Give Me Liberty!

1
Chapter 16
Norton Media Library
Give Me Liberty! An American History Second
EditionVolume 2
by Eric Foner
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I. Second Industrial Revolution

• Astounding pace and magnitude
• Emergence of factory as foremost realm of
  industrial production
• Emergence of wage labor as prevalent source of
  livelihood
• Emergence of city as chief setting for
  manufacture
• Leading industrial cities
• New York
• Chicago
• Pittsburgh
• Single-industry cities

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I. Second Industrial Revolution (contd)

• Expansion of national market
• Eastern markets for western goods (agricultural,
  extractive)
• Western markets for eastern goods (manufactured)
• Central role of railroad
• National brands, chains, mail order firms
• Technological innovations
• Leading breakthroughs
• Thomas A. Edisons research laboratories

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I. Second Industrial Revolution (contd)

• Competition and consolidation
• Volatility of marketplace
• Downward pressure on prices Great Depression of
  1873-1897
• Ruthless competition among businesses
• Corporate initiatives to stabilize marketplace
• Pools
• Trusts
• Mergers

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I. Second Industrial Revolution (contd)

• Industrial giants
• Vast accumulation of wealth and power
• Leading business figures
• Thomas A. Scott (railroad)
• Size and scope of Pennsylvania Railroad
• Prototype of modern business organization
• Andrew Carnegie (steel)
• Personal rise
• Vertical integration
• Blend of philanthropy and dictatorial management
• John D. Rockefeller (oil)
• Cutthroat competition
• Horizontal integration
• Blend of philanthropy and dictatorial management

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I. Second Industrial Revolution (contd)

• Industrial giants
• Popular perceptions of
• Favorable captains of industry
• Unfavorable robber barons
• Workers conditions in industrial America
• Advantages for skilled labor elite
• High wages
• Areas of control
• Process of production
• Pace of production
• Training of apprentices

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I. Second Industrial Revolution (contd)

• Workers conditions in industrial America
• Hardships for growing ranks of semi-skilled
  workers
• Economic insecurity
• Unreliability of employment and wage rates
• Lack of pensions
• Lack of compensation for injury or unemployment
• Working conditions
• Length of workday
• Dangers of workplace
• Odds against collective action
• Breadth and depth of poverty

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I. Second Industrial Revolution (contd)

• Growing signs of class division
• New urban middle-class neighborhoods
• Exclusive world of the rich
• Home and neighborhood
• Resorts, social clubs, schools
• Conspicuous consumption (Thorstein Veblen)
• 1897 Waldorf-Astoria costume ball
• Contrasts of wealth and poverty
• Matthew Smiths Sunshine and Shadow
• Jacob Riiss How the Other Half Lives

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II. Transformation of the West

• Overall themes
• Variety of regions within West
• Variant on global patterns of political and
  economic incorporation
• Displacement of indigenous peoples
• Promotion of business development
• Promotion of population settlement
• Vital role of government
• Farming empire
• Spread of land under cultivation
• Pace and diversity of settlement
• Wheat and corn production on Middle Border

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II. Transformation of the West (contd)

• Farming empire
• Hardships of Great Plains farming
• Hazards of nature
• Hard labor and solitude (especially for women)
• Call for large-scale irrigation
• John Wesley Powell
• Implications for small-scale farmers
• Increasing market orientation of small farmers
• Forms
• Sale of crops
• Purchase of manufactured goods
• Impacts
• Dependence on loans
• Vulnerability to shifts in world markets

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II. Transformation of the West (contd)

• Farming empire
• Budding trend toward large-scale farming
• Features
• California precedent
• Cowboys
• Diversity
• Myth vs. reality
• Rise and decline of cattle drives
• Corporate West
• Prominent manufacturing and trading centers
• San Francisco
• Los Angeles

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II. Transformation of the West (contd)

• Corporate West
• Large corporate enterprises
• Lumber
• Mining
• Railroad
• Displacement of independent prospectors, farmers
• Subjugation of Indians
• Earlier transformations of Plains Indians
• Eighteenth-century shift to hunting and farming
• Arrival and coalescence of rival tribes

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II. Transformation of the West (contd)

• Subjugation of Indians
• U.S.-Indian conflict on the Plains
• Emergence in 1850s
• During Civil War
• President Ulysses S. Grants peace policy
• Systematic onslaught on Indian life
• By army, hunters
• On villages, horses, buffalo

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II. Transformation of the West (contd)

• Subjugation of Indians
• U.S.-Indian conflict further west
• Defeat of the Navajo
• Destruction of orchards and sheep
• Removal to reservation
• Defeat of the Nez Percé
• Pursuit of and capture by U.S. Army
• Removal to reservation
• Chief Josephs Washington speech
• Continuation of Indian resistance
• Sioux-Cheyenne victory at Little Big Horn
• Apache escapes and raids

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II. Transformation of the West (contd)

• Subjugation of Indians
• Ongoing white encroachment
• New western states
• Railroads, soldiers, settlers
• Indian reservations
• Spread of
• Impoverishment, exploitation
• Reduction of Sitting Bull to popular spectacle
• Federal assault on Indian culture
• Imposition of white American values
• Elimination of treaty system
• Dawes Act
• Provisions
• Outcomes

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II. Transformation of the West (contd)

• Subjugation of Indians
• Indian citizenship
• Conditional offers of American citizenship in
  nineteenth century
• Judicial obstructions to equal citizenship for
  Indians
• Western courts
• Supreme Court
• Gradual expansion of Indian citizenship
• Closing act
• Ghost Dance
• Wounded Knee massacre

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III. Politics in a Gilded Age

• Origins and meanings of Gilded Age
• Political corruption
• Widespread unease over
• Manifestations of
• Corporate lobbyists
• Urban political machines Boss Tweed
• Crédit Mobilier scandal
• The political parties
• Imprint of Civil War on each
• Social and regional bases of support
• Republican
• Democratic

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III. Politics in a Gilded Age (contd)

• The political parties
• Close division of popular support
• Presidential elections
• Congressional elections
• Political stalemate
• The state of American political democracy
• Indications of vitality
• Closely contested elections
• Intense party loyalty
• High voter turnout
• Spectacular rallies and oratory

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III. Politics in a Gilded Age (contd)

• The state of American political democracy
• Meager response to social problems of industrial
  era
• Minimal nature of federal government
• Size
• Scale of activity
• Deference of both parties to business interests
• Divergence of parties over tariff policy
• Convergence of parties over fiscal policy
• Achievements of national politics (and their
  limits)
• Civil Service Act
• Interstate Commerce Act
• Sherman Antitrust Act

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III. Politics in a Gilded Age (contd)

• Political ferment in the states
• Debate over role of government at state and local
  levels
• Potential points of intervention
• Actual points of intervention
• Popular campaigns for government action
• Greenback-Labor party
• Grange
• Labor movement
• Legacies of popular campaigns
• Mixed results in short-term
• Sowing of long-term debate on political and
  economic freedom

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IV. Freedom in the Gilded Age

• Debate over aspects of new social order
• Relations between classes
• Coexistence of poverty and wealth
• Advent of permanent factory population
• Defenses of Gilded Age inequalities
• Justifications for concentrations of wealth, low
  wages
• Uncoupling of principles of freedom and equality
• New liberal reformers
• Fear of lower-class democracy
• Commitment to individual liberty and property
  rights

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IV. Freedom in the Gilded Age (contd)

• Social Darwinism
• Application of evolutionary science to social
  problems
• Implications for social policy
• Acceptance of poverty, material inequality
• Rejection of public relief, economic regulation
• Notion of undeserving poor
• William Graham Sumner What Social Classes Owe to
  Each Other
• Liberty of contract
• Link to Social Darwinism
• Themes
• Freedom as limited government and unrestrained
  market

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IV. Freedom in the Gilded Age (contd)

• Liberty of contract
• Themes
• Sanctity of labor contract
• As arbiter of free labor
• As beyond reach of public intervention
• Promotion by the courts overturning or
  distortion of regulatory legislation
• Munn v. Illinois
• Wabash v. Illinois
• Pro-business slant in ICC cases
• U.S. v. E.C. Knight Co.
• Use of Sherman Antitrust Act against labor
• Lochner v. New York

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V. Labor and the republic

• 1877 railroad strike and emergence of labor
  question
• Resurgence of labor movement
• Knights of Labor
• Size and diversity
• Range of activities
• Variety of programs
• Common targets
• Ideologies of Social Darwinism and liberty of
  contract
• Growing loss of economic independence
• Inequalities of wealth and power
• Corruption of democracy by concentrated capital

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V. Labor and the republic (contd)

• Middle-class reformers
• Unease over social conditions, concentrated
  capital, class conflict
• Range of social prescriptions
• Leading works of social criticism
• Henry Georges Progress and Poverty
• Statement of problem
• Single tax solution
• Conceptions of freedom
• Mass popularity
• Laurence Gronlunds The Cooperative Commonwealth
• Popularization of socialist ideal in America
• Core socialist principles
• Socialism as outcome of peaceful evolution

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V. Labor and the republic (contd)

• Leading works of social criticism
• Edward Bellamys Looking Backward
• Futuristic utopian novel
• Themes
• Embrace of cooperation, interdependence,
  equality, economic security, powerful state
• Rejection of class strife, individualism,
  inequality, competition
• Impact
• Inspiration for Nationalist clubs
• Influence on reform thought

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V. Labor and the republic (contd)

• Social Gospel movement
• Seedbed
• Emerging strain within Protestantism
• Variant within Catholicism
• Themes and initiatives
• Critique of Social Darwinism, laissez-faire
  doctrine, Gospel of Wealth
• Vision of equalization of wealth and power,
  checks on competition
• Efforts to ameliorate working-class conditions
• Promotion of cooperative organization of economy

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V. Labor and the republic (contd)

• 1886 Labors great upheaval
• Explosive growth of Knights of Labor
• Nationwide May Day demonstration for eight-hour
  day
• Haymarket Affair (Chicago)
• Background
• Iron moulders strikes of 1885 and 1886
• Killing of strikers by police
• Bloodshed at Haymarket Square
• Scapegoating of labor movement
• As violent
• As vehicle of immigrant radicals

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V. Labor and the republic (contd)

• 1886 Labors great upheaval
• Haymarket Affair (Chicago)
• Haymarket martyrs
• Arrests, trial, and conviction of anarchists
• Hangings, imprisonment, commutations
• Albert and Lucy Parsons
• Labor and politics
• Spread of independent labor political campaigns
• Connection to Knights of Labor
• Major goals
• Electoral successes
• New York mayoral campaign of Henry George
• Decline of Knights of Labor

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End slide
This concludes the Norton Media Library Slide Set
for Chapter 16
Give Me Liberty! An American History 2nd Edition,
Volume 2
by Eric Foner
W. W. Norton CompanyIndependent and
Employee-Owned