economic change and the crisis of the 1890s © 2003 wadsworth group all rights reserved. chapter 19

Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s

© 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved.

Chapter 19Chapter 19

Economic Growth

• 15 years between 1878 – 1893: U.S. economy grew at one of the fastest rates in history

• Growth in manufacturing:– 180% increase

• Agriculture:– 26% increase

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved


Value Added by Economic Sector, 1869-1899 (In 1879 Prices)

Railroads

• Railroads: single most important agent of economic growth

• Railroad “pools” and other sources of resentment• Patrons of Husbandry or Grange (1867)

– "Granger laws"– Munn v. Illinois (1877)

• Interstate Commerce Act (1887)– Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)

• Standard time zones


Technology• Advancements in:

– Railroads

– Steel Mills

– Telephone

– Electricity: light and the generator

– Typewriter

– Elevators and skyscrapers

– Entertainment: phonographs and motion picture

– Household items: refrigerators, washing machines

– Internal Combustion engine leads to automobiles and first flight (Wright Brothers)


The American Middle Class

• Middle class achieves class consciousness

• Tries to recreate nation in their image

Philadelphia Centennial Exposition

• American inventions on display

• Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone

• Christopher Sholes and the typewriter

• Corliss Steam Engine

• Fair demonstrated that the antebellum Market Revolution had become industrial

Gilded Age Cities

• Urbanization increased– U.S. 20% urban in 1860, 40% in 1900

• Streetcars allow urban growth beyond “walking city”

• Great disparities of wealth in cities• Suburbs for middle class• Public vs. private utilities and urban

services

American Museum

• Museums move from warehouse of curiosities to ornate display of fine art and scientific artifacts– Natural History Museum in New York– Field Museum in Chicago

• Labor groups pressure museums to open on Sundays

• Middle class decorum maintained

The Department Store and Mail Order Catalogs

• Department stores replace small, single item shops– John Wanamaker’s Philadelphia 1876

• Mail Order catalogs bring department experience to rural areas– Montgomery Ward– Sears Roebuck

• Chain Stores– A & P– Woolworth’s

• All required standardization of goods

Advertising and magazines

• Advertising becomes a major industry• Magazines

– Primary method of advertising distribution

– Pioneered artistic style like Realism

– Pioneered literary forms like short stories

– Made important technical breakthroughs for media like photo reproduction and printing

• Newspapers– Sunday editions and comic strips

African-American Middle Class Culture

• Segregation forces Blacks to organize their own economic and social institutions

• The Colored American

• Frances E. Harper

• Paul Laurence Dunbar

• W. E. B. Du Bois

The New Woman

• Women challenge “separate spheres” in generation after the Civil War

• More women obtain high school and college degrees

• Women begin to work in professional and white collar occupations– Work put women away from supervision of male

family members

– Wages gave them some independence

• Women and volunteer associations– Settlement Houses and YWCA

World’s Columbian Exposition

• Chicago 1893: culmination of the middle class revolution

• White City— middle class ideal for future of America

• Midway Plaisance– Sol Bloom– Ferris Wheel

Wealth and Inequality

• Gulf between rich and poor widened dramatically

• Thorstein Veblen and Conspicuous Consumption– The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)

• “Robber barons“– Criticism was of power, not wealth


Real Wages of Workers and per capita Income of all Americans, 1870-1900


The Antitrust Movement

• Standard Oil Trust

• John Sherman and the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)– “Restraint of trade”

• U.S. v. E. C. Knight Company (1895)


Labor Strife

• Labor discontent– U.S. had world’s highest rate of industrial accidents

– Decline in status of craft labor

• National Labor Union (1866)• Bureau of Labor (1884)• Labor Day (1894)• Molly Maguires• Greenback-Labor Party


The Great Railroad Strike of 1877

• Railroad wage cuts– Baltimore and Ohio Railroad

• 10 states call out militia


The Knights of Labor

• Terence V. Powderly and the Knights of Labor (1869)

• Rank and file wanted to concentrate on improvement in bread and butter issues

• Leadership wanted alternative to wage system• Although leadership opposed strikes, Knights

greatest triumphs were through strikes


Haymarket

• National general strike for 8 hour day 5-1-1886• McCormick strike, police kill 4 strikers 5-3-1886• Protest of killings at Haymarket Square 5-4-1886

– Anarchists– Bomb kills 10, 6 police– 8 Anarchist tried for murder– Knights of Labor caught in anti-labor backlash

• American Federation of Labor (1886)– Samuel Gompers– Accepted capitalism and wage system


Henry George

• Progress and Poverty (1879)

• Land monopoly is source of wealth disparity

• Solution: 100% tax on “unearned increment” of land value

• Sensitized generation that become the Progressives to social issues


Edward Bellamy

• Looking Backward (1887)

• Social Gospel and Christian Socialism– Aid to poor as important as saving souls– Settlement houses– Contributed to rise of Progressives


The Homestead Strike

• Carnegie Steel Company

• Henry Clay Frick

• Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers

• Lockout vs. sitdown 1892

• Pinkertons and state militia break strike


The Depression of 1893-1897

• Panic of 1893– Reading Railroad– National Cordage Company

• Jacob Coxey– End depression with road building– "Coxey's army"


The Pullman Strike

• George Pullman• Company town• Pullman cuts wages, but keeps rents and store price

the same• American Railway Union (ARU)

– Eugene V. Debs– Success in spring 1894 against Great Northern Railroad– Sympathy strike with Pullman workers– Federal troops sent, 34 die– Strike broken, Debs jailed


Farmers’ Movements

• Settlers fill plains states in generation after Civil War

• Agricultural challenges for farming in the west– Severe weather was devastating– Precipitation swings “in God we trusted, in Kansas we

busted”– Isolation and loneliness for farm families

• Global agricultural glut in wheat and cotton by 1880s


Credit and Money

• Deflation hurt farmers in debt– “Greenbacks"

• Public Credit Act (1869)

• Specie Resumption Act (1875)

• Effects mixed– Facilitated overall economic growth– Hurt rural economies of South and West


Wholesale and Consumer Price Indexes, 1865-1897


The Greenback and Silver Movements

• Greenback Party– "the Crime of 1873"

• Bland-Allison Act (1878)

• “Free Silver”

• Sherman Silver Purchase Act (1890)


The Farmers’ Alliance

• Farmers' Alliance– Marketing cooperatives– Ocala, Florida demands (1890)

• Graduated income tax• Direct election of Senators• Free silver• Government control of railroads, telegraph, and telephone

industry• Subtreasury Plan

• People's Party– Populists


The Rise and Fall of the People’s Party

• Support for Populists strong in Plains and mountain states

• Leonidas L. Polk• Omaha platform (1892)

– Mirrors Ocala demands

• James B. Weaver• Results

– Gain control of some Western legislatures– Defeated by racial demagoguery in the South


The Silver Issue

• William Jennings Bryan– “Cross of gold" speech– Democratic nominee

• Populist dilemma– Democratic whale swallowed the Populist fish

in 1896


The Election of 1896

• Republicans and William McKinley – Preferred tariff campaign– Bryan is irresponsible inflationist– Mark Hanna– "front porch campaign"

• 1896 election most impassioned in a generation• Section pattern: South and West vs. North• International gold discoveries reverse deflation,

prosperity returns


Conclusion

• 1890s in America:– American Past: large rural and agricultural

economy– American Future: cities and commercial-

industrial economy

• Social and Political upheavals– Economic changes and the widening gap

between rich and poor


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economic change and the crisis of the 1890s © 2003 wadsworth group all rights reserved. chapter 19

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