1
The Rise of the Rail Roads

• Technology, Urban Growth, New Immigration Big
  Business

2
Focus Questions Identifications

• How did Americans respond to the depression that
  followed the Civil War? And justify the growing
  disparity of wealth?
• Negro Rule Jack Riis
• Irish Bossism Immigration Legislation
• Nativism
• Gospel of Wealth
• Yellow Peril

3
Focus Questions Identifications

• What factors allowed for the transportation
  revolution, or building of a trans-national
  railroad?
• 1862 Pacific Rail Road Act
• Immigration

4
Focus Questions Identifications

• What was the impact of an unregulated industrial
  growth and the response by farmers and workers?
• Labor Exploitation
• Pools
• Interstate Commerce Act 1887
• The Grange, Granger Laws, Munn V Illinois (1877)
• Mark Twain and The Guilded Age

5
Reconstruction Governments

• 11 states, new leadership included poor whites
  and blacks
• Modern constitutions that embodied an active role
  in government (antithesis of southern tradition)
• Public schools for blacks and whites
• Modern prisons
• Social reform organizations
• Universal manhood suffrage

6
1873 Panic

• Worst depression in American history at the time
• Wages cut repeatedly
• Wall Street Panic of 1873
• Wave of Bankruptcies
• 6,000 businesses failed in 1874 alone

7
Economic Disparity

• Increasing wealth evidence of progress
• Centennial Exposition
• Steam Engine
• Electricity
• Type writer
• Telephone
• Further impoverishment Depression
• 30 unemployment In Massachusettes
• Failure of small business

8
Explanations for Panic in the South

• The South its upheaval to blame
• Conservatives argued that it was the inclusion of
  African Americans in Public that led to failures
• Propaganda campaign of the Negro Rule
• Leadership of migrant northerners (Carpetbaggers)
  and modest southern whites (Scalawags) and all
  blacks
• Weakened business confidence in the south
  undermined economic growth
• Myth of Negro Domination served to discredit the
  government that had been selected by the southern
  masses
• Began to reverse gains made by reconstruction
  governments
• Bolstered support for the return of white
  supremacy

9
Negro Rule

• The "Lost Cause" meant the restoration of the
  virtues, the economy, and, particularly, the
  social system of the Old South.

10
1877 Compromise

• Republican candidate, Ruthford B. Hayes
• Accepted presidency in return for removing troops
  from the South
• New politics embraced regulation of morals
  return to white supremacy
• Wealth Intelligence of the South, the
  Democrats recaptured or redeemed the former
  confederate states through rhetorical campaigns
  against debts, incompetence corruption
• Myth of the Negro Rule

11
Post Reconstruction Politics

• Nationalist reforming temper of the 1860s
  transitioned to reaction of economically
  depressed in the 1870s
• Politics turned away from policies of social
  equity
• African American struggle for rights abandoned
• State Sponsored Education Abandoned
• Womens suffrage abandoned

12
African American Exodus

• Early 1870s legislation against terrorism
  re-interpreted from being criminal acts to the
  need for traditional political elites to return
  to power
• Antebellum power relations restored
• Exodus to Kansas
• 1879 10,000s of African Americans from lower
  Mississippi valley fled Klan violence and threat
  of practical re-enslavement

13
Settling the west

• The first Transcontinental Railroad
• 1862 the Pacific Rail Road Act
• authorized the construction of a new
  transcontinental link.
• provided grants of land and other subsidies to
  the Rail roads
• Congress awarded 170 million acres (half billion
  dollars worth)
• By 1893 Minnesota and Washington had deeded a
  quarter of their state lands to the Rail roads
• Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, North Dakota and Montana
  turned over a fifth of their acreage.

14

• Railroad company and government collusion
• Central pacific RR
• spent 2000 on bribes to get 9 million acres of
  free land 24 million in bonds (paid 79 made a
  profit of 36 million dollars over the value)
• Union Pacific RR
• Given 12 million acres of free land
• Given 27 million in government bonds
• Created Credit Mobilier company
• Gave them 94 million for what cost 44 million

5
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
15
Rise of the Rail Road Barons

• 1869 Rail Road Executive joined the Union and
  Central pacific Rail lines
• first transcontinental line
• 1873 400 corporations criscrossed the northeast
• Businesses that sold bonds to finance their
  businesses ventures
• could not meet their actual costs or fulfill
  their bond obligation
• Northern Pacific Securities Bank, Jay Cooke,
  closed down

16
Financial Collapse

• Triggered other firms to collapse
• Financial panic ensued
• Stock Market crash 5 year depression
• Farm prices plummeted, steel furnaces stood idle,
  1 of 4 rail roads failed
• In two years 18,000 businesses went bankrupt
• 3 million employees out of work
• Those employed saw their wages repeatedly cut
• Labor protests mounted and industrial violence
  spread

17
1873 Panic

• Worst depression in American history at the time
• Wages cut repeatedly
• Wall Street Panic of 1873
• Wave of Bankruptcies
• 6,000 businesses failed in 1874 alone

18
Completing the first transcontinental railroad,
Promontory Point, Utah, May 10, 1869.
Human cost Irish, Chinese, War Veterans paid 2
a day 1889, 22,000 killed or injured
4
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
19
Labor

• Central Pacific employed Chinese workers
• chipped and blasted rail bed out of solid rock in
  the sierra Nevada
• preferred Chinese labor
• worked hard for low wages,
• did not drink,
• furnished their own food and tents
• 12,000 graded the road bed while Irish,
  Mexican-American and black workers laid track.

20
Explanation for Panic in the North

• Irish Bossism
• Pejorative applied to leaders who control the
  selection of their political party's candidates
  for elected office and dispense patronage without
  regard for the public interest.
• The power of a boss turns on his ability to
  select single-handedly the candidates who will
  win an election.
• Indebted elected representatives then turn the
  reigns of government over to the boss, who makes
  policy decisions and uses government jobs and
  revenue to employ party loyalists and fund party
  functions.
• Credited for causing the crisis in government and
  the economy in the North
• Irish were poor working class who were succeeding
  in politics
• Reality
• 65 of industrial workers in 1870 were American
  Born
• 11 Born in Germany
• 5 From England Wales
• 12 from Ireland
• 7 Other
• Revival of 1850s Nativism
• Service of Irish and African Americans in the war
  had bolstered claims to full citizenship
• These progressive ideas centered on equality and
  liberty quickly faded
• Various ethnic groups in the United States
  scape-goated for the crisis

21
Explanations for Panic in the West

• Yellow-Peril
• 9 of the population, ¼ of the work force were
  Chinese
• 1880 population 160,000
• Fear of Chinese Domination
• Migrated to Pacific coast 1840-1860s
• Vast majority young men
• Built western Rail Roads
• Provided crucial services in the mining camps
• Formed the work force in western cities
  (agricultural construction)
• Established businesses

22
Coolie Labor

• 1870 shoe Manufacturer in north Adams,
  Massachusetts imported 75 Chinese to break a
  strike by the Knights of St. Crispin
• They opposed contract labor
• No tone of racial prejudice
• Employers however used Chinese workers as a
  bulwark against unionism aggravated racial
  tensions among workers

23
Railroads

• Railroads single most important agent of
  economic growth
• pools
• Technique used by RR to divide up traffic and fix
  rates, avoiding competition
• Rate-cutting wars, benefited some shippers,
  ruined others

3
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
24
RR Farmers Associations

• Interstate Commerce Act (1887)
• Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
• Outlawed pools, discriminatory rates, rebates
  for favored shippers
• ICC had minimal enforcement, and federal courts
  frequently chose to enforce law
• Rates did decline slowly afterwards
• Standard time zones
• Consequence of RR impact on every day life
• Before 1883 time kept locally by suns meridian in
  each locality
• Played havoc with the trains time table, the RR
  established standard times zones and established
  new time tables

25
Farmers exploited by high rates Response
Cooperatives or Patrons of Husbandry known as
The Grange Marketing groups (Farmers Alliance)
to sell crops and buy supplies Organize an
anti-monopoly to protect from the RR
Monopoly "Granger laws Elected state legislators
who enacted laws Fixed maximum freight rates
warehouse charges Munn v. Illinois (1877) RR
challenged the laws, Supreme court ruled that
states could regulate businesses clothes with a
public interest including railroads Encouraged
state regulation
Poster advertising the gifts of the Grangers.
5
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
26
Transformation of the WestMixed Legacy of
Expansion

• In the North American trans Mississippi west
  miners, farmers, land speculators and rail road
  developers
• Westward re-settlement
• Prairies of
• Iowa
• Minnesota
• Kansas

27
Protestant Profit Work Ethic

• Many white families prospered on the plains,
• heedless pursuit of land and profit threatened
  the Native American way environment.
• exploited white, native American, Chinese and
  Mexican laborers alike
• Bison nearly exterminated
• Miners skinned the mountainsides in search of
  minerals
• Farmers plowed the prairie and built sod houses

28
Governments Hand in the Free Market

• Westerners attributed economic gain
• American individualism and self reliance
• Reality depended heavily on the federal
  government
• sent troops to clear the lands of native people,
  to subjugate them and dispossess them of
  resources
• promoted the acquisition of farm land through the
  Homestead Act of 1862
• Subsidized the construction of the rail road
  lines
• Eastern banks and foreign capitalists provided
  investment capital and eased access to the
  international markets
• Many chose to view the destruction of indigenous
  America as necessary price of civilization and
  progress

29
Promoted re-settlement

• The companies recruited settlers and in their
  propaganda glorified the west as the new Garden
  of Eden.
• One unintended consequence of land promotions was
  to make land available to single women.
• 18 of claimants in Wyoming were single women,
  10-20 in Colorado.
• Kansas having been settled by exo dusters of the
  south were now joined by Russian Mennonites in
  1905.

30
The New Middle Class Woman

• Women challenge separate spheres
• obtain high school and college degrees
• work in professional and white collar occupations
• Work puts women away from supervision of male
  family members
• Wages gave them some independence
• Women and volunteer associations
• Settlement Houses

15
31
Rise of the Rail Road Barons

• Transformation of the Trans-Mississippi West

32
Rise of the Rail Road Barons

• 1869 Rail Road Executive joined the Union and
  Central pacific Rail lines
• first transcontinental line
• 1873 400 corporations criscrossed the northeast
• Businesses that sold bonds to finance their
  businesses ventures
• could not meet their actual costs or fulfill
  their bond obligation
• Northern Pacific Securities Bank, Jay Cooke,
  closed down

33
Railroads

• Railroads single most important agent of
  economic growth
• pools
• Technique used by RR to divide up traffic and fix
  rates, avoiding competition
• Rate-cutting wars, benefited some shippers,
  ruined others

3
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
34
Farmers Associations

• Farmers exploited by high rates
• Grange (1867)
• Response Cooperatives or Patrons of Husbandry
  known as The Grange
• Marketing groups (Farmers Alliance) to sell
  crops and buy supplies
• Organize an anti-monopoly to protect from the RR
  Monopoly
• "Granger laws
• Elected state legislators who enacted laws
• Fixed maximum freight rates warehouse charges
• Munn v. Illinois (1877)
• RR challenged the laws, Supreme court ruled that
  states could regulate businesses clothes with a
  public interest including railroads
• Encouraged state regulation

35
Interstate Commerce Act (1887) Interstate
Commerce Commission (ICC) Outlawed pools,
discriminatory rates, rebates for favored
shippers ICC had minimal enforcement, and federal
courts frequently chose to enforce law Rates did
decline slowly afterwards Standard time
zones Consequence of RR impact on every day
life Before 1883 time kept locally by suns
meridian in each locality Played havoc with the
trains time table, the RR established standard
times zones and established new time tables
Poster advertising the gifts of the Grangers.
5
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
36
Completing the first transcontinental railroad,
Promontory Point, Utah, May 10, 1869.
Human cost Irish, Chinese, War Veterans paid 2
a day 1889, 22,000 killed or injured
4
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
37

• Railroad company and government collusion
• Central pacific RR
• spent 2000 on bribes to get 9 million acres of
  free land 24 million in bonds (paid 79 made a
  profit of 36 million dollars over the value)
• Union Pacific RR
• Given 12 million acres of fee land
• Given 27 million in government bonds
• Created Credit Mobilier company
• Gave them 94 million for what cost 44 million

5
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
38
Financial Collapse

• Triggered other firms to collapse
• Financial panic ensued
• Stock Market crash 5 year depression
• Farm prices plummeted, steel furnaces stood idle,
  1 of 4 rail roads failed
• In two years 18,000 businesses went bankrupt
• 3 million employees out of work
• Those employed saw their wages repeatedly cut
• Labor protests mounted and industrial violence
  spread

39
1873 Panic

• Worst depression in American history at the time
• Wages cut repeatedly
• Wall Street Panic of 1873
• Wave of Bankruptcies
• 6,000 businesses failed in 1874 alone

40
Transformation of the WestMixed Legacy of
Expansion

• In the North American trans Mississippi west
  miners, farmers, land speculators and rail road
  developers
• Westward re-settlement
• Prairies of
• Iowa
• Minnesota
• Kansas

41
Protestant Profit Work Ethic

• Many white families prospered on the plains,
• heedless pursuit of land and profit threatened
  the Native American way environment.
• exploited white, native American, Chinese and
  Mexican laborers alike
• Bison nearly exterminated
• Miners skinned the mountainsides in search of
  minerals
• Farmers plowed the prairie and built sod houses

42
Governments Hand in the Free Market

• Westerners attributed economic gain
• American individualism and self reliance
• Reality depended heavily on the federal
  government
• sent troops to clear the lands of native people,
  to subjugate them and dispossess them of
  resources
• promoted the acquisition of farm land through the
  Homestead Act of 1862
• Subsidized the construction of the rail road
  lines
• Eastern banks and foreign capitalists provided
  investment capital and eased access to the
  international markets
• Many chose to view the destruction of indigenous
  America as necessary price of civilization and
  progress

43
Settling the west

• The first Transcontinental Railroad
• 1862 the Pacific Rail Road Act
• authorized the construction of a new
  transcontinental link.
• provided grants of land and other subsidies to
  the Rail roads
• Labor
• Central Pacific employed Chinese workers
• chipped and blasted rail bed out of solid rock in
  the sierra Nevada
• preferred Chinese labor
• worked hard for low wages,
• did not drink,
• furnished their own food and tents
• 12,000 graded the road bed while Irish,
  Mexican-American and black workers laid track.

44
Pacific Rail Road Act

• Congress awarded the railroads 170 million acres,
  worth over ½ a billion dollars.
• By 1893 Minnesota and Washington had deeded a
  quarter of their state lands to the Rail roads
• Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, North Dakota and Montana
  turned over a fifth of their acreage.

45
Promoted re-settlement

• The companies recruited settlers and in their
  propaganda glorified the west as the new Garden
  of Eden.
• One unintended consequence of land promotions was
  to make land available to single women.
• 18 of claimants in Wyoming were single women,
  10-20 in Colorado.
• Kansas having been settled by exodusters of the
  south were now joined by Russian Mennonites in
  1905.

46
RR Influence on Agriculture

• to ensure a quick repayment of money owed
• urged new immigrants to specialize in cash crops
• wheat on the Northern plains,
• corn in Iowa Kansas
• cotton and tobacco in Texas.

47
Accelerated development of the West

• Used to ship army horses and men in the dead of
  winter to attack Indians when they were most
  vulnerable
• Used to gain quick access to bison, slaughter
• Then used to rapidly settle colonists

48
Homesteading the Great Plains

• The Homestead Act passed in 1862
• Liberalized land laws
• Encouraged westward settlement
• 160 acres to any individual who would pay a 10
  dollar registration fee,
• live on the land for five years and cultivate and
  improve on it.
• 400,000 families claimed land 1860 1900

49
Dispossession of Homesteaders

• Agents filed false claims for the choicest
  locations
• railroads acquired huge holdings
• only 1 of every 9 acres went to pioneers
• Another problem was the 160 acre limit
• Depending on the richness of the soil, a family
  needed more than 160 to survive.
• Congress passed the Land Act of 1877, the Timber
  Culture act of 1873 and Timber and stone act of
  1877
• allowed farmers to buy additional acreage given
  their terrain.
• Again speculators, timber companies and cattle
  ranchers exploited the new legislation to their
  benefit.
• While half the homesteaders adjusted to life on
  the frontier, half also gave up their claims and
  moved on.

50
Farming Communities

• farm mechanization and development of new strains
  of wheat and corn to boost production
  dramatically 
• Steel plows
• Wheat planters
• Grain binders
• Threshers
• Windmills
• Barbed wire
• cost of land, horses, machinery and seed exceeded
  the annual earnings of an industrial worker,
• government supported big business rather than the
  small business owners in such endeavors.
• With increased mechanization government support
  agribusiness began to establish itself and hinder
  small business owners from proliferating.

51
Big Business Government

• 1887 President Grover Cleveland , with a huge
  surplus,
• vetoed a bill providing 100,000 relief to Texas
  farmers
• to help them buy seed grain during a drought.
• federal aid in such cases encourages the
  expectation of paternal care on the part of the
  government and weakens the sturdiness of our
  national character
•  
• Cleveland used surplus to pay off wealthy bond
  holders
• at 28 above the 100 value of each
• a gift of 45 million dollars 

52
Small Farmers plight

• high mortgage payments
• forced to specialize in cash crops like corn or
  wheat
• made them dependent on the railroads for shipping
  
• Charged what they wanted for shipping costs
• put them at the mercy of the international grain
  markets shifting prices.
• Plight of mid westerners desperate by the late
  1870s
• Dry years of the 1870s
• Grass hopper infestation
• Economic depression
• Farmers could not meet costs of productions
• 25 of farmers lost their homes and became
  tenants, while others yet became farmer laborers
  unable to pay a rent
• 1900 4.5 million farm laborers n the country

53
Green-backers

• Government helped the bankers and hurt the
  farmers
• it kept the amount of money based on gold steady
  while the population rose,
• less money was in circulation.
• If a farmer had to pay his debts in dollars, it
  was hard to get and by the time bankers got the
  dollars, they were worth less
• Farmers movements demanded more money be put in
  circulation by printing greenbacks.

54
Farmers Alliance

• Began in Texas
• Southern crop-lien system
• farmer would get things he needed from the
  merchant, the use of a cotton gin during harvest
  time and other supplies.
• merchant would get a lien or a mortgage on his
  crop to pay for needs
• farmer might pay 25 interest
• Farmer would owe more money each year
• Land would be taken, he would become a tenant

55
Rebellions

• Delhi, LA in 1889
• Gathering of small farmers rode to down and
  demolished the stores of merchants
• to cancel their indebtedness

56
Farmers Alliance, 1877

• Height of the Depression
• By 1882 120 sub-alliances in 12 counties
• 1886 100,000 farmers joined in 2,000
  sub-alliances
• Offered alternatives to the old system
• Join the alliance and form cooperatives
• Get needed things at lower prices
• bulking put cotton together and sell it
  cooperatively

57

• By 1886 the populist doctrine of Cleburne
  Demands.
• It was the Farmers Alliance at the core of what
  would become known as the populist movements
  during the 1880s and 1890s.

58
1886, Cleburne, Texas

• Alliance drew up the Clerburne Demands
• First document of what was becoming the Populist
  party
• Called for such legislation as shall secure to
  our people freedom from the onerous and shameful
  abuses that the industrial classes are now
  suffering at the hands of the arrogant
  capitalists and powerful corporations
• asked that legislation be passed to protect
  workingmen from the abuses of capitalists and
  corporations
• included regulation of RR rates
• a heavy taxation of land held only for
  speculative purposes
• increase the money supply

59
Growth of Alliances

• 1887 200,000 members of 3,000 sub-alliances
• 1892 farmer lecturers
• 43 states
• Reached 2 million families
• most massive organizing drive by any citizen
  institution of 19th C America
• Movement based on ideas
• Cooperation
• Farmers creating their own culture Political
  parties
• Georgia 100,000 members in 134 of 137 counties
• Tennessee 125,000 members and 3,600 sub-alliances
  in 92 of 96 counties

60
Texas Exchange

• Formed from the alliance
• Handled the selling of the farmers cotton in one
  transaction
• Charged less for supplies
• Charged less for land and machinery
• Needed to be able to loan members money
• Scraped together needed capital for exchange to
  operate from the farmers
• Collected 80,000, not enough and banks refused to
  loan money to the exchange
• Unable to operate, to poor to help themselves it
  convinced them of the need of monetary reform

61
Rise of the Populist/Peoples Party

• 1890 38 alliance people were elected to congress
• Georgia and Texas elected governors
• Georgia
• Took over democratic party in Georgia
• Won 3/4ths of the state legislature
• Six of its ten congressmen
• Did not wrest real power away from the old
  political bodies, but spread new ideas and new
  spirit

62
1892, Peoples Party Convention

• Pre-amble
• We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the
  verge of moral, political and material ruin.
  Corruption dominates the ballot box, the
  legislatures, the congress, and touches even the
  ermine of the bench. The people are
  demoralizedThe newspapers are subsidized or
  muzzled public opinion silenced business
  prostrate, our homes covered with mortgages,
  labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in
  the hands of the capitalists. The Urban workman
  are denied the right of organization for self
  protection imported pauperized labor beats down
  their wages, a hireling standing armyestablished
  to shoot them downthe fruits of the toil of
  millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal
  fortunesFrom the same prolific womb of
  governmental injustice we breed two
  classes-paupers and millionaires
• Nominated james Weaver, Iowa populist and former
  general in the union army for president, lost.

63
Challenging the black-white dichotomyRevealing
class

• From this movement grew a movement out of the
  Colored Farmers National Alliance (CFNA)
• encouraged cross-racial alliances
• it cut across boundaries of race to address the
  real problem of class.
• Considered breaking down the color barrier to
  create real economic and political gain for
  small land owners and working classes
• Attempted to create a culture of cooperation,
  self respect and economic analysis among the
  rural labor movement.

64
Failure of the Populist Party

• Nativism and Racism dominated and hindered people
  from uniting on sufficient levels
• Lure of electoral politics
• Populists allied with the Democratic party and
  supported Williams Jennings Bryan in 1896
• Pressure for electoral victory led populism to
  make deals with major parties city after city
• Populism lost in electoral politics and its
  ideals negotiated, brokered and compromised away
• William McKinley won Presidency of 1896
• Declared war on Spain two years later

65
Territory to State

• Communities grew large enough to petition
  congress to pass an Enabling Act
• Established the territorys boundaries and
  authorized an election to select delegates for a
  state constitutional convention.
• Once the constitution was drawn up and ratified
  by popular vote, the territory applied to
  congress for admission as a state.
• Kansas entered the Union 1861
• Nevada in 1864
• North Dakota , Montana, Washington , 1889
• Utah 1896
• Oklahoma 1907
• Arizona and New Mexico 1912

66
Consequences of Westward Settlement

• Ideas of white supremacy, racism and Nativism
• Established through violence and embedded in the
  new American institutions throughout the west
• Impoverished minority working classes created
• Class system further stratified
• Further concentration of wealth produced
• Rise of agri-business
• Environmental devastation