Chapter 17: Freedom's Boundaries, at Home and Abroad, 1890–1900 JSRCC

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 Andrew Carnegie

Carnegie’s steelworks at Homestead Pennsylvania

Andrew Carnegie, who emigrated with his family from his native Scotland at the age of thirteen and was a teenager worked in a Pennsylvania Textile factor

1873, Carnegie set out to establish a “vertically integrated’ steel Company

1900s; he dominate the stee industry and had accumulated a fortune worth hundreds of millions of dollars

The railroad pioneered modern techniques of business organization

By the 1890s, Carnegie dominated the steel industry Vertical integration

Carnegie's life reflected his desire to succeed and his desire to give back to society

Industrial giant

Born in Scotland and immigrated to US in 1848

Homestead Steel

their steel mills were most profitable and technologically advanced in the world . Workers went on strike because of low pay checks and wages

Populists

Populist Party

Populists in western states endorsed woman suffrage

Farmer’s Alliance

Farmer’s Alliance had 1.5 Million members Colored Alliance 1 million members by 1890

Origins and spread

Strategies

Initial cooperative approach; "exchanges"

Turn to "sub treasury plan," political engagement

Farmer’s Aliance

When

1890

What

Farmer’s Alliance had 1.5 Million members Colored Alliance 1 million members by 1890

Origins and spread

Strategies

Initial cooperative approach; "exchanges"

Turn to "sub treasury plan," political engagement

Omaha Platform

Adoption of the sub-treasury plan

Free and unlimited coinage of silver

A graduated income tax

Establishment of postal saving banks for safe deposit of earnings

Government ownership and operation of railroads, telephone telegraph and postal system

Tariff reduction

Electoral; reforms including: direct popular election senators, direct primaries the initiative, the referendum, the secret ballot, and limiting the office of the president and vice president each to one term

Omaha Platform of 1892 Increase money supply: gold and silver money

Income tax

Secret ballots

`8 hours’ workday

Omaha Platform

When 1892

What Electoral; reforms including: direct popular election senators, direct primaries the

initiative, the referendum, the secret ballot, and limiting the office of the president and vice president each to one term

Impact Adoption of the sub-treasury plan

Free and unlimited coinage of silver

A graduated income tax

Establishment of postal saving banks for safe deposit of earnings

Government ownership and operation of railroads, telephone telegraph and postal system

8 hour work day

immigration

Colored Farmer’s Alliance

1891

Tired to organize a strike if cotton pickers on plantations in South Carolina, Arkansas, and Texas ’actions was violently suppressed by local authorities and landowners, some of them sympathetic to the white Alliance but unwilling to pay higher wages to their own laborers

Colored Farmer’s Alliance

When

1891

Where

South Carolina, Arkansas, and Texas

What

Tired to organize a strike if cotton pickers on plantations in South Carolina, Arkansas, and Texas ’actions was violently suppressed by local authorities and landowners, some of them sympathetic to the white Alliance but unwilling to pay higher wages to their own laborers

Pullman

Pullman Strike-1894

Involved the Pullman Palace Car Company and the American Railway Wnion

Injunction issued using the Sherman Antitrust Act

American Railway Union

150,000 members included both skilled and unskilled railroad laborers, announced that its member would refuse to handle trains with Pullman cars

Boycott crippled national rail services

President Grover Cleveland’s attorney general, Richard Oliney , obtained a federal court injunction ordering the strikers back to work

Eugene V. Debs

Were jailed for contempt of court for violating the judicial order

The case of In Re Debs, the Supreme Court unanimously confirmed the sentences and approved the use of injunction against striking labor unions

Debs charged that concentrated economic power, now aligned with state and national governments, was attempting to “wrest from the weak” their birthright of freedom

Coxey’s Army

1894

Band of several hundred unemployed men led by Ohio businessman Jacob Coxey demanding economic relief

Democrats nominate William Jennings Bryan

Platform called for “Free Silver”

Populists nominated him too

William Jennings Bryan

William McKinley

Republican

Gold Standard

Using only gold to back all money (worth more)

McKinley wins election

1879-1880

Migration by some 40,000-60,00o blacks to Kansas to escape the oppressive environment of the New South

Name participants gave to this migration- the Exodus, derived from the biblical account of the Jews escaping slavery in Egypt

including former slave Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, the organizer of a real estate company, distributed flyers and lithographs picturing Kansas as an idyllic land if rural plenty

Most black migrants ended up as unskilled laborers in towns and cities

Kansas Exodus

Kansas Exodus

When

1879-1880

Where

Kansas

What

African-Americans Migrated to Kansas, seeking political equality, freedom from violence, access to education, and economic opportunity

Migration by some 40,000-60,00o blacks to Kansas to escape the oppressive environment of the New South

Impact

Name participants gave to this migration- the Exodus, derived from the biblical account of the Jews escaping slavery in Egypt

including former slave Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, the organizer of a real estate company, distributed flyers and lithographs picturing Kansas as an idyllic land if rural plenty

Most African- Americans had little alternative but to stay in the region

Most northern employers refused to offer jobs to black

 

National Association of Colored Women

1896

Brought together local and regional women’s club to press for both women’s rights and racial uplift

Most female activists emerged from the small urban black middle class

Preached necessity of “respectable” behavior as part and parcel of the struggle for equal rights

National Association of Colored Women

When

1896

Impact

U.S. Supreme court decision supporting the legality of Jim Crow laws that permitted or required separate but equal facilities for blacks and whites

“Separate but equal" doctrine

Justice Harlan dissent

Plessy v. Ferguson

1896

U.S. Supreme court decision supporting the legality of Jim Crow laws that permitted or required separate but equal facilities for blacks and whites

“Separate but equal" doctrine

Justice Harlan dissent

Immigration Restriction League

A group that called for the reduction of immigration by barring the illiterate from entering the United States

Chinese Exclusion Act

1882

By the mid 1800’s a seething anti-Chinese sentiment among the working class is was developing

Chinese immigrants became scapegoat for economic hardships because of their lower wages and unwillingness to unionize with non-Chinese

Anti-Chinese agitation eventually convinced Congress to pass a national Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882

Preamble whereas in the opinion of the Government of the United states the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory thereof:

Be it enacted by the senate and house of representatives of the united states of American in congress assembled

That from and after the expiration of ninety days next after the passage of this act and until the expiration of ten years next after the passage of this act.

Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington’s widely praised speech at the Atlanta Cotton Exposition that urged blacks to adjust to segregation and abandon agitation for civil and political right

Background on Washington

1895 Atlanta address

Washington approach

Repudiation of claim to full equality

Acceptance of segregation

Emphasis on material self-help, individual advancement, alliance with white employers

American Federation of Labor

Rise of the AFL, Samuel Gompers

AFL-Gompers approach

Repudiation of broad reform vision, political engagement, direct confrontation with capital

Emphasis on bargaining with employers over wages and conditions; "business unionism"

Narrower ideal of labor solidarity

Concentration on skilled labor sectors

Exclusion of blacks, women, new immigrants

Women’s Christian Temperance Union

Largest female reform society of the late nineteenth century it moved from opposing sale of liquor to demanding the right to vote for women

Spanish-American War

1898

Known as the “splendid little war”

Who

Spain vs. America

Where

Philippines, Cuba

Why

Help give freedom to Spain’s colonies

USS Maine

Battleship that exploded in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, resulting in 266 deaths; the American public, assuming that the Spanish had mined the ship, clamored for war, and the Spanish-American War was declared two months later

Platt Amendment

Amendment to Cuban constitution that reserved the United States� right to intervene in Cuban affairs and forced newly independent Cuba to host American naval bases on the island

Insular Cases

1901-1904

The supreme court held that the Constitution did not fully apply to the territories recently acquired by the united states—a significant limitation of scope of American freedom

Court declared, must recognize the “fundamental” personal rights of residents of the Philippines and Puerto Rico

Ida B. Wells

Born slave in Mississippi of 1862. Became a school teacher and an editor of the newspaper Memphis Free Press.She moved to the North because of the white people against her opinions

Hawaii

Was closely tied to the United States.  It was wanted as a naval base.  It had American sugar-plantations.  It was annexed to the U.S. In 1898

Carrie Chapman Catt

President of the National American Women Suffrage Association (1890).  She suggested voting as well.

L. Frank Baum

published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900. It represented the aftermath of the reconstruction