GOAL FIVE 5.04

1
GOAL FIVE5.04

• Becoming an Industrial Society
• (1877-1900)
• The learner will describe innovations in
  technology and business practices and assess
  their impact on economic, political, and social
  life in America.
• Describe the changing role of government in
  economic and political affairs.

2
Sherman Antitrust Act- (July 2, 1890)

• legislation passed by Congress to break up
  monopolies. The first of several antitrust acts
  designed to curb the power and growth of
  monopolies the law forbade companies to join in
  a trust in order to control interstate trade. The
  law was also used to break up unions. Penalties
  for violation included a 5,000 fine, a year's
  imprisonment, or both. Because its wording was
  unclear and it was difficult to enforce, the
  Sherman Anti-Trust Act was supplemented by the
  Clayton Antitrust Act in 1914.

3
Pendleton Act- (January 16, 1883)

• act passed by Congress during the administration
  of Chester A. Arthur establishing a Civil Service
  Commission, which required competitive
  examinations for some federal jobs. It was the
  first comprehensive national merit system. The
  Pendleton Act helped dismantle part of the spoils
  system.

4
Political machines

• an organized group that controls a political
  party in a city and offers service to voters and
  businesses in exchange for political and
  financial support.

5
Boss Tweed- (1823-78)

• political boss and criminal. Known as Boss Tweed,
  he served as New York City commissioner of public
  works in 1870. Tweed helped set in motion a
  series of frauds and corrupt deals that drained
  millions of dollars from the New York City
  treasury. Through his control of Tammany Hall,
  Tweed and his associates, known as the Tweed
  Ring, dominated the New York City government.
  Arrested for fraud, Tweed escaped from jail to
  Spain in 1875. In 1876 he was identified by a
  Spanish police officer from one of Thomas Nast's
  cartoons and was arrested and returned to the
  United States for trial. He died in prison before
  his trial began.

6
Tammany Hall

• powerful political force in New York City
  originally formed to preserve the nation's
  independence. Organized in 1789 as the Society of
  St. Tammany, it was named after a legendary
  Delaware Indian chief. Eventually developing a
  close association with the Democratic party,
  Tammany Hall became a political machine
  dominating New York City and state politics
  during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
  Many scandals were connected with the
  organization, including the infamous 1871 affair
  involving Boss Tweed and his gang, who were
  convicted of defrauding New York City of millions
  of dollars. Tammany regained power until the
  1930s, revived in the 1950s, and subsequently
  disappeared as a political power after the 1970s.

7
Thomas Nast- (1840-1902)

• German-born editorial and political cartoonist.
  Nast's influential cartoons appeared in the
  popular magazine Harper's Weekly during the 1860s
  and 1870s. Nast created or popularized such
  political symbols as the Democrats' donkey, the
  Republicans' elephant, and the Tammany tiger. His
  cartoons about the corruption of the Tweed Ring
  and Tammany Hall in New York City (1869-72)
  helped mold public opinion and bring about the
  downfall of William "Boss" Tweed and his
  supporters.

8
Crédit Mobilier scandal

• a construction company organized in 1864 by a few
  important stockholders to build the Union Pacific
  Railroad. The company bribed congressmen by
  selling them shares of stock at half the market
  value in return for favorable legislation
  regarding public land grants. Exposed in 1873
  during the Grant administration, the unraveling
  Crédit Mobilier scandal revealed that Congressman
  Oakes Ames had distributed such stock to Vice
  President Schuyler Colfax and Congressman Henry
  Wilson. Also implicated were Speaker of the House
  James G. Blaine and Representative James A.
  Garfield, both of whom denied the charges.

9
Graft

• Unscrupulous use of one's position to derive
  profit or advantages.

10
Whiskey Ring Scandal

• a major scandal during President Ulysses S.
  Grant's second term (1873-77). Whiskey
  distillers, revenue collectors, and high federal
  officials conspired to avoid taxation through
  fraudulent reports on whiskey production. The
  association was formed in St. Louis, Missouri,
  and spread to the cities. Secretary of the
  Treasury Benjamin Bristow found evidence against
  the lawbreakers in 1875, and many persons were
  convicted although most of the leaders escaped
  with light punishments.

11
Populism

• Populism refers to a third-party movement that
  materialized in America in the 1890s, generating
  a spirited energy that also caused a certain
  alarm near the seats of the mighty. The Populists
  engaged in a social analysis of contemporary
  American society that yielded a range of proposed
  economic reforms. Foremost among them was the
  Subtreasury Land and Loan System, which
  reconceptualized American banking and proposed a
  restructured monetary system that would
  fundamentally alter the power relationships
  between bankers and everyone else.

12
Populism

• The Populist concern about "concentrated capital"
  extended beyond banks to include large-scale
  business organizations generally. Populist
  reformers felt that business domination of the
  political processthrough massive campaign
  contributions to friendly officeholders and
  persistently effective lobbying in the national
  Congress and the state legislatureshad proceeded
  to the point that the practice had begun to
  undermine the democratic idea itself. In an
  effort to restructure American politics,
  Populists formed the People's party, which was
  free of corporate influence.

13
Populism

• The new party polled over a million votes in its
  initial campaign in 1892, made sizable gains in
  1894, and then joined with the free-silver wing
  of the Democratic Party to support William
  Jennings Bryan's unsuccessful presidential
  candidacy in 1896. Having lost much of its
  distinctive identity in the course of its
  "fusion" with the Democrats, the third party
  suffered an abrupt decline thereafter.

14
Secret ballot (Australian)

• Political Parties could manipulate and intimidate
  voters by printing lists of party candidates and
  watching voters drop them into the ballot box on
  election day. It first successfully worked in
  Massachusetts in 1888.

15
Initiative

• The power or right to introduce a new legislative
  measure. The right and procedure by which
  citizens can propose a law by petition and ensure
  its submission to the electorate.

16
Referendum

• The submission of a proposed public measure or
  actual statute to a direct popular vote.

17
Recall

• The procedure by which a public official may be
  removed from office by popular vote.

18
Mugwumps

• The mugwumps were a group of Independent
  Republicans who bolted their party in the
  presidential election of 1884 to vote for Grover
  Cleveland on the Democratic ticket. (The group
  was given its name, an old slang word for
  "kingpin," by the New York Sun.) The
  Independents, including men like George William
  Curtis, E. L. Godkin, and Carl Schurz, had
  favored Cleveland, whom they championed (somewhat
  inaccurately) as a fighter in the cause of
  reform.

19
Mugwumps

• Instead, the regulars at the June 1884 Republican
  convention easily overrode them and nominated
  Secretary of State James G. Blaine of Maine, a
  party stalwart whom the mugwumps regarded (with
  some justification) as politically corrupt. The
  anti-Blaine forces might have prevailed if they
  had been willing to renominate the incumbent
  president, Chester A. Arthur, but the mugwumps
  felt that he too was insufficiently reformist.