Urban
politics and reform. In the late nineteenth century, municipal government often
failed to meet the needs of its constituents — citizen and immigrant alike. In
many cities across the country, power rested not in the hands of elected
officials but with the boss who handpicked the candidates for office and
controlled the vote through the political machine, or organization, that he
ran. Some of the bosses were New York's William Marcy Tweed and George
Washington Plunkitt, Kansas City's “Big Jim” Pendergast, and Cincinnati's
George Cox. Although reformers bitterly attacked the corruption and
inefficiency that went along with boss politics, the system did provide
valuable services. In return for immigrants' votes and help organizing
campaigns, bosses could arrange jobs on the growing city payrolls for them or
their children. Bosses also provided the poor with money and food and helped
them work out problems with the police or other city agencies. In sum,
political machines ran a large-scale welfare system at a time when even the
concept of a social safety net was unheard of.
The
strong late-nineteenth-century impulse to help the poor and recent immigrant
arrivals often had a distinctly Christian overtone. Groups like the Young Men's
Christian Association, whose North American branch was founded in 1851, grew
rapidly after the Civil War, and an American branch of the Salvation Army was
established in 1880. Charitable assistance was encouraged by the Social Gospel,
a philosophy embraced by a number of Protestant ministers, which noted that
personal salvation came through the betterment of society and that churches could
help bring this about by fighting poverty, slum conditions, and drunkenness.
Churches built gymnasiums, opened libraries, set up lectures, and took on
social programs in the hope of attracting the working poor.
The
settlement house movement was a nonsectarian approach to the same problems
addressed by the churches. Established in the poorest neighborhoods, settlement
houses served as community centers whose primary function was to help immigrant
families adjust to life in the United States. They offered a variety of
services, including nurseries and kindergartens, classes on sewing, cooking,
and English, and a range of sports and recreation programs. The first
settlement house was the Neighborhood Guild in New York (1886), but the most
famous were the Hull House in Chicago, founded by Jane Addams in 1889, and the
Henry Street Settlement on Manhattan's Lower East Side, founded by Lillian Wald
in 1893. College-educated middle-class women, who in effect created the field
of social work, generally ran the settlement houses. As professionals, they
were interested in gathering information on a wide range of urban problems. The
data they collected helped bring about changes in building codes, improved
health care and factory safety, and highlighted the need for new child labor
laws.
African‐Americans
after Reconstruction
In much
of the country in the late nineteenth century, social tensions were defined in
terms of rich versus poor, native-born versus immigrant, and worker versus
capitalist. In the states of the former Confederacy, despite all the calls for
a New South in the years after Reconstruction, tensions continued to center
upon the relations between blacks and whites. Although a small percentage of
African-Americans found work in the new iron foundries and steel mills, they
were generally barred from the textile mills that grew into the region's major
industry. Mill owners preferred to use white women and children rather than
blacks, who were increasingly portrayed as lazy, ignorant, and shiftless. Consequently,
the overwhelming majority of African-Americans were tied to the land as
sharecroppers or tenant farmers. By 1900, segregation was institutionalized
throughout the South, and the civil rights of blacks were sharply curtailed.
Jim Crow
laws and segregation. Under the Civil Rights Act of 1875, racial discrimination
in public accommodations such as hotels, railroads, and theaters was
prohibited. Several challenges to the law were mounted in the courts. In 1883
the Supreme Court ruled in the Civil Rights Cases that the Act was invalid
because it addressed social as opposed to civil rights. Furthermore, the Court
noted that the Fourteenth Amendment protected people against violations of
their civil rights by states, not by the actions of individuals (for example,
when the owner of a hotel refused to rent a room to an African-American). In
the wake of the decision, state legislatures throughout the South enacted laws
that legalized racial segregation in essentially all public places, from
schools to hospitals to restaurants. The Supreme Court upheld such Jim Crow
laws that enforced racial segregation in its landmark decision in Plessy v.
Ferguson (1896). In this case, the Court set forth its famous separate but
equal doctrine, which stated that segregation in itself did not violate the
equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, provided the facilities
for blacks and whites were equal.
Segregated
facilities, whether schools or public transportation, were rarely equal. For
example, while several Southern states spent nearly the same amount on the
education of whites and blacks in 1890, there was a tremendous disparity in
spending in favor of whites within 20 years. Legalized segregation also
reinforced the notions of white racial superiority and African-American
inferiority, creating an atmosphere that encouraged violence, and during the
1890s lynchings of blacks rose significantly. Despite these obvious problems,
the concept of separate but equal was not overturned by the Supreme Court until
1954.
Losing
the right to vote. The end of Reconstruction did not mean an end to
African-American political influence in the South. Blacks continued to serve in
several state legislatures as late as 1900 and were even elected to Congress
after 1877, albeit from all-black districts. However, a change took place in
the 1890s as attitudes about race became more strongly felt and the prospect of
an electoral alliance between poor whites and blacks that could threaten the
power structure became a possibility. While the Fifteenth Amendment ensured
that African-Americans could not be denied the right to vote simply because
they were African-American, the southern states came up with various ways to
disenfranchise blacks.
Mississippi's
1890 constitution imposed limitations on voting that were aimed primarily at
African-Americans. These limitations included residency requirements,
disqualification of individuals convicted of even minor crimes, payment of all
taxes (including the poll tax), and a literacy test. Loopholes existed within
these restrictions to favor whites who might have been otherwise ineligible to
vote. For example, an illiterate person who could demonstrate to the registrar
that he “understood” the constitution would be allowed to vote. Louisiana adopted
the so-called grandfather clause, which allowed men to vote if their fathers or
grandfathers had been eligible to vote as of January 1, 1867. No blacks had the
right to vote anywhere in the South at that time. Although the Supreme Court
ultimately declared the grandfather clause unconstitutional, this and similar
laws drastically cut African-American voter registration in the South by 1900.
The
African-American response. Blacks responded to increasing discrimination in
several ways. The initial wave of the Great Migration of African-Americans,
moving from the rural South to the urban North, began in the 1890s, and there
was a very small emigration back to Africa as well. Former slaves established
all-black towns in Tennessee, Kansas, and the Oklahoma Territory, and organized
early civil rights organizations such as the Citizens Equal Rights Association
(1887) and the Afro-American League (1890). The divisions within the
African-American community on how best to achieve equality were reflected in the
disparate philosophies of two men: Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois.
The
founder of the Tuskegee Institute (1882), an agricultural and vocational
training school in Alabama, Washington believed that blacks should concentrate
on economic self-improvement rather than on demanding social equality and civil
rights. After he outlined his views in a speech in Atlanta in 1895, which
included an apparent acceptance of segregation, his accommodationist position
became known as the Atlanta Compromise. Massachusetts-born and Harvard-trained
Du Bois attacked Washington's philosophy in his The Souls of Black Folks
(1903). He believed that education for blacks had to include more than learning
a trade, and he demanded access to higher education. Indeed, Du Bois believed
it would be this educated African-American elite that would lead the way to
equality by using the ballot box in states where they could vote and
“agitation,” or protest, where they could not.
Everyday
Life in America
In the
decades after the Civil War, Americans experienced remarkable changes in their
everyday life, from the clothes they wore and food they ate to their
opportunities for recreation. Mail order catalogs allowed rural residents to
buy new equipment and follow the latest trends in fashion or household
appliances without ever going to a store. The public school and university
systems grew and developed as the demand for education increased. Meanwhile,
Americans filled their leisure time with a diverse range of activities, from
sports to vaudeville to amusement parks. The impact of these changes in
lifestyle was reflected in both the serious and popular literature of the time,
which emphasized realism and targeted the growing middle class.
The
impact of mass production. Mass production changed the way Americans dressed,
shopped, and ate. After the Civil War, handmade clothing quickly gave way to
ready-to-wear clothes sold through retail outlets. But people did not have to
live in large cities or even visit the stores themselves to buy what they
needed. In 1872, Aaron Montgomery Ward opened the first mail-order retail
business and issued a one-page catalog featuring nearly 150 items; by 1884 the
catalog contained more than 200 pages and listed over 10,000 items. Montgomery
Ward and its more successful competitor Sears, Roebuck and Company brought the
benefits of mass production to farms and small towns by selling everything from
clothes to agricultural implements through their catalogs. Mail-order buying
was made even more accessible in 1896 with the first rural free delivery (RFD)
service.
The
variety of foods available also increased dramatically. By the 1880s,
Easterners could buy California oranges, Wyoming beef, and fresh milk shipped
from rural dairies by rail in refrigerated cars. More and more women shopped
for commercially prepared food and did less baking and canning. Many of today's
best known brand names — Campbell's soup, Nabisco crackers, and Coca-Cola —
were introduced in the 1890s. These products were marketed through grocery
chain stores like the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, or A & P,
which added foodstuffs and household products to its inventory in the 1870s.
Perhaps the best known example of the chain store was the “five and dime,”
created by F. W. Woolworth in 1879. Like the new department stores, the
retailing success of A & P and Woolworth's was due to large-volume buying
and heavy advertising.
The
expansion of education. Public-school enrollment doubled between 1870 and 1900,
including a significant jump in the number of high school students during the
same period. Both trends contributed to a sharp drop in illiteracy in the
United States. The growth in elementary education reflected the influx of
immigrants. Immigrant parents wanted their children to go to school as a means
of getting ahead, while educators and public officials saw schools as the best
instruments for acculturation. Children of the middle class, however, accounted
for the increase in the secondary-school population. New classes in American
history, the sciences, and the “manual arts” were added to the basic curriculum
of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and the first vocational high schools were
established by the turn of the century.
Higher
education also expanded. As a result of both public and private investment,
American colleges and universities had almost 250,000 students by 1900, four
times the number 30 years earlier. The Morrill Act of 1862 led to the creation
of 12 new state colleges, 8 agricultural and mechanical colleges, and 6 black
colleges, and the federal government provided partial funding for these
institutions through the Second Morrill Act (1890). At the same time, wealthy
entrepreneurs and philanthropists endowed new schools, such as Johns Hopkins
University (1873), Stanford University (1885), and the University of Chicago
(1890). Higher education became more accessible to women as several women's
colleges, such as Vassar (1861) and Smith (1871), were founded and state
land-grant universities became coeducational. In fact, women accounted for
nearly 20 percent of college graduates in 1900. Not everyone fully shared in
these changes though. Although a number of all-black colleges were established,
African-Americans certainly did not benefit as much as middle-class whites from
the expansion of public education.
The use
of leisure time. Sports became a popular pastime for many Americans in the late
nineteenth century. Golf, tennis, and bicycling (which became a short-lived
national craze in the 1890s) attracted middle-class and well-to-do men and
women, while baseball drew more diverse and much larger crowds. Not long after
the professional Cincinnati Red Stockings began barnstorming around the
country, the National League was formed (1876) and the rules of the modern game
took shape. The rival American League began play in 1901, and the inaugural
World Series was held two years later. Prizefighting, long considered a working
man's sport, gained wider acceptance with the introduction of the Queensberry
rules, which mandated the use of gloves, set the length of a round at three
minutes, and outlawed wrestling holds; no less a figure than Theodore Roosevelt
endorsed boxing as a manly sport. Football quickly became the premier collegiate
spectator sport, and Dr. James Naismith invented basketball in 1891 as an
indoor game that could be played between the football and baseball seasons.
Vaudeville,
which grew out of the pre-Civil War minstrel shows, was an important form of
family entertainment. A variety of acts, including dancing, singing, magic,
juggling, acrobatic, and trained-animal, toured on circuits organized by
theater owners. For more highbrow tastes, almost every major American city had
a symphony orchestra by the turn of the century. Band performances, both
open-air and in concert halls, were well attended in cities and small towns
across the county. The repertoire relied heavily on patriotic marches such as
John Philip Sousa's “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” Ragtime, which came out of
the African-American tradition, became part of American popular music. The
publication of Scott Joplin's “Maple Leaf Rag” in 1899 brought syncopated
rhythms of the saloons and black community to a wider audience. New York's
Coney Island became the first and best known of the great amusement parks,
which offered exhilarating rides, strange sideshows, and cheap food. A smaller
number of Americans had the opportunity to see the wondrous products of the
industrial age and the cornucopia from the country's farms at the 1876
Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition and the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition in
Chicago.
Literature
and popular reading. Realism was the central literary style in the works of
American writers after the Civil War. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by
his pen name Mark Twain, was the first major American writer born west of the
Appalachian Mountains. His most famous works — The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
(1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) — drew on his experiences
of life in Missouri and along the Mississippi River before the Civil War. Among
Twain's contemporaries were William Dean Howells and Henry James. Howells's The
Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) portrays the newly rich middle class and is among
the earliest fictional accounts of an American businessman, while James's The
Portrait of a Lady (1881) examines a young American woman's experiences in the
European societies of England and Italy. Influenced by the deterministic
aspects of Darwinism, Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser used naturalism — a
form of realism emphasizing the role of environment and fate in characters'
lives — to present a more pessimistic depiction of society and human existence.
Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) tells the story of the slums of
New York and an innocent woman's fall into prostitution and death. In Sister
Carrie(1900), Dreiser describes how a young country girl is literally seduced
by her own ambition and city life. One of the most popular books of the late
nineteenth century was not a realistic depiction of urban life but a utopian
novel. Edward Bellamy,mn's Looking Backward (1888) is set in the year 2000 when
poverty, crime, and corruption have disappeared and everyone is working for a
government-owned-and-operated trust for the same pay.
Popular
reading was often geared to a specific audience. As the tide of immigration
grew, so did the number of ethnic newspapers published in the United States.
The foreign-language press included dailies and weeklies in French, German,
Greek, Italian, Russian, Spanish, and Yiddish (the language spoken and read by
East European Jews). Magazines aimed primarily at middle-class women appeared,
such as Harper's Bazar (1867), Ladies Home Journal (1883), and Ladies' Home
Companion (1886). An enduring notion of post-Civil War America perpetuated in
popular reading was that anyone could be successful through hard work and
perseverance. Horatio Alger, who wrote more than 100 young-adult novels
beginning with the best seller Ragged Dick (1867), did more than anyone else to
popularize the “rags-to-riches” myth. In fact, his heroes managed to pull
themselves up more by luck than by sheer determination — they saved the life of
the daughter of a wealthy businessman and got a job with the company as a
reward. Alger's suggestion that anyone could succeed did not match the reality
of social mobility. Successful men usually came from a middle or upper class
background and had fathers who were in commerce, banking, or the professions.
Domestic
Politics
In the
period from the end of Reconstruction to the beginning of the twentieth
century, there was little difference between the agendas of Republicans and
Democrats. Both parties were generally pro-business, despite the fact that
steps were taken to regulate the railroads and the trusts, and neither was
concerned with the economic and social dislocations brought about by
industrialization and urbanization. The questions that dominated domestic
politics in the late nineteenth century appear rather mundane — monetary
policy, civil service reform, and the tariff. The failure of the federal
government to seriously address the problems facing agriculture forced farmers
to organize and pursue political action on their own. Although domestic issues
occupied the nation for most of the period, foreign policy questions dominated
the last years of the century. In a remarkably short time, the United States
acquired an overseas empire in the Pacific and the Caribbean and became a major
force in world affairs.
Republicans
and Democrats were relatively evenly matched in the political arena. Although
the Republicans controlled the White House for all but eight years between 1876
and 1900, presidential elections were close and the winner rarely received more
than 50 percent of the popular vote. Congress was usually divided with a
Republican majority in the Senate and a Democratic majority in the House. The
reason for such an even political balance was that neither party had a truly
national base of support. Democrats could count on the “solid” South (as the
states of the former Confederacy were called) and the southern parts of the
border states, as well as recent immigrants, Catholics, and the working class
in the larger cities of the Midwest and Northeast where political machines got
out the vote. Republicans, on the other hand, had strongholds in smaller
cities, towns, and the rural areas of the Midwest and New England, and were
also backed by the business community, the growing middle class, and
African-Americans (to the extent that they could and did go to the polls).
These generalizations about party loyalty had many exceptions, of course. For
instance, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were
swing states, meaning that they might vote either Democrat or Republican in a
presidential election.
Greenbacks
and silver. The nation's monetary system was chaotic after the Civil War, with
gold, silver, and paper money all circulating simultaneously. Gold circulated
in twenty-, ten-, and five-dollar coins known as “double eagles,” “eagles,” and
“half-eagles” while silver coins were minted as dollar, half-dollar, quarter,
dime, and half-dime coins. Greenbacks, the paper money printed by the Union
during the Civil War, remained in circulation and could be redeemed for gold or
silver. Banks, meanwhile, were printing their own notes (another form of paper
money), often in excess of their assets. As individuals and institutions
struggled to find security within the country's complicated financial system,
two approaches to managing the system emerged — one that favored restricting
the money in circulation and another that favored expanding it. Supporters of a
restricted currency felt that limiting the money supply would keep the economy
stable and prices low. Advocates of an expanded currency, however, believed
that increasing the money supply would make it easier for debtors, particularly
farmers, to pay off what they owed and create increased prices for farm
products.
Those
who supported an inflated currency, as well as mining interests in the West
that had just found major deposits of silver, were outraged when the Coinage
Act of 1873 ordered the U.S. Mint to stop issuing silver dollars; they derided
the new law as “the Crime of '73.” In 1878, the Greenback Labor party, which
was quite successful in that year's Congressional elections, called for the
unlimited coinage of silver. In the same year, the silverbackers secured
passage of the Bland-Allison Act, which required the Treasury to buy between two
and four million dollars worth of silver per month. Treasury officials,
however, purchased the minimum amount of silver required under the law and did
not put the new coins produced into circulation. Congressional supporters of a
silver standard passed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1890, under which 4.5
million ounces of silver were bought each month (effectively the entire output
of the western silver mines) and Treasury notes were made redeemable in gold or
silver. While the money supply did increase slightly, the currency question
remained unresolved and became the central issue in the 1896 presidential
election.
Civil
service reform. Angered by the scandals of the Grant administration and
political corruption in general, Americans demanded changes in the way
government jobs were given out. Common practice was to rely on the spoils
system, in which the party that won the presidency replaced office holders in
the federal bureaucracy with members of its own party. Critics charged that
such “rotation in office” resulted in a considerable loss of experience and
expertise. The Republican party was split into two factions on the issue of
civil service reform. The Half-Breeds, led by Senators Carl Schurz and James G.
Blaine, along with newspaper editor Edwin L. Godkin, favored an end to the
spoils system, while the Stalwarts, led by Senator Roscoe Conkling, felt that
control of patronage jobs was essential. When the Republican convention
deadlocked on the issue in 1880, the party compromised and nominated Half-Breed
James A. Garfield for president and Stalwart Chester A. Arthur for vice
president.
Although
Garfield won the close election, he was assassinated four months after taking
office by Charles Guiteau, a disgruntled office seeker and self-proclaimed Stalwart.
The country was so outraged by the murder that the Pendelton Civil Service Act
was passed by Congress and signed by new pro-spoils President Arthur in 1883.
The law created an independent Civil Service Commission and determined which
jobs in the federal government would be filled on a merit basis through
competitive examinations rather than through political appointment. Although
the percentage of positions covered by the law was small at first, subsequent
legislation expanded the commission's reach and significantly improved the
quality of federal employees.
Considered
by his peers to be a hack politician and a mediocre president, Chester Arthur
was pushed aside by the Republicans in 1884 in favor of James G. Blaine, whose
career in the Senate was tarnished by trading political favors for railroad
stock. The Democrats, who had captured the House in 1882, sensed a chance to
gain the White House for the first time since 1856. They selected Grover
Cleveland, who had risen from the mayor of Buffalo, New York, to the governor
of the state in a remarkably short period of time. The campaign was a dirty
one, with the Republicans claiming that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate
child; he admitted that he had accepted his responsibility for the child and was
paying support to its mother. A remark by a Protestant minister (who was a
Blaine supporter) that the Democrats were the party of “rum, Romanism, and
rebellion” was not disavowed quickly enough by the Republicans, and this helped
Cleveland to win a close election.
The
tariff question. Tariffs were the one issue that seriously divided the two
parties. Republicans favored high tariffs to help subsidize American industry
by keeping cheaper imported goods out of the country; Democrats wanted to lower
duties to reduce prices. Tariff schedules — what rates were charged on which
products — were always changing to reflect new commodities on the market or the
political strategies of members of Congress who used the tariffs for their own
advantage. A senator from Iowa, for example, would support a low rate for iron
ore since none was mined in his state and a high rate on imported grain to
protect Iowa corn.
Toward
the end of his term, Grover Cleveland proposed a major overhaul of the
country's tariff policy. The high rates, he argued, had created a sizable
federal surplus that pushed the cost of living up for everyone while benefiting
only a few. Congress refused to enact tariff reform, and Cleveland's position
cost him the next election. Although receiving more of the popular vote, he
lost to Benjamin Harrison, the Republican senator from Ohio, in the electoral
college. Emboldened by their victory in 1888, the Republicans raised rates in
1890 (the McKinley Tariff) and again in 1897 (the Dingley Tariff). In the
interim, during Cleveland's second term (1892–97), a modest reduction was
enacted in the Wilson-Gorman Tariff of 1894. The law included a personal income
tax to make up for the revenue lost due to the lower rates, a provision the
Supreme Court later declared unconstitutional.
The
Revolt of the Farmers
American
farmers faced a myriad of problems in the late nineteenth century. Agricultural
prices steadily declined after 1870 as a result of domestic overproduction and
foreign competition. The high rates charged by grain elevator operators and
railroads to store and ship crops were a constant source of complaint, while
high tariffs made the goods farmers had to buy, such as farm machinery, more
expensive. Forced to borrow money to pay for their land or equipment, many
farmers were in debt and favored keeping the amount of money in circulation
high, either through printing greenbacks or the unlimited coinage of silver.
The
Grange and Farmers' Alliances. Farmers began to organize soon after the Civil
War. The Patrons of Husbandry, or the Grange, was established in 1867 to
sponsor educational and social programs for farmers and later encouraged
farmer-owned cooperatives. In the political arena, the Grange successfully
secured legislation in several states to regulate railroad and warehousing
rates, and many of its members supported the Greenback Labor party. As the
Grange declined in the late 1870s, new farmer groups known as Farmers'
Alliances came to the fore. By 1890, the two largest were the Northwestern Alliance
and the Southern Alliance, which, despite their regional names, had more than
three million members nationwide. Although the Alliance movement encouraged the
participation of women, who were among some of its most outspoken leaders, the
Southern Alliance was segregated. As a result, African-American farmers in the
Deep South formed the National Colored Farmers Alliance. Representatives of
this organization met with the Southern Alliance and the Farmers' Mutual
Benefit Association in Ocala, Florida, in December of 1890 to develop a
platform that became known as the Ocala Demands. These demands called for the
abolition of national banks, the creation of federal sub-treasuries that would
provide low-interest loans to farmers against the value of their crops, the
unlimited coinage of silver, an end to high tariffs, strict control over
transportation and communication, a graduated income tax, and the direct
election of senators.
The
Southern Alliance stayed within the Democratic party, and following the 1890
elections the Alliance gained control of eight state legislatures, elected four
governors, and sent forty-four representatives and two senators to Washington.
In the Plains, the Alliance ran third-party candidates with very similar
results. Kansas and South Dakota had senators who were Populists, as the new
political movement was called, and both houses of the Nebraska legislature were
in their hands as well. These victories soon led to the creation of a national
party.
The
Populist party. The Populist, or People's, party was officially organized in
St. Louis in February 1892 and held its first nominating convention in Omaha in
July. Dominated by farmers, the party also reached out to labor and
reform-minded groups and reflected this broader constituency in its platform.
In addition to restating the Ocala Demands, the platform called for an
eight-hour workday and immigration restriction, strongly condemned the use of
Pinkerton detectives against strikers, and supported such political reforms as
the secret ballot, initiative, and referendum. The Populists took a somewhat
more radical stand on government ownership, implying that the railroads should
be nationalized without delay.
In the
1892 presidential race, the Populists nominated James B. Weaver, a former
general in the Union army who had previously run for president as the Greenback
Labor party's candidate. Although he received more than 1 million popular votes
and 22 in the electoral college (including Kansas, Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada)
Weaver and the Populist party lacked support in key areas. Southerners did not
back Weaver because he had fought for the North during the Civil War and
because of the fear that a Populist victory would lead African-Americans to
demand their full civil rights. Nor was the party's appeal to labor groups very
successful, because higher agricultural prices meant higher food prices and
lower tariffs meant more competition from abroad, which could result in
layoffs. Although the Populists elected five senators and ten representatives,
Democrat Grover Cleveland took the White House for a second time.
The
crisis of the 1890s. Cleveland had barely taken office when the nation was hit
by the worst economic crisis in its history up to that time. Triggered by the
bankruptcy of several railroads and the failure of a British bank that caused
many British investors to exchange their American stocks for gold, the Panic of
1893 led to a depression that lasted for four years. The nation's gold reserves
fell dramatically between January 1892 and March 1893, 600 banks had closed
their doors by the end of the year, more than three million people — about 20
percent of the workforce — were unemployed, and wheat and corn prices fell
precipitously.
Cleveland
failed to comprehend the magnitude of the disaster. To stop the drain of gold,
the President asked for and received the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase
Act. This stopped the issuance of silver certificates that were redeemable in
gold, but it did not solve the problem. The federal government was forced to
secure a loan from a banking syndicate headed by J. Pierpont Morgan to buy 3.5
million ounces of gold in order to meet the Treasury emergency. Throughout the
crisis, Cleveland maintained that boom-and-bust cycles were inevitable and that
little could be done about them. Indeed, he strongly believed that
responsibility for the social costs of depression did not fall to the
government, at any level. Jacob Coxey, a Populist from Ohio, disagreed. He led
a group of 400 men on a protest march to Washington, D.C., in the spring of
1894 and demanded that the federal government set up a $500 million public
works project for the unemployed. Coxey's Army quickly disbanded when Coxey and
other leaders were arrested for trespassing.
The
election of 1896. The Democrats were certainly hurt by the Panic of 1893; both
the Republicans and Populists gained seats in the 1894 congressional elections.
As the country anticipated the presidential campaign of 1896, it was clear that
the main campaign issue would be whether to have a silver or gold monetary
standard. The Republicans nominated William McKinley of Ohio on a platform
supporting the gold standard and high tariffs. Democrats were split between the
silverites, who supported a silver standard, and the goldbugs, who supported
currency that was based on gold. Silverite William Jennings Bryan, a former
Congressman from Nebraska, guaranteed himself the Democratic nomination through
his famous “Cross of Gold” speech before the convention. The selection of Bryan
created a serious problem for the Populists. Party leaders realized that
running their own candidate would split the silver vote and hand the election
to the Republicans. At the same time, “free silver” was just one plank in the
Populist program and backing the Democrats would mean a loss of independence
and identity. Ultimately, the Populist party decided to nominate Bryan for
president as well and made Tom Watson of Georgia its candidate for vice
president.
The
Republicans dramatically outspent the Democrats in promoting their campaign and
trumpeted that a vote for McKinley was a vote for prosperity. Meanwhile, the
Democrats discovered that Bryan had very little appeal among immigrants,
factory workers, and the middle class. McKinley's victory was decisive; for the
first time since 1872, a candidate for president won more than 50 percent of
the vote. By committing the 1896 campaign platform to the single issue of free
silver, the Populists lost momentum on their other reform proposals. When Bryan
ran against McKinley for a second time in 1900, the Populists again endorsed
him and shared his second defeat. By this time, the party was no longer winning
state and local elections and was clearly in decline.
Circumstances
more than his program made McKinley's administration a successful one.
Certainly the high rates of the Dingley Tariff did little to solve the
country's economic ills, but an increase in farm prices, the excitement of
finding gold in the Klondike, and restored prosperity helped the Panic of 1893
fade into a bad memory. Americans were also turning their attention to a new
issue — the idea of overseas expansion.
The
United States as a World Power
Around
the time of the Civil War, the majority of Americans showed little interest in
foreign policy; national concerns were industrialization, the settlement of the
West, and domestic politics. Nonetheless, steps were taken to extend American
influence beyond the continental United States. Before and after the war, several
small islands in the Pacific were acquired as coaling stations for American
ships: Howland and Baker Islands in 1857 and the Midway Islands in 1867. The
purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867, though derided at the time as “Seward's
Folly,” was seen by Secretary of State William H. Seward as an important step
in establishing a foothold in Asian markets. In 1878, a treaty was negotiated
that gave the United States the right to establish a naval station at Pago Pago
in Samoa. The true prize in the Pacific, however, was the Hawaiian Islands.
The
annexation of Hawaii. American missionaries and commercial interests had long
been active in Hawaii; by the 1840s, they controlled the sugar plantations and
held positions in government. The United States was given the right to build a
naval base at Pearl Harbor in 1887, and, in the same year, Americans on the
islands forced the Hawaiian rulers to create a constitutional monarchy under
American control. In 1891, Queen Liliuokalani assumed the throne and tried to
reassert Hawaiian sovereignty, but this brief interlude of independence came to
an end two years later when the planters, with the help of American gunboats,
staged a successful coup. President Cleveland refused to annex Hawaii and
preferred the restoration of a constitutional monarchy, but the leaders of the
coup rejected that solution and instead proclaimed The Republic of Hawaii on
July 4, 1894. The United States quickly recognized the new republic, but this
did not end the matter. McKinley ran on a platform that called for the
annexation of Hawaii, and the island became a U.S. territory in 1898, just as
European and U.S. imperialism boiled over into the Spanish-American War.
Justifications
for expansion.Since 1870, European nations such as Great Britain, France,
Belgium, Germany, and Italy had been seizing territory and establishing
colonies in Africa and Asia. Several factors contributed to the United States'
somewhat belated participation in this Age of Imperialism. Both industrial
output and agricultural production were far exceeding the ability of the
nation's consumers to absorb them, and foreign markets were thereby deemed
essential to continued economic growth. Business leaders believed that huge
profits could be made by selling American goods in Central and South America
and Asia as well as by directly investing in the development of the natural
resources of those countries. The clamor to annex Hawaii, for example, came
first and foremost from the American sugar cane planters on the islands.
The
proponents of a strong navy also recognized the value of overseas trade.
Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan argued in The Influence of Sea Power upon History
(1890) that a nation's greatness depended on its navy, and that countries with
the greatest fleets played a decisive role in shaping history. His vision for
the United States included overseas colonies and control of a canal linking the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans across either Panama or Nicaragua. Mahan's ideas
influenced men like Theodore Roosevelt, who served as Assistant Secretary of
the Navy under McKinley, and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, a supporter of American
expansion.
In
addition to national prestige, race theory was another justification for
American imperialism. In 1885 Congregationalist minister Josiah Strong
published Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis, in which he
argued that the United States, as the home of the “superior” Anglo-Saxon race,
had an obligation to spread political liberty, Christianity, and civilization.
He wrote, “This powerful race will move down upon Mexico, down upon Central and
South America, out upon the islands of the sea, over upon Africa and beyond.”
The popularity of Strong's book (the first edition sold 158,000 copies)
indicated that public opinion supported the concept of the “white man's burden”
and social Darwinism, or the survival of the fittest society. Such beliefs in
moral and societal superiority helped Americans to rationalize U.S. involvement
in foreign affairs.
The war
with Spain. Spain's misrule of Cuba alarmed many American businessmen who had
more than $50 million invested on the island. When the Spanish government
attempted to harshly suppress a revolt, dramatic stories describing brutal
atrocities circulated in the American press. Two leading American newspaper
publishers, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, used the Cuban tragedy
to boost circulation through sensationalist reporting known as yellow
journalism. The newspaper accounts succeeded in stirring anti-Spanish and
pro-Cuban sentiment in the United States. The publication of the de Lome
Letter, a letter from the Spanish Minister Depuy de Lome in which he called
President McKinley a weak politician, heightened anti-Spanish feelings in the
United States as well. On February 15, 1898, less than a week after the letter
appeared in the press, the U.S. battleship Maine blew up in Havana Harbor with
the loss of 260 men. Although the cause of the explosion could not be
determined, Hearst loss no time in blaming Spain for the incident, his
newspapers declaring “Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain!” McKinley did not
want open hostilities, and there is ample evidence that Spain was ready to make
major concessions in Cuba, but public opinion demanded action. The two
countries were at war on April 21.
The
first victory of the Spanish-American War came far from Cuba, in the
Phillipines. On May 1, under the command of Commodore George Dewey, the U.S.
Asiatic Squadron destroyed or captured the entire Spanish fleet in the Battle
of Manila Bay. American forces took Manila with the help of Filipino
insurrectionists and began the military occupation of the islands in August. In
June, 17,000 American troops, a combination of the regular Army and volunteers
(including a cavalry regiment popularly known as the “Rough Riders,” organized
by Theodore Roosevelt), landed in Cuba. Strategic points on the island fell to
the Americans in two major land engagements on July 1, and the American fleet
made short work of the Spanish ships that tried to run the blockade of Santiago
harbor a few days later. By July 26, Spain was asking for peace, and the
armistice to end what was called the “splendid little war” was signed on August
12. Of the almost 5,500 men who died during the war, less than 400 were killed
in battle, the majority falling victim to diseases such as yellow fever and
malaria. To many, this seemed a small price to pay for an empire.
At the
start of the war, the United States had disavowed all territorial claims to Cuba,
but this pledge did not apply to other strategic islands or Spanish
possessions. While Cuba became independent under the Treaty of Paris (December
10, 1898), which formally ended the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico and Guam
were ceded to the United States. The United States also gained control of the
Philippines in return for a payment to Spain of $20 million. American
acquisition of the Philippines was the most controversial aspect of the war,
and the dissension was reflected in the debate between the imperialists and
anti-imperialists in the Senate regarding the ratification of the treaty. The
Filipinos had fully expected the United States to grant them independence after
Spain was defeated, and when that did not occur, a revolt against American rule
began. Fought from 1899 to 1902, the Philippine Insurrection was more costly
than the Spanish-American War. Over 125,000 American troops were sent to the
Philippines and fought a protracted guerrilla war that resulted in more than
4,000 U.S. and nearly 20,000 Filipino combat deaths. The cost of administering
an empire proved high indeed.
China
and the Open Door policy. By the 1890s, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia,
and Japan had carved out special trading privileges and spheres of influence
for themselves in China. Not to be left out of a very lucrative market,
Secretary of State John Hay issued a series of diplomatic notes between 1899
and 1900 that outlined what became known as the Open Door policy. The first
note called on all countries to allow open access to trade with China. Even
though formal responses were never received from any nation except Great
Britain, Hay announced that everyone supported the American initiative. A new
obstacle to trade in China arose in June 1900 when Chinese nationalists
organized a revolt, the Boxer Rebellion, against foreign influence and laid
siege to several embassies in Peking. Afraid that the revolt would be used as
an excuse to break up the Chinese Empire, Hay called on all countries to
respect the territorial and administrative integrity of China. On August 14, a
joint American, British, German, Russian, and Japanese expeditionary force
arrived in Peking and put down the rebellion. The United States would continue
to make its presence felt in Asia as well as the Caribbean and Central America
in the first decades of the twentieth century.
Political
and Social Reforms
During
the Progressive Era (1900–1920), the country grappled with the problems caused
by industrialization and urbanization. Progressivism, an urban, middle-class
reform movement, supported the government taking a greater role in addressing
such issues as the control of big business and the welfare of the public. Many
of its accomplishments were based on efforts of earlier reform movements. The federal
income tax and the direct election of senators, for example, were a part of the
Populist program, and Prohibition grew from a pre-Civil War anti-alcohol reform
tradition. Although the Progressives formed their own political party in 1912,
the movement had broad support among both Democrats and Republicans. Presidents
Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft (Republicans) and Woodrow Wilson
(Democrat) all claimed the Progressive mantle.
The need
for reform was highlighted by a group of journalists and writers known as the
muckrakers, who made Americans aware of the serious failings in society and
built public support for change. Exposés such as Lincoln Steffens' The Shame of
the Cities (1904), an attack on municipal corruption, and Ida Tarbell's History
of the Standard Oil Company (1904), which chronicled John D. Rockefeller's
ruthless business practices, often first appeared in the new mass circulation
magazines, such as McClure's and Cosmopolitan, and were later published as
books. The muckrakers' impact could be powerful, as in the case of Upton
Sinclair's The Jungle (1906), a book whose vivid descriptions of working and
sanitary conditions in Chicago's meatpacking plants led directly to federal
laws regulating the industry.
Making
government more responsive and efficient. Two important objectives of
Progressivism were giving the public the opportunity to participate more
directly in the political process and limiting the power of big city bosses.
Progressives hoped to accomplish these goals through a variety of political
reforms. These reforms included the direct primary a preliminary election
giving all members of a party the chance to take part in a nomination and that
was intended to limit the influence of political machines in selecting candidates;
initiative a process for putting a proposition or proposed law on a ballot
(usually by getting a specified number of signatures on a petition), and
referendum, the voting on an initiative, allowing the people to enact
legislation that a state legislature is either unwilling or unable to do; and
recall, a process giving voters the power to remove elected officials from
office through petition and a vote. Governor Robert M. LaFollette of Wisconsin
championed these reforms, and their implementation in his state became the
model for the rest of the country (the Wisconsin Idea).
Meanwhile,
making the national government more responsive to the people was expressed
through the Seventeenth Amendment (1913) which provided for the direct election
of senators rather than their selection by the state legislatures. State
legislatures were also increasingly concerned about the welfare of their
citizens. In 1902, Maryland became the first state to offer workmen's
compensation, payments to workers or their families for disability or death
suffered on the job. Some protection was offered to federal employees under the
1916 Workmen's Compensation Act.
Progressives
were also fascinated by efficiency and scientific management. In 1900, when a
hurricane and flood destroyed much of the infrastructure of Galveston, Texas,
the mayor and city council were replaced with a commission made up of
nonpartisan administrators who ran each of the city's municipal departments.
The commission form of government became popular in small and medium-sized
cities throughout the country. Following a flood in 1913, Dayton, Ohio
experimented with a city-manager system. Under this plan, the structure of a
city government followed that of a business corporation, with a city
administrator acting as a manager reporting to a board of directors made up of
a mayor and city council. The Progressive Era also saw the growth of the public
ownership of water, gas, and electric service; municipally owned utilities
offered consumers lower rates than private companies. Utilities that remained
in private hands invariably came under the jurisdiction of regulatory
commissions that reviewed rates, mergers, and other business activities.
Railroads and urban transportation systems were under similar regulation. Progressive
reform measures, however, extended beyond restructuring the government and
addressed social problems as well.
Prohibition.
The campaign against the evils of alcohol made little progress until the
formation of the Anti-Saloon League in 1893. Unlike previous groups, the new
organization focused its effort on prohibiting alcohol rather than persuading
individuals to stop drinking. Supported by Protestant churches, it pioneered
single-issue politics and backed only “dry” candidates for elected office. This
strategy worked, and by 1917 almost two thirds of the states had banned the
manufacture and sale of alcohol. With German Americans prominent in the brewing
and distillery industries, American participation in the First World War added
allegedly patriotic motives to the calls for a constitutional amendment on
prohibition. In December 1917, Congress adopted the Eighteenth Amendment, which
was approved by the states in January 1919 and went into effect a year later,
banning the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol nationwide.
Child
labor and women's rights. The National Child Labor Committee coordinated a
movement to address the exploitation of children. One of the most effective
weapons in its campaign were photographs taken by Lewis Hine that showed boys
and girls as young as eight years of age working with dangerous equipment in
coal mines and factories. By 1910, many states had enacted legislation
establishing the minimum legal age when children could work (between 12 and 16)
and the maximum length of a workday or week. It is not clear, however, what had
more of an impact on child labor — these laws or the state compulsory school
attendance requirements that were becoming more widespread at the same time.
Progressives
also wanted to limit how long women could work, arguing that long hours in a
factory were detrimental to a woman's well being. The Supreme Court agreed in
Muller v. Oregon (1908) and upheld a state law that limited women laundry
workers to working no more than ten hours a day. The case was significant
because the Court accepted the Brandeis Brief a wealth of sociological,
economic, and medical evidence submitted by attorney Louis Brandeis
demonstrating that the health of the women was impaired by long factory hours.
Sometimes, however, change came only as a result of tragedy. On March 25, 1911,
almost 150 people, mostly Italian and Jewish immigrant women, died in the
Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire. In response, the New York State legislature established
a 54-hour workweek for women, prohibited children under 14 from working, and
imposed new building regulations and factory safety rules.
Although
the cause of equal opportunity in the workplace was pushed back by the
Progressive's argument that women were weaker than men, women finally did get
the right to vote. A number of western states had already granted suffrage
(enfranchisement, or voting privileges) — Wyoming (1890), Colorado (1893), Utah
(1896), and Washington (1910) — and the Democratic Party platform in 1916
called on the remaining states to do the same. While the National American
Woman Suffrage Association relied on patient organizing, militant groups
adopted more direct tactics. The Congressional Union, for example, was
committed to gaining the vote through the passage of a constitutional amendment
rather than securing it piecemeal state by state, and the National Woman's
Party used picket lines, marches, and hunger strikes to build momentum for
their cause. Women's participation in World War I, through service in the
military and work in defense plants and the Red Cross, heightened the momentum.
The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which gave women the right to
vote, passed the Senate in June 1919 and was ratified by the states in August
1920, more than 70 years after the first women's rights meeting in Seneca
Falls, New York.
Progressivism:
Roosevelt and Taft
On
September 6, 1901, an anarchist shot President William McKinley, who died a few
days later. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt returned from a camping trip to
take the oath of office. Although he was the youngest person ever to hold the
office, Roosevelt had considerable political experience. The vice president
previously served as a member of the New York State Assembly, commissioner of
the New York City police, assistant secretary of the Navy, a leader of the
Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War, and governor of New York. Just as
Progressives believed that state and local governments had an expanded role to
play in controlling big business and public welfare, so did Roosevelt believe
that the federal government and the presidency itself had a greater job to do.
Roosevelt
and big business. Roosevelt had a well-deserved reputation as a “trustbuster.”
During his administration (1901–09), 44 antitrust actions were filed against
the nation's largest corporations, including the Northern Securities Company (a
railway holding company). But the essence of the president's Square Deal —
Roosevelt's approach to social problems, big business, and labor unions — was
that he distinguished between “good” and “bad” trusts and strongly preferred to
regulate corporations for the public welfare rather than destroy them. In the
case of the railroads, for example, the practice of rebating was eliminated
through the Elkins Act (1903), and the Hepburn Act (1906) allowed the
Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to set maximum railroad rates. The Hepburn
Act also expanded the ICC's jurisdiction to include pipelines, ferries,
sleeping cars, and bridges and made the ICC's orders on carriers binding,
pending a court ruling.
Regulation
meant protecting the interests of consumers as well as controlling the power of
big business. The muckrakers had raised serious questions about such problems
as the utility of the patent medicines sold to Americans and sounded the alarm
that meat infected with disease or covered in rat droppings was processed and
sold to the public. Congress reacted to these revelations by passing the Pure
Food and Drug Act (1906) which prohibited the manufacture, sale, or
transportation of food or drugs in interstate commerce that had been
adulterated or fraudulently labeled. The Meat Inspection Act, which was enacted
in the same year, sought to enforce sanitary conditions in the packing industry
and authorized the Department of Agriculture to inspect meat sold through
interstate commerce.
Conservation
of natural resources. Outdoorsman, hunter, and naturalist in his own right,
Roosevelt was the first president to actively promote the conservation of the
country's natural resources. Under his administration, millions of acres were
set aside as national forest lands; coal and oil reserves as well as
hydroelectric power sites were placed in the public domain; and the national park
system was enlarged. For Roosevelt, conservation meant wise use, and this was
the theme of the White House Conference on Conservation (1908) that brought
together members of the Cabinet and Congress as well as the governors of most
of the states. The president's utilitarian approach was championed by the head
of the U.S. Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, and was reflected in such
legislation as the National Reclamation Act of 1902, which directed that
proceeds from the sale of public lands be used to finance irrigation projects
in the West.
Taft as
a progressive. After the 1904 election, Roosevelt stated that he would not run
for president again. Four years later, William Howard Taft, his handpicked
successor, easily defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan in his third and
final run for the White House. Although Taft had never held elective office, he
did have years of public service behind him. He had been a prosecutor and
judge, U.S. solicitor general under President Harrison, the first civilian
governor of the Philippines, and Roosevelt's Secretary of War. Although more
conservative than his predecessor, Taft filed twice the number of antitrust
suits as Roosevelt, and the Supreme Court upheld the breakup of Standard Oil
under the Sherman Antitrust Act (1911) during his administration. Through the
Mann-Elkins Act (1910), the authority of the ICC was again expanded to cover
regulation of telephone, telegraph, and cable companies. The act also enabled
the commission to suspend rates set by railroads pending investigations or
court actions. Taft actively supported both the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Amendments (which provided for the federal income tax and direct election of
senators, respectively) and established new agencies, such as the Bureau of
Mines, which set standards of mine safety, and the Federal Children's Bureau.
Despite
his strong reform record, the president lost support within the Republican
Party and among Progressives. Taft ran into trouble with a group of Progressive
Republicans in Congress known as the Insurgents, led by Senator Robert La
Follette. Although the president wanted lower duties on imports, he was unable
to stop the conservative Republicans from pushing through the Payne-Aldrich
Tariff (1909) which kept rates on some products high over the objections of the
Insurgents. Taft sided with Speaker of the House Joseph Cannon in his struggle
to hold on to his power against congressional reformers. When the Speaker's
authority was weakened through changes in the House rules, the president also
lost influence. In the meantime, a dispute over conservation policy between the
Department of the Interior and the Forest Service ultimately caused Taft to
fire Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot, Roosevelt's close friend and the man who
epitomized the federal government's commitment to the environment. Early into
Taft's term a major split in Republican ranks between conservatives and
progressives became apparent. Whatever other goals they had, the Progressive
Republicans were determined to gain control of the party and deny Taft's
nomination for a second term. Roosevelt began to seriously consider running
again when he returned from a safari in Africa in 1910, and LaFollette was
clearly a candidate in 1911.
The
election of 1912. Roosevelt indicated early in 1912 that he would accept the
Republican nomination if it was offered to him. Even though the former
president won several primaries and carried a number of state conventions,
Republican conservatives controlled the nominating convention and made sure
Taft was chosen to run for a second term. Roosevelt and his supporters bolted
and formed the Progressive Party, whose platform called for presidential
primaries, direct election of senators, the vote for women, greater regulation
of the trusts, and a ban on child labor. The Democrats selected the past
president of Princeton University and governor of New Jersey, Woodrow Wilson,
as their nominee. Although put into the State House by the Democratic bosses,
Governor Wilson had proved himself to be a reformer, pushing through a direct
primary law, workmen's compensation, and public utility regulation.
The
election of 1912 was a contest between Roosevelt and Wilson and their
respective progressive philosophies. Roosevelt campaigned for his New
Nationalism, which maintained that large corporations were an integral part of
modern industrial society. The responsibility of the federal government was to
regulate, not to destroy, business combinations while protecting the interests
of the underprivileged. Wilson's New Freedom called for restoring competition
through elimination of the trusts and lowering tariffs. Although recognizing
that federal power was necessary to accomplish these goals, he was just as
concerned with big government as big business; any expansion of authority from
Washington he considered to be only a temporary expedient. With the Republican
vote split between Roosevelt and Taft, Wilson won with the largest electoral
majority of any presidential candidate up to that time.
Progressivism:
Wilson
The
election of Wilson was significant in several respects. First, it brought the
Democrats back to power for the first time since the Civil War. The party
controlled not only the White House but both houses of Congress as well, which
had happened only briefly (1893–95) under Cleveland. The election also
represented the political resurgence of the South. Despite spending most of his
working life in the North, Wilson was born and raised in the South. In addition
to making William Jennings Bryan, who had long enjoyed strong southern support,
his secretary of state, Wilson appointed a number of other southerners to the
Cabinet and Colonel Edward House of Texas as his chief political advisor.
Because of the seniority system, the chairs of many key House and Senate
committees were southern Democrats.
Tariff
and banking reform. Staying true to his campaign promises, Wilson tackled the
tariff issue first. The Underwood-Simmons Tariff (1913) was the first law to
substantially lower rates in 50 years, and the free list of goods, on which no
import duties were charged, was expanded to include iron, steel, raw wool, and
sugar. To make up for the revenue shortfall that the reduction in rates caused,
the law included a provision for implementing the federal income tax provided
for in the just-ratified Sixteenth Amendment. It levied a tax of one percent on
all incomes over $4,000 (the majority of Americans made considerably less than
that and therefore paid no income tax), with the tax rate going up to 7 percent
for the highest earners. Wilson's most important domestic program, however, was
the reorganization of the nation's banking system.
A
congressional investigation found that the country's credit and money policies
were largely controlled by a handful of eastern banks. The administration's
response to this discovery was the creation of the Federal Reserve System.
Under the Federal Reserve Act (1913), Federal Reserve banks were set up in 12
regions across the United States. These were, in effect, “banks for banks,” and
they became the depositories for all national banks and those state banks that
wished to join. The Federal Reserve banks took over the outstanding loans of
their members in return for Federal Reserve notes, or paper money. The Federal
Reserve Board, appointed by the president, oversaw the system and, by setting
the interest rates charged on loans to its member banks, could seriously impact
the economy. Lower interest rates tended to stimulate business by making more
money available for expansion, while higher rates helped control economic
growth and cap inflation.
Antitrust
legislation. The cornerstone of Wilson's antitrust policy was the Federal Trade
Commission (1914) which was intended to control unfair competition in
interstate commerce. It was empowered to investigate individuals and
corporations suspected of unfair practices, and it could issue cease-and-desist
orders to stop a company from hindering competition. Already existing antitrust
laws were strengthened with the passage of the Clayton Antitrust Act (1914). It
outlawed specific business practices such as price discrimination, “tying” (an
agreement that required a buyer not purchase products from a competitor of the
seller), and the acquisition of stock in a competing company. Of particular
importance given the way antitrust legislation had been interpreted in the
past, was the Clayton Act's specific statement that farm organizations and
labor unions were not “unlawful combinations in restraint of trade.” The use of
injunctions against strikes was also prohibited, unless it could be shown that
irreparable damage to property was likely. However, the degree of protection
these provisions actually offered unions depended on court interpretations.
Wilson
showed little interest in the social concerns associated with progressivism
during his first term. With the Republican Party on the mend as the 1916
election approached, he began to include more reforms in his domestic agenda.
For farmers, a program of low-interest loans through Federal Reserve banks was
put in place. Child labor was addressed in the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act,
which prohibited interstate commerce in products made by children under the age
of 16. Although the law was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in
1918, the Court did uphold legislation that set an eight-hour day and
time-and-a-half pay for overtime for railroad workers handling cars in
interstate traffic. In women's rights, Wilson did not openly support a
constitutional amendment to give women the right to vote, but he backed action
by the individual states as called for in the Democratic Party platform.
Immigrants
and African-Americans. Two groups did not benefit from the reforming zeal of
the Progressive Era: immigrants and African-Americans. Immigration to the
United States reached its high tide before World War I, with immigration
numbers topping the one million mark six times between 1900 and 1914. During
this same period, demands for immigration restriction found growing public
support. By 1903, the original list of people who could not enter the country
(compiled in 1882) was expanded to include anarchists, prostitutes, paupers,
and all those likely to become a public charge (in need of some type of
welfare). When the San Francisco School Board ordered Chinese, Japanese, and
Korean students to attend segregated schools in 1906, President Roosevelt
intervened and the decision was reversed. In return, Japan agreed to
voluntarily limit the number of its laborers emigrating to the United States
through what became known as the Gentlemen's Agreement (1907). Americans who
favored significantly reducing immigration pinned their hopes on a literacy
test for those who wished to permanently settle in the United States. Presidents
Cleveland (1897), Taft (1913), and Wilson (1915 and 1917) vetoed bills
containing requirements for such a test. Wilson's second veto was overriden by
Congress, however, and a literacy test became part of immigration law. What
direct effect the test had on immigration is difficult to assess because
immigration had already declined sharply because of World War I. The
legislation did mark an end to the more or less open immigration policy and
paved the way for the quota system that would be implemented in the early
1920s.
In 1900,
the overwhelming majority of African-Americans lived in the rural South, where
segregation was established as a legal institution, and the denial of civil
rights to blacks, particularly the right to vote, was an accomplished fact.
Conditions in the South and economic opportunities in the North, particularly
as the country began to mobilize for war, led to a significant shift in black
population. The Great Migration refers to the internal movement of
African-Americans from the farms of the South to the factories of the
industrial North. Organizations like the Negro Fellowship League, founded by
Ida Wells-Barnet in Chicago, and the National Urban League helped the migrants
adjust to life in the cities. The North was not free from prejudice, however.
Competition for jobs in defense plants and for housing were contributing
factors to the violent race riots that broke out in East St. Louis in 1917 and
Chicago in 1919.
Although
President Roosevelt broke with precedent and invited Booker T. Washington for
lunch at the White House (1901), the federal government did little to help
African-Americans. The driving forces for change were men like Washington and
W. E. B. Du Bois, whose Niagara Movement (1905) pressed for political and economic
equality for blacks. In 1910, his group joined with the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), established a year earlier by
white social-justice progressives and African-Americans to work for equality
within the system. The NAACP was most successful in mounting legal challenges
aimed at making sure the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were enforced. In
1915, for example, its attorneys persuaded the Supreme Court to strike down the
grandfather clause in Guinn v. United States that had been used in Maryland and
Oklahoma to deny blacks the right to vote.
Foreign
Policy in the Progressive Era
In the
wake of the Spanish-American War, the United States joined the ranks of the
imperial powers with possessions that stretched halfway around the globe, from
Puerto Rico in the Caribbean to the Philippines in the Pacific. In the years
leading up to its entry into World War I, America did its best to maintain its
influence in Asia through diplomacy while following an aggressive foreign
policy in the Western Hemisphere. The United States showed little interest in
European affairs until the outbreak of war in August 1914 and even then
remained officially neutral for almost three years. The commitment of American
troops in 1917 was a significant factor in the Allied victory and earned
President Wilson the right to help shape the peace settlement. The failure of
the Senate to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, however, marked a shift toward a
more isolationist foreign policy.
As a
two-ocean conflict, the Spanish-American War underscored the value of a canal
linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The French had tried but failed to
construct a canal across the Isthmus of Panama in the 1880s, so the United
States decided to take over the project. Under the Hay-Herran Treaty (1903),
Columbia agreed to a 99-year lease of a six-mile-wide strip of land in Panama (a
province of Columbia at the time) in return for a $10 million cash payment and
an annual fee of $250,000. When the Columbian Senate refused to ratify the
treaty, the Panamanians mounted a successful revolt that had the tacit approval
of the Roosevelt Administration. Sending warships to prevent Columbia from
taking action, the United States quickly recognized Panama's independence. A
new agreement — the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty — gave the United States full
control and sovereignty over the Canal Zone (an area ten miles wide across the
isthmus) in return for the same financial arrangements made with Columbia.
Construction on the Panama Canal began in 1904, and the first ship passed
through the locks in 1914. While the canal construction was a major feat of engineering,
medical advances that occurred during the ten-year period, such as the
eradication of yellow fever and better control over malaria and other tropical
diseases were important accomplishments as well.
American
intervention in the Caribbean and Central America. Throughout the Progressive
Era and well into the 1920s, the United States followed a policy of
intervention in the Caribbean and Central America. Under the Platt Amendment
(1901), which was incorporated into the Cuban constitution and a Cuban-American
treaty, the United States could intervene to preserve the independence or
political and social stability of Cuba. Furthermore, Cuba agreed to grant land
for an American naval base on the island (Guantanamo Bay), not to sign a treaty
with another country that impaired Cuba's sovereignty, and not to incur a debt
that could not be repaid out of current revenues. The U.S. government used this
amendment as the justification for sending American troops into Cuba in 1906,
1912, and 1917.
Similarly,
the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (1904) maintained that “chronic
wrongdoing” by any nation in the Western Hemisphere might force the United
States to exercise its “international police power”; that is, it would
intervene. Under this principle, the finances of the Dominican Republic came
under American control through a treaty, and after a revolution threatened
these arrangements in 1916, U.S. troops occupied the country for the next eight
years. Essentially the same policy was applied to Haiti, where American
civilian personnel and military forces remained on the island from 1915 to
1934. When a revolt against the government jeopardized American interests in
Nicaragua in 1912, U.S. Marines arrived and stayed until 1925. They were back a
year later to put down another round of civil unrest. As a possible site for a
second interocean canal, Nicaragua was particularly important, and the United
States wanted to make sure no foreign power gained control of the route.
U.S.
policy in Asia. At the turn of the century, Japan was the major power in Asia.
Fearful of Japanese dominance, Roosevelt played peacemaker in the conflict that
broke out between Japan and Russia in 1904 in the hope of limiting Japanese
gains. The Treaty of Portsmouth (1905), which ended the Russo-Japanese War and
earned the president the Nobel Peace Prize, recognized Japan's influence in
Manchuria (a province of China) but did not include a cash indemnity and
required Russia to give up only half of Sakhalin Island. At the same time, in
the Taft-Katsura Agreement (1905), the United States and Japan acknowledged the
United States' control of the Philippines and Japan's control of Korea. Despite
the tensions that arose because of immigration and the Gentlemen's Agreement,
relations between the two countries remained good. They agreed to respect the
territorial integrity of each other's possessions in Asia, and Japan
reconfirmed its support for the Open Door Policy through the Root-Takahira
Agreement (1908).
Taft's
foreign policy relied on dollar diplomacy — spreading American influence
through the economic penetration of overseas markets by U.S. corporations. In
an attempt to maintain the independence of China, the administration
unsuccessfully tried to establish an international banking syndicate that would
buy back the railroads in Manchuria that were in the hands of the Japanese. The
combination of a Japanese-Russian alliance and a lack of support from the
Wilson administration led U.S. investors to reject the project. On the whole,
dollar diplomacy was more effective in Central and South America than it was in
Asia.
Relations
with Mexico. Opposing the regime of General Victoriano Huerta, who had come to
power in Mexico following the May 1911 revolt, the Wilson administration supported
the revolutionary movement headed by Venustiano Carranza. American troops
attacked Veracruz in April 1914, which ultimately led to Huerta leaving office
and Carranza and his supporters occupying Mexico City. These developments were
soon marred by infighting between Carranza and one of his generals, Pancho
Villa. When Villa's forces raided a town in New Mexico in 1916, Wilson ordered
the U.S. Army to mount a punitive expedition into Mexico to capture him. This
prolonged intrusion brought the United States and Mexico to the brink of war
until the troops were withdrawn in January 1917.
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