1. The 1870s and today

2. There are 5 parallels between the 1870s and today
Parallel Number One: A Plague of Drugs
Largely the result of the Civil War
Cocaine comes into vogue
Distinctive characteristic of the first drug epidemic was that people believed drugs had benefits and no side effects.

3. Parallel Number Two: A Purity Crusade
KS – passed law giving statutory force to the 10 Commandments
NH Constitutional Amendment: the US was founded upon Christian principles, and thus Christianity’s tenets may be enforced as law.
Blue Laws
Made it illegal to conduct most forms of business on Sunday.
Most states banned lotteries and horse racing.
TN banned the sale and manufacture of cigarettes – a ban upheld by the courts.

4. Temperance Women’s Christian Temperance Union
Blamed alcohol for crime, poverty, wife beating.
Wanted a ban on the sale and manufacture of all alcohol.
Sought limits on immigration.

5. Sexual Prudery Comstock Act
The Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of Obscene Literature and Articles for Immoral Use
500,000+ pieces of art destroyed
Assault on birth control

6. Parallel Number 3: Government Retrenchment
Government spent nothing unless absolutely necessary.
Federal government cut salaries of every employee, some up to 50%.
Texas: paid legislators $2/day if they met more than 60 days, $5/day if they met less than 60 days.
VA – governor declared “education should be paid for by those who use it.”
Most Southern schools cut the school year by 20%
Southern children on average attended school less than 100 days per year.
Schools spent an average of $6 per child per year.

7. Government retrenchment almost always equals a rise in corruption.
State funds stolen by state treasurers:
TN - $400,000
AR - $215,000
KY - $229,000
MI - $316,000
LA - $777,000
Mississippi – the entire state’s expenditure less than $100,000 – the education secretary stole $40,000.

8. Building projects Iowa State Capital New York City
Foundation collapsed
New York City
Tweed Courthouse.
Cost $10 million
One table/chair set
cost $100,000
Paid a plasterer $137,000 for 2 days’ work.

9. Parallel Number Four: A Retreat From Civil Rights.
Goal is to restrict African Americans’ access to the vote, but were used against poor whites as well.
Legal Measures
Voter Registration – did not exist prior to the 1870s.
Requirement that voter registration card be presented to vote.
Barring of all criminals from voting - including those convicted of misdemeanors.
Change to the “Australian Ballot” – no party symbols may be present.
Institution of time-limits.

10. Extralegal measures False bottom ballot box
Moving the polling location without notice.
Tampering with voter registration rolls.
Violence
Louisiana – 40 African Americans killed for attempting to vote.

11. Parallel Number Five: A disputed presidential election.
Samuel J. Tilden – Gov. of NY.
Rutherford B. Hayes – Gov. of Ohio
Popular Vote
Tilden: 4,288,546
Hayes: 4,034,311
Electoral Vote
Tilden – 204
Hayes – 165
BUT

12. Congress appoints a committee
Republicans challenge the results in South Carolina, Louisiana, Oregon, and Florida.
Congress appoints a committee
7 Democrats
7 Republicans
1 Independent, a Supreme Court Justice
The justice ended up resigning and a Republican named to replace him. The committee voted 8-7 to give Hayes the disputed votes, and Hayes appeared to win.

13. Compromise of 1877 Election of Hayes is certified.
Hayes must appoint a Democrat to his cabinet.
Hayes will support federal aid for railroad construction in the South.
All federal troops, who are enforcing the rights of African Americans, are to be removed from the South.

14. Historical Significance
The parties essentially agreed that Southerners would handle their own racial affairs without interference, while the North would dominate the nation’s economy.
Created a new political coalition – Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans – that would last into the 1980s.

15. The South in the 1880s
“The south was crushed, wretched, and licking its wounds.”
Public Health Crises.
Yellow fever killed 1100 in Vicksburg, TN; 3900 in New Orleans.
Railroads traveled at mph.
Average income of Southerners was 27% of that of Northerners.

16. How to Get Rich Quick in the South.
Northerners bought all resources they could
1 congressman bought 186,000 acres in LA.
41 Northerners owned 1.37 million acres of LA.
States even gave away their land
TX gave away 32 million acres.
By 1890, 12 men own ½ of all the railroad track mileage in the South.
Within five years one man, JP Morgan, bought all of them out.

17. Control of Natural Resources
The South is rapidly becoming an economic colony
1907 – Morgan bought all of the coal and iron resources for $35 million.
Mellon family purchased steel producing resources, valued at $1 billion.
Results:
Morgan increased shipping rates:
South of Washington DC pays 35% extra.
West of the Mississippi pays 75% extra.
Mellon introduced “Pittsburgh Plus” pricing for steel: a base point for steel produced in Pittsburgh, plus whatever the shipping costs would be.

18. Oil – the best example of Northern economic domination
Oil boom begins in 1901 at Spindletop (TX).
Large wells produced 3-4 barrels/day.
Spindletop – 100,000 in 9 days. In 2nd year it produced 17 million barrels.
Texans did NOT get rich though.

19. Making money in oil Requires transportation and refining.
Could pay whatever they wanted for the oil – and what they wanted to pay was 1¢/barrel

20. So what is left for the South
The industries left to the South were so-called extractive – low wage and low value.
Cigarettes
Bourbon
Profits are not large (in 1870s-80s) so no reinvestment and industrialization.
Average wealth in North is $1100; in South it is $500.

21. How People Dealt with these conditions
Options for farmers (especially Southern) dwindled.
Average size of farm 1861 – 350 acres
Average size 1870 – 150 acres.
1880 – ½ of all Southern land owned by Northerners.
Southerners are forced into crop-lien and sharecropping systems.

22. Sharecropping – how it develops
Farmers need money – for seed, equipment, household goods. They have no collateral – they don’t own their land
Banks?
In US generally, 1 bank per 16,000 people.
In the South, 1 bank per 80,000.
Most counties in the South had no banks period.

23. Sharecropping
Landowners provide loans in exchange for a pledge of the crop – usually 50%.
Crop lien:
If the farmers needs more, no problem. The lender will place a lien on the remainder of the crop – typically at a rate of 30-70%.
The result is debt peonage – the farmers owe more than they could ever possibly pay back.

24. 1860 farmers made far more money than 1885 farmers.
Southern Agriculture
The mindset of farmers makes it worse.
All are growing the same thing – cotton.
Result is dropping prices.
Solution?
Grow MORE.
Result?
Prices drop even more.
1860 – farmers grew cotton on 9 million acres
1885 – farmers grew cotton on 25 million acres.
1860 farmers made far more money than 1885 farmers.