for oneself Inhering: exist within (permanent) Derived: acquired, gained, not just given to you Industrial: related to business, commercial production, trade Wage: payment for labor Subsistence: maintenance Prevail: overcome Laborer: someone who works at physical work for a living (coal miner, railroad worker), workman Insuperable: difficult to overcome

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19th Amendment

Women’s Suffrage Movement - Historical Context

Formed in 1890, the National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) had two main tactics aimed at gaining women the right to vote. The first was through a federal constitutional amendment, while the second tactic operated under the belief that women’s enfranchisement could be more easily obtained through a state-by-state campaign.

Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, originally members of the NAWSA, were appointed to the troubled Congressional Committee. Paul and Burns were radicalized by their experiences in England, which included violent confrontations with authorities, jail sentences, hunger strikes, and force-feedings, and they sought to inject these radical ways into the American campaign. The President of the NAWSA, Carrie Chapman Catt, didn’t believe in the tactics that Alice Paul and Lucy Burns were asking to pursue.

This disagreement led to the formation of the NWP (National Women's Party), a group separate from NAWSA that also endeavored to fight for women’s suffrage. Forming in 1912, the NWP was led by Alice Paul & Lucy Burns.

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Document A: Youngest Parader in New York City NAWSA suffrage parade New York City, May 6, 1912

This image is taken from a NAWSA organized parade in New York City in 1912. The parade was rather peaceful, and included young women, older women, and children. The parade marchers carried signs, and asked observers to sign a petition supporting women gaining the right to vote in New York state. The banner in the back reads “We demand equal representation for equal taxation” echoing the revolutionary war cry “No taxation without representation.”

Document C: NWP Suffragists demonstrating against President Woodrow Wilson October 1916

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Document D: Alice Paul Excerpt from speech for suffrage activists luncheon New York, Dec. 1916.

"We are not working to win New York. We are working to put the Federal Suffrage Amendment in the Constitution. The trouble with the suffragists is they are like the allies in the war.... State suffrage by its scattered methods is losing as the allies have been losing."

Document E: Letter from Carrie Chapman Catt, President (NAWSA), to Champ Clark, Speaker of the House, April 10, 1917

Hon Champ Clark, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Washington

DC

My dear sir:

On behalf of NAWSA, I write to ask that a Committee on Woman Suffrage be appointed in the House of Representatives as there is in in the Senate of the Congress of the United States. We make this request because the Judiciary Committee, to which constitutional amendments are referred, is always and has been so occupied with other important questions, that it has never been able to give consideration due to this measure supported by so large a portion of our people…a separate committee will allow more time, energy, attention, and thought to the issue of women’s suffrage...which it so desperately needs and deserves...

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Document G: Starving for Women’s Suffrage: “I Am Not Strong after These Weeks” - NWP members who had been imprisoned in the Occoquan Workhouse went on a hunger strike to draw international attention to their cause. Prison authorities responded with brutal force feedings - this article details that ordeal. The New York Times Published: November 7, 1917 Copyright © The New York Times

MISS ALICE PAUL ON HUNGER STRIKE

Suffragist Leader Adopts This Means of Protesting Against Washington Prison Fare.

NOW IN JAIL HOSPITAL

Threatens to Starve to Death Unless Better Food Is Provided for Six Companions.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 6- Alice Paul, National Chairman for the Woman’s Party, now doing a seven months’ sentence in jail here for picketing the White House, has gone on a hunger strike, and tonight she had been in the jail hospital without food for the preceding twenty-four hours, stolidly threatening to starve herself to death unless her six companions, serving time for the same offense, got better food.

So far, the jail officials are taking the strike calmly and waiting for Miss Paul to get hungry enough to eat. Forcible feeding has not been discussed as yet. But inasmuch as Miss Paul made somewhat of a record for herself as a hunger striker in an English jail several years ago, while militating with Mrs. Pankhurst, headquarters of the Woman’s Party is quite confident that she will give the prison officials a surprise of they expect her to yield quickly.

Miss Paul, a slight, little woman, weighing about ninety pounds and a delicate constitution, was taken to the jail hospital last night because she was ill. Miss Paul said she was ill because of bad food, bad air, and no exercise. Woman’s Party officials say she and the other militants have been getting a coarse diet principally of salt pork and cabbage at the rate of eighteen times in thirteen days. When Miss Paul was taken to the hospital a diet, including milk and eggs and without the salt pork and cabbage, was offered her, but she announced she would have none of it unless her sisters got the same.

Tonight Dr. Cora Smith King, Miss Paul’s physician, who was permitted to attend her, issued a bulletin saying Miss Paul was much thinner than when she centered the jail, Oct 22, was refusing food, and would not touch a morsel until she and her companions received the same treatment as seventeen murderers, who have the privilege of special food, air exercise, and the newspapers.

“If we are to be starved, I prefer to be starved at once,” was the message Miss Paul sent out to the workers. “There is no use giving us special food today and not tomorrow simply to keep us alive as long as possible.”

Although the militants have announced they will not resume picketing the White House until Congress reconvenes in December, they consider that a hunger strike is a sufficient climax, for the present at least, to their efforts to force President Wilson to indorse woman suffrage by Constitutional amendment.

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Document H: Title: National Woman’s Party fires burn outside White House, Jan. 1919

Sign Text: “President Wilson is Deceiving the world when he appears as the prophet of Democracy. President Wilson has opposed those who demand democracy for this country. He is responsible for the Disenfranchisement of Millions of Americans. We in America know this. The world will find him out.”

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Document I: Map of States and Territories before the 19th amendment - States and territories that granted women the right to vote before the 19th amendment were the result of the work that NAWSA did.

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How the Other Half Lives

Inquiry

As a result of industrialization and urbanization in the Gilded Age (1870 - 1910), America was changed forever; in some ways the change was positive, and in other ways the changes were negative. The Progressive Era is the name given to the time period between 1890 and 1920; this name reflects the desire of a large group of American citizens to help society “progress” or move forward as a result of economic changes during the Industrial Age. Progressive reform in this time period depended upon journalism as an important tool to raise public awareness of serious societal problems. Investigative journalists encouraged the progressive reform movement by not only informing and educating the public of serious issues, but also by describing the problems in such detail that the government was forced to intervene to correct the injustice. For example, in the 1870’s meat and food production became industrial. This helped companies produce meat and food more quickly to meet the demands of the growing American population, but also meant that the food production industry changed radically. New workers were forced to work long hours in often unsanitary conditions. After Upton Sinclair published The Jungle detailing the unsanitary practices of a meat packaging plant in Chicago, the US government began to regulate food production; the largest regulation came when President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Meat Inspection Act (1906) of and Pure Foods and Drug Act of (1906). The investigative journalists who played a major role in the Progressive Era were known as muckrakers. A table of muckrakers and the reform issues they brought to light are below.

Author Book or Work Issue they uncovered

Lincoln Steffens

Shame of a City Corruption in state and city politics

Upton Sinclair

The Jungle Unsanitary conditions in meat packing industry

Lewis Hines NCLC (National Child Labor Committee)

Child labor, unsafe and exploitative practices

Ida Tarbell The History of the Standard Oil Company

Monopolistic and at aggressive business practices of Robber Barons

Jacob Riis How the Other Half Lives NYC tenement housing and unsafe living conditions of immigrants and poorest class

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In the 1800’s, New York City grew at a rapid pace and became a thriving city of culture, wealth,

and innovation. However, not all residents were wealthy. Many lived in total poverty and

dangerous living conditions, especially new immigrants. Jacob Riis immigrated to the United

States in 1870; first working as a carpenter, he eventually was able to secure a job as a news

reporter at The New York Tribune. After some time, he was assigned to be a police reporter and

reported on crimes in the New York City slums and tenements. This gave him a firsthand look

at the tenements of the Lower East Side of Manhattan where most of the newly arriving

immigrants lived. After months of documenting the unsafe living conditions in tenements, Jacob

Riis gave a speech and displayed his photographs of the tenements at a church; the talk was

titled “How the Other Half Lives”.

Dens of Death Jacob Riis, 1872

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Yard in Jersey Street (now gone) Where Italians Live in the Worst Slums Jacob Riis (before 1898)

Image caption: It costs a dollar a month to sleep in these sheds

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Lodgers in a crowded Bayard Street tenement - "Five cents a spot." Jacob Riis 1890

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The "Slide" that was the Children's only Playground once Jacob Riis (1898)

Vocabulary (words are listed in order in which they appear in the text)

Tenant - person who rents a space Promiscuous -immoral Harbor - keeping or protecting Industrious - hard working Thoroughfares - road Ventilation - fresh air in a room

Tenement - small cramped living space Mosaic - pattern or design Sullen - gloomy Notorious - famous for negative reasons Importation - bring into a country Exclusive - unique

Waxing- increase Exorbitant - excessively high Slough - swamp Apprehension - anxiety, worry Sediment - residue Gregarious - talkative or friendly Inexorable - impossible to stop

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Chapter 1: Genesis of the Tenement

...There had been tenant houses before, but they were not built for that purpose. Nothing would

probably have shocked their original owners more than the idea of their harboring a

promiscuous crowd; for they were the decorous homes of the old Knickerbockers, the proud

aristocracy of Manhattan in the early days. It was the stir and bustle of trade, together with the

tremendous immigration that followed upon the war of 1812 that dislodged them. In thirty-five

years the city of less than a hundred thousand came to harbor half a million souls, for whom

houses had to be found...Their comfortable dwellings in the once fashionable streets along the

East River fell into the hands of real-estate agents and boarding-house keepers...in it’s

beginnings, the tenant-house became a real blessing to that class of industrious poor whose

small earnings limited their expenses, and whose employment in workshops, stores, or about

the warehouses and thoroughfares, render a near residence of much importance…their large

rooms were partitioned into several smaller ones without regard to light or ventilation, the rate

of rent being lower in proportion to space or height from the street...Neatness, order,

cleanliness, were never dreamed of in connection with the tenant-house system…

Chapter 2: The Awakening ...Today, what is a tenement?...It is generally a brick building from four to six stories high on the street, frequently with a store on the first floor which, when used for the sale of liquor, has a side opening for the benefit of inmates and to evade the Sunday law; four families occupy each floor, and a set of rooms consists of one or two dark closets, used as bedrooms, with a living room feet by ten. The staircase is too often a dark well in the center of the house, and no direct through ventilation is possible, each family being separated from the other by partitions. Frequently the rear of the lot is occupied by another building of three stories high with two families on a floor...The statement once made a sensation that between seventy and eighty children had been found in one tenement. It no longer excites even passing attention, when the sanitary police report counting 101 adults and 91 children in a Crosby Street house, one of twins, built together. The children in the other, if I am not mistaken, numbered 89, a total of 180 for two tenements! Or when a midnight inspection in Mulberry Street unearths a hundred and fifty "lodgers" sleeping on filthy floors in two buildings. Spite of brown-stone trimmings, plate-glass and mosaic vestibule floors, the water does not rise in summer to the second story, while the beer flows unchecked to the all-night picnics on the roof. The saloon with the side-door and the landlord divide the prosperity of the place between them, and the tenant, in sullen submission, foots the bills.

Chapter 3: The Mixed Crowd When once I asked the agent of a notorious Fourth Ward alley how many people might be living in it I was told: One hundred and forty families, one hundred Irish, thirty-eight Italian, and two that spoke the German tongue...One may find for the asking an Italian, a German, a French, African, Spanish, Bohemian, Russian, Scandinavian, Jewish, and Chinese colony. Even the

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Arab, who peddles "holy earth" from the Battery as a direct importation from Jerusalem, has his exclusive preserves at the lower end of Washington Street. The one thing you shall vainly ask for in the chief city of America is a distinctively American community. There is none; certainly not among the tenements. Where have they gone to, the old inhabitants? I put the question to one who might fairly be presumed to be of the number, since I had found him sighing for the "good old days" when the legend "no Irish need apply" was familiar in the advertising columns of the newspapers. He looked at me with a puzzled air. "I don't know," he said. "I wish I did. Some went to California in '49, some to the war and never came back. The rest, I expect, have gone to heaven, or somewhere. I don't see them 'round here." ...New York's wage-earners have no other place to live, more is the pity. They are truly poor for having no better homes; waxing poorer in purse as the exorbitant rents to which they are tied, as ever was serf to soil, keep rising. The wonder is that they are not all corrupted, and speedily, by their surroundings. If, on the contrary, there be a steady working up, if not out of the slough, the fact is a powerful argument for the optimist's belief that the world is, after all, growing better, not worse, and would go far toward disarming apprehension, were it not for the steadier growth of the sediment of the slums and its constant menace.

As emigration from east to west follows the latitude, so does the foreign influx in New York

distribute itself along certain well-defined lines that waver and break only under the stronger

pressure of a more gregarious race or the encroachments of inexorable business. A feeling of

dependence upon mutual effort, natural to strangers in a strange land, unacquainted with its

language and customs, sufficiently accounts for this…. A map of the city, colored to designate

nationalities, would show more stripes than on the skin of a zebra, and more colors than any

rainbow.

Chapter 4: The Downtown Back-Alleys One day, I witnessed a fire in the tenements. When the blinding effect of the flash had passed away and I could see once more, I discovered that a lot of paper and rags that hung on the wall were ablaze. There were six of us, five blind men and women who knew nothing of their danger, and myself, in an attic room with a dozen crooked, rickety stairs between us and the street, and as many households as helpless as the one whose guest I was all about us. The thought: how were they ever to be got out? made my blood run cold as I saw the flames creeping up the wall, and my first impulse was to bolt for the street and shout for help. The next was to smother the fire myself, and I did, with a vast deal of trouble. Afterward, when I came down to the street, I told a friendly policeman of my trouble. For some reason he thought it rather a good joke and laughed immoderately at my concern lest even then sparks should be burrowing in the rotten wall that might yet break out in flame and destroy the house with all that were in it. He told me why, when he found time to draw breath. "Why, don't you know," he said, "that house is the Dirty Spoon? It caught fire six times last winter, but it wouldn't burn. The dirt was so thick on the walls, it smothered the fire!" Which, if true, shows that water and dirt, not usually held to be harmonious elements, work together for the good of those who insure houses…

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