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
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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
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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DO NOT QUOTE sources, paraphrase in your own words and cite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)
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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
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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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