Gilded Age Politics

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• Gilded Age Politics
• C. 18761900

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Gilded Age Politics

• The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Warner
  (1873)
• Political equilibrium
• Civil service reform, currency, and the tariff

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Gilded Age Politics

• Strict Constructionists
• Commander in Chief
• Enforcer of laws passed by Congress
• Head of political party

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Gilded Age Politics

• High Voter Participation Why?
• (1) People believed that the issues were
  important
• (2) People believed that their votes counted
• (3) Politics Entertainment

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Gilded Age Politics

• Involved electorate, but what determined how it
  voted?
• Republicans Protestants of English and German
  descent, Southern Blacks, and Union Civil War
  Veterans. Ohio River Valley, the West, and New
  England

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Gilded Age Politics

• Democrats Southern Whites, Roman Catholics,
  Jewish people, immigrants under the influence of
  party bosses.
• CampaignsRepublicans
• The Bloody Shirt
• Veterans Pensions

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Gilded Age Politics

• Nativism
• CampaignsDemocrats
• Republicans will take your booze away
• Played to Race in the South
• Maintained that Republicans were corrupt

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Gilded Age Politics

• Why the push for Civil Service Reform?
• President Ulysses S. Grant (R) (1822-1885)
  (1869-1877)

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Gilded Age Politics

• Patronage
• Roscoe Conkling
• Stalwart
• James Blaine
• Half-Breed

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Gilded Age Politics

• President Rutherford B. Hayes (R) (1822-1893)
  (1877-1881)

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Gilded Age Politics

• President James A. Garfield (R)
  (1831-1881) (1881)

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Garfield was shot on 2 July 1881 and died on 19
September
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Gilded Age Politics

• A disgruntled patronage seeker, Charles J.
  Guiteau (1840?-1882), assassinated Garfield

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Gilded Age Politics

• President Chester A. Arthur (R) (1830-1886)
  (1881-1885)

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Gilded Age Politics

• Pendleton Civil Service Act (1883) Merit-based
  system
• Put approximately 14 of Federal Jobs under
  classified services jobs were obtained through
  competitive examinations.

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Gilded Age Politics

• The Tariff
• By 1888, over 4,000 items imported into the US
  had duties of roughly 45.
• Protectionism
• Created tensions between industry and agriculture

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Gilded Age Politics

• Arthur appointed a special Tariff Commission
  (1882)
• Recommended lowering the tariff 20-25
• Riders
• Mongrel Tariff (1883)

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Gilded Age Politics

• The Underwood Tariff (1913)
• Income Taxes (XVI Amendment 1913)
• Currency
• debtors vs. creditors

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• Legal TenderUS can require creditors to
  accept paper money as payment for debt. The
• Fed printed 450,000,000

Greenbacks
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Gilded Age Politics

• Hepburn v. Griswold (1870)
• Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase (1808-1873)
• Specie Resumption Act (1874)

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• Coinage Act (1873)
• Sherman Silver Purchase Act (1890)required
  Federal Government to buy 4.5 million ounces of
  silver each month with Federal Bank Notes

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The Agrarian Revolt

• (1) High railroad rates in farming regions
• (2) Overcharged and ripped off by middlemen
• (3) Hurt by high tariff
• (4) Victimized by eastern bankers
• (5) Not enough money

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The Agrarian Revolt

• The Grange
• The Farmers Alliance
• Cooperatives
• Crop Sub-Treasuries
• The Populists

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The Agrarian Revolt

• Populist Platform endorsed at the Party
  Convention, Omaha, Nebraska 4 July 1892
• (1) Crop sub-treasury
• (2) Free and unlimited coinage of silver at 16 to
  1
• (3) Graduated income tax

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The Agrarian Revolt

• (4) Nationalization of railroads, telegraphs, and
  telephones
• (5) Eight-hour workday
• (6) Immigration restrictions
• (7) Initiative, Referendum, and Recall

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The Agrarian Revolt

• (8) Australian Ballot
• (9) Direct election of United States Senators
• (10) At least 50.00 in circulation per capita

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The Agrarian Revolt

• Presidential Election of 1892
• James B. Weaver (1833-1912) (P)
• Carried Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, and Nevada

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The Agrarian Revolt

• Presidential Election of 1896
• William Jennings Bryan (D) (1860-1924)

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The Agrarian Revolt

• William McKinley (R) (1843-1901) (1897-1901)

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The Agrarian Revolt

• Exuded Protestant evangelism
• Republicans would not join the Populist/Democrat
  fusion
• Many believed he was communistic or anarchistic
  American labor did not join the American farmer

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Legacies of the 1896 Election

• A new campaigning style
• Ascendancy of the industrial over the
  agricultural
• Beginning of the end of American mass political
  participation
• Decline of Party and the rise of Special Interest
  Groups

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The Progressive Era

• The desire to use government as an agency of
  human welfare
• Antecedents of Progressivism
• (1) Movement owed a great deal to Populism
• (2) Social Critics and Writers

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The Progressive Era

• Individuals described by Theodore Roosevelt as
  the lunatic fringe of muckrakers
• a. Henry Demarest Lloyd used articles to attack
  monopoly including, Story of a Great Monopoly
  in Atlantic Monthly (1881)

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The Progressive Era

• b. Ida M. Tarbell also targeted John D.
  Rockefeller with her History of the Standard Oil
  Co.

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The Progressive Era

• c. Lincoln Steffens wrote about municipal
  corruption in Minneapolis, Philadelphia,
  Pittsburgh, and St. Louis for McClures,
  Everybodys, and Cosmopolitan

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The Progressive Era

• Four features of Progressivism
• Democratic
• Direct primaries
• Initiative, referendum, and recall
• Income Taxes (XVI Amendment 1913)

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The Progressive Era

• Direct election of US Senators (XVII Amendment
  1913)
• Government efficiency
• City Manager
• Staunton, Virginia (1908)
• National Association of City Managers

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The Progressive Era

• Governor Robert M. Fighting Bob La
  Follette (R) (1855-1925)
• Legislative Reference Bureau
• Wisconsin idea

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The Progressive Era

• Regulation
• Increased tendency to direct some business
  activities through federal regulations
• Social Justice
• Settlement House movement

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The Progressive Era

• Jane Addams (1860-1935)

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The Progressive Era

• Hull House Chicago, Illinois (1889)

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The Progressive Era

• The National Child Labor Committee (1904)
• By 1914, 35 state legislatures had passed laws
  prohibiting children under age fourteen from
  working

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The Progressive Era

• Florence Kelly (1859-1932)
• National Consumers League
• Sociologist Louis D. Brandeis

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Triangle Shirt Waist Company fire , New York (25
March 1911)
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The Progressive Era

• Liquor Prohibitionmanufacture, sale, or
  transportation of intoxicating liquors . . .
  prohibited. (XVIII Amendment 1919)

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The Progressive Era

• Presidential Election of 1900
• William Jennings Bryan (D) (1860-1924)

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The Progressive Era

• Leon F. Czolgosz (1873-1901) assassinated
  William McKinley (1901)

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The Progressive Era

• President Theodore Roosevelt (R) (1858-1919)
  (1901-1909)

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The Progressive Era

• Roosevelt wished to avoid socialism and a return
  to laissez faire
• Used the carrot and the stick approach
• Anthracite Coal Strike (May-October 1902)

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The Progressive Era

• John Mitchell (1870-1913)
• United Mine Workers Union

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The Progressive Era

• 20 wage increase
• Eight-hour workday
• Union recognition

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The Progressive Era

• George F. Baer (1842-1914) led the mine operators

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The Progressive Era

• Binding arbitration
• Everybody got something
• 10 pay increase
• Nine-hour workday
• Operators not required to recognize the United
  Mine Workers Union

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The Progressive Era

• Roosevelt the Trust Buster
• Northern Securities Company

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The Progressive Era

• Northern Securities Company v. United States
  (1904)
• US Supreme Court ruled that the NSC was an
  unreasonable restraint of trade and ordered it
  dissolved

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The Progressive Era

• Bureau of Corporations within the newly
  created Department of Commerce and Labor (1903)
  to collect statistics and investigate the
  activities of corporations.

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The Progressive Era

• Presidential Election of 1904
• Alton B. Parker (D) (1852-1926)

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The Progressive Era

• President Roosevelt speaking in Hannibal,
  Missouri

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The Progressive Era

• Upton Sinclairs The Jungle (1906)

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LTC Roosevelt and the 1st US Volunteer Cavalry
Regiment (Rough Riders), San Juan Hill, Cuba 1898
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The Progressive Era

• In the Spanish-American War (1898), 5,462
  Americans died, but only 379 in combat

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The Progressive Era

• Meat Inspection Act (1906)
• Pure Food and Drug Act (1906)

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The Progressive Era

• In 1905, by the authority of the Forest
  Reserve Act (1891), TR placed 172 million acres
  under Federal protection

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• Hepburn Railroad Regulation Act (1906)
• As Roosevelts Administration progressed, he
  favored
• Income tax
• Inheritance tax
• Greater regulation of Business
• Industrial Safety Regulations

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The Progressive Era

• Presidential Election of 1908
• William Jennings Bryan (D) (1860-1924)

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The Progressive Era

• William Howard Taft (R)
  (1857-1930) (1909-1913)

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Tafts specially designed White House bathtub
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The Progressive Era

• Roosevelt assumed that Taft would continue his
  activist progressive policies, but he was badly
  disappointed

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The Progressive Era

• Presidential Election of 1912
• Theodore Roosevelt formed the Progressive or
  Bull Moose Party

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The Progressive Era

• Woodrow Wilson (D) (1856-1924) (1913-1921)

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The Federal Reserve System