1. Chapter 20 – Democracy & Empire 1870 - 1900

2. The Growth of Government
Government grew rapidly during the Gilded Age
New employees, agencies and responsibilities
Local governments assumed responsibility for providing such vital services as police, fire protection, water, schools, and parks
As government increases so do taxes!!

3. The Machinery of Politics
Both parties weak & ineffective (Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland not on our list of greats!)
The tariff becomes the main issue again
Partisan politics explodes!
Result: Need for greater sources of revenue
Leads to the spoils system - rewarding friends of the winning party

4. The Spoils System &Civil Service Reform
Garfield’s 1881 assassination
Killed by disgruntled job seeker
Only served four months in office
1883: Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act
Standards established for federal jobs
Competitive exams for applicants
Gave government departments a more
professional look

5. Farmers and Workers Organize Their Communities
Discontent among farmers & workers grows:
Target the rich in control of government
Demand economic & political reforms
Led to the Populist movement (People’s Party) – effort to return power to the hands of the people

6. The Grange
Formed in the 1870s by farmers in the Great Plains and South:
Those who suffered boom and bust conditions and natural disasters
Grangers blamed hard times on a band of “thieves in the night,” especially railroads
Pushed through laws regulating shipping rates and other farm costs
Created their own grain elevators, set up retail stores, and produced their own farm machinery

7. “I Feed You All”

8. Workers Search for Power
Workers organized stronger unions:
Expose corrupt politicians
Increasingly resorted to strikes
Created labor parties – seeking seats on town councils, state legislatures & Congress
Women activists:
Shaped labor & agrarian protests
Led reform movements
Frances E. Willard

9. MAP 20.1 Strikes by State, 1880 MAP 20.1 Strikes by State, 1880
Most strikes after the Uprising of 1877 could be traced to organized trades, concentrated in the manufacturing districts of the Northeast and Midwest.
SOURCE: From Geographical Inquiry and American Historical Problems, edited by Earl Carville. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992). Originally published in the Third Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1887.

10. “Populists” or the People’s Party
1890 – 1892: Representatives from numerous organizations such as the Farmers’ Alliance, the Knights of Labor etc. unite to form the People’s Party
Call for government ownership of railroads, banks etc.
Fairer taxes
Improved working conditions
Protection of farmers from price fluctuations

11. The Great Uprising of 1877 Began as a strike of railroad workers
Spread rapidly to communities along railroad routes
In Philadelphia strikers set fire to downtown buildings
Federal troops were brought leading to more than a hundred deaths
Railroad corporations suffered a $10 million loss in property

12. The Great Uprising of 1877
The Great Uprising of 1877, which began as a strike of railroad workers, spread rapidly to communities along the railroad routes. Angry crowds defied the armed militia and the vigilantes hired to disperse them. In Philadelphia, for example, strikers set fire to the downtown, destroying many buildings before federal troops were brought in to stop them. More than a hundred people died before the strike ended, and the railroad corporations suffered a $10 million loss in property.

13. Crisis of the 1890s Financial Collapse and Depression:
Began in1893 with the collapse of the nation’s major rail lines
Nationwide unemployment hits three million
Tens of thousands took to the road in search of work or food (“tramp life”)

14. Coxey’s Army
Jacob Coxey called for an “army” of the unemployed to march on Washington
Demand relief through public works programs
Greeted warmly by most communities on the way to Washington
The attorney general, a former lawyer for a railroad company, conspired to stop the march
Police clubbed & arrested the marchers for trespassing on the grass in Washington
Full recovery was not achieved until the early 1900s

15. The Pullman Strike Pullman, Illinois:
Manufactured “sleeper cars” for railroad lines
Workers voted to strike based on a list of grievances
Conflicts in Chicago and other cities as railroad workers join in a nationwide sympathy strike
Federal troops called in to break up strikes, dozens killed and wounded

16. The Pullman Strike

17. The Republican’s Triumph
1896 – William McKinley elected
Promoted a mixture of pro-business and expansionist foreign policies
Returning prosperity after 1898 insured continued Republican control & McKinley’s easy reelection in 1900

18. Nativism & Jim Crow White supremacy as a political force in the South
A system of legal segregation & disenfranchised blacks
Approved by the Supreme Court
Between 1882 and 1900 lynchings exceeded a hundred each year.
Announced in newspapers
Became public spectacles
Ida B. Wells—anti-lynching crusade
Jim Crow was a famous character in white minstrel shows. These shows used racist humor to caricature black people in the South. The name Jim Crow was later used to describe the laws that legalized racial segregation following the end of Reconstruction.

19. The Path to Imperialism
Many Americans saw the crisis of the 1890s as one of inadequate markets for American goods
New markets abroad became increasingly popular as a solution
“White Man’s Burden”
Josiah Strong
Christianize and civilize the world

20. The Quest for Empire United States began expanding overseas
Secretary of State William Henry Seward buys Alaska
U.S. policy emphasized economic control, particularly in Latin America.
1880s and 1890s, the United States strengthened its navy and began playing an increased role throughout the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific

21. Onto a Global Stage Hawaii Cuba (“a splendid little war”)
The Philippines

22. Critics of Empire Anti-Imperialist League founded
Denounced the war and territorial annexation
Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie and William Jennings Bryan all critical of imperialism
Most Americans put aside their doubts and welcomed the new era of aggressive nationalism.