AP US History Gilded Age
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| Republican Presidents dominated (supported business, blacks voted for them because of loyalty from civil war); most were civil war vets; first was Ulysses S. Grant (good general, but bad president) | ||
| 1869-1896; name given by Mark Twain; known for corruption | ||
| devised a plot to drastically raise the price of the gold market in 1869; On "Black Friday," September 24, 1869, the two bought a large amount of gold, planning to sell it for a profit; in order to lower the high price of gold, the Treasury was forced to sell gold from its reserves | ||
| employed bribery, graft, and fraudulent elections to milk New York of as much as $200 million; eventually put into prison | ||
| political cartoonist, constantly drew against Tammany's corruption | ||
| AKA Tweed Ring; of NYC, headed by "Boss" Tweed, employed bribery, graft, and fake elections to cheat the city of as much as $200 million | ||
| scandal erupted in 1872 when Union Pacific Railroad insiders formed the Credit Mobilier construction company and then hired themselves at inflated prices to build the railroad line, earning high dividends; When it was found out that government officials were paid to stay quiet about the illicit business, some officials were censured | ||
| By 1872, a power wave of disgust at Grant's administration was building, despite the worst of the scandals not having been revealed yet, and reformers organized this and nominated the dogmatic Horace Greeley. | ||
| In 1873, a paralyzing panic broke out caused by too many railroads and factories being formed than existing markets could bear and the over-loaning by banks to those projects. Essentially, the causes of the panic were the same old ones that'd caused recessions every 20 years that century: (1) over-speculation and (2) too-easy credit. | ||
| coin money | ||
| greenbacks | ||
| The Republican hard-money policy, unfortunately for it, led to the election of a Democratic House of Representatives in 1874 which spawned to... | ||
| in 1882, halted Chinese immigration into America; People of the West Coast attributed declining wages and economic troubles to the hated Chinese workers | ||
| Charles J. Guiteau at a Washington railroad station; Guiteau, claiming to be a Stalwart, shot the president claiming that the Conklingites would now get all the good jobs now that Chester Arthur was President; The death of Garfield shocked politicians into reforming the spoils system; The reform was supported by President Arthur, shocking his critics. | ||
| made campaign contributions from federal employees illegal, and it established the Civil Service Commission to make appointments to federal jobs on the basis of competitive examination; It was basically made to stop political corruption; The civil-service reform forced politicians to gain support and funds from big-business leaders | ||
| The Republicans chose James G. Blaine as their presidential candidate; The Democrats chose Grover Cleveland; Grover Cleveland was a very honest and admirable man; Cleveland won the election | ||
| James G. Blaine became the Republican candidate, but some Republican reformers, unable to stomach this, switched to the Democratic Party | ||
| The growing surplus of money in the Treasury coming from the high tariff, which was made to raise revenues for the military during the Civil War, caused President Cleveland to propose lowering of the tariff in order to bring lower prices to consumers; The lower tariff, introduced to Congress in 1887 and supported by Cleveland, tremendously hurt the nation's factories and the overall economy; Cleveland lost support because of the tariff | ||
| named for its lavish spendings, gave pensions to Civil War veterans, increased government purchases on silver, and passed the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890 | ||
| raised tariffs yet again and brought more troubles to farmers; Farmers were forced to buy expensive products from American manufacturers while selling their own products into the highly competitive world markets; The Tariff Act caused the Republican Party to lose public support and become discredited. In the congressional elections of 1890, the Republicans lost their majority in Congress | ||
| The People's Party; formed from frustrated farmers in the agricultural belts of the West and South; demanded inflation through free and unlimited coinage of silver; They also called for a graduated income tax; government ownership of the railroads, telegraph, and telephone, the direct election of U.S. senators; a one-term limit on the presidency, the adoption of the initiative and referendum to allow citizens to shape legislation more directly, a shorter workday, and immigration restriction; nominated General James B. Weaver for the presidential election of 1892; In 1892, a series of violent worker strikes swept through the nation; fell far short of winning the election; One of the main reasons was that the party supported and reached out to the black community; Its leaders, such as Thomas Edward Watson, felt that a black man had every right to vote; counted on many blacks votes from the South; Unfortunately, many Southern blacks were denied the right to vote due to literacy tests; The Southern whites voted against the party due the party's equal rights views toward blacks | ||
| the worst economic downturn for the United States during the 19th Century; It was caused by overbuilding and over-speculation, labor disorders, and the ongoing agricultural depression; The Treasury was required to issue legal tender notes for the silver bullion that it had purchased; Owners of the paper currency would then present it for gold, and by law the notes had to be reissued; This process depleted the gold reserve in the Treasury to less than $100 million | ||
| The Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 was created by the administration of Benjamin Harrison in order to increase the amount of silver in circulation; The drastic rise in silver caused the American people to believe that the less expensive silver was going to replace gold as the main form of currency; The American people therefore began to withdraw their assets in gold, depleting the Treasury's gold supply; Cleveland was forced to repeal the Sherman Silver Act Purchase in 1893; Cleveland turned to J.P. Morgan to lend $65 million in gold in order to increase the Treasury's reserve | ||
| Due to the expansion of the country, many new railroads were built; Congress began to advance liberal money loans to 2 favored cross-continent companies in 1862 in response to the fact that transcontinental railroad construction was so costly and risky; Growing railroads took up more land than they were allotted because their land grants were given over a broad path through the proposed route; The railroad owners would then choose the route to build on; President Grover Cleveland ended the land dispute in 1887 when he opened up all the unclaimed public portions of the grants to the public | ||
| The railroad was his enterprise; 2 significant improvements benefited the railroads; the steel rail and a standard gauge of track width; Steel rails were much stronger and safer than the traditional iron rails | ||
| agreements to divide the business in a given area and share the profits, were the earliest form of combinations | ||
| In 1887, Congress passed this; It prohibited rebates and pools, required the railroads to publish their rates openly, forbade unfair discrimination against shippers, and outlawed charging more for a short trip than for a long one over the same line; It also created the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to administer and enforce the new legislation; The new laws provided an orderly forum where competing business interests could resolve their conflicts in peaceful ways; The laws tended to stabilize the existing railroad business | ||
| American ingenuity played a vital role, as such inventions like mass production (from Eli Whitney) were being refined and perfected; The telephone was created in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell; This invention revolutionized the way Americans communicated; Thomas Alva Edison invented numerous devices; the most well-known is his perfection of the electric light bulb in 1879 | ||
| companies of same industry come as one | ||
| was not a monopolist and actually disliked monopolistic trusts; He entered the steel business in the Pittsburgh area and created an organization with about 40 "Pittsburg millionaires"; By 1900, he was producing ¼ of the nation's Bessemer steel | ||
| to combine all phases of manufacturing into one organization; Carnegie: He and his business controlled every aspect of production, from mining to marketing; His goal was to improve efficiency | ||
| entailed allying with competitors to monopolize a given market; This tactic of creating trusts was used by Rockefeller | ||
| organized the Standard Oil Company of Ohio in 1870, attempting to eliminate the middlemen and knock out his competitors; By 1877, he controlled 95% of all the oil refineries in the nation; Rockefeller grew to such a great power by eliminating his competitors | ||
| allowed for the price of steel to drop dramatically and for its production to be done with relative ease; The process involved blowing cold air on red-hot iron in order to ignite the carbon and eliminate impurities | ||
| financed the reorganization of railroads, insurance companies, and banks; expanded his industrial empire and created the United States Steel Corporation in 1901; It was America's first billion-dollar corporation | ||
| The wealthy proclaimed that they were justified by God to have so much wealth; They claimed that God gave them their money or they were a product of natural selection | ||
| Hailing to public demand, Congress passed this in 1890; The Act forbade combinations in restraint of trade without any distinction between "good" trusts and "bad" trusts; The law proved ineffective because it contained legal loopholes and it made all large trusts suffer, not just bad ones | ||
| Throughout the industrial strive in the North, the South produced a smaller percentage of the nation's manufactured goods; Southern agriculture received a boost in the 1880s when machine-made cigarettes replaced earlier methods of producing cigarettes; This caused tobacco consumption to shoot up; Northern-dominated railroad companies charged lower rates on manufactured goods moving southward from the North, but higher rates when raw materials were shipped from the South to the North; The South strived in manufacturing cotton textiles; By 1880, northern capital had created cotton mills in the South; Those who worked the cotton mills were in perpetual debt and were paid extremely low wages | ||
| Women, who had swarmed to factories and had been encouraged by recent inventions, found new opportunities, and this created by Charles Dana Gibson, became the romantic ideal of the age; young, athletic, attractive, and outdoorsy | ||
| Led by Terence V. Powderly, the Noble and Holy Order of this was formed in 1869 as a secret society and remained secret until 1881; It sought to include all workers in one big union and campaigned for economic and social reform, including and codes for safety and health | ||
| was founded in 1886 and was led by Samuel Gompers; The federation consisted of an association of self-governing national unions, each of which kept its own independence; It sought for better wages, hours, and working conditions; The federation's main weapons were the walkout and the boycott; The greatest weakness of organized labor was that it still embraced only a small minority of all working people | ||
| Chicago police advanced on a meeting called to protest alleged brutalities by authorities; A dynamite bomb was thrown and killed dozens of people; 8 anarchists were tried and convicted; 5 were sentenced to death while the other 3 were sent to jail. In 1892, the governor of Illinois, John P; Altgeld, pardoned the 3 who were in prison; The Knights of Labor were blamed for incident at Haymarket Square and as a result, it lost public support; Another downfall of the Knights of Labor was that it included both skilled and unskilled workers; When unskilled workers went on strike, they were just replaced | ||
| contributed to the development of the skyscraper | ||
| were the worst since they were dark, cramped, and had little sanitation or ventilation | ||
| like Macy's (in New York) and Marshall Field's (in Chicago) provided urban working-class jobs and also attracted urban middle-class shoppers | ||
| the 1880s came from southern and eastern Europe; They came from countries with little history of democratic government, where people had grown accustomed to harsh living conditions; Some Americans feared that the New Immigrants would not assimilate to life in their new land; They began asking if the nation had become a melting pot or a dumping ground | ||
| anti-foreignism; blamed immigrants for the degradation of the urban government; These new bigots had forgotten how they had been scorned when they had arrived in America a few decades before | ||
| churches tackle the burning social issues of the day | ||
| the most prominent American settlement house; condemned war as well as poverty; offered instruction in English, counseling to help immigrants deal with American big-city life, childcare services for working mothers, and cultural activities for neighborhood residents | ||
| Published in 1859 this stated that humans had slowly evolved from lower forms of life; The theory of evolution cast serious doubt on the idea of religion; Conservatives stood firmly in their beliefs of God and religion, while Modernists flatly refused to accept the Bible in its entirety | ||
| fought against monopolies, corruption, inefficiency, and social injustice; The purpose was to use the government as an agency of human welfare | ||
| shocked middle-class Americans in 1890 with How the Other Half Lives which described the dark and dirty slums of New York | ||
| new york reporter that launched a series of articles in McClure's titled "The Shame of the Cities" which unmasked the corrupt alliance between big business and municipal government | ||
| novel //The Jungle** enlightened the American public to the horrors of the meatpacking industry, thus helping to force changes | ||
| published a devastating but factual depiction of the Standard Oil Company | ||
| pictures of child labor | ||
| exposed the corruption and scandal that the public loved to hate | ||
| sought 2 goals: to use state power to control the trusts; and to stem the socialist threat by generally improving the common person's conditions of life and labor | ||
| would place laws on ballots for final approval by the people | ||
| voters could directly propose legislation themselves, thus bypassing the boss-sought state legislatures | ||
| Direct primary election | ||
| Direct election of Senators | ||
| ould enable the voters to remove faithless corrupt officials | ||
| reconcile the ideas that women are inferior to men and stay at home, but also get the right to vote | ||
| fire in factory; changes regulations in factories | ||
| found attorney Louis D. Brandeis persuading the Supreme Court to accept the constitutionality of laws that protected women workers |
