1. Unit 6: The Gilded Age (1865-1900)
During the last quarter of the 19th century, the US would experience tremendous economic growth, westward expansion, and immigration. Although some Americans became rich and lived the American dream, most struggled with great poverty. This economic expansion was encouraged and supported by Republican majorities in Congress.

2. Westward Expansion
Frederick Jackson Turner - The Significance of the Frontier in American History, States
Reasons for westward expansion:
Individual Incentives:
Safety Valve: Ranching, Mining, Farming (Great Plains)
Need for Labor
Image of Frontier: Rocky Mountain School, Wild West Shows Literature – Mark Twain, The Virginian
Government Support:
Land Acts - Homestead Act, Timber Act, Desert Land Act, Timber and Stone Act
Railroad Subsidies mil. acres of land, additional 50 mil. acres from states
Standard time zones and tracks
Transcontinental Railroad, ,000 miles of tracks
Native American Policy
Immigration Policy – integrated work force

3. Native American Policy
Demand for land – Technological Advances – Railroads, Barbed-Wire, Farming, Ranching, Mining
Plains Indians – Buffalo (1865 – 15 mil, 1875 – 1000)
White Settlers vs. Native Tribes
Government Policy:
Concentration Policy – 1851, Reservation Policy – 1867
Native American Wars – 1850s through 1880s
Sioux Indians – Dakota Reservation and Gold Mines
Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull – 1875 – Battle of Little Big Horn – General George Custer – Round-up and return
Revival Movement – Ghost Dance
Massacre at Wounded Knee –
Cheyenne, Nez Perce, and Apache Tribes all involved in similar wars with similar result
Bounties and Indian Hunting
Dawes Severalty Act

4. Industrial Revolution and the Growth of Big Business
In the last quarter of the 19th Century, the US economy increased tremendously. By 1900, the US was one of the leading industrial economies in the world.
Causes of Industrial Growth:
Technological Advancements
Transportation – Railroads, Internal Combustion Engine - Airplane (1903) and Automobile (1896)
Communication – Telephone – Alexander Graham Bell – 1876
Electricity – Edison and Westinghouse
Mining and Processing Resources – Bessemer Process and Steel, Oil Refinery
Advancements in Farming and Ranching
New Business Methods
Taylorism and the Assembly Line – Unskilled Labor
Corporations – Limited Liability – Big Business
Research and Development
Monopolies and Trusts – Eliminate Competition - Horizontal and Vertical Integration – Carnegie and Rockefeller – Laissez Faire
Government Support of Business
Republican control – Tariffs, Land Grants, National Banking System and Monetary supply
Open Immigration Policy
Corruption and bribery – Labor Unions and Strikes

5. Captains of Industry Robber Barons

6. Evaluate the extent to which Reconstruction ( ) marked a turning point in the in the United States, analyzing what changed and what stayed the same from the period before the war to the period after it.

7. Immigration in the Gilded Age
– 30 Million Total Immigrants
European:
– Old Immigration (Irish, German, English)
– New Immigration (Southern and Eastern Europe)
Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican Immigration
Reasons for Immigration – Poverty and Oppression in Europe, Job opportunities, Labor Contract Laws, American Dream
Settlement in the United States – Cities of Northeast, Northwest, and West Coast – Ethnic Neighborhoods
Nativism – American Protective Association (500,000)
- Immigration Restriction League – desirables v. undesirables
- Anti-Coolie Clubs

14. Nativism Why? Government Actions: - 1882 – Chinese Exclusion Act
– Convicts, Paupers, Mentally Ill banned
- $.50 tax on immigrants
– Outlawed Contract Labor Laws
– Gentleman’s Agreement
- Ellis Island and Angel Island
Why did the federal government not place greater restrictions on immigration?

15. Urban America during the Gilded Age
> 50% of Americans live in Urban areas
- New York = 3 million, Chicago = 1 Million
Rural Women, Southern Black Americans, Immigrants
Urban Planning and Construction –
- City Beautiful Movement and
Urban Planning – ‘Great White City’
Public Space – Parks, Museums,
Libraries, Theaters, etc.
Transportation – Streets, Railroads,
Subways
- Skyscrapers
- Housing – Tenements
Sewage Systems and Waste
Management
- Fire and Police Departments

17. Entertainment and Leisure
- “eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, and eight hours for what we will”
Saloons
Moving Pictures – Peep Shows, Nickelodeons, Great Train Robbery
Theater – Vaudeville
Sports – Baseball,
Football, Boxing,
Gambling
Trolley Parks
Newspapers and
Yellow Journalism,
William Randolph
Hearst and Joseph
Pulitzer
- Books and Magazines

18. Working Conditions

19. Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (146)

20. Labor Unions and Interests
Knights of Labor (1869) – Terence Powderly
-’All who toiled’
- overhaul of economic system – political action – radicals?
- Strikes and Boycotts to pressure employers
American Federation of Labor – (1886) – Samuel Gompers
- skilled workers– ‘pure and simple unionism’, ‘bread and butter’
- work within the system – strikes and negotiations
Molly Maguires – (1860s and 1870s)
- coal miners in Western Pennsylvania
- kidnapping, arson, and acts of terror
Socialist Party of America– Eugene V Debs (1901)
- collective ownership through political action
mil votes, 1000s local offices
Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies)–William Haywood (1905)
- all workers organize as a working class – overthrow ‘wage slave’ system
- no political action – general strikes and acts of terror

21. The Era of the Great Strikes
Great Railroad Strike – 1877
- 10% wage cut – Workers from Maryland to California went on strike
- Local Militias – President Hayes and Federal Troops
- 100 killed – millions in damages
Haymarket Affair- 1886
- General Strike on May 1 for eight hour workday
- Police ordered to disperse – bomb thrown – 7 killed, 37 injured
- 8 anarchists arrested and 4 executed
Homestead Strike – 1892
- Carnegie Steel Plant – Wage cut
- Pinkerton Detective Agency
- National Guard Troops Sent
Pullman Strike
- Pullman factory and American Railway Union
- Railroad strike in 27 states
- Supreme Court Injunction (Sherman Antitrust Act) and Cleveland sends federal troops

22. The Era of The Great Strikes
What did all of the strikes have in common?
Why did all of the strikes of this era fail?

23. Reform Demands of Other Groups
Farmers
3 D’s = Debt, Drought, Deflation
Overproduction, Abuses of Railroads and Monopolies, Tariffs, Drought in the 1880s, Deflation
The Grange – Granger Laws, Wabash v. Illinois Case
Farmers Alliance
Urban America
Crime, Poverty, Tenements and Living Conditions
Social Gospel Movement – Salvation Army
Settlement Movement – Jane Addams, Hull House
Temperance – WCTU -Frances Willard – 19 States
African Americans
Jim Crow Laws, Voting Restrictions, KKK, Plessy v. Ferguson
Booker T. Washington – Atlanta Compromise - Tuskegee Institute
W.E.B. Dubois – Niagara Movement - NAACP
Women
NAWSA – Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Rochester, NY – 1872 – Civil Disobedience

24. Government during the gilded Age
Local and State Governments
Political Machines and Political Bosses
Rapid Urban Development - Graft
Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed
Corruption, Trading Votes for Jobs – No Secret Ballots

25. The Federal Government
Forgettable Presidents
Patronage and Political Parties
Senate and Corruption
Government Support of Business (Laissez Faire) – Republican Control – Immigration, Strike Breaking, Land Grants, Tariffs
Sherman Antitrust Act and Interstate Commerce Commission
Supreme Court – Wabash Case, US v. EC Knight and Co. (1895)
Overall, government at all levels in the United States did not respond to the demands for change. Mostly this was because of corruption during the Gilded Age. At the turn of the century, a new idea in politics would emerge making government more responsive to the needs of the people. This movement is called Progressivism.

28. Using the 1883 image below, answer a, b, and c.
Briefly explain the point of view about the economy expressed by the artist.
Briefly explain ONE development in the period 1865 to 1920 that could be used to support the point of view expressed by the artist.
Briefly explain ONE development in the period 1865 to 1920 that could be used to challenge the point of view expressed by the artist.