1. 1869: 9 Billion, 1900: $29 Billion
2. Carnegie, Rockefeller: major players
3. employment in steel-10x
4. major confrontation in Homestead, Pennsylvania: union went on strike, workers locked out, strikebreakers brought in, Union loyalists attacked the barge
5. Gospel Of Wealth: “obligations” of the wealthy to the poor
6. Carnegie gave away 90% of his wealth
7. first $Billion dollar corporation in American history-consolidation of resources, monopolistic
8. Rockefeller: $ is in refining oil, ruthlessness!
9. Rockefeller: organized a trust, “Mother Of All Trusts”
10. 1911 Standard Oil is broken up, under Sherman Anti-trust act
11. powerful corporations have virtual monopolies
12. issue of trust, major political football, concern of progressive reform
13. the development of a corporate economy (corporatism/fascism?)
14. steel, oil, railroads-economic engine
15. pay by hour, not by task
16. uniform standard time was needed
17. 1880s, 70% of the country’s wealth held by 10% of the people
18. 1916: 60% of the country’s wealth held by 2% of the people
19. a small # of industrial corporations controlled 1/2 of the manufacturing
20. Republicans: packed the Supreme Court, supported corporate privilege
21. Santa Clara, gives corporations Bill of Rights protections of 5th & 14th amendments.
22. Progress & Poverty (George), The Gilded Age (Mark Twain)
23. Belamie: perfect civilization, utopia, all cooperative, society was like a train
24. Gladden: Applied Christianity, being a Christian is being compassionate for your fellow man, the Social Gospel
25. Charles Sheldon, In His Steps, 1896 story of dying vagrant, stumbles into a church, 2nd most selling book in America next to the Bible
26. America’s independent farmers-moral backbone of America, economically independent, close to nature, strong-hard working, family-oriented, Bible-oriented people
27. North and East: two sections that prevailed over the South (Civil War), the Homestead Act of 1862, 160 acres of land in the West
28. Independent farmers were disillusioned by Republican Party, felt powerless. Railroad prices for carrying products decreased, farmers had easier access to credit, agricultural machinery made productivity higher but prices for crops were declining.
29. railroads: arbitrary rates, American farmers were always dependent on bankers, dependent on unpredictable factors
30. Farmers organized with Grange Movement in the 1870s. Failed because of conservative courts wouldn’t allow state regulations to be enforced.
31. sought to regulate railroad rates.
32. Women: some of most outspoken leaders: masses vs. the classes (upper)
33. Wanted federal regulation of the trusts/railroads
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Heart Of Gold, The Omaha Platform, Looking Backward
Heart Of Gold, 1896
1. western/southern agrarians
2. US should be able to operate without consulting with other nations
3. New York/Massachusetts should be able to operate independently
4. independence of the states!
5. gold standard?
The Omaha Platform (1892)
1. “We are the verge of moral, political, and material ruin.”
2. voters are intimidated or bribed
3. public opinion is silenced
4. homes covered with mortgages
5. labor is impoverished
6. land is concentrated
7. workers can’t organize
8. imported labor drives down wages
9. a standing army will shoot down workers
10. conditions are deteriorating to European conditions
11. millions labor so a few can have colossal fortunes
12. capitalists despise the republic/liberty
13. tramps & millionaires are created
14. money creation only benefits bond holders
15. silver has been demonotized to benefit gold’s value
16. currency fattens usurers
17. two parties of plunder
18. neither parties promise substantial reform
19. they will take our lives, homes, children to enrich millionaires
20. capitalists, corporations, national banks, rings, trusts, watered stock, demonitization of silver, oppressions of userers
Looking Backward
1. coach dragged people
2. everyone wants a seat on the coach (upward mobility)
3. people are nervous about downward mobility
4. was there any compassion for those outside of the luxurious life?
5. in times of difficulty, a little bit of relief for those pushing the coach
6. seeing the misery made people want luxury more
7. it was believed this is the only way society could/can operate
8. it was beyond remedy...
9. people that rose to a higher social class forgot their roots
1. western/southern agrarians
2. US should be able to operate without consulting with other nations
3. New York/Massachusetts should be able to operate independently
4. independence of the states!
5. gold standard?
The Omaha Platform (1892)
1. “We are the verge of moral, political, and material ruin.”
2. voters are intimidated or bribed
3. public opinion is silenced
4. homes covered with mortgages
5. labor is impoverished
6. land is concentrated
7. workers can’t organize
8. imported labor drives down wages
9. a standing army will shoot down workers
10. conditions are deteriorating to European conditions
11. millions labor so a few can have colossal fortunes
12. capitalists despise the republic/liberty
13. tramps & millionaires are created
14. money creation only benefits bond holders
15. silver has been demonotized to benefit gold’s value
16. currency fattens usurers
17. two parties of plunder
18. neither parties promise substantial reform
19. they will take our lives, homes, children to enrich millionaires
20. capitalists, corporations, national banks, rings, trusts, watered stock, demonitization of silver, oppressions of userers
Looking Backward
1. coach dragged people
2. everyone wants a seat on the coach (upward mobility)
3. people are nervous about downward mobility
4. was there any compassion for those outside of the luxurious life?
5. in times of difficulty, a little bit of relief for those pushing the coach
6. seeing the misery made people want luxury more
7. it was believed this is the only way society could/can operate
8. it was beyond remedy...
9. people that rose to a higher social class forgot their roots
On The Edge, p. 1-16
On The Edge, 1-161. large amounts of capital were required
2. Santa Clara decision of 1886: the Supreme Court allowed the 5th and 14th amendments for corporations
3. Standard Oil: increased scale/efficiency of raw material processing
4. Andrew Carnegie: innovative refining/administration: 1st billion dollar company
5. Winslow Taylor: high speed metal cutters
6. electric light, telephone, cash register, elevator were invented
7. railroads brought raw materials
8. “Redeemer regimes” in the South lowered taxes, reduced government regulation, cut public services, leased convict labor to mining/railroad interests, sold/leased millions of acres of land to northern timber & mine operators
9. Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama: poor white farmers, non-mobile labor force
10. The West: booming economy with land, minerals, fish & timber
11. the subsistence/communal economy of the Indians had to be dismantled
12. six Western states joined the union from 1889 to 1890
13. the N. Plains Sioux, the Apache of the Southwest had to give up land
14. mining: low wages, high speed job
15. major corporate revolution in cities
16. steel framed skyscrapers, electric street-cars/trolleys were erected
17. middle class shoppers came to downtown department stores
18. fabulous mansions, grand hotels and plush cafes with great urban centers featured cultural institutions & parks
18. capitalism: offered lower prices, greater investment flexibility, & more opportunities for white collar employees
19. 1879: Rockafeller created the nation’s 1st trust
20. Jay Gould, James Hill, Cornelius Vanderbilt: created trusts
21. Social Darwinism: survival of most fit
22. 1880s: 10% of the population owned 70% of the national wealth
22. Gospel of Wealth: “self-help” philanthropies
Immigrants, Workers & Labor
1. most of the labor was immigrants in 1880s
2. Irish & German: most numerous
3. 5.5 million Irish immigrants came
4. 1880: 1/3 of NY was Irish
5. contracts, jobs, services for votes
6. ward system: not Protestant individualism
7. Welsh, Polish, German, Chinese: worked in the West
8. racial tensions over jobs with Chinese
9. factories, mills, processing plants, mines, construction sites, railroad yards were dangerous, repetitive, monotonous, impersonal, demeaning
10. $10 in pay for 59 hour week
11. Knights of Labor: 1860s
12. AFL: 1886, Samuel Gompers
13. AFL focus: higher wages, job security, improved working conditions for skilled laborers
14. Henry Clay Frick was wounded by a Russian anarchist
15. the governor of Idaho declared martial law
16. Eugene Debs spent six months in jail
Sharecroppers, Farmers, Populists
1. southern planters resumed control of the economy after the Civil War
2. sharecropping by freed slaves
3. housing, stock, implements, seed in return for a sizable portion of crops
4. tenants were reinforced by convict labor
5. black voters were disenfranchised
6. poor white/black farmers turned to populist protest
7. The Souhern Alliance of 1880: empowered poor farmers in the South-Charles Macune
8. antimonopoly program of railroad regulation/monetary reform
9. Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, imposed nondiscriminatory freight rates on the railroads
10. Populist Party: Omaha Nebraska, 1892, 5 Senate seats, Weaver got 1 million votes (8.5%) of the popular vote
11. Coxey’s Army: army of unemployed stormed Washington to demand public works jobs
The New Politics of The 1890s
1. Political activism
2. 1879: Henry George, Progress & Poverty, wanted tax on speculative income
3. Looking Backward: Edward Bellamy, criticized heartless competition, envisioned a cooperative commonwealth
4. Wealth vs. Commonwealth (1894) showed how trusts hurt everyday people
5. Populist monetary demands: William Harvey Coin’s Financial School & The American People’s Money
6. evangelical Protestants: Republican, Roman Catholics/German Lutherans: Democrat
7. William Jennings Bryan, producer democracy
8. Southerners didn’t want a independent party, might hurt white supremacy
Life At The Start Of The 20th Century
1. the new industrial age
2. the key institution was the corporation
3. individualism, free competition, localism: things of the past
4. technology, bureaucracy, national market dominated
5. ethnic, racial, & gender diversity upset traditional norms, new cultural styles emerged
6.) 300 giant corporations controlled 40% of national wealth
7) 70 people owned 1/16 of wealth in America
8) retail/groceries were competitively priced
9. railroads, oil, steel,copper, industries became monopolistic
10. middle class: executives, supervisors, engineers, sales employees, office employees
11. CA, TX, FL: top fruit/veggie places
12. fans, flatirons, stoves, sewing machines, clothes washers, rayon were invented
13. 1901, petroleum refinery in Beaumont, Texas
14. NC, 1903, Wright brothers flew
15. Henry Ford, from a farm in Michigan
16. $265 for a model T-Ford
17. 1920: 9,000,000 vehicles on the road
18. Ford payed his workers $5 a day, 2x the average wage
19. the Federal Highway Act of 1916 was passed
20. many employers refused to keep married women
21. Frederick Winslow Taylor: creator of “scientific management”
22. Taylor became an engineer, wanted to improve efficiency of workers,
23. believed greater efficiency led to shorter hours, higher wages, lower consumer prices
24. Then Henry Ford implemented “mass production”
25. 1908, Harvard began offering Master’s Of Business Administration (MBA)
26. advertisers deliberately sought to create consumer desires
27. emphasized cleanliness, beauty, sexuality
28. department stores: styles, cosmetics, home furnishings, household appliances
29. bargain basements for lower income shoppers
30. big city emporiums: hurt indie merchants & neighborhood shops
Life In The City
1. cities grew
2. 1920: more than half of population in cities
3. 2/3 of urban dwellers were in Northeast
4. electric trolleys, underground railways integrated residential areas & downtown cores
5. neighborhoods were separated by social class
6. sewage problems overwhelmed authorities
7. poor health practices, malnutrition & childhood diseases> US had lowest public health rating of any industrialized nation
8. streetcars reduced animal waste
9. improved sanitation > cures for malaria, yellow fever, typhoid, diphtheria
10. 1/3 decline in national death rate after 1900
11. life expectancy for whites: 48 years, for nonwhites: 33 years
12. parts of NYC had higher population density than cities in India-Bombay
13. overcrowding, squalor: high crime rates
14. Chicago: 1 arrest per 11 residents
15. Chicago: 8x as many murders as Paris
16. Joseph Pulitzer & William Randolph Hearst used comic strips of crime, gossip, scandal & corruption
17. Lawson: “Frenzied Finance”
18. Riis: “How The Other Half Lives”
19. Phillips: “The Treason Of The Senate.”
20. Steffen’s: “The Shame Of Cities”: boss-rule
21. Sinclair’s “The Jungle”, conditions in Chicago’s meat-packing industry
Key Excerpts:
1. Looking Backward
2. The Omaha Platform
3. “The Cross Of Gold Speech”
2. Santa Clara decision of 1886: the Supreme Court allowed the 5th and 14th amendments for corporations
3. Standard Oil: increased scale/efficiency of raw material processing
4. Andrew Carnegie: innovative refining/administration: 1st billion dollar company
5. Winslow Taylor: high speed metal cutters
6. electric light, telephone, cash register, elevator were invented
7. railroads brought raw materials
8. “Redeemer regimes” in the South lowered taxes, reduced government regulation, cut public services, leased convict labor to mining/railroad interests, sold/leased millions of acres of land to northern timber & mine operators
9. Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama: poor white farmers, non-mobile labor force
10. The West: booming economy with land, minerals, fish & timber
11. the subsistence/communal economy of the Indians had to be dismantled
12. six Western states joined the union from 1889 to 1890
13. the N. Plains Sioux, the Apache of the Southwest had to give up land
14. mining: low wages, high speed job
15. major corporate revolution in cities
16. steel framed skyscrapers, electric street-cars/trolleys were erected
17. middle class shoppers came to downtown department stores
18. fabulous mansions, grand hotels and plush cafes with great urban centers featured cultural institutions & parks
18. capitalism: offered lower prices, greater investment flexibility, & more opportunities for white collar employees
19. 1879: Rockafeller created the nation’s 1st trust
20. Jay Gould, James Hill, Cornelius Vanderbilt: created trusts
21. Social Darwinism: survival of most fit
22. 1880s: 10% of the population owned 70% of the national wealth
22. Gospel of Wealth: “self-help” philanthropies
Immigrants, Workers & Labor
1. most of the labor was immigrants in 1880s
2. Irish & German: most numerous
3. 5.5 million Irish immigrants came
4. 1880: 1/3 of NY was Irish
5. contracts, jobs, services for votes
6. ward system: not Protestant individualism
7. Welsh, Polish, German, Chinese: worked in the West
8. racial tensions over jobs with Chinese
9. factories, mills, processing plants, mines, construction sites, railroad yards were dangerous, repetitive, monotonous, impersonal, demeaning
10. $10 in pay for 59 hour week
11. Knights of Labor: 1860s
12. AFL: 1886, Samuel Gompers
13. AFL focus: higher wages, job security, improved working conditions for skilled laborers
14. Henry Clay Frick was wounded by a Russian anarchist
15. the governor of Idaho declared martial law
16. Eugene Debs spent six months in jail
Sharecroppers, Farmers, Populists
1. southern planters resumed control of the economy after the Civil War
2. sharecropping by freed slaves
3. housing, stock, implements, seed in return for a sizable portion of crops
4. tenants were reinforced by convict labor
5. black voters were disenfranchised
6. poor white/black farmers turned to populist protest
7. The Souhern Alliance of 1880: empowered poor farmers in the South-Charles Macune
8. antimonopoly program of railroad regulation/monetary reform
9. Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, imposed nondiscriminatory freight rates on the railroads
10. Populist Party: Omaha Nebraska, 1892, 5 Senate seats, Weaver got 1 million votes (8.5%) of the popular vote
11. Coxey’s Army: army of unemployed stormed Washington to demand public works jobs
The New Politics of The 1890s
1. Political activism
2. 1879: Henry George, Progress & Poverty, wanted tax on speculative income
3. Looking Backward: Edward Bellamy, criticized heartless competition, envisioned a cooperative commonwealth
4. Wealth vs. Commonwealth (1894) showed how trusts hurt everyday people
5. Populist monetary demands: William Harvey Coin’s Financial School & The American People’s Money
6. evangelical Protestants: Republican, Roman Catholics/German Lutherans: Democrat
7. William Jennings Bryan, producer democracy
8. Southerners didn’t want a independent party, might hurt white supremacy
Life At The Start Of The 20th Century
1. the new industrial age
2. the key institution was the corporation
3. individualism, free competition, localism: things of the past
4. technology, bureaucracy, national market dominated
5. ethnic, racial, & gender diversity upset traditional norms, new cultural styles emerged
6.) 300 giant corporations controlled 40% of national wealth
7) 70 people owned 1/16 of wealth in America
8) retail/groceries were competitively priced
9. railroads, oil, steel,copper, industries became monopolistic
10. middle class: executives, supervisors, engineers, sales employees, office employees
11. CA, TX, FL: top fruit/veggie places
12. fans, flatirons, stoves, sewing machines, clothes washers, rayon were invented
13. 1901, petroleum refinery in Beaumont, Texas
14. NC, 1903, Wright brothers flew
15. Henry Ford, from a farm in Michigan
16. $265 for a model T-Ford
17. 1920: 9,000,000 vehicles on the road
18. Ford payed his workers $5 a day, 2x the average wage
19. the Federal Highway Act of 1916 was passed
20. many employers refused to keep married women
21. Frederick Winslow Taylor: creator of “scientific management”
22. Taylor became an engineer, wanted to improve efficiency of workers,
23. believed greater efficiency led to shorter hours, higher wages, lower consumer prices
24. Then Henry Ford implemented “mass production”
25. 1908, Harvard began offering Master’s Of Business Administration (MBA)
26. advertisers deliberately sought to create consumer desires
27. emphasized cleanliness, beauty, sexuality
28. department stores: styles, cosmetics, home furnishings, household appliances
29. bargain basements for lower income shoppers
30. big city emporiums: hurt indie merchants & neighborhood shops
Life In The City
1. cities grew
2. 1920: more than half of population in cities
3. 2/3 of urban dwellers were in Northeast
4. electric trolleys, underground railways integrated residential areas & downtown cores
5. neighborhoods were separated by social class
6. sewage problems overwhelmed authorities
7. poor health practices, malnutrition & childhood diseases> US had lowest public health rating of any industrialized nation
8. streetcars reduced animal waste
9. improved sanitation > cures for malaria, yellow fever, typhoid, diphtheria
10. 1/3 decline in national death rate after 1900
11. life expectancy for whites: 48 years, for nonwhites: 33 years
12. parts of NYC had higher population density than cities in India-Bombay
13. overcrowding, squalor: high crime rates
14. Chicago: 1 arrest per 11 residents
15. Chicago: 8x as many murders as Paris
16. Joseph Pulitzer & William Randolph Hearst used comic strips of crime, gossip, scandal & corruption
17. Lawson: “Frenzied Finance”
18. Riis: “How The Other Half Lives”
19. Phillips: “The Treason Of The Senate.”
20. Steffen’s: “The Shame Of Cities”: boss-rule
21. Sinclair’s “The Jungle”, conditions in Chicago’s meat-packing industry
Key Excerpts:
1. Looking Backward
2. The Omaha Platform
3. “The Cross Of Gold Speech”
Dorothea Lange, "Migrant Mother"
[1]http://poietes.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/dorothea-lange-great-depression2.jpg
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