NYU The Gilded Period of the US Argumentative Essays Assignment 1(PPT part 2 26 at least 300) ANALYZE JOHN GAST’S AMERICAN PROGRESS (1872) AND TELL ME WHA

NYU The Gilded Period of the US Argumentative Essays Assignment 1(PPT part 2 26 at least 300)

ANALYZE JOHN GAST’S AMERICAN PROGRESS (1872) AND TELL ME WHAT THEMES FROM LECTURE (THIS WEEK’S AND PREVIOUS LECTURES) ARE CAPTURED IN THIS PAINTING. HOW DOES THIS PAINTING RELATE TO MANIFEST DESTINY AND FRONTIER THESIS? WHO IS EXCLUDED IN THIS IMAGE? HOW DOES THIS IMAGE GESTURE TO THE RISE OF THE GILDED AGE?

Assignment 2 (3 pick 2, each question at least 300)

•Based on lecture and the Historians on Housewives podcast episode, how did Milton Hershey and the Hershey company exemplify the Gilded Age through company practices, the idea of the self-made man, and the American dream? Use at least two examples from the assigned podcast.

•Discuss the relationship of wealth inequality and Robber Barons/entrepreneurs at the end of the 19thcentury. How did the railroad help to shape these conditions? Use at least two assigned sources and include at least two examples.

•How is Frontier Thesis similar to and different from Manifest Destiny? Based on lecture and the assigned sources how can we see that Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis is problematic? Use at least two assigned sources and provide at least two examples.

Assignment 3( at least 350 words)

Watch Bill Moyer’s Gold Mountain Dreams (Links to an external site.)Write a 2- paragraph reflection on the documentary and how it relates to this week’s lecture content.

You must make it clear to me that you viewed, and engaged this documentary and could relate this content to the lecture material to be eligible for points. Fredrick Jackson Turner, 1893
The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893)
https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/historicalarchives/the-significance-of-the-frontier-in-american-history
THE TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROADS AND CHINESE
EXCLUSION: LAND GRANTS, EXTRACTION INDUSTRIES
GENDER, AND FAMILIES IN THE WEST IN THE LATE-19TH
CENTURY
HIST 40B, LESSON 5
A NOTE ON LECTURE DESIGN
• This lecture goes through 3 movements:
• The Railroads
• Land Acts
• The Gilded Age
• Lecture is designed this way to layer on the
phenomena that created the conditions for Gilded
Age America. Even though it’s going to start with
the Antebellum period, we will get through the
1890s.
THEMES FOR THE
RAILROAD, CHINESE
EXCLUSION, AND
LAND ACTS
• The transcontinental railroad offers a
bridge between westward
expansion, sectional crisis, the Civil
War, Reconstruction, and the rise of
the Gilded Age
• Land Acts for individual settlement
in the West versus the federal
treatment of the Railroad
• The reorientation of time and space
• Consider the rise of corporations
and the emergence of
antimonopoly sentiment
• Regardless of wagon train migration
(which happened in the tens of
thousands), versus land act
settlements (which brought
hundreds of thousands to the West),
the success of making it in the West
required family labor and luck.
THEODORE “CRAZY” JUDAH
• Engineer Theodore Judah
came out to CA to build
a railroad between
Sacramento and Folsom.
• He surveyed in the Sierras
and came up with idea
that a railroad was
indeed possible when he
measured the grade at
Donner Pass. So he took
his measurements, maps,
and plans and went to
Congress.
PROBLEMS WITH JUDAH’S PROPOSAL
• It’s the 1850s and he proposes his plan in 1856 to
Congress and follows up in an audience with
President Buchanan in 1859!
• What is the problem with proposing a
transcontinental railroad in 1850s? Why might that
be a contentious proposal?
• So Judah works around the increasing sectional
crisis of the 1850s and goes out and finds private
funding through The Big 4 – Collis P. Huntington,
Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, and Leland
Stanford. They each invested $6,000 and reaped
over $200 million from the profits.
THE BIG 4
Collis P. Huntington
• Huntington was the leader of the
Big 4. He was the son of tinkerer. He
became a traveling salesman at 14
and owned his very own store by 19.
He was among those to head west
to join the Gold Rush. He became
the vice president of the Central
Pacific Railroad.
Charles Crocker
• Crocker was the
biggest of Big 4 in
stature, and a banker,
and he was the
construction supervisor
for the Central Pacific
THE BIG 4, CONTINUED
Mark Hopkins
• Hopkins was the Central Pacific’s
accountant.
Leland Stanford
• Stanford was the President of the
Central Pacific. His contemporaries
thought of him as ponderously slow.
He had always wanted to be a lawyer
but didn’t want to go to law school.
But he did become governor of
California and later a Senator.
Stanford founded Stanford University.
PACIFIC
RAILROAD ACT,
1862
• Pacific Railroad Act of 1862allowed the Federal Government to
help the Railroad in two ways. First, it
gave the Big 4 30-year bonds at 6%;
(16,000$ per mile of track laid
through flat lands and 48,000$ for
the mountains).
• In today’s money: $460,000 flat/$1.3
million mountains
• Secondly, this Act provided massive
land grants to the Big 4.
• From 1850 to 1871, the railroads
received more than 175 million
acres of public land – an area more
than one tenth of the whole United
States
• In total the US gov’t granted about
250 million acres of land to various
railroad companies
WHO BUILT THE
RAILROAD?
Extra credit:
Watch Bill Moyer’s Gold
Mountain Dreams; Write a 2paragraph reflection on the
documentary and how it
relates to this week’s lecture
content.
Due 7/27/2020 by 11pm PST
3pts
• The influx of Chinese
immigrants to build the
railroad influenced the
passage of the Chinese
Exclusion Act in 1882- It was
not repealed until 1943 during
WWII.
• California also passed the
Queue Ordinance in 1873
allowing white Californians to
forcefully and legally cut the
hair off Chinese men as a
form of legalized hate crimes.
• For more on Chinese
immigration in the United
States (rather than reading)
see Bill Moyer’s Gold
Mountain Dreams.
TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD
COMPLETION, 1869
• The two halves of the railroad were conjoined at
Promontory, Utah with the Golden Spike Ceremony
in 1869.
• Note that it’s deceiving that we call this project the
transcontinental railroad, since at no point did this
railroad ever stretch from coast to coast.
SANTA CLARA VERSUS SOUTHERN
PACIFIC RAILROAD, 1886
• Railroads created shipping monopolies since they were the only game in
town to transport farm goods and livestock. They would charge “All the
market will bear” as the price of shipment, which could and did fluctuate
throughout the day. So your neighbor might have been charged $10 to
ship his 5 pounds of apples at 10am, and when you went at 11am your 5
pounds of apples could cost $30. This led to difficult relationships
between farmers and the railroads.
• The California Constitutional Convention of 1878-1879 denied railroads
“the right to deduct the amount of their debts [i.e., mortgages] from the
taxable value of their property, a right which was given to individuals.”
• Southern Pacific refused to pay taxes under these new changes. The
taxpaying railroads challenged this law, based on a conflicting federal
statute of 1866, which gave them privileges inconsistent with state
taxation.
• After hearing arguments in San Mateo County v. Southern Pacific
Railroad Company, the California Supreme Court sided with the counties
FROM SUPREME COURT CHIEF JUSTICE
WAITE, 1886
• “The court does not wish to hear an argument on the question of whether the
provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to
deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to
these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.“
• This will make more sense after the Civil War/Reconstruction lecture, but essentially
the Supreme Court quickly used the new Reconstruction amendments that
granted citizenship rights and protections to newly freed African Americans to both
apply these rights to emerging corporations and deny them to the black
population.
• Thus, the railroads created the beginnings of corporate personhood at a time
when African Americans and white women were desperately trying to become
citizens and access rights of citizenship. But the corporations were successful in
gaining legal protections when actual people were not.
• The railroad helped to create the Gilded Age America, and set the precedents for
what we see as the corporate/bank/political corruption that we know today
• Corporations, in their modern form, were only possible because of large
government spending and subsidy, and the government spent much more with
these “handouts” to businesses than to the welfare of citizens.
TRAINS AND SCHEDULES
• The need to sync up train schedules led to the
creation of time zones in the US.
• However, trains were incredibly inefficient
regardless, and railroad companies frequently had
to file for bankruptcy and get bailed out by the
federal government. This left workers incredibly poor
but corporate leaders continued to get wealthier
and wealthier.
• Trains helped to reorient the East-West perspective
of the United States. Trains frequently ran NorthSouth connecting Canada and Mexico to the
United States in new ways.
LAND ACTS
THE
HOMESTEAD
ACT, 1862
Making the Land Act
Model
• This Act designated that the
head of family, or 21 years,
and citizen of US/or with filed
intension to do so, and hasn’t
bared arms against US or
aided enemies could acquire
a homestead plot given by
the U.S. government
• With the plot of land, a
farmer would receive a
quarter section, or 160 Acres,
or ¼ mile squared. On paper
it was a good deal.
THE PROBLEM WITH HOMESTEAD
• You were given five years to “make improvements on the land”- this meant you had to
clear it and plant on it.
• This took a lot of labor! Women and children provided vital help and labor in the process
of building and maintaining a homestead.
• Congress included a stipulation that was called “preemption claims” which politicians
thought was a way to stop people from squatting on someone else’s land, but in order
to be assigned one of these land plots a farmer may or may not have the opportunity to
see the land before he bought it. After five years you had to prove to the land office
with signed documents from two witnesses that you’d accomplished this
improvement—that you had improved the land.
HOMESTEAD FAILED
• Two and a half million American households took
advantage of the Homestead Act over the course
of about 30 years, but 2/3 of them failed to meet
the expectations to improve land. And as a result
the land reverted back to public domain.
• Congress did not think about the feasibility of the
law because it was primarily meant to rally people
to the union. It had a short-term purpose, but in
trying to divide up the land into these neat little
segments, Congress did not take into account, nor
care to think about, whether or not growing on
these lands was viable.
TIMBER CULTURE ACT, 1873
• Instead of asking you to farm
your land, Congress
encouraged you to grow trees
on the Great Plains.
• But again this Act only
succeeded in the same places
that Homestead succeeded,
which was wherever plots had
proximity to river basins and
near annual rainfall.
• And the same amount of
people failed. 66%. There’s a
reason that trees weren’t on this
land before settlers got there—
the ecosystems could not
support it.
DESERT LAND ACT, 1877
• Now this land was only 25 cents an acre, and a
farmer could buy up to a single square mile. Now
the trade off for this ‘great deal’ was that within
three years, a farmer was required to irrigate the
land and make water flow. Irrigation took a great
deal of labor- entire families were needed to
undertake this process.
TIMBER STONE ACT, 1878
• You were either allotted one of two areas: either
160 acres of the Rocky Mountains where you would
be required to mine for mineral deposits, or on the
other side where you’d be required to harvest
timber in the woodland. Both mining for mineral and
harvesting timber, again required massive amounts
of labor, and women and children were essential
for keeping households afloat.
THE DAWES SEVERALTY ACT (1887)
• It was structured similarly to the other
land laws, except that it was dealing
with Indians, and most white,
immigrant American settlers.
• The success of the other land
allotment laws, however, depended
on the existence of the Reservation
system.
• The Act granted full citizenship in
exchange for dissolution of tribal
affiliation.
• Number of Native Americans shrunk
under the law because the definition
of who was considered a Native
American narrowed.
INDIAN RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS
•
Between the 1880s and 1920s, thousands of
Native American children left their homes
on reservations to attend Indian boarding
schools funded by the federal government.
•
By 1902, there were twenty-five such
schools across the country, serving roughly
3,000 female students each year.
•
The schools sought to “Americanize” the
children. English was the only acceptable
language and Christianity the only religion.
All tribal languages, rituals, and customs
were forbidden.
•
Parents were required to sign multi-year
contracts, and efforts to break contracts
consistently failed
•
During recruitment, some families would go
into hiding or would bargain to send one
child in exchange for keeping the rest at
home.
•
•
CREATING THE
GILDED AGE:
RELATIONSHIP OF
LAND ACTS AND
RAILROADS TO
MANIFEST
DESTINY
•
•
•
•
•
It was mainly wealthy elites who managed to
consolidate wealth and prosperity in the West,
especially through the railroads, because they
could pay for machinery and workers to reshape
the land.
The ideology of Manifest Destiny convinced
people that if you work hard enough, you could
attain the American Dream, even though more
than 66% of people who believed it in their core,
braved the elements to move west died, or if they
were lucky just went bankrupt.
The American Dream: You had to be asleep to
believe it.
Whole families relocated and ended up with
nothing. The labor was so intensive that unless you
received a lucky plot that provided the resources
needed to succeed you didn’t stand a chance,
especially because most people used all the
material resources they had to relocate to the
west and try to set up a homestead.
Women and children farmed, helped build
homes, helped fell trees, clear lands, and sustain
life in the West.
When women found themselves alone in the West
they had few opportunities: many turned to
prostitution. Calamity Jane ran her own brothel
and was well known for protecting the women
that worked for her. Prostitutes preferred working
for female brothel owners when they had a
choice.
Women also became teachers, especially at
“Civilizing Schools” that ripped native children
from their families and attempted to forcibly
assimilate them.
THE GILDED AGE, 1870-1900
• These were decades of globalization and US empire
building, industrialization, urbanization, massive
immigration, and a telecommunications revolution.
These were decades of financial industrial boom
and bust.
• These were decades when society was split apart
by the concentration of wealth and the persistence
of poverty and brutal insecurity for the working
majority. And these were decades when the
corporation, railroads, banking, steel, oil emerged
as the master institution of American life.
WHY GILDED?
• The name “Gilded Age” came
from a title written by Mark Twain
• “Gilded” to mean that
everything was covered in gold
but with little to no value at the
core
• This was a social commentary on
the great wealth disparities and
policies of the era
• From 1860 to 1900, the
wealthiest 2% of American
households owned more than
1/3 of the nation’s wealth, while
the top 10% owned roughly 3/4
of it.
1890 CENSUS
• Declared there was no more frontier in the
continental US- everything had been settled
• Census commissioner addresses that issue by
declaring that by 1890 there were no more places
in the US that qualifies as frontier
• From 1845-1880 the West is unrecognizable country
compared to what is was before 1845- incredible
rapid speed of transformation
EMERGENCE OF NEW NATIONAL
CULTURE
•
•
•
•
•
Standardized time
Consumer Goods and Advertising
Culture of Consumption
Crime
Scientific Racism
SOCIAL DARWINISM
• Derived from Darwin’s theory of evolution in Origins
of the Species, 1859
• Evolution as a natural process that government
should not interfere with
• Propelled by a distinction between a deserving
poor and an undeserving poor
• Deserving poor: need help and unable to work because
they are disabled, too sick, or too old (usually white)
• Undeserving poor: minorities, sometimes included women,
and people that were able to work but could not find it or
work enough to support themselves
CITY AND WORKING CLASS CULTURE
• Industrial economy created new jobs
• By 1900, 1/3 of single women worked
• Amusements on the rise for working people and
youth to enjoy: Dance halls, vaudeville,
nickelodeons, amusement parks
• Literature
• Dime novels and newspapers
CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS
• Meant to buttress class differences between the
working class and the middle-and-upper class elites
• Libraries and Museums are established as a way to
put physical distance between classes
• The leisure of the elite was not the same as the
amusements of the working class and that was of
intentional design.
THE SECOND INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION
• Also known as the Technological Revolution
• Occurred in the late-19th to early 20th centuries
• All business sectors expanded, especially
manufacturing
• Railroad was single most important agent of
economic growth
• Economic power brought political influence and corruption
TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS:
THOMAS EDISON’S LABORATORY
THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY
• This lithograph from
1876 celebrates
technological
innovations such as
the steamboat,
locomotive, steam
press, and
telegraph.
CHICAGO WORLD’S FAIR, 1893
• The Electricity
Building at the
Chicago World’s
Fair of 1893, painted
by Childe Hassam.
This building
illustrated how
electricity was
changing the visual
landscape.
INDICATORS OF ECONOMIC CHANGE
1870-1920
THE GREATEST DEPARTMENT STORE ON EARTH, A CARTOON FROM
PUCK, NOVEMBER 29, 1899, SHOWS UNCLE SAM SELLING
MANUFACTURED PRODUCTS TO THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD.
EMERGENCE OF CORPORATE AMERICA
• Backed/Supported/Made possible through
subsidies from the Federal Government
• Corporations replace local, family-run businesses
• Shares sold to public
• Board of managers
• Advancements often overshadowed by illegal
speculation and labor unrest
CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY AKA ROBBER
BARONS
• With no personal or corporate income taxes, some
businessmen accumulated massive wealth and economic
power.
• This would include The Big 4, Andrew Carnegie, John D.
Rockefeller and many others
• Such figures and their wealth attracted the admiration and
resentment of many Americans. While many rose from modest
circumstances, their wealth, and their methods for treating
workers and conducting business alienated many Americans,
who thought their unregulated actions eroded political and
economic freedom and damaged democracy.
• It was contested whether such figures were “captains of
industry” or “robber barons.” In Wealth against
Commonwealth, an 1894 exposé of Standard Oil’s
manipulation of markets and bribery of legislators, Henry
Demarest Lloyd wrote that “liberty and monopoly cannot live
together.”
CARNEGIE AND ROCKEFELLER
• Andrew Carnegie emigrated from Scotland as a teenager and
labored as a factory worker and telegraph operator before he
used a position with the Pennsylvania Railroad to build a steel
empire.
• During the 1870s depression, Carnegie built a “vertically integrated” steel
company—one that controlled every stage of production, from raw
materials to transportation, manufacturing, and distribution.
• By the 1890s, Carnegie dominated the steel industry and amassed a
fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars. His steel factories at Homestead,
Pennsylvania, were the most technologically advanced in the world.
Although Carnegie’s upbringing instilled in him a commitment to
democracy, social equality, and charity, he ran his factories ruthlessly.
• John D. Rockefeller rose from being a merchant clerk to an oil
industry titan. Through cutthroat competition, he ruined rival oil
companies, arranged deals with railroads, and fixed prices and
production. He mastered “horizontal integration,” in which one
firm acquires competing firms, but soon established a vertically
integrated company, a monopoly that controlled the drilling,
refining, storage, and distribution of oil. By the 1880s, Rockefeller’s
Standard Oil Company controlled 90 percent of America’s oil
industry.
• Andrew Carnegie
• Nov 25, 1835-Aug 11, 1919
• John D. Rockefeller
• July 8, 1839- May 23, 1937
JP MORGAN
APRIL 17, 1837-MARCH 31, 1913
• Most celebrated and
powerful
banker/financier of 19th
century
• 1892, merger between
Edison General Electric
and Thompson-Houston
Electric Company to form
General Electric
• 1901, merged several
companies with Carnegie
Steel to form United Steel
Corporation
ROBBER BARON…
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