Hull House Jane Addams Janie P. Barrett In this time period there was no safety net for the poor. Even Poor Houses charged money for rent. There were privately funded settlement houses like Hull House (shown above). Settlement houses were to be found in most major cities and were helpful to immigrants or other groups in need. Janie Porter Barrett, for example, opened the Locust Street Social Settlement in Hampton, Virginia, for African American women. Hull House in Chicago was opened to all immigrant groups and Jane Addams was loved by all of them as someone who truly cared for their communities.

A PERSONAL VOICE MARK TWAIN & CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER “ There are many young men like him [Philip Sterling] in American society, of his age, opportunities, education and abilities, who have really been educated for nothing and have let themselves drift, in the hope that they will find somehow, and by some sudden turn of good luck, the golden road to fortune.... He saw people, all around him, poor yesterday, rich to-day, who had come into sudden opulence by some means which they could not have classified among any of the regular occupations of life.” —The Gilded Age

A PERSONAL VOICE JAMES PENDERGAST “ I’ve been called a boss. All there is to it is having friends, doing things for people, and then later on they’ll do things for you.... You can’t coerce people into doing things for you—you can’t make them vote for you. I never coerced anybody in my life. Wherever you see a man bulldozing anybody he don’t last long.” —quoted in The Pendergast Machine

Tammany Tiger Boss Tweed Arrest Just as businessmen were corrupt in this era so too were government officials. Elected officials would approve contracts for public works projects like roads, sewers, or government buildings at highly inflated prices. In return the businesses would give some of the money back to the politicians. That is known as graft. The most infamous of all the political machines was Tammany Hall in New York City, headed by William M. “Boss” Tweed. He wielded influence and power but he was brought down in part through the efforts of political cartoonist Thomas Nast (see “Tammany Tiger” above). Eventually Boss Tweed was arrested, convicted and jailed.

Patronage, or the spoils system, had been in place since the presidency of Andrew Jackson. Sensing public discontent with corruption reformers began to call for civil service reform legislation. Supporters of reform were called “Half- Breeds,” and those who wanted status quo maintained were called “Stalwarts.” President Rutherford B. Hayes made some minor progress in this area, and in the election of 1880 reformer James Garfield was elected with Stalwart Chester Arthur as Vice-President. On July 2, 1881, office seeker and Stalwart Charles Guiteau assassinated Garfield. Embarrassed by this event Arthur, the new president, supported and signed into law the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of No more spoils system. Hayes Garfield Guiteau Arthur

Cleveland Cleveland Harrison McKinley The good news in this time period was people paid no income tax. The bad news was that someone had to pay for the government so that meant tariffs. Of course big business had tremendous influence on the government so the only question was how high the tariff would be. Democrat Grover Cleveland wanted to lower tariffs because that would lower prices for consumers but Congress did nothing. Republican Benjamin Harrison signed the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890, the highest tariff in U.S. history. Grover Cleveland was re- elected in 1892 and the Wilson-Gorman Tariff, which lowered the tariff a little, became law. Then in 1897 William McKinley became President…