UTA Progressives Played a Vital Role in Restructuring American Society Discussion

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The Populist and Progressive reformers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries brought about widespread changes to American politics, economics, and society. In this essay, we want you to consider the ethics and civics of the reformers. Who were these reformers? What methods did they use to further their goals through civic engagement? What ethical considerations did they take into account in pushing reforms?

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Signature Assignment Essay: Prompt PROMPT: The Populist and Progressive reformers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries brought about widespread changes to American politics, economics, and society. In this essay, we want you to consider the ethics and civics of the reformers. Who were these reformers? What methods did they use to further their goals through civic engagement? What ethical considerations did they take into account in pushing reforms? Note 1: Successful responses will consider a broad range of evidence in support of arguments. Take a few moments to consider how you would respond by making a list of both "ethics" and "civics" related to these reformers and reforms. Be sure to have a mixture of big/broad ideas and specific/detailed evidence in your argument. Note 2: We DO NOT want summaries. Summaries will not earn a high grade. "A papers" utilize rule of three analysis (including strong rule of three thesis statements in the introduction and each paragraph of the body), specific and detailed historical facts as evidence, analysis instead of summary, consider change over time and historical geography (as necessary in response to the prompt), and properly cite both primary and secondary sources. Note 3: Required length is 2-3 pages (introduction, 3 paragraphs of the body, conclusion). Requirements for the Signature Essay • • • Must be in Rule of Three format with a introduction and strong thesis statement, 3 paragraphs of the body (each with their own thesis statement - one for each of the three key points of your overall thesis), and conclusion. So a minimum of 5 paragraphs. (2-3 pages) This is a fact based essay, you must provide specific and detailed evidence for your hypotheses. You must utilize a minimum of three primary sources from the assigned materials (primary sources posted in the Blackboard course module OR found under the primary source section of each chapter in American Yawp only; you may not utilize sources linked to • • • • • • • in the reference section of American Yawp) as evidence in your essay You must utilize a minimum of three secondary sources from the assigned materials as evidence in your essay You may only use materials assigned in this course for your essay (we have vetted all the materials utilized in this course, other materials may not be appropriate or accurate). If you use outside sources your grade will be docked. DO NOT QUOTE sources, paraphrase in your own words and cite You must consider ethics/ethical decision making in this essay Don't forget about historical geography, where something takes place matters and it may be important to your argument. You must use Turabian citation style in this essay; all citations must be footnote style citations (no parenthetical cites allowed, no endnotes/works cited at the end, you need footnotes). Be sure to review how to properly cite a primary source that may be contained in another work and be sure to use page numbers where possible. 12 pt type, 1 inch margins, double-spaced Proper Citation you should used Turabian/Chicago. You must also FOOTNOTE. Parenthetical cites are NOT allowed. Primary sources; http://www.americanyawp.com/text/15-reconstruction/ http://www.americanyawp.com/text/17-conquering-the-west/ http://www.americanyawp.com/text/16-capital-and-labor/ http://media.pearsoncmg.com/ph/hss/SSA_SHARED_MEDIA_1/history/MHL/US/docum ents/Bryan_Cross_Gold_Speech_1896.html http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5304 http://www.americanyawp.com/text/18-industrial-america/ http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5363/ http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5363/ http://www.americanyawp.com/text/19-american-empire/ https://login.ezproxy.uta.edu/login?url=https://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/bibl iographic_entity%7Cvideo_work%7C1790466?account_id=7117&usage_group_id=114 749 http://www.americanyawp.com/text/20-the-progressive-era/ http://media.pearsoncmg.com/ph/hss/SSA_SHARED_MEDIA_1/history/MHL/US/docum ents/Roosevelt_New_Nationalism_1910.html http://media.pearsoncmg.com/ph/hss/SSA_SHARED_MEDIA_1/history/MHL/US/docum ents/Wilson_from_New_Freedom_1913.html http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5722 http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5723 http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5724 http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5725 https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/amendments-11-27 Jane Addams and Hull House (Social Gospel) • • About Jane Addams and Hull House (Links to an external site.) - Read about Jane Addams and Hull House from the Hull House Museum website (Links to an external site.) Primary Document Reading - Twenty Years at Hull House (Links to an external site.) - Skim through chapter VIII. To access the chapter, simply scroll down until you come to the table of contents and then click on the highlighted chapter number. Margaret Sanger and Family Planning • • Brief Biography (Links to an external site.) from the Biography Channel website Primary Document Reading - Women and the New Race Actions - Please skim read pdf pages 30-54 (begin with chapter 5). You may wish to click on the "download" icon from the browser reader and open in Adobe for an easier read. Transcript Link: Segregation and Civil Rights Advocates (Links to an external site.) Transcript Link: Toward Institutionalized Racism Transcript: Forced Integration of American Indians https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14975/14975-h/14975-h.htm 1. The Chinese Exclusion Act (Links to an external site.) 2. Yick Wo v Hopkings (Links to an external site.) 3. William B. Farwell, The Chinese at Home and Abroad http://www.americanyawp.com/text/21-world-war-i/ http://www.americanyawp.com/text/22-the-twenties/ http://www.americanyawp.com/text/23-the-great-depression/ http://www.americanyawp.com/text/24-world-war-ii/ http://media.pearsoncmg.com/ph/hss/SSA_SHARED_MEDIA_1/history/MHL/US/docum ents/Einstein_Letter_to_Roosevelt.html http://www.americanyawp.com/text/25-the-cold-war/ Secondary sources In the file’s attachment Were they Robber Barons or Captains of Industry? Both terms are used to describe the industrialists and financiers of the Gilded Age. But which were they? The more positive view is that they were the captains of industry. Men whose vision, capital, and business acumen propelled the United States to a dominate position in the world. But they accomplished this feat through some unsavory business practices which limited fair competition and created appalling working and living conditions for many of their employees. Take, for example, Andrew Carnegie, the ultimate rags to riches story. He emigrated from Scotland as a boy. His first job as a telegraph messenger boy led to his employment as a telegraph operator at the Pennsylvania Railroad. Through hard work and a knack for business, he quickly rose through the ranks and into management. Carnegie began amassing his fortune through wise investments – such as an early investment in the Pullman Car company. During the Civil War, Carnegie was one of many investors in ironworks for the Union war effort. After the war, Carnegie turned his attention fully to iron and steel – the common element required in the rapid expansion of railroads, cities and factories. He embraced the new Bessemer steel process and, over the next few decades, built an empire that produced more steel than the entire output of Great Britain. But Carnegie’s success also came with a great cost. One of his favorite sayings was "watch costs and the profits take care of themselves." And watch costs he did. While he wrote of his support for the rights of labor to unionize – Carnegie did not practice what he preached. Carnegie steel workers labored long hours, in dangerous conditions working around blast furnaces with molten metal and rolling and stamping machines. Pittsburgh was described as “hell with the lid off.” In addition, workers were paid low wages and their families lived in squalid company towns. One Carnegie factory, in Homestead, PA, went on strike in 1892. Carnegie fully backed his plant manager, Henry Frick, who locked out the workers and hired Pinkerton agents. In the ensuing violence, many were killed. But ultimately, Carnegie and Frick won the labor dispute. In 1901, Carnegie sold his company (it became a key component of the new US Steel), and spent the rest of his life giving away his money. His legacy included more than 2500 public libraries, the Carnegie Foundation and Carnegie Mellon University, all of which continue to enrich lives to this day. Other industries also became associated with trusts and monopolies. John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust integrated all aspects of oil and petroleum production in the US through unfair monopolistic practices. They drove their competition out of business and ruined many businessmen and investors. During the reforming Progressive era, the courts ordered that the Standard oil trust should be broken up into smaller companies. Modern ExxonMobil grew from two of the components of the original Standard Oil. Rockefeller, like Carnegie, also became a philanthropist in retirement. His Rockefeller foundation supported education by endowing institutions like the University of Chicago, Spelman College and the first schools of public health. It also funded scientific and medical research – one success was developing a vaccine for yellow fever. Rockefeller was also a great supporter of the humanities, social sciences and cultural endeavors. So, with all these good works, why do we attach the term “robber baron” to men like Rockefeller and Carnegie? Some historians and contemporaries suggested that their philanthropy was simply an attempt to assuage a guilty conscience. The best example to understand the argument for using the term Robber Baron is by looking at what the author and muckracker Frank Norris called “the Octopus,” the railroads. Say, for example, you are a farmer in California. The only way you can get your crops to market in Chicago or New York or countless other cities is to ship them by rail. Only the railroad systems, organized by J.P. Morgan, have unfairly forced out competition and collude in the setting of freight rates. So when you need to get your produce to market, the railroads will raise the rates to ship your goods beyond “what the market will bear.” As a farmer you are left with few options – refuse to pay these exorbitant shipping rates and you will watch your crop spoil, ship your produce with the railroads and you will see a decline in your income, or if you try to organize with other farmers against the Octopus – you will see the full force of the Robber Barons crush your plans. So you ship your goods and lose money, while the Robber Barons line their pockets. The prices that workers in the cities must pay for this food increases, but other Robber Barons keep their wages low, so fewer can afford to adequately feed their families. And so the cycle continues – with the rich getting richer and the poor, poorer. So, are they Robber Barons or Captains of Industry? Perhaps a bit of both was needed to propel the United States through this period of rapid industrialization, an era in which America moved from a mostly rural and agrarian nation to become the leading industrial nation in the world in the span of half a century. TRANSCRIPT: Populism and the Cross of Gold In the late 1870s, there was trouble on the farm – drought, declining wheat prices, growing agribusiness, and economic depression. By the 1880s – anger and discontent lead to formation of Farmers’ Alliances. These alliances demanded currency and tax reforms and government ownership of transportation and communication infrastructure. From this activism, a new political party emerged – the People’s Party – whose members are better known as populists. These populists were unhappy with the Gilded Age politics as usual, especially with the Democratic and Republican failures to address the monetary crisis and adopt the coinage of silver (plentiful in the West) alongside gold. This is known as the bi-metallic standard. In 1892, the People’s Party met in Omaha and adopted a far-reaching political platform. The planks included a call for free silver (which was political shorthand for the bi-metallic standard), a graduated income tax, a subtreasury system to warehouse excess crops to maintain farmers’ income, and government ownership of railroads and communication infrastructure (to limit the unfair business practices of the robber barons). They also called for the use of initiatives and referendums and the direct election of US Senators (who, in most states, were chosen by state legislatures) – they believed that these reforms would make the government more responsive to the average American. In an appeal to the working class, the populists also called for an 8-hour workday and the outlawing of the Pinkertons. In the 1892 election, Eastern Democrats and Republicans portrayed the Populists as hayseed socialists and lunatics. The election was a rematch between Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland and focused on the tariff. The Republican “Billion Dollar Congress” and the Homestead strike were also factors in the election. In the end, Cleveland, the Democrat, won. However, the Populists had great success for a third party – with many victories in state and local elections and even some members of Congress. Almost immediately upon assuming office, Cleveland faced a crisis – the 1893 financial panic. This panic sets off the most severe depression of the 19th century. As the nation’s gold reserve dipped below $100 million – confidence in currency, which was on the gold standard, declined. In response, Cleveland repealed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which he felt had helped cause the panic. He expended all his political capital on an approach which did not help the economy. The Democratic Party divided over the proper course of action and Cleveland did not see the need to provide federal relief to ameliorate suffering. In fact, the president used his authority as commander in chief to act against workers. He used federal troops in the Pullman Strike and on Coxey’s Army - a peaceful march of the unemployed on Washington to ask for relief in the form of a federal road-building project Saddled with an unpopular president, a divided party and a depression, the Democrats suffered serious losses in the 1894 midterms. The Populists did capitalize, with a substantial increase in their share of the vote but they actually suffered a decrease in the number of offices held – hindsight would show that the movement had crested. The real winner in the midterms were the Republicans, who depicted their party as the one of prosperity The 1896 election would prove to be one of the most pivotal in American history. It is particularly noted for the battle of the standards, gold v silver. The Republicans nominated William McKinley, the Governor of Ohio, who carried out his campaign from his front porch (the old-style of campaigning). The Republicans promoted McKinley as “the advance agent of prosperity” The Democrats had a much more difficult time in choosing their candidate. At their convention, several influential conservative Eastern Democrats vied for the nomination. But there was one Dark Horse in the field, William Jennings Bryan, the young reformer congressman from Nebraska Bryan won the nomination after his “Cross of Gold” Speech, one of the most effective political speeches in American history. The speech ended with the rousing lines: Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold. And as he finished speaking, Bryan stood silently at the podium, in the position of Christ on the cross, for nearly a minute as the hall erupted around him. Bryan went out on the campaign trail and “talked silver all the time”. He also ran the first modern presidential campaign – delivering 600 speeches to 5 million people, and traveling 18,000 miles And who did the Populists choose as their standard bearer – William Jennings Bryan. The socalled fusion ticket (they nominated Bryan with a different VP) proved to be political suicide and the end of the Populist party. However, the Democrats adopted many of the populists’ planks from the Omaha platform as their own and from this point forward became a big-tent party which included reformers and workers along with Eastern elites. The 1896 election was an electoral landslide for the Republicans and marked the beginning of an era of Republican ascendancy, of national political realignment. McKinley also strengthened what had been a weak presidency during the Gilded Age – now the President and Congress were more evenly balanced. The election also marked the beginning of a close relationship between business interests and the Republican Party. The era of Gilded Age politics had ended. Lesson 1.4 LECTURE/MEDIA: Rise of the City With the rapid industrialization of the United States that we've been talkin about comes the rapid urbanization of the United States I'm going to talk a little bit about a growing wealth and power gap between the working class and the the Robber Baron of top 1% type classes and that's only going to become more pronounced and the effects of it become more pronounced with the rise of the city in the United States cities as we know them essentially developed during this time during the last few Decades of the 19th century and they become a cultural symbol of American Life of both to Americans and two others abroad the city symbolizes America and by 1890 there's been a crossover the majority of Americans 57% will live in urban areas rather than rural areas for the first time in the country's history and cities again grow really rapidly and by 1890 there are three cities with populations of over 1 million people in New York City has 5 million Chicago which is a relatively new city at this time has 1.7 million people in Philadelphia has 1.3 million people and many many other cities have populations that are sizable into the hundreds of thousands as compared to the much smaller sizes of towns and even cities before Chicago becoming rapidly one of the most important cities one of the most important locations in the United States and its at a favorable location right where it is focusing on the redistribution of goods from the East into the west and into the South into the rest of the country becomes a major port essentially and there's a poem here by Carl Sandburg that tells us a lot about what Chicago was like and what people thought it was like at this time maker stacker of wheat player with railroads and the nation's Freight Handler stormy husky brawling city with the big shoulders right so the weight of the distribution of goods not only to the rest of the United States went to the world through Lake Michigan right Chicago has become this in this major major player on the US in the world stage thanks to development of of a city environment there the rise of these cities and the rise in Immigration become closely associated and cities ultimately become associated with immigrants and emigrants are pouring into the cities sometimes to stay permanently and sometimes not we talked about those birds of Passage right but either way the cities are where the vast majority of the jobs are and so that's where the Immigrant population expands rapidly and their densities become supermassive like a like a star right I mean these people are packed in like sardines like the sardines they are packing in the factories right into these cities so they become super dense and people see more of these immigrants together more of the same types of people together in the same place you see developments of neighborhoods chinatown's Little Italy's Etc in the cities where these immigrants live supacaz these cities are becoming so densely populated so quickly right there's a desperate need for more space in the cities are running out of space in their cores right and there's there's no more room to build outward so you have to build upward but the problem is there's a limit to the height of that you can build masonry brick buildings because the walls are load-bearing so high before the building will collapse but what happens is the advancements in architectural design and particularly the development of Steel beams allows building to be built higher you can build a core out of steel that will support buildings of unimaginable lights and the skyscraper becomes again just like the city itself a symbol of America because America so badly needs these skyscrapers and you'll hear Louis Sullivan the five skyscraper sometimes and he builds the building picture here or designs the building picture here of the Guaranty building in Buffalo New York and it was only 12 stories tall you can actually see it next to a another building even taller than it you know 12 stories doesn't seem that high to us today but nobody was imagining a 12story building at that time so it was really quite quite an amazing feat and buildings continue to get taller and taller and the Woolworth Building in New York was actually the tallest building in the world until 1930 when it gets replaced by another skyscraper in New York so again the development of these skyscrapers allows these cities to pack in even more people than they were already doing and more business spaces Etc so if the skyscrapers like a crown and Glory of American cities the tenement buildings that house the urban poor are its seedy underbelly right and an end the shame of cities really again like we talked about the the people are pouring into the cities and there is a great need for more housing for more people but the tenement buildings were probably the worst way they could have gone about it right so so these buildings are designed specifically to house the poor working class especially immigrants and these buildings are overcrowded they are unsanitary are unsafe just about every possible way each apartment floor has several apartments on each of these apartments will have 10 to 20 people living in several families and they are really a vector for disease is one of the biggest problems before 1904 the toilet they had our houses in rear yards and this is where children were so disease spread that way after 1900 indoor plumbing became a little more common but they were having to Common toilet sprayer floor for the several Apartments so again a lot of disease to be spread that way and just to make matters worse both for physical health and mental health these apartments were dark and airless and dank there were very few exterior windows on these places in the ones that did faced super narrow light shaft because these buildings are so close together so the tenement buildings were really a bad place that you wanted to escape at all costs if you could so as people who have any money at all when they're moving up the social ladder or looking to escape the squalid downtown environments that we see the development of what we now call suburbs essentially writes the suburbs are as old as urbanization itself and the invention of the streetcar will will Propel the development of suburbs forward and also another architectural developments the FourSquare house you own you can see here looks sort of like the the standard modern American house that we know now these things will lead to the development of what they call streetcar neighborhoods right so people would move into these homes in the suburbs and they would ride the streetcar to work during the day and then ride back to their neighborhood when work was done and so what you see the middle class in the upper class Escape downtown to the suburbs and the Working Poor stuck in in the tenement housing is that in these these unsafe or unsanitary downtown now despite all the gloom-anddoom that I've been painting you here there are some good things about living in the city about Urban industrial life and one of those is that you do often have some Leisure Time even even the people who are working incredibly long hours I will have some Leisure Time more so than they often would have had in agricultural life when they were living on farms those were sort of round-the-clock lives in many ways and so you see the development of leisure activities that are suited to the city to urban life and one in particular is the development of basketball the inventor James Naismith worked for the YMCA in Springfield Massachusetts and he had people confined to indoor spaces especially during the winter and and needed a way to keep them keep them active and keep them occupied and he saw it is the ideal game right it could be played Outdoors but it could also be played indoors either way but there was no large field required right it's a relatively small space a basketball court and so this this game of basketball becomes very popular bone both men and women living in the cities at this time but even more than basketball baseball is the real of favorite pastime of urban America during this. And baseball has existed for decades at this point of people know baseball already by then but it really takes in the cities and becomes this sort of urban but also sort of rural past I'm right there you go out to these big fields and see it and the streetcar is part of what helps the development of baseball in the cities because you can build you no further Ralphie's ballparks and take the streetcars to go see the game or or even to participate in the game most cities will develop professional and semiprofessional teams and many of them are competing in the National League at this time I' you also see the development of the first amusement parks the modern amusement park as we know it is developed during this time and Coney Island in New York is perhaps the most famous during this. And you have roller coasters and entertainment shows and haunted houses all kinds of really amazing entertainment and everything is lit up by thousands and thousands of electric lights there's all kinds of food available to you hot dogs and cotton candy and the and the soft drinks Cola lemonade at cetera how many of which are very very new at this time so the novelty of a place like Coney Island was really amazing and again it was a place you can hop on the streetcar and go and get away from from the the Terrors of the factory and the disease of the tenement buildings it was really an escape from reality and we're going to continue to touch upon a theme parks amusement parks in America and how they are important to American history as we move forward in the course. Because that's one of my specialties and finally I want to talk just a little about the music of this. And the kinds of leisure activities involving music so a Ragtime and Dixieland are two styles of music that our predecessors to what we would consider modern Jazz and they both develop in African American communities in particular St Louis on New Orleans that to some degree Chicago the styles of music come from these places and what they are is modified versions of European styles of music of the standard March of the French quadrille and beguine these These Old world-style musics are being played on pianos and on other instruments in music halls in the city I and African-American people bring their own style and their own improvisation to it and really create a new forms of Music at least forms of music apps the country that they transcend race and class at least to some degree everyone is listening to them the upper class of society is going to Ragtime balls but the working class is also able to to go and participate in the end Music Hall celebrations and and dances and the end Jam sessions and things like that and again you're you're you're seeing people with more Leisure Time and you're seeing the development of new technology you're seeing things like a Edison's phonograph being perfected during this time that's making music able to spread a further and more efficiently than it had before play the time that the the working class and the upper class are are using the new found time that they have in this new industrial order
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1

Populists and progressives were central to the reconstruction and restructuring of
American society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After the civil war, which had
resulted in the destruction of much of the south, there was a need for reconstruction. This
involved attempts to reintegrate the southern states, which had seceded, into the Union1. The
reconstruction phase, termed as the gilded era, attracted a high rate of immigration, urbanization,
and industrialization. Wealthy individuals who controlled most of the resources were able to
exploit the social and economic advancement opportunities mostly at the expense of the middle
and lower classes. There was a need to redress problems of inequalities that had far-reaching
social, political, and economic implications2. The populists and progressive reformers played a
central role in pushing for change, especially fighting for social, gender, and racial equality as
well as advocating for the government’s involvement in citizens’ social welfare.
The populists constituted a successful political party in Kansas, commonly known as the
People’s party. They were generally rural Americans and their roots could be traced back to the
Grander movement of the 1870s. This movement was started by farmers a...


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