Midterm Review, How Did Populist Insurgents & others criticize late 19th century American capitalism?

p. 258
a. a literature of dissent & protest arose 
b. Henry George, a self-educated workingman from a poor Philadelphia family wrote “Progress & Poverty” that argued that the basis of wealth was land and that a single tax on land would equalize wealth in the nation
c. Edward Bellamy, a Massachusetts lawyer wrote “Looking Backward,” described socialism lovingly, a million copies were sold, embraced cooperative living
d. 1880s-1890s: great movements of farmers & workers
e. revolutionary talk was in the air

272, 273
a. Emma Goldman addressed a huge meeting of the unemployed and encouraged the hungry to go into stores and take it
b. Goldman was arrested for “inciting a riot”
c. 1894, strike @ the Pullman Company in Illinois
d. engineers made $957 but laborers made $124
e. 30,000 injuries a year, 2,000 deaths in railroad work
f. Eugene Debs promoted unionism & socialism, inspired by Bellamy’s “Looking Backward,”
g. 1893, Debs formed the American Railway Union to unite all railway workers
h. Debs wanted to include everyone but blacks were kept out
i. 1894, workers @ the Pullman Palace Car Company went on strike

282, 283
a. the People’s party/Populist party met in convention in 1890 in Topeka, Kansas
b. Mary Ellen Lease told the people: “Wall street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street and for Wall Street. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags... the politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction, when 10,000 little children starve to death every year in the US and over 100,000 shop girls in New York are forced to sell their virtue for bread.”
c. 30 men in USA hold $1.5B in wealth
d. people want land, money, and transportation
e. want direct loans from the government
f. want an abolition of the National Banks

Ignatius Donelly:
a. “We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot box, the legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized. The newspapers are subsidized or muzzled; public opinion silenced; business prostrate, our homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists. The urban workman are denied the right of organization for self-protection; imported pauperized labor beats down their wages; a hireling standing army established to shoot them down... The fruits of the toil of millions are badly stolen to build up colossal fortunes... From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed two classes-paupers and millionaires.”(283) 
b. 1892, James Weaver is nominated, a former general in the Union army
c. the Populist movement was now tied to the voting system
d. Polk: “they could link their hands and hearts together and march to the ballot box and take possession of the government, restore to it the principles of our fathers, and run it in the interest of the people.”(283)
e. Weaver got over 1M votes but lost
f. “The white and colored Alliance are united in their war against trusts, and in the promotion of the doctrine that farmers should establish cooperative stores, and manufactures, and publish their own newspapers, conduct their own schools, and have a hand in everything else that concerns them as citizens or affects them personally or collectively.”(283)
g. “The Bourbon Democracy are trying to down the Alliance with the old cry ‘nigger’. It won’t work though.”(283) 

288, 289
a. populists were racist and nativist
b. “to emancipate all men.”
c. Homestead Strike: capital vs. labor
d. failure to unite blacks & whites
e. failure to unite city workers & farmers
f. 1896, Populists supported William Jennings Bryan
g. Populism would drown in the sea of Democratic politics
h. populism wanted to remain as an independent movement
i.1896, Bryan (D) was defeated by William McKinley: massive use of money in a election campaign
j. 1890, US soldiers attacked Indians camped at Wounded Knee
k. 1896, the state stood to crush labor strikes
l. McKinley drew a connection between money & the flag
m. two years after McKinley became President, the US declared war on Spain

294
a. oil became a big export in the 1880s, 1890s
b. 1891, Rockefeller’s Standard Oil controlled 90% of American exports of kerosene and controlled 70% of the world market
c. oil was the second largest export after cotton
d. demands for expansion by large commercial farmers
e. foreign markets were seen as important to prosperity
f. 1898, Cuban rebels tried to gain independence
g. initially, American business interests didn’t want military intervention in Cuba
h. William Jennings Bryan: anti-imperialist
i. some businessmen, intellectuals and politicians opposed traditional colonialism and advocated an open door policy where America’s economic strength would enter and dominate all of the underdeveloped areas of the world
j. the idea of “informal empire,” 

353
a. Wilson promised that US would stay neutral
b. US wasn’t really neutral, they shipped supplies to Britain
c. the Lusitania was heavily armed 
d. tough business climate: depression in business, deflated farm prices, high unemployment, heavy industries were operating under capacity, bank clearings were off
e. $2B in goods sold to the Allies
f. prosperity depended on foreign markets
g. $700M to $3.5B in private foreign investments in USA-1897 to 1914
h. William Jennings Bryan: believed in neutrality but believed US needed overseas markets
i. Bryan wanted: “an open door to the world” and “the righteous conquest of foreign markets”
j. JP Morgan lent much to the British cause
k. the industrialists spoke as if everyone benefitted from Morgan’s loans