Review for the Unit 1 Test.

The West The Homestead Act and the Pacific Railways Act were both acts of Congress designed to encourage settlement of the West. Both acts came at the expense of Native Americans already living on the land. One unintended consequence of the Homestead Act was that people gobbled up the land illegally without going through the process outlined in the act.

Populism This starts in the West where farmers were in big debt due to the high price of farm equipment and the high fees the railroads were charging to transport their crops. This leads to them viewing the railroad, and wall street, as the “elite” who were taking advantage of hard working Americans. They start a political party, and part of their platform was that they wanted money to backed by silver instead of gold. They also wanted a graduated income tax, senators elected by popular vote, and federal loans to help them purchase farming equipment.

The Jim Crow South Plessy v. Ferguson found “separate but equal” to be ok, greenlighting segregation in the South, and saying that it did not violate the 14th Amendment. Many obstacles were put in place to stop African Americans from voting. Literacy Tests Grandfather Clause Poll Tax

Gilded Age Robber Barons v. Captains of Industry. John Rockefeller amasses his wealth through horizontal integration (buying out your competitors and jacking up the price of oil). Social Darwinism- idea of the survival of the fittest, the fittest humans will make the most money.

Gilded Age Rapid immigration causes rapid urbanization. Cities grew too fast, living conditions were poor. Political Machines run the cities, they get the new immigrants to vote for their people by setting them up with jobs and housing. New immigrants are mostly from Southern and Eastern Europe. Faced a lot of discrimination from native-born Americans, nativist movement.

Political Machines They stepped in to gain power in America’s cities by focusing on getting the new immigrants to vote for their political candidate. To encourage them to vote for their guy they would set the new immigrants up with jobs, food, housing in return for their votes. This is how they stayed in power, and they used their power to get money from the city government. This was called “graft,” and Political Machine operatives viewed it as ok, they even called it “honest graft.”

Progressive Era Muckrakers- investigative journalists who exposed corruption and problems in American society. Their work sparked change through their stories that were published in newspapers and magazines. Ida Tarbell wrote about Standard Oil, Upton Sinclair wrote about the meatpacking plants in the Jungle.

Progressive Presidents Teddy- Square Deal, mostly focused on the Railroads, wants trusts to stop interfering with interstate trade. Taft- Also a trust-buster, but not big into conservation. Wilson- New Freedom was designed to further regulate companies and trusts Clayton Antitrust Act Underwood Tariff (lowered tariffs) Federal Reserve and Federal Trade Commission gave government more power to regulate banks and businesses.

Political Reform Initiative, Referendum, and recall all gave more power to the citizens in the role of shaping legislation. Initiatives and Referendum allow for citizens to vote on whether something should become law or not. A Recall gives the citizens the ability to vote on whether to remove a member of the legislature prior to their term ending.

Election of 1912. Wilson, a Democrat, was able to win because Teddy entered the race as a third party candidate. Teddy and Taft split the Republican vote, while Wilson was able to get all the Democratic vote, thus securing his victory.