Weekly Assignment #7

Read Chapter 7 from Going to the Source, and answer question #3 in a 1 1/2--2 page paper, due March 4

The United States and Imperial Wars

I. Spanish-American War

A. The Imperialist Impulse

1. Alfred Thayer Mahan--the leading naval theorist of his time, Mahan argued that a nation could only achieve foreign policy success by building a strong navy. To achieve this objective, the nation would also have to obtain places for its large fleet to refuel--"coaling stations"--with the reliance upon steam for locomotion. This became the one of the excuses for the aggressive imperialism that became manifested in the foreign policy of the United States in the years just before the turn of the century.

2. Imperialist foreign policy--in many ways, the 1890s are a pivotal decade. In 1890, the  Census Department determined that the frontier in the United States had ceased to exist. By 1892, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner had developed  a theory that the frontier had been the determining factor in the development of democracy in the United States. That same  year, Homer Plessy was arrested in New Orleans for violating the new segregated railroad car law in Louisiana; by 1896, the Supreme Court would institute the doctrine of "separate but equal," instituting legal segregation. Worries about having room to expand met racist presumptions about the ability of  non-white peoples of the earth to govern themselves in this new imperialist foreign policy.

B. Cuba Libre!

1. The "Yellow" Press--the  birth of the modern newspaper in the years just before the turn of the 20th century led many of the papers to promote lurid, sensationalist stories in an attempt to sell more  newspapers.

a. William Randolph Hearst

2. Remember the Maine

a. The USS Maine--in response to perceived "Spanish aggression," the USS Maine was dispatched to Havana Harbor to "show the flag." On the night of February 15,1898 the Maine suffered a catastrophic explosion, which an investigating committee concluded could only have happened from a mine placed  in the harbor (modern evidence points to spontaneous combustion in a coal bin).  As a result, pressure to declare war on Spain grows irresistible. When McKinley asks Congress to declare war (the Constitutional method  of doing so, by the way), Roosevelt resigns his position in the administration to join the Rough Riders he had been busy organizing.

b. Cuban rebels--had been fighting Spanish forces off and on for the previous thirty years, and at this point had nearly worn Spain into submission before the Americans even began their short voyage. Rebel forces, in fact, held off Spanish forces during the American invasion, which is the main reason why the American forces landed unscathed.

3. The Rough Riders--is really a manifestation of the multi-culturalism that Roosevelt learned from his association with Jacob Riis. The Rough Riders were a mixture of blue blood friends from New York (who made up much of the officer corps), with cowboys, Indians, Mexicans, and a smattering of other  ethnic groups--with one important exception--who all brought the "barbarian virtues" that Roosevelt felt  Anglo-Saxons had lost.

4. The Charge up Kettle Hill--this engagement, like the whole War With Spain, was a FUBAR mess. It took weeks to transport troops to Cuba, supplies were inadequate--as were preparations, medical attention, and just about everything else  about the operation.

1. The Role of the10th Cavalry--under the command of General John J. Pershing, the all African American 10th Cavalry actually bore much of the brunt of the fighting for both Kettle Hill  and  San Juan Hill. Their bravery under fire was remarked on by a number of officers,  including initially one Lt. Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. The 10th Cavalry did not have a personal war correspondent,  however, so none of them were awarded a Medal of Honor

B. The Philippines

1. Philippine Revolution--Filipino insurgents, led by Emilio Aguinaldo, had fought Spanish forces to a standstill by December 1897, and the Spanish government paid Aguinaldo to go into exile. From exile in Hong Kong, however, Aguinaldo maintained that he was contacted by US representatives and encouraged to return to The Philippines to take back up the struggle. Aguinaldo returned in April 1898, and soon rebel forces had overrun the Spanish Army in the entire archipelago except for Manila. With the US Pacific fleet anchored in Manila Bay, victory (and independence) seemed imminent. Filipino force were warned to stay out of Manila, however, on danger of being fired upon by American forces--and the Spanish surrendered to the Americans.

2. Filipino-American War--it quickly became apparent to Filipinos that the United States aimed at replacing Spain as the colonial master of the islands, and not long after open hostilities broke out. Outgunned, the Filipinos retreated to the jungle and fought a guerrilla war until 1902, after Aguinaldo was assassinated--although certain guerrilla fighters carried on until 1914.

3. The Carrot and the Stick--the United States, to win the hearts and minds of the Filipino, built roads, schools, hospitals, and other government buildings--while also burning villages to the ground that they suspected of harboring guerrillas, and torturing--or murdering--combatants that were captured

a. Dealing with "gooks"--Filipinos were referred to by many soldiers as "goo-goos," which became gooks--an epitaph that became used to describe most people of Southeast Asia.

II. Panama Canal

A. Connecting the Oceans--part of the concern raised by Mahan dealt with the time it took to sail around Cape Horn through the Drake Passage. Efforts to build a canal through the Isthmus of Panama (only 48 miles wide) were begun by France--which had just constructed the Suez Canal, with British assistance--began in 1880. After millions of dollars and the deaths of more than 21,000 workers--most from yellow fever and malaria--the French abandoned the project.

B. Creating Panama--until 1903, Panama was a province of Columbia. To get a better deal on rights to construct the canal, US representatives--under the direction of President Theodore Roosevelt--persuaded a number of leading businessmen and landowners in Panama along the proposed route of the canal to declare their "independence"--an independence enforced by the US Navy anchored of the Panamanian coast.


III. Mexican Revolution

A. Border raids

1. Two Mexican governments – one in the north (led by Poncho Villa), and one in the south

2. Anti-American sentiment – many people in Mexico resented the United States interference in political affairs previously in Mexico, as well as the way many of their relatives and former countrymen were being treated in the Southwest.

B. Unstable business environment – for US businesses, anyway; fear of intervention by British or German forces which would conflict with US business interests.

1. Petroleum

2.Mining – particularly silver, lead, and copper mines

3. Intervention – invoking the Monroe Doctrine, used as justification to interfere in affairs of Mexico.

4. Tampico Affair – avenging US honor, or the humiliation of Mexico?  US sailors arrested, then quickly released with apology from Mexican government; naval commander insists Mexican officials salute US flag, which they refuse to do; Marines and sailors occupy Veracruz by force.

5. Pursuit of Poncho Villa – Villa, looking to provoke US invasion, Villa’s forces raid Columbus, New Mexico, burn it to the ground, and kill sixteen US citizens; Wilson responds by sending Gen. John Pershing into Mexico to pursue Villa; Pershing is unable to capture Villa or his forces, however, and US forces are withdrawn, quietly, a year later (to be transported across the Atlantic).

6. “Dollar Diplomacy” – interventions on the part of US government to protect the interests of American businesses, began in 1909 with personal appeal from Taft to Chinese leaders on behalf of US businesses; with Wilson, this “diplomacy” often took the force of arms

7. Nicaragua

8. Haiti

9. Dominican Republic

a. Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler, USMC

IV. War in Europe

A. Hyphenated Americans

1. German-Americans – number 8.25 million of German parentage

2. Irish-Americans – 4.5 Million of Irish parentage

3. Both groups either expressed opposition for English war aims (Irish), or support for German war aims (German-Americans)

B. Why support Allies? – Cultural affinity with Great Britain by politicians; the fact that Great Britain controlled US access to information about the war, so US only heard about “Hun atrocities.”

C. “Preparedness” v. anti-militarism – US had long held suspicion of large standing army, and of militarism, but this was in the process of changing.

1. Preparedness advocates

a. Theodore Roosevelt – felt the military was the great democratic leveler (unless you were black and relegated to a segregated unit), and would restore masculinity that was sorely lacking, particularly in the middle class (desk jobs)

2. Anti-militarists

a. William Jennings Bryan

b. Women’s Peace Party (40,000 members)

c. Most Progressives

d. Socialist Party

e. IWW – latter two believed that this was a capitalist war, fought to control overseas colonies (and largely, it was)

3. Wilson’s position – shifting, depending upon the political climate

a. 1915 – recommends military build-up

b. 1916 – switches positions, promising to keep US from entangling alliances, because that position is more politically popular, and there was an election coming up.

4. Peace tied to US economic expansion

5. Economic Effects of War on US

a. 1914 recession – US securities were held abroad and cashed in for gold, which depleted reserves; between $2.5 and $6 billion worth of US securities were dumped in the fall of 1914.

b. 1915 boom – with orders for war materials from Europe, US business booming; also, with immigration from Europe cut off, workers seeing wages rise for first time after a series of recessions; however, wages do not keep pace with inflation which soon hits the economy.

c. Wall Street Journal – praised war’s “tendency toward conservatism” in financial matters.

D. Effect of Total War in Europe on US

1. British blockade – Most of German fleet was locked up in ports along the Baltic Sea due to British blockade and naval superiority.

2. Contraband – anything enroute to German ports was seized as contraband by British war ships, and transported to British ports.

3. German U-Boats (Unterseebooten)

4. War ship inferiority – German navy smaller, had to rely upon U-Boats as equalizer.

a. SS Lusitania – British passenger liner, which German u-boat sank; suspected of ferrying small arms; of the 1200 passengers killed when it sank were 124 Americans (May 7, 1915)

b. Bryan, greatest voice for peace in Administration, resigns post over Administration handling of Lusitania, which leaves hawks in control.

c. Germany agrees to give warning to passenger boats in the future before torpedoing

d. German peace proposal – demands cessation of Belgium Congo, as well as other colonies; rejected by Allies.

E. Russian Revolution (1917)

1. Socialist revolution – overthrew czar, support for entering the war on the side of the Allies was gained from Russian Jews, Poles, and Scandinavian immigrants, who had feared policies of czarist policies.

2. Allied war effort – in trouble; French leader Aristide Briand’s government falls; Britain forced to use conscription (and considers conscripting the Irish)

3. Germany resumes unrestricted submarine warfare – in the spring of 1917

4. Zimmerman telegram – Germany tries to make an allied pact with Mexico in case US should enter the war on the side of the Allies.

F. Selling the War to the American Public – Wilson used the carrot and stick approach, using advertising techniques to sell the “benefits” of the war, and the law and police powers to squelch dissent.

1. Committee on Public Information – publicized German atrocities

2. War Industries Board – essentially, a planned economy; production planned; support of labor unions sought (through representation on the War Labor Board, a subset of the War Industries Board).

3. Revenue Acts (1916-1917)

4. Espionage Act (1917)

5. Alien and Sedition Act (1918) – made it illegal to voice any opposition to the war; it was under this act that Eugene Debs was arrested, tried, and convicted.

G. US entry into the War – the manpower the United States was able to provide tipped the scale in favor of the Allies.

Oppositional Politics in the Pre-War Era

I. Socialist Party – the so-called “left-wing” of Progressivism was an important source of opposition to the government as it was then constituted, and attempted to give voice to the discontents of a number of workers.

1. Eugene V. Debs – the perennial Presidential candidate of the party, former labor leader (founder of the American Railway Union, which was a leading force in the Pullman Strike in 1894), who turned to politics after being placed in jail for a year after the Pullman Strike.

a. 1900 Social Democratic Party – presidential candidate

b. 1901 Socialist Party founded – from the ashes of the Socialist Labor Party

c. 1912 Presidential election – Deb’s polled over 900,000 votes, 6% of the total that year; he was gaining substantial support not only in New York City and Chicago, but also in places like Butte, Montana, Oklahoma City, OK, Milwaukee, WI, and Schnectady, NY.



II. Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

A. “Continental Congress of the Working Class” – founding convention held in Chicago in 1905, which was attended by a number of leading leftists: Debs, Mother Jones, Daniel DeLeon, and “Big Bill” Haywood of the Western Federation of Miners.Many of the early leaders of the organization came out of the WFM

B. Egalitarian in Nature

1. Organized without regard to race, ethnicity – organized workers from lumber “bums” in the Pacific Northwest to turpentine camps in Louisiana to textile workers on the east coast (Lawrence, MA and Patterson, NJ)

2. Organized without regard to gender – calls for equal pay for women many years before it became fashionable.


C. Oppositional Culture

1. Abolish the wage system

2. Refusal to sign contracts – this idea went along with abolishing the wage system; thinking went along the lines of why sign any contracts, since the ultimate end was to get rid of the owning classes althogether?

3. Free speech fight – fought mainly on the West Coast, the bastion of personal liberty.

4. Belief in unions as a revolutionary vehicle – most member of the IWW believed that society needed to be revolutionarily changed, and that that change would be fostered by a labor union rather that a political party; this belief is called syndicalism.


5. Song – Joe Hill and “Solidarity Forever,” “Pie in the Sky Bye and Bye” and other which were compiled in the “Little Red Songbook.”

D. IWW “Organization” Drives

1. 1910 McKees Rocks, PA – led strike of immigrant railcar workers

2. 1912 Lawrence, MA – the famous “Bread and Roses” strike, when the IWW led members of numerous ethnic groups, who previously had been hostile to one another, on a huge strike.

a. Large number of workers who were women and children

b. Organized strike and relief committees for each of the different ethnic groups, and provided translators for the speeches given at the daily strike rallies, as well as for strike literature.

c. Striking pickets were able to surround the factories, forcing them to close down, which brought out state repression

d. Attempts to starve strikers into submission led to families placing their children with sympathizers around the country, which in turn led the state and companies to attempt to stop this practice, which led to sympathetic coverage in the press

3. 1913 Patterson NJ strike – the strike by Patterson’s silk workers followed much the same pattern as the Lawrence strike the previous year.

a. Seven month strike, again led by IWW after the workers had walked out

b. Betrayal by native workers – each of these strikes was eventually defeated by native white workers betraying their fellow workers and going back to work, allowing production to begin again.

E. Other worker rebellions

1. United Mine Workers – although miners were skilled workers, their lack of an apprentice system meant that they had little control over who entered the field, which therefore led the organization to be more receptive to organizing African Americans and southern and eastern European immigrants, since they were in the mines anyway.

2. 1914 Ludlow CO Massacre

a. Strike began in late 1913, at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company; this company was owned by John D. Rockefeller,Jr., who also owned much of Standard Oil and was the richest man in the world.

b. Miners were evicted from their company owned homes, and forced to live in tents in the middle of the Rocky Mountain Colorado winter; mine owners pay for the Colorado militia to be brought in the quell “disturbances” – mainly picketing.

c. Easter night, militia moved in on the tent city, raked it with machine gun fire and set many of the tents on fire, killing sixteen people, including twelve children.

d. Touched off ten day gun battle between militia and miners, which was only ended when Federal troops were brought in and disarmed the miners.

e. Aftermath – resultant bad publicity spurs the development of professionalization of employee relations.

III. Race and the Progressive Movement

A. Booker T. Washington – former slave, founder of the Tuskegee Institute

1. 1895 Cotton States Exposition speech – “In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers on a hand, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.”

2. Tacit acceptance of Jim Crow and voter disenfranchisement

B. W.E.B. DuBois – first African American granted Ph.D degree from Harvard.

1. Souls of Black Folks – contained as essay entitled “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others” which challenged the views of Washington and his followers.

2. 1903 Niagara Movement – meeting at Niagara Falls, Canada, because no hotels on the American side would allow African Americans to register; meeting drew up a list of demands to end segregation and discrimination in unions, courts, and public accommodations.

C. Progressive Era Race Riots


1. 1906 Atlanta – newspapers exploited alleged black on white rapes, which whipped a large crowd into a murderous rampage.

a. Georgia State militia – marched on “Brownsville,” home to a large population of middle class black (including, at this time, one W.E.B. DuBois) as well as a number of black colleges; professors and students were rounded up at gunpoint and marched downtown to prevent white “retaliations.”

b. Eventually, 26 people were killed in the rioting, 25 of those black, including four who were beaten to death.

c. Atlanta an ill-policed city – muckraker Ray Stannard Baker investigated this riot, and found Atlanta ill-policed, with high rates of crime which affected all citizens; his investigation of the reported rapes found two actual and three attempted rapes of white women by black men; he also discovered three cases of white on white rape which the newspapers had failed to report at all.

2. 1908 Springfield Illinois – white riot again provoked by rumors of black on white rapes, which resulted in three days of rioting and one black death.

D. Founding of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) – in response to these widely reported riots, a meeting was “Called to Discuss Means for Securing Political and Civil Equality of the Negro,” which involved both whites and African Americans who had been involved in the Niagara Movement; became the NAACP in 1911.

Weekly Assignmnet #5

Read chapter 5 from Going to the Source, and fully answer question number 2

Women and the Progressive Movement

I. 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.

III. Jacob Riis and the Image of the Immigrant

A. Jacob Riis--an immigrant from Denmark, migrated to the United States in 1870. His experience as an immigrant was an extremely difficult one, and acquainted him with the dark underside that was part of the immigrant experience. He eventually landed a job with the New York Tribune as a police reporter. His most famous bit of writing is contained in a book he produced, called How the Other Half Lives, which helped connect him with Theodore Roosevelt when Roosevelt became a police commissioner in the latter part of the 1880s.

Commercialization of Working-Class Culture

I. Commercialized Amusement

A. Irish shabeen--refers to an unlicensed place that sold alcohol. In the Irish-American community, such an establishment was usually run be an Irish widow as a means of supporting her family, and was usually run from her home or apartment. It was supported by neighbors as a means of providing for a family that had run into difficult times.

B. Ethnic saloon--some immigrants from a variety of ethnic groups became small businessmen, and opened businesses that catered to the needs of their countrymen--opening grocery stores, real estate agencies, restaurants, and in particular saloons.

1. Permanent address--many male migrants moved from rooming house to rooming house, so that mail from the home country may not have been deliverable because they had moved several times in the interim; the saloon acted as a mail drop for men in this situation.

2. Cheap--or free--food--the saloon also provided a free meal with the purchase of a beer or two, an important service because rooming houses would have charged extra for board; many men were also trying to send most of their pay home, especially in the years just before and just after the turn of the century.

3. Place to hear and speak native language--because these establishments catered to ethnic groups, the saloon also served as a way to remain connected to the news from "back home" through the mail connection mentioned above, but also by reading newspapers from the old country, and being able to converse with fellow countrymen in one's native tongue.

4. Conviviality--with enough drinking (but not too much), convivialty was enhanced--one felt befriended. There were also rituals of saloon conviviality, principally the practice of "treating."

a. Treating--the practice of buying a round of drinks "for the house"--that is to say, everyone present in the saloon. This was expected of each newcomer entering the saloon. After treatin everyone in the saloon, the newcomer would be then welcomed into the inner circle, and often would not have to buy another drink that evening, since others would treat him in turn.

C. Brewery Saloons--beginning in the late 1880s, a number of breweries built saloons to sell their beer in. All of the larger breweries--Budweiser, Schlitz, Pabst, and numerous others. They often then leased their buildings to local proprietors, who had to sign contracts limiting their sales to products from the host brewery. This left breweries open to the charge that they were subsidizing drunkedness in these ethnic communities; the fact that many of these brewery owners had been, themselves, ethnic immigrants only a generation before was also somewhat problematic.

D. Wine shops and brothels--some saloons also operated as brothels, with women plying their trade in small rooms upstairs from the bar (known as "cribs").

1. Anthony Comstock--founder of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, and later Assistant Postmaster of the United States. Served in the Union Army in the Civil War, saw little action and complained of the foul language used by his fellow soldiers. After the war, became a self-appointed guardian of virtue in New York City; was connected politically so that his views easily obtained the force of law. He first moved against the distribution of information about birth control. He then moved against the distribution of what he considered "obscenity," which of course was applied to anything having to do with information about sex--eventually including anatomy textbooks for medical students.



E. Dance Halls--Dance halls were considered dangerous to the public morals because they encouraged the indiscriminate and unregulated mingling of the sexes. The dances of the age, the so-called "tough dances," but the sexes in close contact with one another, and were vigorous and "stimulating."

1. Unchaperoned women--Dance halls were also seen as threats to public morality because they admitted unchaperoned women, and allowed them to mix indiscriminately with the men present.

F. Amusement Parks and Arcades.

1. Resorts--usually catered to middle class families, and were located some distance from larger urban areas to make it more difficult for working-class individuals to get there.

a. Cedar Point--Began as a beer garden with a couple of decrepit bathhouses. Its location in Sandusky, approximately halfway between Cleveland and Toledo on the New York Central Railway, made it accessible to a number of families who lacked the means to own a place of their own near the refreshing breezes of the lake (and out of the steamy temperatures of the city during the summer), but could afford a couple of days or a week at a nearby resort.

2. Urban Amusement Parks--other parks were located closer to cities--like Kennywood Park in Pittsburgh, Coney Island near New York City, and Belle Isle in Detroit--and were therefore accessible to working-class families

a. Proximity to workers--urban amusement parks were close enough to cities that workers and their families could easily reach them on their only day off--Sunday--for a day of enjoyment. These parks were usually located just beyond the city limits, so that they could sell customers alcohol. Most cities at this time enforced Sunday closing laws, popularly known as "Blue Laws," to prevent the purchase of alcohol on the Christian sabbath day.

II. Mass Consumption and Advertising

A. Urban environment--as more people lived in to cities (and this did not make up the majority of the population until 1920), they had to become reliant upon stores to supply the goods they needed for everyday living.

B. Individual packaging--until near the turn of the century, nearly all goods were sold from common containers, and customers were reliant upon the honesty and sanitary practices of the store owner for the condition of the goods they purchased.

1. Standard weights--companies like Toledo Scale Company filled a need to ensure that when customers asked for a pound of meat, they could ensure that the received a pound of meat, because they could see the evidence before their eyes.

2. Standard packaging--companies like Procter and Gamble in Cincinnati began sending their goods to stores in standardized packaging (often using industrial versions of scales) to ensure customers that they were receiving good quality, standard weight goods. The packaging--in cans, boxes, cartons, or specially-designed wrappers--obscured the appearance of the good contained within. How could customers tell the quality of a good before purchasing it?

C. Advertising--early advertising looks foreign to the modern eye; how could anyone be enticed to by a good by an advertisement that appears so blah?

1. Branding--one of the earliest elements of advertising was the development of the brand name--something that a customer could go into a store and ask for (or, increasingly, look for themselves) by name.

a. Ivory Snow--its name suggest purity--and who could ask for more in a soap? It's advertising slogan, "99 and 44/100ths%  pure" also suggest that, by not claiming to be 100% pure, that the company was being honest with its customer.

b. Maxwell House Coffee--"Good to the last drop" is a slogan that Maxwell House adopted soon after Theodore Roosevelt was overheard uttering it

c. Gillette Safety Razor--had to work to convince men to throw away the blade that went into their safety razor. After the turn of the 20th century, Gillette worked with medicine cabinet manufacturers to place a slot at the back of the cabinet to accommodate throwing away the blades.

2. Sex sells--advertisers quickly learned that putting an attractive woman on the label attracted both men and women to buy the product.

3. Race sells--advertisers also learned that putting caricturized and demeaning pictures of African Americans on the label helped to sell the product, as well. Some companies even went so far as to brand these products with the names of their fictionalized characters--like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben (it was common for whites to refer to all older African Americans as "auntie" or "uncle."

Jumpin' Jim Crow

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

i. Textile mills

ii. Tobacco (the Duke family and the establishment of the American Tobacco Company)

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

iv. Lumber

v. Petroleum

vi. 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

i. Problems

1. Land ownership

a. Sharecropping

b. Tenant farming

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

3. 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.

ii. 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.

d. The Political Leaders of the New South

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

ii. Bourbon ideology

1. Allied politically with eastern conservatives – interested in seeing the powers of the Federal government reigned in

2. 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.

3. 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.

e. Effects of the Bourbon retrenchment

i. Greatly reduced government expenditures

1. Slashed spending on education

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

3. Repudiation of state debts – refused to pay state debts incurred during Reconstruction.

ii. Blacks and the New South

1. Flexibility in Bourbon race relations

a. 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.

b. Little strict segregation

II. 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

i. National Farmers’ Alliance (Northern Alliance

ii. National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union (Southern Alliance)

iii. 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

i. 1890 Election

1. Kansas – Alliance supporters won 4/5ths of the seats in the legislature

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

ii. 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.

1. 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

i. Purpose – to divide poor whites from allying with poor blacks

ii. Political disenfranchisement

1. Mississippi plan

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

b. Disqualifications for certain crimes

c. Poll tax

d. Literacy test (with understanding clause)

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

d. Segregation in the South

i. Supreme Court

1. 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).

2. 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”.

e. Organized violence against blacks

i. 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

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

2. Ritualized torture – burning, mutilation

3. Public spectacle - meant to intimidate African Americans into accepting white rule