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Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19 Chapter 19
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Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

Dec 22, 2015

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Page 1: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s

© 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved.

Chapter 19Chapter 19

Page 2: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

Economic Growth

• 15 years between 1878 – 1893: U.S. economy grew at one of the fastest rates in history

• Growth in manufacturing:– 180% increase

• Agriculture:– 26% increase

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 3: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Value Added by Economic Sector, 1869-1899 (In 1879 Prices)

Page 4: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

Railroads

• Railroads: single most important agent of economic growth

• Railroad “pools” and other sources of resentment• Patrons of Husbandry or Grange (1867)

– "Granger laws"– Munn v. Illinois (1877)

• Interstate Commerce Act (1887)– Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)

• Standard time zones

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 5: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

Technology• Advancements in:

– Railroads

– Steel Mills

– Telephone

– Electricity: light and the generator

– Typewriter

– Elevators and skyscrapers

– Entertainment: phonographs and motion picture

– Household items: refrigerators, washing machines

– Internal Combustion engine leads to automobiles and first flight (Wright Brothers)

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 6: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

The American Middle Class

• Middle class achieves class consciousness

• Tries to recreate nation in their image

Page 7: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

Philadelphia Centennial Exposition

• American inventions on display

• Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone

• Christopher Sholes and the typewriter

• Corliss Steam Engine

• Fair demonstrated that the antebellum Market Revolution had become industrial

Page 8: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

Gilded Age Cities

• Urbanization increased– U.S. 20% urban in 1860, 40% in 1900

• Streetcars allow urban growth beyond “walking city”

• Great disparities of wealth in cities• Suburbs for middle class• Public vs. private utilities and urban

services

Page 9: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

American Museum

• Museums move from warehouse of curiosities to ornate display of fine art and scientific artifacts– Natural History Museum in New York– Field Museum in Chicago

• Labor groups pressure museums to open on Sundays

• Middle class decorum maintained

Page 10: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

The Department Store and Mail Order Catalogs

• Department stores replace small, single item shops– John Wanamaker’s Philadelphia 1876

• Mail Order catalogs bring department experience to rural areas– Montgomery Ward– Sears Roebuck

• Chain Stores– A & P– Woolworth’s

• All required standardization of goods

Page 11: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

Advertising and magazines

• Advertising becomes a major industry• Magazines

– Primary method of advertising distribution

– Pioneered artistic style like Realism

– Pioneered literary forms like short stories

– Made important technical breakthroughs for media like photo reproduction and printing

• Newspapers– Sunday editions and comic strips

Page 12: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

African-American Middle Class Culture

• Segregation forces Blacks to organize their own economic and social institutions

• The Colored American

• Frances E. Harper

• Paul Laurence Dunbar

• W. E. B. Du Bois

Page 13: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

The New Woman

• Women challenge “separate spheres” in generation after the Civil War

• More women obtain high school and college degrees

• Women begin to work in professional and white collar occupations– Work put women away from supervision of male

family members

– Wages gave them some independence

• Women and volunteer associations– Settlement Houses and YWCA

Page 14: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

World’s Columbian Exposition

• Chicago 1893: culmination of the middle class revolution

• White City— middle class ideal for future of America

• Midway Plaisance– Sol Bloom– Ferris Wheel

Page 15: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

Wealth and Inequality

• Gulf between rich and poor widened dramatically

• Thorstein Veblen and Conspicuous Consumption– The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)

• “Robber barons“– Criticism was of power, not wealth

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 16: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

Real Wages of Workers and per capita Income of all Americans, 1870-1900

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 17: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

The Antitrust Movement

• Standard Oil Trust

• John Sherman and the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)– “Restraint of trade”

• U.S. v. E. C. Knight Company (1895)

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 18: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

Labor Strife

• Labor discontent– U.S. had world’s highest rate of industrial accidents

– Decline in status of craft labor

• National Labor Union (1866)• Bureau of Labor (1884)• Labor Day (1894)• Molly Maguires• Greenback-Labor Party

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 19: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

The Great Railroad Strike of 1877

• Railroad wage cuts– Baltimore and Ohio Railroad

• 10 states call out militia

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 20: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

The Knights of Labor

• Terence V. Powderly and the Knights of Labor (1869)

• Rank and file wanted to concentrate on improvement in bread and butter issues

• Leadership wanted alternative to wage system• Although leadership opposed strikes, Knights

greatest triumphs were through strikes

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 21: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

Haymarket

• National general strike for 8 hour day 5-1-1886• McCormick strike, police kill 4 strikers 5-3-1886• Protest of killings at Haymarket Square 5-4-1886

– Anarchists– Bomb kills 10, 6 police– 8 Anarchist tried for murder– Knights of Labor caught in anti-labor backlash

• American Federation of Labor (1886)– Samuel Gompers– Accepted capitalism and wage system

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 22: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

Henry George

• Progress and Poverty (1879)

• Land monopoly is source of wealth disparity

• Solution: 100% tax on “unearned increment” of land value

• Sensitized generation that become the Progressives to social issues

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 23: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

Edward Bellamy

• Looking Backward (1887)

• Social Gospel and Christian Socialism– Aid to poor as important as saving souls– Settlement houses– Contributed to rise of Progressives

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 24: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

The Homestead Strike

• Carnegie Steel Company

• Henry Clay Frick

• Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers

• Lockout vs. sitdown 1892

• Pinkertons and state militia break strike

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 25: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

The Depression of 1893-1897

• Panic of 1893– Reading Railroad– National Cordage Company

• Jacob Coxey– End depression with road building– "Coxey's army"

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 26: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

The Pullman Strike

• George Pullman• Company town• Pullman cuts wages, but keeps rents and store price

the same• American Railway Union (ARU)

– Eugene V. Debs– Success in spring 1894 against Great Northern Railroad– Sympathy strike with Pullman workers– Federal troops sent, 34 die– Strike broken, Debs jailed

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 27: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

Farmers’ Movements

• Settlers fill plains states in generation after Civil War

• Agricultural challenges for farming in the west– Severe weather was devastating– Precipitation swings “in God we trusted, in Kansas we

busted”– Isolation and loneliness for farm families

• Global agricultural glut in wheat and cotton by 1880s

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 28: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

Credit and Money

• Deflation hurt farmers in debt– “Greenbacks"

• Public Credit Act (1869)

• Specie Resumption Act (1875)

• Effects mixed– Facilitated overall economic growth– Hurt rural economies of South and West

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 29: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

Wholesale and Consumer Price Indexes, 1865-1897

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 30: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

The Greenback and Silver Movements

• Greenback Party– "the Crime of 1873"

• Bland-Allison Act (1878)

• “Free Silver”

• Sherman Silver Purchase Act (1890)

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 31: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

The Farmers’ Alliance

• Farmers' Alliance– Marketing cooperatives– Ocala, Florida demands (1890)

• Graduated income tax• Direct election of Senators• Free silver• Government control of railroads, telegraph, and telephone

industry• Subtreasury Plan

• People's Party– Populists

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 32: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

The Rise and Fall of the People’s Party

• Support for Populists strong in Plains and mountain states

• Leonidas L. Polk• Omaha platform (1892)

– Mirrors Ocala demands

• James B. Weaver• Results

– Gain control of some Western legislatures– Defeated by racial demagoguery in the South

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 33: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

The Silver Issue

• William Jennings Bryan– “Cross of gold" speech– Democratic nominee

• Populist dilemma– Democratic whale swallowed the Populist fish

in 1896

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 34: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

The Election of 1896

• Republicans and William McKinley – Preferred tariff campaign– Bryan is irresponsible inflationist– Mark Hanna– "front porch campaign"

• 1896 election most impassioned in a generation• Section pattern: South and West vs. North• International gold discoveries reverse deflation,

prosperity returns

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Page 35: Economic Change and the Crisis of the 1890s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 19.

Conclusion

• 1890s in America:– American Past: large rural and agricultural

economy– American Future: cities and commercial-

industrial economy

• Social and Political upheavals– Economic changes and the widening gap

between rich and poor

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved