The Crash and the Onset of the Great Depression

I)                   Economic problems of the 1920s

A)    Farm Crisis – farmers were plagued with overproduction, falling farm prices, and declining income throughout the 1920s.

1)      Over expansion and debt – high prices during the war had encouraged farmers to increase their level of debt; when prices fell in the recession of 1920-21, they had great difficulty in repaying this debt.  Because there were no government subsidies, most farmers in the decade of the 1920s continued in this condition (or worse) for the next ten years or so.

2)      Non-Partisan League – called for government intervention (the government ownership of the grain elevators and slaughterhouses, easier credit, and tax exemptions for farm improvements).  This group was strongest in the upper Midwest (the Dakotas and Minnesota); it remained a force into the 1940s, particularly in Minnesota where it was transformed into the Farm-Labor Party.

3)      McNary-Haugen Bill – passed twice by Congress (1926 and again in 1927), but was vetoed both times by Calvin Coolidge.  This bill introduced the concept of farm parity (which was a guarantee that farmers could sell their crop at a higher price than it cost them to produce it).  A similar law was not passed until the New Deal.

4)      Rationalization of the family farm – more and more families were in fat being pushed off the family farm by the worsening economic conditions; this farmland was then bought up by corporations, who in turn then hired labor (often, the family who had been forced to sell their farm) to work on these farms.

5)      Dustbowl – on the Great Plains, the economic hardships were worsened for farmers by the onset of drought; this area had never received a great deal of rain (settlement had only been made possible by the techniques of “dry farming”), and the extended drought coupled with poor soil conservation practices produced the most famous images of the Great Depression.

B)     Decline of Organized Labor – the reaction against radical politics in general had a definite negative effect on organized labor; with the decline of organized labor also came a decline in the share of profits that workers got from the workplace.

1)      “American Plan” (its evil opposite would, of course, be the “un-American Plan) – the description of the corporate drive for the open (anti-union) shop; the closed (or union) shop imposed upon the “individual liberties” of the American worker.

(a)    Employer Welfare Plans – insurance, company athletic teams, and other company sponsored cultural and social events were all intended to fight the impression that workers labored for a coldly impersonal corporation that would throw them out into the streets as soon as an economic downturn occurred (which, of course, was the reality of the situation).

(b)   Company unions – gave the appearance of employee representation; in reality, company unions were a way of sidetracking employee complaints about working conditions and wages.  Corporations were able to push out or eliminate unions that were affiliated with the AFL, and replace them with unions that the companies could control.

2)      Decline of mature industries – with the decline of mature industries, in particular the coal industry, labor lost many members in these industries which it had already organized, while more workers were finding employment in newer manufacturing industries (like automobiles), that the AFL had never been able to successfully organize in the first place.

3)      Death of Samuel Gompers – Gompers died in 1924, while in office.  William Green, who had formerly been an official with the United Mine Workers, replaced him.  Green was not a dynamic leader, which the labor movement probably needed at this point desperately to battle against the tide of events.

4)      Continuing labor racism

(a)    Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters – led by A. Philip Randolph, by 1926 this union had several thousand members; the AFL, however, refused to charter the union, mainly because it had a largely black membership, and was led by an African American.

C)    The Business Cycle – the so-called “boom and bust” cycle was an ongoing phenomenon for which we really have no good explanation. However, depression had happened in the past (1837-38, 1857-1861, 1873-1877, 1885-86, 1893-1897, 1907, 1920-1921), but had largely been self-adjusting (that is, they were waited out without government intervention).

1)      “New prosperity” – according to economist Thorstein Veblen in 1921, this so-called new prosperity was based upon an “inordinately productive form of mechanical activity.”  Machinery was able to produce more goods faster with fewer workers; but ultimately this also provided fewer customers to buy these goods.

2)      Wall Street speculation – buying stocks “on margin” (that is, with money that was borrowed, in the expectation that the market would continue its upward trend.  When the market crashed, these investors had to pay back these loans, which often wiped out most of the gains (and then some) that they had made previously.

3)      Unemployment – increased from fewer than 500,000 to more than 4,000,000 between October and December 1929.

4)      Federal Reserve Board – had fueled Wall Street speculation by keeping interest rates low through most of the 1920s; after the crash, the Fed reacted by raising interest rates at exactly the wrong time.

5)      Smoot-Hawley Tariff (1930) – raised import duties to the highest levels in US history; this helped increase the downward spiral of the economy, as other countries responded by raising their tariffs, as well.  Many European countries went off the gold standard; Germany ended paying reparations because it was not receiving promised loans from the US, and France and Great Britain also ended payments on wartime loans they had received from the US.

D)    International economic crisis – we tend to forget that this was a worldwide depression, not only localized in the US.  In fact, because other countries were less hesitant to intervene through political means in their own economies, the depression was less severe and lasted a shorter time period than in the US.

E)     Hard Times – bread lines and soup kitchens became common sites in major US cities, and are our most common images of the Great Depression.

1)      Joblessness – in many of the manufacturing cities in the Midwest and East, unemployment levels ranged between 25% to 50% of the workforce (Toledo was at the high end of those figures).  Women, particularly married women, were forced out of the workforce, since they were there to earn “pin” money anyway, and were taking money out of the pocket of a male breadwinner.

2)      “Sharing the misery” – even those workers still employed were working greatly reduced hours; sometimes only 1-3 days a week, and often for six hours or less a day.  This allowed many more workers to remain on the job than would otherwise be the case; however, this method could only be used in larger manufacturing concerns, smaller ones could not afford to do this.

3)      Return migration – many southern whites returned to the South during this time, since it would be easier to eke out an existence back on the family farm among relatives and friends.  Not all internal migrants, however, chose to return to their former homes, or returned voluntarily.

(a)    Mexican nationals – many Mexican nationals had moved north to manufacturing jobs; with the onset of hard times local government officials and other workers often used intimidation to force these people to vacate their northern homes.

(b)   African Americans – remained in the North, preferring life there, as hard as it was, to returning to the South.  In part, this was probably caused by the increase in physical violence against blacks in the South; lynchings increased in the 1930s for the first time in a decade.

(i)                  Scottsboro Boys – nine young black men were found sharing a boxcar with two white women early in the Depression, so naturally they were charged with rape, even though no evidence was ever presented verifying that any kind of sexual intercourse had been taken part of.  The Communist Party gained the trust of a large portion of the African American population during this trial and the endless rounds of appeals for their role in the trial.

F)     Government response

1)      Crisis in confidence – consumer and business confidence in the expansion of the economy had created the extended economic boom; as the depression worsened and lengthened, this confidence evaporated.

2)      Hoover’s response – Hoover was in many ways the personification of progressive politics; a technocrat, an able administrator, who believed that politics could be made apolitical, and that rational decisions could be made after one was able to gather sufficient information.

(a)    Reconstruction Finance Corporation – a plan which loaned $700 million to failing banks and businesses; but the government also raised taxes to pay for this, which largely undercut its economic effectiveness.

(b)   Bonus marchers – victims of an overzealous cavalry charge led by Gen. Douglas Macarthur, who ordered the shanties torched after removing the occupants at bayonet point.

(c)    “Hoovervilles” – shantytowns that were thrown up using discarded scrap were referred to as a “Hooverville,” in a black humor poke at the man most people blamed for their abject condition.

G)    Poor People’s Campaigns

1)      Communist Party and Unemployed Councils – local agitation for rent relief and other kinds of assistance were often led by members of the Communist Party, or by those sympathetic to the immediate aims of the party in the affiliated Unemployed Councils.

(a)    Sharecroppers’ Union – active among black sharecroppers in Alabama

(b)   Ford Hunger March – the march on the River Rouge plant in 1932, demanding work; 4 marchers were killed, and more than 60 others were injured by the Ford Service Department (led by Harry Bennett and peopled by thugs) and the Dearborn Police (kind of an extension of the Ford Service Department).  More than 20,000 people in Detroit marched in the funeral procession, while thousands more watched in respectful silence.

II) 1932 Presidential Election

A) Hoover’s popularity – Hoover, of course, was hugely unpopular; most of the blame and frustration with the economic woes most people were facing were placed upon him.

B) Franklin Delano Roosevelt – promised to balance the federal budget (Hoover was running the largest peace-time budget deficit in the country’s history at this time) and trim the federal payroll; his stand on religion and drink were completely unexamined during the campaign (much to his benefit). Roosevelt campaigned on the slogan “A New Deal for the American People.”

1) Background – patrician (meaning he came from old money, as did his cousin TR). In many ways, he tried to model his political career with that of his cousin’s—he served as New York assemblyman, secretary of the Navy, and he was the Democratic Party’s choice to run as Vice-President in 1920. In 1921 he was stricken with polio, and was never able to walk without some kind of assistance after that. That he was able to make a political comeback from this disease was due in large part to the assistance of his wife, his second cousin Eleanor.

2) The new deal--for Roosevelt, the "new deal" was simply a campaign slogan, rather than a well-thought out plan to implement socialism, or to provide a social "safety net" for some Americans. Roosevelt was willing to try just about any program, as long as he was convinced that it might work. As we will see, Roosevelt was very unwilling to overthrow the capitalist system; rather, he was convinced that the system had to be saved (although he did prove more willing to campaign against some groups of people). In 1932, the only thing Roosevelt really promised to do was to balance the federal budget.

3) FDR won 57% of the popular vote (against an immensely unpopular Republican candidate); the only state that he lost outside of New England was Pennsylvania.

a) The interim period--the interim months between Roosevelt's election in November 1932 and his inauguration in March 1933 saw conditions in the country worsen, as the country entered the depths of the Great Depression. Despite an offer from Hoover to collaborate on policies to stem the suffering, Roosevelt chose to remain at his home in New York, and let Hoover and the lame duck Congress deal with the consequences (and take the blame for what was happening.

The Rise of Consumer Culture

I)                   Mass Culture

A)    Radio – for the first time, a mass audience could experience an event at the same time.  Although this was used as a technique to keep alive ethnic cultures (polka stations, foreign language programs, etc.), it also allowed others outside that culture to experience it; business side led to mass entertainment to sell products—which in turn contributed to the homogenization of culture

B)     Phonograph records – a way to maintain ethnic ties as well; but once a record was distributed, there was no way to limit who would consume it, which meant that there was a great deal of interaction between cultures, which in turn created a new culture (Caruso, Sophie Tucker “The Last of the Red Hot Mamas,” the Austin High Gang of ethnics who frequented the jazz clubs of Chicago’s South Side and helped to create the swing music of the 1930s, particularly one Benny Goodman)

C)    Movies – 1920s were a boom time of the downtown movie palaces, which were paeans to consumer culture; as the star system became more refined, these actors became more and more used to sell products (cigarettes, automobiles, etc.)

D)    Automobiles – by 1929, 50% of American families owned an automobile, and the industry directly employed 375,000 people—with millions more indirectly employed because of it.

1)      Fordism – Ford’s contribution to the automotive industry was his drive to reduce the cost of the automobile, so that it would become more widely accessible to the general public; Ford accomplished this by increasing the number of specialized machines used to create parts for the automobile.  This had two advantages: it decreased his reliance upon skilled workers, who could demand higher wages; and it allowed him to set a specific pace of manufacturing, rather than letting the workers set their own pace

(a)    Model T – extremely limited choice (it came with no options, and in one color—black), but this allowed Ford to perfect its manufacture—which in turn allowed Ford to drop the price of the automobile from $950 when it was introduced in 1909 to $290 at the height of its popularity in 1924

(b)   $5 a Day – the famous $5/day wage, instituted in 1914, was approached by few workers, but it helped limit the turnover of 300%; the higher overall wage also allowed workers to purchase the product that they were manufacturing (analogy to Bush directives for Americans to do their “patriotic duty” and purchase stuff in reaction to Sept. 11)

(c)    Increased mobility – ownership of an automobile allowed many more people to move to the suburbs (or “into the country’); also created a greater demand for recreation—along with more workers employed in routinized labor.

2)      Sloanism – named after the President of the General Motors Corporation, Alfred P. Sloan.  Sloanism is in many ways the perfection of Fordism; automobiles were provided in a variety of styles (kind of), and a variety of price ranges

(a)    Creation of the General Motors Acceptance Corporation – GMAC created in order to provide financing for potential automobile purchasers who could not pay cash for an automobile.

(b)   Triumph of Sloanism – by 1927, falling sales of the Model T forces Ford to shut down production, and re-tool for the production of the Model A.  In 1924, Ford had commanded 55% of the new car market.

(c)    Increased importance of advertising – used to help people differentiate between largely undifferentiated products; advertising allowed companies to manufacture desires in their customers.

E. Sports--the 1920s were the "golden age" of sports.

1. Baseball--Babe Ruth was traded from the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees after the 1919 season, and became an everyday player instead of one of the best left-handed pitchers in baseball. The manufacture of the baseball itself was refined and made easier to hit fan-pleasing home runs--deemed a necessity after the so-called Black Sox Scandal, where members of the Chicago White Sox team were accused of "throwing" the World Series to make money for gamblers--to make up for the shortfall many players felt because they felt the owner of their team was less than generous with them.

2. College football--dominate teams developed in the Midwest during the 1920s, with the play of Harold "Red" Grange at Illinois and Bronko Nagurski at Minnesota joining the still formidable teams at Michigan and the University of Chicago.



3. Boxing--the "Roaring 20s" got their start here in Toledo in 1919, with the Jess Willard/Jack Dempsey prize fight that took place in Bay View Park. Willard defeated the champion Jack Johnson--the first African American to hold the heavyweight title--

II)                 African American Culture and Political Development in the North – the vitality and creativeness of African American culture first gets widespread recognition as more African Americans move north, and more white northerners come into contact with it.

A)    Jazz – first comes north in the early 1920s—moved up the Mississippi from New Orleans to St. Louis, and then from St. Louis to Chicago; Louis Armstrong moved to Chicago from New Orleans, first with his Hot Five (which eventually grew into his Hot Seven).

1)      Southside Chicago – the area around 43^rd and State was the heart of the African American community in Chicago, the so-called Black Metropolis.  It was here that a group of second generation ethnics from the west side Austin High School came to listen to the jazz bands that played the venues here, and by the late 1930s had transformed the sound into what we know as swing.

2)      New York – NYC quickly became a Mecca for African American jazz players, who found gigs in the burgeoning African American neighborhood in the city known as Harlem.

(a)    “Black and Tan Clubs” – clubs where “slumming” whites could come and listen to and dance to black combos, without having to be alarmed with having to mingle with too many African Americans, unless it was the wait staff or the musicians.  The Cotton Club became the most famous of the clubs.

3)      “Sweet” music and “hot” music – white dance bands toured the hinterlands playing “sweetened” versions of new “hot” jazz hits.  Bands like the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, who would hire a few “hot” players (most notably Bix Biederbecke), but played mainly toned down versions of jazz music.

III)              Reaction to Mass Culture

A)    Prohibition – outlawed the manufacture, and legal drinking; led to the flowering of organized crime.  By outlawing what had been acceptable, it grouped this behavior with other behavior that was looked down upon as well (secular music, dance, homosexuality) that then became tolerated in this developing underground society—and then more laws were passed to outlaw this behavior.

B)     Rise of Fundamentalist Religion – reaction to increased urbanization, increased social contact with Catholics and Jews in urban settings.  White southerners moving north also contributed to this.  Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson

C)    Rebirth of the KKK – became particularly active in northern cities (as well as much of the state government in Indiana); Catholics and Jews became as much a target of intimidation in the North as African Americans during this time.

D)    Scopes “Monkey Trial” – in Dayton, TN, ACLU convinced a teacher named John Scopes to violate recently passed creationist law; Clarence Darrow was the lawyer for the defense, and William Jennings Bryan was on prosecution team; Darrow called Bryan as an expert witness, and got him to admit to numerous embarrassing literal interpretations of the Bible—Bryan died soon afterward.

The AFL and the IWW

I. AF of L, Gompers, and “Pure and Simple Unionism”


A. American Federation of Labor – established in 1886, in the aftermath of the Haymarket Square incident; provided an outlet for craft unions to distance themselves from the radicals arrested because of Haymarket.

1. Pure and Simple Unionism – emphasis upon so-called bread and butter issues—wages, working conditions. Accepted the capitalist system (which other working class movements did not do, including the Knights of Labor).

a. Need to control hiring practices – to maintain enough control to maintain wages and working conditions, workers had to maintain solidarity (by refusing to work at job sites that used non-union labor), and control the number of people who gained access to the trade.

b. The “Walking Boss” – craft unions developed system to police members and the companies that hired them—the business agent, or “walking boss.” BA’s job was to make sure that all of the craft people employed within a certain craft were union members; this left BA’s susceptible to bribes and “sweetheart” deals with firms.

2. Running a Labor Union like a business – AFL unions were often run on the business model, with up-to-date accounting practices, etc.

II. Labor Actions in the 1890s

A. Homestead (1892)

1. Carnegie’s “non-involvement” – Carnegie had not been an advocated of the non-union shop until the early 1890s, when he apparently began to feel that having union workers cost too much money.

a. Ford Clay Frick – Carnegie hired Frick, who had a reputation as a union buster, to run the operation at Homestead, and then left for an extended “vacation” at his newly purchased castle in Scotland.

b. Hiring of Pinkertons – Frick had retained the famed Pinkerton Detective Agency to protect the strikebreakers he expected to hire after locking out current employees at the plant, which had been “protected” by several miles of steel fencing.

2. The Defense of Homestead – Pinkertons were floated a barge downriver from Pittsburgh, expecting to take the workers in Homestead by surprise. Workers were expecting this maneuver, and after a pitched gun battle lasting several hours, workers of Homestead defeated the Pinkertons, who were then viciously beaten by townspeople by being made to run a gauntlet.

3. Aftermath – Pennsylvania militia sent in to “restore” peace, arrest “ringleaders.”

a. Attempted assassination of Frick – by anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Bergman

B. Coeur d’Alene – mining region in northern Idaho, which gave birth to the Western Federation of Miners.

1. 1st Strike – during 1892 mine owners organized themselves to resist miner’s insistence that they be paid $3.50/day. With the aid of a Pinkerton spy who had been able to infiltrate into the highest levels of the miners’ union (he was elected treasurer), the owners first locked out the miners during a rate dispute with the railroad. After the rate dispute was settled, the owners agreed to take back the miners; however, only skilled miners would receive the $3.50/day rate; unskilled miners would receive $3.00/day. The introduction of the steam powered drill had greatly reduced the demand for skilled miners. Miners struck in protest; mine owners brought in strikebreakers. Violence escalated until troops were called in; eventually, a combined state and federal force of 1500 was able to allow the strike to be broken. Union members were summarily arrested and held without trial in hastily constructed stockades called “bullpens.” Result was that miners became active in Populist politics in the state, and the Western Federation of Miners was founded.

2. 1899 “Dynamite Express” – the second Coeur d’Alene strike, in which a large group of miners (estimated at approximately 1000) hijacked a train and used it to transport themselves and a large amount of dynamite to the isolated town of Wardner, where they used the dynamite to blow up a breaker. State government in Idaho dismissed local officials, and asked for federal troops (the black 24th cavalry, just back from conquering San Juan Hill), so that the soldiers and miners would not fraternize). Miners again collected into bullpens; this time, however state takes more repressive measures, including requiring mine companies to use “yellow dog” contracts, which effectively breaks the control of the WFM in the state

a. Split in WFM leadership – this event caused a split in the WFM leadership; part of the group moves into socialist politics, while remaining in the union (the WFM eventually becomes Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers); the more radical left wing eventually evolves into the IWW.

b. Murder of former Governor Frank Stuenenberg – blame was laid to the WFM; Pinkertons were allowed to kidnap officers of the Union and transport them to Idaho for trial.

C. 1894 Pullman Strike

1. “Model town” of Pullman – George Pullman established his model city just south of Chicago, where he provided workers at his factory with housing, stores, schools, and places of worship—all owned by George Pullman.

2. Onset of the 1893 Depression – with the beginning of the depression, Pullman sought to cut costs by cutting his workforce, and by cutting the wages of those workers who remained. Pullman the landlord, however, refused to cut rent for those workers who were forced to remain in his housing, which eventually precipitated a strike in the spring of 1894.

3. Eugene Debs and the American Railway Union – Debs, a former officer in one of the Railroad Brotherhoods, came to see the need to organize railway workers on an industrial, rather than crafts basis. The reason for this was that railroad companies were able to play one set of craft workers against another, and undermine worker solidarity. 1894 ARU convention held in Chicago, voted to boycott any trains that Pullman Cars were attached to.

4. Breaking the strike – on the advice of Attorney General Olney, a former railroad attorney, companies begin attaching mail cars to trains with Pullman Cars, which the federal government then uses as a pretext to arrest union officials, including Gene Debs, for interfering with the US mails.

III. The AFL Alternative

A. Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) – the repression of the WFM led many members into socialist politics.

1. 1905 Founding Convention – “The working class and the owning class have nothing in common.”

2. Syndicalism – IWW used direct action, or sabotage, to fight for control of the workplace with management.

a. Refusal to sign contracts – IWW hostility to the capitalist system led them to refuse to sign contracts with management, which meant that they had to rely upon continued militancy to maintain concessions that they won during any particular labor action.

IV. Industrial Democracy

A) Definition – actually, there is no one definition of industrial democracy—it meant different things to different people. To workers, it meant that they would have a say in how a factory or other kind of business would be run. To owners of the factories and businesses, it meant that for the duration of the war they would tolerate government interference in the running of their business, in return for guaranteed profits—but only to the end of the war.

B) Different views of Industrial democracy
1) Americanization programs – largely under the control of the capitalist class, intended to make workers think and act like “Americans.”

(a) Banishment of German language newspapers – distribution of German language material through the mail was banished in 1917, which effectively ended the large German press in the United States.

(b) Company-sponsored programs

(i) Ford Motor Company – in the period just before the war, Ford introduced his famous “Five Dollars a Day” program, which he proposed to pay workers in his factories five dollars a day (about twice the then going rate for factory workers). To qualify, workers had to pass inspection from the Ford Social Department, who ensured that workers were living frugally and would not dissipate the salary that they were to receive. Immigrant workers, in addition to this, were also required to attend language classes if they did not speak English, and were lectured on work habits, personal hygiene, and table manners; they were also encouraged to move out of ethnic neighborhoods, and not to take in borders.

(ii) International Harvester Company.

(c) Loyalty organizations – groups like the American Protective League were formed by natives born to enforce their vision of Americanization upon the foreign born, as well as other natives who did not fit their vision of proper conduct.


(d) Restrictions on immigration – although the numbers of immigrants was not restricted by law until 1924, and the effect of that law did not come into effect until 1929 (when, due to the world-wide depression, immigration would have fallen off, anyway), restrictions were placed upon immigration before that time period.



(i) Literacy test – immigrants had to prove that they could read and write in their native language—a law the AFL staunchly supported. The law was passed by Congress over President Wilson’s veto

(e) Eighteenth Amendment – the amendment abolishing the manufacture (except for personal consumption), distribution, and sale of any alcoholic beverage. This concept had long been an aim of moralists in the country; what may have finally pushed the issue over the top was a backlash against the German American brewery owners who dominated the industry.


(f) Nineteenth Amendment – giving women the right to vote; this was another long political struggle that reached fruition by the end of hostilities in Europe. While this gave women the right to vote, most men who worked for passage did not expect this to change the political balance in the country, and it did not—the mostly middle class women who benefited most from this amendment voted in much the same way as the middle class men did. Leading women who worked for passage of this amendment went immediately to work on passage of an Equal Rights Amendment, meant to remove the remaining inequalities between women and men; most were not around to see Congress finally approve it in 1972, and practically none around to see its failure to pass muster among the states.



2) Industrial democracy for working people.
(a) Labor as a partner in society – the symbolic importance of the positions that AFL president Samuel Gompers held should not be discounted in importance; this gave the working people that he represented (the single largest group, and growing during this time period) the impression that they finally had some influence in government.


(b) Success of labor actions – with sympathetic members sitting on the War Labor Board, which was charged with adjudicating labor disputes, labor unions increasingly won recognition from companies, and modest wage increases for the workers they represented (which companies could afford to grant because many of them operated with “cost-plus” contracts from the Federal Government—which meant that the companies were guaranteed a certain level of profit).


V. Reaction to Industrial Democracy – after the signing of the Armistice, companies in the United States moved to rescind many of the agreements that had been reached during the war years.

A) 1919 Strike wave

1) Seattle General Strike – a strike instigated by the International Associations of Machinists, who represented shipbuilding workers in the city. Eventually, most workers in the city joined the machinists on strike, and a workers’ strike committee ended up running the city for three days—providing law enforcement, food distribution, and other essential services.


2) Rossford Ford Plate Glass strike – led by the IWW, began the same time as the Willys-Overland strike; strike leaders were swiftly arrested, and carted off to Wood County seat Bowling Green (with the assistance of a number of volunteer deputies recruited from the normal college there), where they were held largely incommunicado. Catholic school children were told that there parents would be excommunicated from church if they attended a strike rally in Toledo; management in the factory armed and deputized by county; after several weeks, with the assistance of strikebreakers, strike defeated.


3) Willys-Overland strike – Willys attempted to unilaterally impose a wage cut on workers; offered a profit-sharing scheme to workers, which was rejected. When wage cut imposed anyway (in the form of a longer work day with no increase in wage), many workers walk off job at normal quitting time; workers are fired, and strike called. Workers from Lagrange Street area board westbound streetcars on Central, all workers who cannot produce a Chevrolet work badge are made to get off the streetcar. Strikebreakers are hired, and housed within the company compound; strikers surround compound. Sweeping injunction granted after North Carolina auto dealer claims business adversely effected.

4) Steel strike – AFL made concerted attempt to organize steel workers during the war, and this attempt continued during period just after the war. Most success occurred in the area around Chicago, and result encouraged attempts to organize workers in the Pittsburgh area. Leadership of this drive was given to former Wobbly William Z. Foster, who had headed up a similar drive on the behalf of the Chicago Federation of Labor and the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butchers to organize packinghouse workers in Chicago area. Steel companies refused to negotiate; used Foster’s syndicalist past to discredit him, and eventually crush the strike.

5) Boston Police Strike – walkout of the Boston Police force led to widespread looting and general lawlessness; Governor of Massachusetts, Calvin Coolidge orders the firing of the entire police force, and mobilizes the state militia to police the city. This strike, perhaps more than any of the other of the hundreds that occurred, scared those in power most.

B) Reaction of governing elite


1) Red Scare – led by US Attorney General (and Presidential wannabee) Mitchell Palmer, a nationwide coordinated attack against known and suspected radicals took place in early January 1920, when hundreds were arrested, with a suspension of the rights of habeas corpus; some of those arrested are deported on minor violations; some of those who were American citizens—like Big Bill Haywood—jumped bail and left the country (Haywood fled to the Soviet Union, and is buried in the wall of the Kremlin).


2) Institution of the “American Plan” – this plan was part carrot, and part stick. While unions were unwanted in the workplace, in many factories the indiscriminate powers of the foreman were curtailed, and powers to hire and fire were given instead to newly instituted personnel departments.


(a) Power of foremen curtailed

(b) Institution of personnel departments

(c) Grievance procedures

(d) Profit-sharing and stock options plans

(e) No collective bargaining, however

Conclusion

V. Conclusion

Weekly Assignment 5

History 2020-002


America from 1865

Instructor: Gregory Miller

Due Date: February 16, 2011

Weekly Assignment 5
In the past, the Progressive Era was portrayed as a time when the United States implemented a number of enlightened policies, broadening electoral participation on the part of many Americans. Yet the Progressive Era was also a time when “jim crow” laws were widely implemented across the South, when immigration restrictions were debated (and eventually implemented in 1924), and when extending voting rights to women—half the population of the country—was resisted. What explains these differences? Discuss both enlightened and oppressive policies of the Progressive Era in your answer.

The Early 20th Century Fight for Civil Rights

I) Prophets and Goals of the New South

A) Henry Grady – editor of the Atlanta Constitution; declared that the in his New South Creed that the old South of slavery and agriculture had to give way to a new South of diverse industry and racial harmony (note: he does not proclaim the need in the South for racial equality).

B) Economic Growth in the New South

1) Textile mills

2) Tobacco (the Duke family and the establishment of the American Tobacco Company)

3) Coal and iron ore – Birmingham is discovered as a source of low grade iron ore, and the city begins life as a manufacturing center

4) Lumber

5) Petroleum

6) Hydroelectric power

Most of these industries were based upon either extracting raw materials from the ground (and sending them elsewhere, or they were based upon agricultural practices). Even textile mills were dependent upon the supply of cotton that southern farmers could provide.

C) Agriculture in the New South

1) Problems

(a) Land ownership

(i) Sharecropping

(ii) Tenant farming

(b) Credit—the crop-lien system – farmers in the South, both sharecroppers and tenant farmers, operated in mostly a cashless society

(c) Collapsing prices – prices worldwide for farm products were spiraling downward throughout this period, meaning that farmers got less and less return on their investment per year.

2) Result: Stagnation. The concentration of ownership of the land, while tying people to the land through the system of sharecropping and tenant farming, kept wages depressed that resulted in economic stagnation.

B) The Political Leaders of the New South

1) Who and what was a Bourbon? – the same as a Redeemer, only named by an enemy rather than a sympathizer.

2) Bourbon ideology

(a) Allied politically with eastern conservatives – interested in seeing the powers of the Federal government reigned in

(b) Allied economically with eastern capitalists – Bourbons were closely allied with eastern capitalists because this is where they obtained most of their financing; southern banks were too small to handle the financing needed by most Bourbon planters.

(c) Retention of current social and economic system – Bourbons were most interested in retaining the then current social and economic system, because this system no only allowed them to retain control over southern blacks, but also over southern whites. This allowed them to maintain lower wages than the national average for both whites and blacks – another consequence of the “wages of whiteness.”

C) Effects of the Bourbon retrenchment

1) Greatly reduced government expenditures

(a) Slashed spending on education

(b) System of convict leasing (Parchman Farm and system of arresting blacks for “vagrancy” during harvest times; system also depressed wages for industrial workers

(c) Repudiation of state debts – refused to pay state debts incurred during Reconstruction.

2) Blacks and the New South

(a) Flexibility in Bourbon race relations

(i) Black voting – the rights of blacks to vote in elections was little disturbed during the early years of Bourbon rule—although steps were taken to ensure that blacks would have little say in the government composed as a result of these elections.

(ii) Little strict segregation

III) Rise of Populism – Populism today used to describe anyone who can be characterized as a demagogue; in the past, historians have often considered Populists racists and small minded.

A) Farmer’s Alliance

1) National Farmers’ Alliance (Northern Alliance)

2) National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union (Southern Alliance)

3) Colored Farmers’ National Alliance (also southern, covering black farmers who where not allowed into the Southern Alliance)

B) Popularity – Populism in general, and the Farmers’ Alliances in particular, were enormously popular, and threatened to become a viable third party when the group organized politically as the People’s Party. Strength was particularly in the Plains states of Kansas and Nebraska, as well as the southwestern states of Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana

1) 1890 Election
(a) Kansas – Alliance supporters won 4/5ths of the seats in the legislature

(b) Nebraska – allied with Democrats to elect governor, and young William Jennings Bryan courted Alliance voters in his successful bid for a Senate seat.

2) Tom Watson – Georgia politician who exemplified to tentative efforts of southern populists to cross-racial boundaries. Poor whites were beginning to realize that they had more in common with poor blacks than they did with the rich Bourbon whites.

(a) Playing the race card – by judicious use of election time violence and racial epitaphs to discourage abandoning the Democratic Party, as well as appeals to Southern sympathies to those people who removed the Yankee threat and “redeemed the South.”

C) Institution of Jim Crow

1) Purpose – to divide poor whites from allying with poor blacks by allying poor whites more closely with middle class and upper class whites through a system of white privilege.

2) Political disenfranchisement

(a) Mississippi plan

(i) Residency requirement – had to live at the same address for two years (difficult for poor farmers to meet this requirement)

(ii) Disqualifications for certain crimes, usually crimes against property which were more likely to be perpetrated by the poor (both black and white)

(iii) One in the southern prison system, many prisoners were hired out by the state to work on large plantations in competition with free labor, which again helped depress wages (most famously at Parchman Farm, place where such African American blues performers as Huddie Ledbetter and Bukka White did time—as well as Angola Prison in Louisiana)

(iv) Poll tax

(v) Literacy test (with understanding clause)

IV) *Remind class that this is the era in the South before the Secret ballot.

A) Segregation in the South

1) Supreme Court

(a) Civil Rights Cases (1883) – Supreme Court decided to allow individuals to discriminate, which meant that blacks could legally be forced to use segregated public facilities (restaurants, hotels).

(b) Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) – Plessy was hired by the railroad to violate the ordinance in New Orleans because they wanted to avoid the expense of having to have separate railroad passenger cars for whites and blacks. Established the legal fallacy of “separate but equal”.

B) Organized violence against blacks

1) Lynching – more than just vigilante justice; a system of terror utilized to ensure that blacks behaved in the “proper manner”—that is, in a subservient manner

(a) Ritualized mutilation – ears, fingers (used as “souvenirs”), and genitalia

(b) Ritualized torture – burning, mutilation

(c) Public spectacle

(d) Done not only in the South, but in the North as well, particularly as more African Americans moved to the North and became more of a perceived threat.

2) Leo Franks case – Mary Phelan, who worked in a factory of Franks (who was Jewish) in Atlanta, was found raped and strangled at the bottom of an elevator shaft in the factory. Even though evidence in the case pointed toward the African American janitor as the culprit, a jury in Marietta found Franks guilty, and the citizenry of the city stormed the jail and lynched Franks.

V. Settlement House movement

A. Jane Addams and Hull House--Addams established Hull House with Ellen Gates Starr in 1889, and immediately attracted the attention of a large contingent of well-healed supporters and a great deal of favorable publicity.

1. Inspiration--Addams was inspired by her observations of what was happening at Toynbee Hall in the East End of London. There, young men from Oxford (often looking toward a career in the ministry) lived among the poorest of the poor in London, ministering to their needs.

2. Vision--Although Addams was inspired by the work at Toynbee Hall, she made important changes to the operation of the settlement house when she brought the idea to the near west side of Chicago.

a. Non-sectarian--Toynbee Hall was an arm of the Anglican Church, the established church of England. Many of the new immigrants living in the neighborhood around Hull House were Roman Catholic or Jewish, and the decision to remain unaffiliated with any religious body (although accepting help from all) made it seem less threatening to religious institutions in the neighborhood.

b. Democracy--Addams saw Hull House as an incubator for the democratic process, and therefore programming at Hull House was much freer than she had observed at Toynbee Hall. Although English language classes and the "classics" of English literature were available, neighbors were welcome to bring in their own cultural artifacts to supplement these materials.

3. Creating Public Space for Women--Addams graduated from the Rockford Seminary in 1881, but spent the next eight years floundering because she had no idea of how to make a career for herself outside of that fo housewife--which she had no interest in.

a. Death of her father--Addams' father was her source of self-confidence; when he died in the mid-summer of 1881, Jane Addams was left adrift.

b. The Family Claim--as the remaining unmarried female child in her family, Jane Addams was expected to be the companion of her step-mother until the step-mother's death.

c. Limited Female Public Role--the roles that middle class white women filled in American society was extremely limited at the beginning of the Progressive Era was extremely limited--school teachers, missionaries, lawyers, and doctors would make up most of a list of "respectable" occupations.

II. Municipal Housekeeping--During the Progressive Era, women began claiming the right to speak out and be heard in public as an extension of their duties in the home--a right claimed with the phrase "municipal housekeeping."

A. Settlement Houses--as discussed extensively above, this was a way for many women (and a few men) to reach out to recent immigrant groups--some more successfully than others.

B. Municipal politics--while women were restricted from participating in politics at the national level until passage of the 19th Amendment, women were active politically in a number of municipalities.

1. Toledo--Pauline Perlmutter Steinem--grandmother of feminist Gloria Steinem, Pauline Steinem was one of the earliest women to hold elective office in the state of Ohio when she was elected to the Toledo Public School Board in 1905.

2. Chicago--women also gained the right to vote in municipal elections in Chicago, in part because many had found a way to become politically active before being granted that right.

a. City Club of Chicago--a group of well-heeled, wealthy men roused to action as a result of the labor strife that had become endemic in Chicago (Great Upheaval of 1877, Haymarket Affair of 1886, Pullman Strike in 1894, among numerous other events). Organization formed in 1903, with the idea that citizens of a community should take responsibility for improving conditions in that community.

--The City Club of Chicago was an exclusive organization. Members had to be recommended by other members, and then prove through a written application that they adhered to the political ideology of the other members--which was very business-friendly.

--Resolution of issued tended to revolve around was Club members viewed as being most "cost-efficient"--that is, whatever result might return a profit or lower tax rates.

b. Women's City Club of Chicago--made up of many of the wives of the well-heeled, wealthy men of the Chicago City Club--but also a number of other women (including those involved in settlement work), and who had a more expansive and inclusive vision of what "betterment" of the community meant.

--Garbage disposal in Chicago: City Club called for the continuation of private contract for the disposal of garbage, since companies not only did it "efficiently," but through the process of "reduction" produced on oil used in the production of soap. The fact that citizens were inconvenienced by having to separate garbage from trash, that the rickety wagons that transported the garbage to the reduction plant leaked and spilled garbage along the route, and ran infrequently, were not persuasive arguments for making garbage pick-up and disposal a municipal function.

--The Women's City Club of Chicago not only supported efforts to make garbage pick-up a municipal function, but also funded a study to ascertain whether the city should not instead operate an incinerator to dispose of both trash and garbage, and to use the ash left over to make paving bricks for the city streets.

C. Women's Christian Temperence Union (WCTU)--a quasi-political national organization that advocated the total banishment of the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages of any kind. Organization was formed as a result of the split formed in the women's suffrage movement. The WCTU's great moment of triumph was the passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919.

Weekly Assignment Number 4

Today's lecture focused in part upon changes and continuities (things that remained the same) in the meat packing industry. The instructor read passages from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (pages 38-48), published in 1905, and a book of more recent vintage, Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation (pages 169-179). What differences in the two accounts are most noticeable? What accounts for these differences? And what do you find most striking about any similarities--and what accounts for that.

As has become the practices, your answer to these questions should fill at least two pages of  standard-sized copier paper, double-spaced, with conventional 1 inch margins and 12 point font. This assignment is due on February 9.

American Government in the Early 20th Century

II) TR the President

A) Expansion of the role of President – Roosevelt had an activist bent that led him to try (largely successfully) to expand the role of the president. Chief executives since Lincoln had been rather weak administrators who were inclined to follow the lead of Congress. While TR was expanding the role of chief executive, however, he was expanding it for fundamentally conservative principles.

1) Trust busting – Roosevelt’s reputation as the “trust-buster” is largely undeserved—his successor, the lethargic William Howard Taft and his administration actually brought many more suits against trusts than did the Roosevelt administration. Roosevelt felt that monopolies were a logical consequence of capitalism; unlike many of his Progressive cohorts, he welcomed this development—as long as the government controlled these monopolies.



(a) Northern Securities Company – TR and his administration did pursue a case against the Northern Securities Company, which was a holding company for the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railroads; railroads were largely unpopular still, and a strong case could be made that the railroads were in fact engaged in interstate commerce, a crucial factor when the case went to the Supreme Court.


(b) Swift & Company v. United States – government contended that meatpackers combined together to restrict competitive bidding for livestock to slaughter; Supreme Court issued ruling using the “stream of commerce” doctrine, which held that some manufacturing processes did indeed take place in interstate means, and therefore were liable to federal regulation under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

(c) Bureau of Corporations – most trust regulation was handled by the newly formed Bureau of Corporations. The Bureau was charged with gathering information about corporations, in order to help them from violating the law. Roosevelt was less interested in busting trusts than he was in regulating them. He divided trust into good trusts and bad trusts; the determination into which pigeonhole a trust fell into was completely arbitrary. The good trusts were those whose officers came to the White House and had dinner with the president, and who cooperated with the Bureau; bad trusts did not do these things.

(d) Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) – although the ICC was established in 1887, it was little used until the Roosevelt administration. TR’s advocacy of regulation was resented by some businessmen (particularly Henry Clay Frick, who complained that “the son of a bitch” wouldn’t stay bought after many businessmen contributed heavily to his 1904 campaign); however, because these regulatory commissions tended to be staffed with officials from the industry the commission was charged to regulate. The Hepburn Act gave the ICC the right to set maximum freight rates, and it outlawed the payments of kickbacks to large volume shippers. Essentially what the ICC did was to allow the railroads to collude and set rail rates—something they had been trying to do for approximately thirty years anyway, and something farmers and workers had been working to prohibit for the same length of time.

                                                                   

(e) Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act – Upton Sinclair published The Jungle in early 1906, a hard-hitting expose of working and living conditions in the packinghouses and their environs in Chicago. That part of the book received very little notice, however; as Sinclair himself described it, “I aimed for people’s hearts, and hit their stomachs.” His descriptions of sausage making (combining putrid meat, rat shit, the occasional part of an extremity from a worker, and a blend of original spices) stirred TR and Congress into action.