| 637117289 | Gilded Age | (1870-1900) politically corrupt internally. Term coined by Mark Twain. As business boomed, strong North-South divisions remained. Corruption in both business and politics was common | |
| 637117290 | Politics | Weak presidencies ("Forgotten Presidents") legislative domination by Congress and the Republican Party. Major issues: patronage, monetary policy, and tariffs. Party loyalists were determined by region, religious, and ethnic differences more than issues. Voter turnout for presidential elections averaged over 78% of eligible voters; 60-80% in non-presidential years. Politics was entertainment. | |
| 637117291 | Republican Party | -pro business, anti-labor unions
-advocated "sound currency"
-favored high, "protective" tariffs
-stressed gvt. role in regulating personal morality
-support came from mid-west and rural parts of NE
-african-ameriican supported republican party, mostly prevented from voting
-grand army of republic (union civil war veterans) solid supporters
-marked by factions and break-away groups | |
| 637117292 | Democratic Party | -pro-business, anti-labor unions
-advocated "sound currency:
-favored lowering tariffs
-opposed enforcement of single, moral system
-support came from N industrial cities and S
-in S, democratic party=party of segregation | |
| 637117293 | Republican Party Factions: Stalwarts | led by Roscoe Conkling. embraced spoils system (patronage) | |
| 637117294 | Republican Party Factions: Half-breeds | led by James Blaine. flirted with reform of the patronage system (1/2 republican, 1/2 democrat) | |
| 637117295 | Republican Party Factions: Liberal Republicans | Disgusted with scandals of the Grant Administration, this group supported Horace Greeley, the Democratic candidate, in the 1872 election. | |
| 637117296 | Republican Party Factions: Mugwumps | Reform-minded Republicans who supported Democrat Cleveland for the presidency. | |
| 637117297 | Greenback Party (Greenback-Labor Party) | Formed in 1875, chiefly by Midwestern and southern farmers, its primary aims were the adoption of a new national monetary policy based on bimetallism and federal issuance of paper currency, called greenbacks, not backed by gold. This would create inflation and higher crop prices. Dissolved in 1878, it united with workers to form the Greenback-Labor Party. It conducted its last national campaign in 1884. It was succeeded in the 1890s by the Populist Party. | |
| 637117298 | Soft/Cheap money | This is the theory that a larger supply of money would lead to inflation or rising prices. This could be accomplished by issuing paper currency and by increasing the minting of silver coins. This would benefit farmers who were suffering from lower crop prices as a result of overproduction. It would also help farmers and other debtors pay back loans since they would be repaid with depreciated dollars (dollars that would buy less). | |
| 637117299 | Hard/Sound Money | The metallic or specie dollar is known as hard money. Creditors wanted paper money removed from circulation and to limit or end the minting of silver coins to decrease the money supply. A smaller money supply would lead to deflation (contraction) and falling prices. This would benefit creditors since loans would be paid back in dollars worth as much or more than when lent out. Also, workers were reluctant to see rising prices since their wages might not keep up with inflation. | |
| 637117300 | Crime of '73 | This is what critics called the Coinage Act of 1873 which stopped the coinage of the silver dollar against the will of the farmers and westerners who wanted unlimited coinage of silver. This led to calls for a return to the "Dollar of Our Daddies" which was basically a call for inflation. | |
| 637117301 | (Specie) Resumption Act, 1875 | It stated that the government would remove greenbacks (paper money) from circulation and provided for the redemption of all paper currency in gold at face value beginning in 1879. | |
| 637117302 | Bland-Allison Act, 1878 | This act was a compromise concerning the coinage of silver and stated that the Treasury had to buy and coin between $2 and $4 million worth of silver bullion each month. The Bland-Allison Act represented a halting return to bimetallism (gold and silver backing the currency). Gold remained a far greater feature of the monetary picture than silver, so the term "limping bimetallism" has frequently been used to describe this program. | |
| 637117303 | Sherman Silver Purchase Act, 1890 | The measure provided for the Treasury to purchase 4.5 million ounces of silver each month. Treasury notes would be redeemable in either gold or silver. As the price of silver continued to decline due to the discovery of new silver, holders of the government notes understandably redeemed them for gold rather than silver. The result of the growing disparity between the two metals was the depletion of the U.S. gold reserves, an event that played prominently during the Panic of 1893. | |
| 637117304 | Ulysses S. Grant
(1869-1877) | Military hero of the Civil War, he led a corrupt administration, consisting of friends and relatives. Although Grant was personally a very honest and moral man, his administration was considered the most corrupt in the U.S. up to that time and included scandals such as the Whiskey Ring. | |
| 637117305 | Credit Mobilier Scandal | This was a railroad construction scandal that consisted of many of the insiders of the Union Pacific Railway. The company hired themselves to build a railroad and made incredible amounts of money from it. In merely one year, they paid dividends of 348%. In an attempt to cover their tracks, they paid key congressmen and even the Vice-President with stocks and large dividends. All of this was exposed in 1872. | |
| 637117306 | Tweed Ring | The Tweed Ring or "Tammany Hall" was group of people in New York City who worked with and for "Boss" Tweed. He was a crooked politician and money-maker. The ring supported all of his deeds. The New York Times finally found evidence to jail Tweed. Without Tweed, the ring did not last. These people, the "Bosses" of the political machines, were very common in America for that time. | |
| 637117307 | Thomas Nast | Thomas Nast was a cartoonist for the Harper's Weekly and drew many famous political cartoons, including many of Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall. The cartoon showed condemning evidence of the corrupt ringleader and he was jailed shortly afterwards. | |
| 637117308 | Panic of 1873, depression | Unrestrained speculation on the railroads let to disaster - inflation and strikes by railroad workers. 18,000 businesses failed and 3 million people were out of work. | |
| 637117309 | Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881); Compromise of 1877 | Rutherford B. Hayes - Republican, Civil War general, received only 165 electoral votes. Samuel J. Tilden - Democrat, received 264,000 more popular votes than Hayes, and 184 of the 185 electoral votes needed to win. 20 electoral votes were disputed, and an electoral commission decided that Hayes was the winner. In return, Hayes promised to show concern for Southern interests and end Reconstruction. He took Union troops out of the South. | |
| 637117310 | James Garfield (1881) | Shortly after taking office, Garfield (no relation to the cat) was assassinated by a mentally disturbed job seeker, Charles Guiteau. | |
| 637117311 | Chester Arthur (1881-1885) | Garfield's vice-president, he assumed the presidency after Garfield was assassinated. His greatest accomplishment was to endorse reform of the spoils system by supporting passage of the Pendleton Act. | |
| 637117312 | Pendleton Civil Service Act (1883) | Passed in response to Garfield's assassination, it's called the Magna Carta of civil-service reform. It created a merit system of making appointments to government jobs on the basis of aptitude rather than who-you-know, or the spoils system. | |
| 637117313 | 1884 Election | This election was marked by heavy mud-slinging. The Republican candidate, James Blaine, was linked to corrupt deals in the so-called "Mulligan letters" while Cleveland was discovered to have fathered an illegitimate son leading to the chant, "Ma, ma, where's my Pa? Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!" Cleveland narrowly won when the Mugwumps, Republican reformers, bolted to him on the theory that personal corruption was less a danger than public corruption. | |
| 637117314 | Grover Cleveland (1885-1889 & 1893-1897) | The only Democrat elected president during the Gilded Age and the only president to serve two-nonconsecutive terms. He made reducing the tariff the centerpiece of his 1887 Annual Address. This probably cost him re-election in 1888. He was elected again in the 1892 election and took office just in time to preside over the Depression of 1893. | |
| 637117315 | Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893) | Grandson of William Henry Harrison ("Tippecanoe"), he defeated Cleveland in the 1888 election by winning the electoral vote, but losing the popular vote. For the first time except in war, Congress appropriated a billion dollars. When critics attacked "the billion-dollar Congress," Speaker Thomas B. Reed replied, "This is a billion-dollar country." | |
| 637117316 | Tariffs (custom duties) | Tariffs were one of the major issues during the Gilded Age. Not only were tariffs intended to protect American goods from foreign competition, they were also the major source of revenue for the federal government. | |
| 637117317 | McKinley Tariff (1890) | this compromise tariff extended to industrial and agricultural goods but provided reciprocal trade provisions with countries that opened their markets to American goods. Subsequent price increases led to a popular backlash and a Democratic House victory in the 1890 election. | |
| 637117318 | Wilson-Gorman Tariff (1894) | Democrats promised to lower the tariff but could only reduce it from 48% to 41%. The bill also established a 2% income tax on incomes over $4,000 to appease the Populists. The income tax was declared unconstitutional and the Republicans regained control of Congress in elections that year. | |
| 637117319 | Dingley Tariff ((1897) | raised tariffs to new heights on certain goods in an effort to restore revenues lost by Wilson-Gorman bill. | |
| 637117320 | Sharecropping, Crop Lien System | Sharecropping provided the necessities for Black farmers. Storekeepers granted credit until the farm was harvested. To protect the creditor, the storekeeper took a mortgage, or lien, on the tenant's share of the crop. The system was abused and uneducated blacks were taken advantage of. The results, for Blacks, were not unlike slavery. | |
| 637117321 | New South | Proponents of the New South, such as Henry Grady of the Atlanta Journal, supported building a more diversified Southern economy and championed the expansion of Southern industry. Birmingham became a steel center ("the Pittsburgh of the South"), the introduction of machine-made cigarettes propelled the Duke family to prominence as tobacco producers, and northern capital introduced textile manufacturing to the South. Nonetheless, the South remained primarily agricultural and poor. | |
| 637117322 | Civil Rights Cases, 1883 | The Supreme Court overturned the Civil Rights Act of 1875 & claimed that the14th Amendment provided protection from state action, not individual action. This ruling discouraged Congress so that it didn't pass another Civil Rights law until 1957. | |
| 637117323 | "Jim Crow" (beginning in 1881) | Laws intended to segregate blacks in public facilities such as schools, railroad cars, restaurants, and so forth. | |
| 637117324 | Disenfranchising Black Voters | Literacy test and poll taxes were used to deny blacks the ballot. The grandfather clause exempted these requirements for anyone whose grandfather had voted in the 1860 election. Electoral districts were gerrymandered to favor the Democratic Party. | |
| 637117325 | Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 | The case involved a dispute over the legality of segregated railroad cars in Louisiana. The Supreme Court upheld segregation by approving "separate but equal" accommodations for African Americans. The "separate but equal" doctrine was finally reversed in the 1954 landmark decision Brown v. Board of Education. | |
| 637117326 | Booker T. Washington | 44% of non-whites were illiterate in 1900; most from the South. Washington became head of the black normal and industrial school at Tuskegee, AL in 1881. He advocated a policy of accommodation (Atlanta Compromise) in which he grudgingly accepted segregation in return for the right to develop economic and educational resources of the black community. Ironically, Washington labored secretly against Jim Crow laws and racial violence, writing letters in code names and protecting blacks from lynch mobs. | |
| 637117327 | W.E.B. DuBois | The first African-American to graduate from Harvard, he opposed Washington and demanded immediate social and political equality for blacks. His opposition to Washington as well as other blacks led to the formation of the Niagara Movement (1905-1909). He wanted an immediate end to segregation and believed that the "talented tenth" of the black community should be given full and immediate access to the mainstream of American life. His Niagara Movement laid the groundwork for creation of the NAACP. | |
| 637117328 | The Age of Industry | The U.S. became the world's most powerful economy by the 1890s. The "2nd Industrial Revolution in America was based on ROSE - railroads, oil, steel, and electricity. | |
| 637117329 | Transcontinental Railroad (1869) | Railroad completed on May 10, 1869 when the Union Pacific and Central Pacific linked up at Promontory Point, Utah. An engineering marvel of its time, it was built using thousands of Chinese and Irish immigrants as workers. It linked the entire continent via railroad and by telegraph and paved the way for the incredible growth of the Great West and facilitated a burgeoning trade with the Orient. It was seen at the time as a monumental achievement on par with the Declaration of Independence and the freeing of the slaves. | |
| 637117330 | Bessemer process | Method of cheaply converting iron into steel. Steel could now be readily produced for locomotives, steel rails, and the heavy girders used in building construction. Andrew Carnegie was the first to use this process on a large scale in the U.S. and it enabled him to build a business empire. | |
| 637117331 | Wizard of Menlo Park | Nickname for Thomas Edison. He invented the electric light bulb, phonograph, mimeograph, Dictaphone, moving pictures. He once said, "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." Electricity became another cornerstone of the industrial revolution (Cities illuminated, electric railcars, etc.) | |
| 637117332 | Cornelius Vanderbilt | This "Robber Baron" tried to monopolize railroads in the east. He also threw the most lavish and notorious party of the Gilded Age. | |
| 637117333 | Andrew Carnegie, Vertical Integration | The technique of controlling every aspect of the production process. Pioneered by Andrew Carnegie in the steel industry, the goal is to improve efficiency by making supplies more reliable, controlling quality of the product at all stages of production, and eliminate middlemen's fees. | |
| 637117334 | John D. Rockefeller, Horizontal Integration | Consolidating with competitors to monopolize a given market. John D. Rockefeller pioneered the "trust" in 1882 to control his competition. In these arrangements, stockholders in various smaller oil companies sold their stock and authority to the board of directors of Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company. | |
| 637117335 | Trusts | Firms or corporations that combine for the purpose of reducing competition and controlling prices (establishing a monopoly). There are now anti-trust laws to prevent these monopolies. | |
| 637117336 | J.P. Morgan | This mega-banker developed interlocking directorates, the practice of having members of a corporate board of directors serving on the boards of multiple corporations, to give him influence over many industries. | |
| 637117337 | Social Darwinism | This philosophy sought to justify the extraordinary wealth and power of industrialists through the natural laws of "survival of the fittest." It was popularized by Yale Professor William Graham Sumner. | |
| 637117338 | Horatio Alger | Author of numerous juvenile books which promoted the ideas of "poor boy works hard and makes good," and "rags to riches." | |
| 637117339 | Gospel of Wealth | In this book, Andrew Carnegie admonished fellow tycoons to give most of their wealth back to their communities. Carnegie himself spent the last years of his life giving away most of his fortune, over $350 million (over $8 billion in today's money), and built over 3,000 public libraries. | |
| 637117340 | Robber barons | A robber baron was a person who made enormous amounts of money in business. An insulting term, it implied that a person used unfair business practices and showed little sensitivity to the common worker. The term "Captains of Industry" was a more positive term applied to the same group. | |
| 637117341 | Granger Laws | These farmer-inspired laws were passed by state legislatures in the Great Plains and Midwest to regulate railroads. | |
| 637117342 | Munn v. Illinois | This 1877 Supreme Court decision was short-lived victory for the Grangers in their quest to regulate railroads. The court ruled that the Public has the right to regulate business operations in which the public has an interest. | |
| 637117343 | Wabash case | In this 1886 case, the Supreme Court ruled that only Congress, NOT the states, could regulate interstate commerce (i.e. railroads). | |
| 637117344 | Slaughterhouse Cases, 1873 | These cased molded the Court's interpretation of 14th Amendment for decades. Court ruled protection of "labor" was not a federal responsibility under the 14th Amendment but a state responsibility. This ruling protected businesses from federal regulation if they engaged only in intrastate commerce (within a state). | |
| 637117345 | Interstate Commerce Act | This 1887 law was perhaps the first ever passed by Congress to regulate big business. This act established a commission to oversee fair and just railway acts, prohibit rebates, end discriminatory practices, and require annual reports and financial statements. The Supreme Court, however, remained friendly to special interests and often undermined the work of the I.C.C. | |
| 637117346 | Sherman Anti-trust Act | Created in response to public demand for curbing excesses of trusts, it prohibited combinations in restraint of trade. It was largely ineffective as it had no significant enforcement mechanism. Ironically, it was used by corporations to curb labor union as they were deemed to be "restraining trade." | |
| 637117347 | Industrial Age and women | Probably no single group was more profoundly affected by industrialization than women. New invention, such as the typewriter and the telephone switchboard, afforded millions of women with new economic and social opportunities. While the concept of the independent "Gibson Girl," became the romantic ideal of the era, most women worked out of necessity and earned less than men. | |
| 637117348 | Great Railroad Strike (1877) | Several railroads announced wages to be cut by 10% for 2nd time since 1873. First nationwide strike; paralyzed railroads throughout the East and Midwest and idled some 100,000 workers. President Hayes sanctioned use of federal troops in PA; set precedent for future federal intervention. Led to over 100 deaths and terrified propertied classes. The strike inspired support for the Greenback-Labor party in 1878 and workingmen's parties in the 1880s. | |
| 637117349 | National Labor Union | Founded in 1866 by William Sylvis, this was the first major labor union in U.S. history. Focused on social reform (such as abolition of the wage system); 8-hour work-day and arbitration of industrial disputes. | |
| 637117350 | Molly Maguires | Formed in 1875 by Irish anthracite-coal miners in PA. Part of Irish American secret fraternal organization (Ancient Order of Hibernians). They used intimidation, arson, & violence to protest owners' denial of their right to unionize. President of Reading Railroad called in Pinkerton detective agency for help. Mollies destroyed and twenty of its members hanged in 1877. They became martyrs for labor; symbol for violence among conservatives. | |
| 637117351 | Knights of Labor | This socialistic organization sought to create "one big union" under the leadership of Terence Powderly. They campaigned for social and economic change and sought to replace the wage system with worker ownership of factories. | |
| 637117352 | Haymarket Square Bombing | This violent 1886 incident in Chicago effectively killed the Knights of Labor as a viable union even though it was actually Anarchists who were responsible. | |
| 637117353 | American Federation of Labor (AF of L) | This union was most successful because it consisted of only craft workers and focused primarily on "bread and butter" issues such as wages, hours, etc. | |
| 637117354 | Samuel Gompers | He founded the AF of L and fought for: "8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, and 8 hours for what we will..." | |
| 637117355 | Old Immigrants | Predominately Germans and Irish - These two groups comprised the bulk of the "Old Immigration" in the last half of the 19th century. | |
| 637117356 | New Immigration | This refers to post-1880 immigrants from eastern and southern Europe. They tended to be Jewish or Catholic and more culturally different than the Old Immigrants. | |
| 637117357 | Ellis Island | This was America's largest processing center for immigrants entering the country by ship. | |
| 637117358 | American Protective Association (APA) | This anti-Catholic organization was the epitome of nativism (anti-foreigners) in the late 19th century. | |
| 637117359 | Chinese Exclusion Act - 1882 | Denied citizenship to Chinese in the U.S. and forbid further immigration of Chinese. Supported by American workers, especially the Irish Kearnyites, who worried about losing their jobs to Chinese immigrants ("coolies") who would work for less pay. | |
| 637117360 | Settlement House Movement | This sought to aid immigrants by helping them assimilate to American culture and giving them a place to take classes and socialize. The most famous were Jane Addams' Hull House in Chicago and Lillian Wald's Henry Street Settlement in New York. | |
| 637117361 | Social Gospel | A movement in the late 1800s & early 1900s which emphasized charity and social responsibility as a means of salvation. It was popularized by Walter Rauschenbusch and Washington Gladden. The Salvation Army was organized in the U.S. as a result of this religious/philanthropic philosophy. | |
| 637117362 | Jacob A. Riis -- How the Other Half Lives (1890) | Photo-journalist who exposed the dirt, disease, vice and misery of rat-infested New York slums. | |
| 637117363 | "Comstock Law" of 1873 | This act made it illegal to send any "obscene, lewd, and/or lascivious" materials through the mail, including contraceptive devices and information. | |
| 637117364 | Henry George | This reform press writer published Progress and Poverty that advocated a 100% tax on excess land values. | |
| 637117365 | Edward Bellamy | This writer wrote Looking Backwards, a socialistic and utopian view of the future set in the year 2000. | |
| 637117366 | Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) | Organized in 1874, it was led by Frances Willard. Increasingly saw alcoholism as result of poverty, not the cause and put enormous pressure on states to abolish alcohol. Most important female organization in 19th century; most powerful lobbying group. The group also championed planned parenthood and became the most important women's suffrage group in late 19th century (included blacks & Indians). They also supported the 8-hr work day and the Knights of Labor. | |
| 637117367 | American Women Suffrage Association | Led by Lucy Stone, it included men, supported black suffrage as stepping-stone to female suffrage and worked at state level rather than national level. Successful in gaining suffrage in Wyoming (1869) and Utah (1870). In 1890 they merged with the National Women's Suffrage Association (Stanton and Anthony's group) to form the National American Women's Suffrage Association (NAWSA). | |
| 637117368 | Carrie Nation | Used her hatchet to smash saloon bottles and bars. Her actions hurt the prohibition movement (she was arrested over 30 times) | |
| 637237809 | Victoria Woodhull | She became a colorful and notorious symbol for women's rights, free love (the "New Morality"), and spiritualism as she fought against corruption and for labor reforms. She is most famous for her declaration and campaign to run as the first woman for the United States Presidency in 1872. (She didn't win.) | |
| 637237810 | Clara Barton | A former nurse during the Civil War, she founded the American Red Cross in 1881. | |
| 637237811 | Charlotte Gillman Perkins | In Women and Economics, this feminist writer saw women playing a vital role in the workplace and envisioned day care centers. | |
| 637237812 | Louis Sullivan | This architect redefined U.S. city skylines with his philosophy of "form follows function." | |
| 637237813 | Literary Realism | Romanticism declined in favor of a more realistic approach as novelists explored social problems. Famous authors include Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, and Henry James. | |
| 637237814 | Realist school of art | Includes the works of Winslow Homer (Preeminent marine painter; The Gulf Stream), John Singer Sanger and Thomas Eakins. | |
| 637237815 | Impressionist school of Art | Mary Cassatt and James McNeill Whistler (portrait painter; Whistler's Mother, "art for art's sake) were well-known American Impressionists who studied in Europe. | |
| 637237816 | Department stores | This large-scale retail concept destroyed many "Mom and Pop" shops that were too small to compete. | |
| 637237817 | Street-car suburbs | These middle-class areas, located in the outskirts of cities, were made possible by improvements in mass transportation. | |
| 637237818 | Three frontiers of the New West | These were farming, mining, and ranching. Farming suffered from low crop prices while mining and ranching came to be dominated by large corporations. | |
| 637237819 | Barbed wire | Invented by Joseph Glidden, this contributed to the death of the "long drive." | |
| 637237820 | Morrill Land Grant Act | This Civil War-era act gave federal lands to states to establish agricultural colleges—the beginnings of the state college system. | |
| 637237821 | Treaty of Fort Laramie | This 1868 treaty had guaranteed Sioux lands in the Dakotas (yet it was broken after gold was found in the Black Hills). | |
| 637237822 | Battle of Little Big Horn | In this battle, the Sioux, led by Crazy Horse, wiped out General Custer and all his men in the most famous of all the battles of the Indian Wars. | |
| 637237823 | Wounded Knee | This 1892 conflict was the last "battle" between Amerindians and the U.S. government (it was more a slaughter than a battle). | |
| 637237824 | Helen Hunt Jackson | This author wrote A Century of Dishonor chronicling the U.S. government's mistreatment of American Indians. | |
| 637237825 | Dawes Severalty Act, 1887 | This took away some reservation lands from tribes and gave land to individual families. Intended to assimilate the Indians, it significantly undermined Indian tribal life, failed at its goal of assimilation, and severely reduced Indian land. | |
| 637237826 | Oklahoma Land Rush | This event symbolized the closing of the frontier when lands in Indian Territory were opened for white settlement. | |
| 637237827 | 1890 Census | The report revealed that for the first time in U.S. History, a frontier line was no longer discernible. | |
| 637237828 | Frederick Jackson Turner | Historian whose 1893 work, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," argued that the frontier experience had molded the American character and provided a "safety valve" for easterners who knew they could always flee to the frontier. | |
| 637237829 | Homestead Strike | 1892 - Iron and steel workers went on strike in Pennsylvania against the Carnegie Steel Co. to protest salary reductions. Carnegie employed strike-breaking Pinkerton security guards. Management-labor warfare led to a number of deaths on both sides. | |
| 637237830 | (Panic) Depression of 1893 | While it began with a stock market collapse, long-term causes include the overbuilding of railroads, reduced money supply as Europeans withdrew capital from the U.S. in response to the "free silver" agitation, labor disorders, and the existing agricultural depression. It led to 20% unemployment. It lasted four years and is considered the second worst in U.S. History. | |
| 637237831 | Repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, 1893 | President Cleveland had concluded that the major cause of the Panic (Depression) of 1893 was the drain on the gold reserves. He persuaded Congress to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. Special arrangements were made with banker J.P. Morgan in which powerful financial interests were enabled to purchase government bonds at deep discounts, assuring them enormous profits. The strategy was successful; gold flooded back into the Treasury. Public confidence in the ability of the government to redeem its notes was restored. | |
| 637237832 | Coxey's army | 1893 - Group of unemployed workers led by Jacob Coxey who marched from Ohio to Washington to draw attention to the plight of workers and to ask for government relief. The government arrested the leaders and broke up the march in Washington. | |
| 637237833 | Pullman Strike | 1894- Eugene Debs' American Railway Union struck the Pullman Palace Car Company in Chicago over wage cuts and job losses. President Cleveland broke the violent strike with federal troops. Popular opinion deplored violence and militant labor tactics. It was also the first time that the government used an injunction (a court order) to stop a strike. | |
| 637237834 | William Hope Harvey: Coin's Financial School (1894) | "Coin" Harvey was a fictional character, "Little professor," who overwhelmed bankers and professors of economics with brilliant arguments for free silver as an answer to economic problems. Fed public feelings of a national & international conspiracy to elevate gold above silver especially the "crime of 1873." | |
| 637237835 | Grange | This pro-farmer organization was founded in the late 1860s and provided cooperatives for farmers as well as social functions. | |
| 637237836 | Farmers Alliances | These three large rural organizations became the intermediate step between the founding of the Grange and the creation of the Populist Party. The movement focused on cooperation between farmers. They all agreed to sell crops at the same high prices to eliminate competition. They were not successful. | |
| 637237837 | Populist Party | Officially named the People's Party, but commonly known as the Populist Party, it was founded in 1891 in Cincinnati, Ohio. This third party won 22 electoral votes in 1892 and elected several candidates to Congress. it represented a crusading form of agrarianism and hostility to banks, railroads, and elites generally. Populist wanted to expand the monetary supply and create inflation (and thus higher prices for farm goods) by supporting "free silver." It sometimes formed coalitions with labor unions, and in 1896 endorsed the Democratic presidential nominee, William Jennings Bryan. After Bryan's defeat the Populist Party went into decline. | |
| 637237838 | Omaha Platform | This set of proposals became the cornerstone of the Populist agenda in the 1892 election. It called for free unlimited coinage of silver; graduated income tax; direct election of senators; government ownership of railroads and telephone & telegraph system and other government reforms to help farmers. | |
| 637237839 | William Jennings Bryan | This fiery Democrat gave a "Cross of Gold" speech that advocated the free unlimited coinage of silver. This speech earned him the presidential nomination of both the Democratic and Populist parties. (But he lost the 1896 election to McKinley anyway). | |
| 637237840 | William McKinley | This 1896 Republican candidate was a staunch defender of the gold standard and had Marcus Hanna as his campaign manager. | |
| 637237841 | 1896 Election | This is considered a critical election in U.S. history as it led to a political realignment that lasted until 1932. Democratic candidate Bryan forced the silver issue to the forefront. McKinley's campaign manger, Marcus Hanna, waged a high pressure campaign against silver while McKinley remained at his Ohio home waging his "front-porch" campaign. McKinley united middle-class voters by characterizing Bryan as a threat to their way of life. McKinley defeated Bryan 271-176 by winning the Northeast and the North while Bryan carried the South & West (except for CA & OR). Last serious effort by a major party to win White House with agrarian votes. Republicans control the White House for 16 consecutive years (28 of next 36 yrs). | |
