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Kay Bradley

16. Capital and Labor | THE AMERICAN YAWP - 2 views

www.americanyawp.com/...16-capital-and-labor

labor US History economics GildedAge

shared by Kay Bradley on 21 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 heralded a new era of labor conflict
  • it was federal troops that finally defeated them
  • American soldiers were deployed all across northern rail lines
  • ...59 more annotations...
  • Nearly 100 Americans died in “The Great Upheaval.” Workers destroyed nearly $40 million worth of property.
  • galvanized the country
  • It convinced laborers of the need for institutionalized unions, persuaded businesses of the need for even greater political influence and government aid, and foretold a half century of labor conflict in the United States
  • II. The March of Capital
  • John Pierpont Morgan
  • Long hours, dangerous working conditions, and the difficulty of supporting a family on meager and unpredictable wages compelled armies of labor to organize and battle against the power of capital.
  • revolutions in American industry
  • Technological innovations
  • national investments
  • slashed the costs of production and distribution
  • New administrative frameworks sustained the weight of vast firms
  • National credit agencies
  • Plummeting transportation and communication costs opened new national media, which advertising agencies used to nationalize various products.
  • Taylorism
  • Frederick Taylor
  • Taylorism increased the scale and scope of manufacturing and allowed for the flowering of mass production.
  • use of interchangeable parts in Civil War–era weapons manufacturing
  • sewing machines
  • packers’ “disassembly” lines
  • grain reapers
  • Duke cigarette rollers
  • Henry Ford made the assembly line famous
  • Cyrus McCormick
  • Industrialization and mass production pushed the United States into the forefront of the world
  • by 1900 the United States was the world’s leading manufacturing nation
  • massive economies of scale
  • New industrial companies therefore hungered for markets to keep their high-volume production facilities operating
  • A new class of managers—comprising what one prominent economic historian called the “visible hand”—operated between the worlds of workers and owners
  • legal creations used to protect investors and sustain the power of massed capital
  • After the Civil War, however, the corporation, using new state incorporation laws passed during the Market Revolution of the early nineteenth century, became a legal mechanism for nearly any enterprise to marshal vast amounts of capital while limiting the liability of shareholders. By washing their hands of legal and financial obligations while still retaining the right to profit massively, investors flooded corporations with the capital needed to industrialize.
  • But a competitive marketplace threatened the promise of investments
  • between 1898 and 1902, a wave of mergers rocked the American economy
  • Competition melted away in what is known as “the great merger movement.”
  • Monopoly had arrived
  • Industrial capitalism realized the greatest advances in efficiency and productivity
  • But it also created millions of low-paid, unskilled, unreliable jobs with long hours and dangerous working conditions
  • new ideas arose to bestow moral legitimacy upon them
  • One of Darwin’s greatest popularizers, the British sociologist and biologist Herbert Spencer, applied Darwin’s theories to society and popularized the phrase survival of the fittest.
  • The fittest, Spencer said, would demonstrate their superiority through economic success, while state welfare and private charity would lead to social degeneration—it would encourage the survival of the weak.10
  • H. L. Mencken wrote in 1907. “All growth must occur at the top. The strong must grow stronger, and that they may do so, they must waste no strength in the vain task of trying to uplift the weak.”11
  • By the time Mencken wrote those words, the ideas of social Darwinism had spread among wealthy Americans and their defenders
  • American workers toiled in difficult jobs for long hours and little pay. Mechanization and mass production threw skilled laborers into unskilled positions
  • The typical industrial laborer could expect to be unemployed one month out of the year. They labored sixty hours a week and could still expect their annual income to fall below the poverty line.
  • skyrocketing rents trapped families in crowded slums.
  • Strikes ruptured American industry throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
  • The failure of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 convinced workers of the need to organize
  • The Knights of Labor enjoyed considerable success in the early 1880s
  • It welcomed all laborers,
  • In the summer of 1886, the campaign for an eight-hour day,
  • culminated in a national strike on May 1, 1886.
  • The deaths of the Chicago policemen sparked outrage across the nation, and the sensationalization of the Haymarket Riot helped many Americans to associate unionism with radicalism
  • Labor leaders and radicals called for a protest at Haymarket Square
  • The American Federation of Labor (AFL) emerged as a conservative alternative to the vision of the Knights of Labor. An alliance of craft unions (unions composed of skilled workers), the AFL rejected the Knights’ expansive vision of a “producerist” economy and advocated “pure and simple trade unionism,” a program that aimed for practical gains (higher wages, fewer hours, and safer conditions) through a conservative approach that tried to avoid strikes.
  • Homestead, Pennsylvania.
  • Henry Clay Frick
  • Pinkerton detectives,
  • Still, despite repeated failure, strikes continued to roll across the industrial landscape.
  • 1894, workers in George Pullman’s Pullman car factories struck when he cut wages by a quarter but kept rents and utilities in his company town constant. The American Railway Union (ARU), led by Eugene Debs, launched a sympathy strike: the ARU would refuse to handle any Pullman cars on any rail line anywhere in the country.
  • workers were not the only ones struggling to stay afloat in industrial America. American farmers also lashed out against the inequalities of the Gilded Age and denounced political corruption for enabling economic theft.
Kay Bradley

Economic history of the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...c_history_of_the_United_States

economics

shared by Kay Bradley on 31 Mar 11 - Cached
  • The U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1787, established that the entire nation was a unified, or common market, with no internal tariffs or taxes on interstate commerce.
  • He succeeded in building a strong national credit based on taking over the state debts and bundling them with the old national debt into new securities sold to the wealthy. They in turn now had an interest in keeping the new government solvent. Hamilton funded the debt with tariffs on imported goods and a highly controversial tax on whiskey
  • Hamilton believed the United States should pursue economic growth through diversified shipping, manufacturing, and banking
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • He sought and achieved Congressional authority to create the First Bank of the United States in 1791; the charter lasted until 1811.[17]
  • Thomas Jefferson and James Madison opposed a strong central government (and, consequently, most of Hamilton's economic policies), but they could not stop Hamilton,
  • As president in 1811 Madison let the bank charter expire, but the War of 1812 proved the need for a national bank and Madison reversed positions. The Second Bank of the United States was established in 1816, with a 20 year charter.[18]
  • Cotton, at first a small-scale crop in the South, boomed following Eli Whitney's invention in 1793 of the cotton gin,
  • Millions moved to the more fertile farmland of the Midwest. States built roads and waterways, such as the Cumberland Pike (1818) and the Erie Canal (1825), opening up markets for western farm products.
  • The Whig Party supported Clay's American System, which proposed to build internal improvements (e.g. roads, canals and harbors), protect industry, and create a strong national bank
  • President Andrew Jackson (1829–1837), leader of the new Democratic Party, opposed the Second Bank of the United States, which he believed favored the entrenched interests of rich. When he was elected for a second term, Jackson blocked the renewal of the bank's charter. Jackson opposed paper money and demanded the government be paid in gold and silver coins. The Panic of 1837 stopped business growth for three years
  • Railroads made a decisive impact on the U.S. economy especially in the 1850-1873 era, making possible the transition to an urban industrial nation with high finance and advanced managerial skills. Railroads opened up remote areas, drastically cut the cost of moving freight as well as passenger travel, and stimulated new industries such as steel and telegraphy, as well as the profession of civil engineering.
  • Atlanta, Billings, Chicago, and Dallas
  • the railroad became the first large-scale business enterprise and the model for most large corporations.[24]
  • Panics did not curtail rapid U.S. economic growth during the 19th century. Long term demographic growth, expansion into new farmlands, and creation of new factories continued. New inventions and capital investment led to the creation of new industries and economic growth. As transportation improved, new markets continuously opened.
  • By 1860, on the eve of Civil War, 16% of the people lived in cities with 2500 or more people; a third of the nation's income came from manufacturing. Urbanized industry was limited primarily to the Northeast; cotton cloth production was the leading industry, with the manufacture of shoes, woolen clothing, and machinery also expanding. Most of the workers in the new factories were immigrants or their children. Between 1845 and 1855, some 300,000 European immigrants arrived annually. Many remained in eastern cities, especially mill towns and mining camps, while those with farm experience and some savings bought farms in the West.[26]
  • The industrial advantages of the North over the South helped secure a Northern victory in the American Civil War
  • Industrialists came to dominate many aspects of the nation's life, including social and political affairs.[26]
  • the region maintained its dependence on cotton
  • An explosion of new discoveries and inventions took place, a process called the "Second Industrial Revolution."
  • By 1890, the USA leaped ahead of Britain for first place in manufacturing output.[2
  • The rapid economic development following the Civil War laid the groundwork for the modern U.S. industrial economy.
  • Parallel to these achievements was the development of the nation's industrial infrastructure
Kay Bradley

Rooted in Reconstruction: The First Wave of Black Congressmen | The Nation - 0 views

www.thenation.com/...n-first-wave-black-congressmen

shared by Kay Bradley on 02 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Well over a century ago, during the turbulent era of Reconstruction, they were preceded by another three: Hiram Revels and Blanche Bruce, both senators from Mississippi, and P.B.S. Pinchback, briefly the governor of Louisiana.
  • It also underscores how remarkable, if temporary, a transformation in American life was wrought by Reconstruction. Revels, Bruce and Pinchback were only the tip of a large iceberg--an estimated 2,000 black men served in some kind of elective office during that era.
  • For many decades, historians viewed Reconstruction as the lowest point in the American experience, a time of corruption and misgovernment presided over by unscrupulous carpetbaggers from the North, ignorant former slaves and traitorous scalawags (white Southerners who supported the new governments in the South). Mythologies about black officeholders formed a central pillar of this outlook. Their alleged incompetence and venality illustrated the larger "crime" of Reconstruction--placing power in the hands of a race incapable of participating in American democracy. D.W. Griffith's 1915 film Birth of a Nation included a scene in which South Carolina's black legislators downed alcohol and propped their bare feet on their desks while enacting laws. Claude Bowers, in The Tragic Era, a bestseller of the 1920s that did much to form popular consciousness about Reconstruction, offered a similar portrait. To Griffith and Bowers, the incapacity of black officials justified the violence of the Ku Klux Klan and the eventual disenfranchisement of Southern black voters.
  • ...54 more annotations...
  • Capitol Men
  • Dray's
  • It does not really offer an assessment of Reconstruction's successes and failings
  • Twelve years earlier, Smalls had piloted the Planter, on which he worked as a slave crewman, out of Charleston harbor and delivered it to the Union navy, a deed that made him a national hero. In 1864, while the ship was undergoing repairs in Philadelphia, a conductor evicted Smalls from a streetcar when he refused to give up his seat to a white passenger. Ninety years before a similar incident involving Rosa Parks sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, Smalls's ordeal inspired a movement of black and white reformers to persuade the Pennsylvania legislature to ban discrimination in public transportation.
  • Stephens offered a long argument based on states' rights as to why the bill was unconstitutional.
  • The subject of their exchange was a civil rights bill banning racial discrimination in places of public accommodation.
  • Elliott launched into a learned and impassioned address explaining why the recently enacted Fourteenth Amendment justified the measure (which was signed into law by President Grant the following year), then reminded Congress of an infamous speech Stephens had delivered on the eve of the Civil War: "It is scarcely twelve years since that gentleman shocked the civilized world by announcing the birth of a government which rested on human slavery as its cornerstone." Elliott already had proved that he refused to be intimidated by whites: in 1869 he whipped a white man in the streets of Columbia for writing inappropriate notes to his wife. A black man assaulting a white man in defense of his wife's good name was not a common occurrence in nineteenth-century South Carolina.
  • Robert Elliott
  • Many of the black Congressmen spoke of the abuse they suffered while traveling to the Capitol. Joseph Rainey
  • Robert Elliott was refused service at a restaurant in a railroad station
  • In the House, one Virginia Democrat announced that he was addressing only "the white men," the "gentlemen," not his black colleagues
  • Congressmen Dray profiles came from diverse origins and differed in their approach to public policies. Some had been free before the Civil War, others enslaved
  • Some favored government action to distribute land to former slaves; others insisted that in a market society the only way to acquire land was to purchase it. Some ran for office as representatives of their race, others as exemplars of the ideal that, with the end of slavery and the advent of legal equality, race no longer mattered. Reconstruction's black Congressmen did not see themselves simply as spokesmen for the black community
  • was one of the more conservative black leaders; yet in the Senate he spoke out for more humane treatment of Native Americans and opposed legislation banning immigration from China
  • Blanche Bruce
  • sixteen black members of Congress
  • had enjoyed opportunities and advantages unknown to most African-Americans
  • Revels
  • had been born free in North Carolina
  • Bruce
  • was the slave son of his owner and was educated by the same tutor who taught his white half-siblings.
  • Some Congressmen had enjoyed unique privileges as slaves.
  • enjamin Turner's
  • wner allowed him to learn to read and write and to run a hotel and livery stable in Selma
  • Others, however, had experienced slavery in all its brutality.
  • Jeremiah Haralson
  • John Hyman
  • None of these men fit the old stereotype of Reconstruction officials as ignorant, incompetent and corrupt.
  • All were literate, most were seasoned political organizers by the time of their election and nearly all were honest.
  • Governor Pinchback
  • ne who does fit the image of venality wa
  • of Louisiana, whose career combined staunch advocacy of civil rights with a sharp eye for opportunities to line his pockets
  • Pinchback grew up and attended school in Cincinnati. In the 1850s he worked as a cabin boy on an Ohio River steamboat. He fell in with a group of riverboat gamblers and learned their trade. He turned up in New Orleans in 1862 and expertly navigated the byzantine world of Louisiana's Reconstruction politics. Pinchback was undoubtedly corrupt (he accumulated a small fortune while in office) but also an accomplished politician.
  • Reconstruction ended in 1877, when President Rutherford B. Hayes abandoned the idea of federal intervention to protect the rights of black citizens in the South, essentially leaving their fate in the hands of local whites.
  • black political power, while substantially diminished, did not vanish until around 1900, when the Southern states disenfranchised black voters. Six more African-Americans served in Congress before the end of the nineteenth century. Some of their Reconstruction predecessors remained active in politics
  • Robert Smalls
  • of Planter fame, served as customs collector at Beaufort until 1913, when he was removed as part of a purge of blacks from the federal bureaucracy by Woodrow Wilson, the first Southern-born president since Reconstruction.
  • Pinchback and Bruce moved to Washington, where they became leaders of the city's black elite and arbiters of federal patronage appointments for African-Americans. Bruce worked tirelessly but unsuccessfully to persuade Congress to reimburse blacks who had deposited money in the Freedman's Savings Bank, which failed during the Panic of 1873. Like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in our own time, the bank was a private corporation chartered by Congress that enjoyed the implicit but not statutory backing of the federal government. Its counterparts today are being bailed out with billions of taxpayer dollars, as they have been deemed too big to fail. The Freedman's Savings Bank was too black to rescue.
  • George White
  • The last black Congressman of the post-Reconstruction era wa
  • of North Carolina, whose term ended in 1901. From then until 1929, when
  • Oscar DePriest
  • took his seat representing Chicago, Congress remained lily-white. Not until 1972, with
  • Andrew Young's
  • election in Georgia and
  • Barbara Jordan's
  • in Texas, did black representation resume from states that had experienced Reconstruction. Today the Congressional Black Caucus numbers forty-two members, seventeen of them from the states of the old Confederacy.
  • Robert Smalls
  • One such episode involves
  • who in 1874 was elected to Congress from Beaufort County, South Carolina.
  • Alexander Stephens
  • Equally riveting is the 1874 confrontation between
  • he former vice president of the Confederacy, then representing Georgia in the House of Representatives, and another black South Carolinian,
  • Robert Brown Elliott (1842-1884) was an African American member of the United States House of Representatives from South Carolina. Robert Brown Elliott's early life is a mystery. Although he claimed to have been born in Liverpool, England to West Indian immigrants, and to have graduated from Eton College, biographers have been unable to corroborate these facts. He moved to South Carolina in 1867 and established a law practice. Elliott helped organize the local Republican Party and served in the state constitutional convention. In 1868 he was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives. The next year he was appointed assistant adjutant-general; he was the first African American commanding general of the South Carolina National Guard. As part of his job, he helped form a state militia to fight the Ku Klux Klan. Elliott was elected as a Republican to the Forty-second and Forty-third United States Congress. He "delivered a celebrated speech" in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1875.[1] He resigned on November 1, 1874, to fight political corruption in South Carolina. He served again in the South Carolina House of Representatives, where he was elected as Speaker of the House. He ran unsuccessfully for South Carolina Attorney General in 1876. Reconstruction ended that year and he was forced out of office.[] He set up a private law practice in New Orleans.
  • Kay Bradley on 02 Feb 11
     
    "Rooted in Reconstruction: The First Wave of Black Congressmen Eric Foner"
Kay Bradley

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - 0 views

www.amphigory.com/oz.htm

Wizard of Oz Baum Gilded Age literature WizardOfOz

shared by Kay Bradley on 13 Feb 13 - Cached
  • publication in 1900
  • The Wizard of Oz is an entity unto itself, however, and was not originally written with a sequel in mind
  • Born near Syracuse in 1856, Baum was brought up in a wealthy home and early became interested in the theater. He wrote some plays which enjoyed brief success and then, with his wife and two sons, journeyed to Aberdeen, South Dakota, in 1887. Aberdeen was a little prairie town and there Baum edited the local weekly until it failed in 1891
  • ...62 more annotations...
  • For many years Western farmers had been in a state of loud, though unsuccessful, revolt. While Baum was living in South Dakota not only was the frontier a thing of the past, but the Romantic view of benign nature had disappeared we well. The stark reality of the dry, open plains and the acceptance of man's Darwinian subservience to his environment served to crush Romantic idealism
  • prices
  • grasshoppers
  • drought
  • blizzards
  • juggling of freight rates
  • Baum's stay in South Dakota also covered the period of the formation of the Populist party, which Professor Nye likens to a fanatic "crusade".
  • Western farmers had for a long time sought governmental aid in the form of economic panaceas, but to no avail. The Populist movement symbolized a desperate attempt to use the power of the ballot[8].
  • Moreover, he took part in the pivotal election of 1896, marching in "torch-light parades for William Jennings Bryan"
  • could have been unaffected by Bryan's campaign. Putting all the farmers' hopes in a basket labeled "free coinage of silver," Bryan's platform rested mainly on the issue of adding silver to the nation's gold standard. Though he lost, he did at least bring the plight of the little man into national focus[11].
  • Nevertheless, Professor Nye quotes Baum as having a desire to write stories that would "bear the stamp of our times and depict the progressive fairies of today.
  • Yet the original Oz book conceals an unsuspected depth
  • children's story with a symbolic allegory implicit within its story line and characterizations
  • subtle parable, Baum delineated a Midwesterner's vibrant and ironic portrait of this country as it entered the twentieth century.
  • orothy, who was an orphan
  • Dorothy's house has come down on the Wicked Witch of the East, killing her
  • Notice that evil ruled in both the East and the West; after Dorothy's coming it rules only in the West.
  • The Wicked Witch of the East had kept the little Munchkin people "in bondage for many years, making them slave for her night and day.
  • In this way Eastern witchcraft dehumanized a simple laborer so that the faster and better he worked the more quickly he became a kind of machine. Here is a Populist view of evil Eastern influences on honest labor which could hardly be more pointed.
  • There is one thing seriously wrong with being made of tin; when it rains rust sets in.
  • Tin Woodman had been standing in the same position for a year without moving before Dorothy came along and oiled his joints
  • he Tin Woodman's situation has an obvious parallel in the condition of many Eastern workers after the depression of 1893
  • While Tin Woodman is standing still, rusted solid, he deludes himself into thinking he is no longer capable of that most human of sentiments, love
  • the country is divided in a very orderly fashion. In the North and South the people are ruled by good witches, who are not quite as powerful as the wicked ones of the East and West
  • Emerald City ruled by the Wizard of Oz
  • Dorothy is Baum's Miss Everyman
  • Dorothy sets out on the Yellow Brick Road wearing the Witch of the East's magic Silver Shoes
  • Silver shoes walking on a golden road
  • orothy becomes the innocent agent of Baum's ironic view of the Silver issue.
  • neither Dorothy, nor the good Witch of the North, nor the Munchkins understand the power of these shoes. The allegory is abundantly clear
  • William Allen White wrote an article in 1896 entitled "What's the Matter With Kansas?". In it he accused Kansas farmers of ignorance, irrationality and general muddle-headedness.
  • the Scarecrow displays a terrible sense of inferiority and self doubt, for he has determined that he needs real brains to replace the common straw in his head
  • the Cowardly Lion
  • As King of Beasts he explains, "I learned that if I roared very loudly every living thing was frightened and got out of my way."
  • Born a coward, he sobs, "Whenever there is danger my heart begins to beat fast
  • The Lion represents Bryan himself
  • In the election of 1896 Bryan lost the vote of Eastern Labor, though he tried hard to gain their support.
  • "struck at the Tin Woodman with his sharp claws." But, to his surprise, "he could make no impression on the tin, although the Woodman fell over in the road and lay still.
  • Baum here refers to the fact that in 1896 workers were often pressured into voting for McKinley and gold by their employers.
  • The magic Silver Shoes belong to Dorothy
  • ilver's potent charm, which had come to mean so much to so many in the Midwest, could not be entrusted to a political symbol
  • All together now the small party moves toward the Emerald City. Coxey's Army of tramps and indigents, marching to ask President Cleveland for work in 1894, appears no more naively innocent than this group of four characters going to see a humbug Wizard, to request favors that only the little girl among them deserves.
  • Those who enter the Emerald City must wear green glasses
  • The Wizard, a little bumbling old man, hiding behind a facade of paper mache and noise, might be any president from Grant to McKinley
  • he symbolizes the American criterion for leadership -- he is able to be everything to everybody.
  • the Wizard assumes different shapes, representing different views toward national leadership. To Dorothy he appears as an enormous head, "bigger than the head of the biggest giant
  • The Wizard has asked them all to kill the Witch of the West
  • he golden road does not go in that direction and so they must follow the sun, as have many pioneers in the past
  • The Witch of the West uses natural forces to achieve her ends; she is Baum's version of sentient and malign nature.
  • Baum makes these Winged Monkeys into an Oz substitute for the plains Indians.
  • Baum's monkeys are not inherently bad; their actions depend wholly upon the bidding of others. Under the control of an evil influence, they do evil. Under the control of goodness and innocence, as personified by Dorothy, the monkeys are helpful and kind, although unable to take her to Kansas. Says the Monkey King, "We belong to this country alone, and cannot leave it" (p. 213). The same could be said with equal truth of the first Americans.
  • The Witch assumes that proportions of a kind of western Mark Hanna or Banker Boss, who, through natural malevolence, manipulates the people and holds them prisoner by cynically taking advantage of their innate innocence.
  • Dorothy destroys the evil Witch by angrily dousing her with a bucket of water. Water, that precious commodity which the drought-ridden farmers on the great plains needed so badly, and which if correctly used could create an agricultural paradise, or at least dissolve a wicked witch.
  • What a wonderful lesson for youngsters of the decade when Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland and William McKinley were hiding in the White House.
  • Formerly the Wizard was a mimic, a ventriloquist and a circus balloonist
  • our little Wizard comes from Omaha, Nebraska, a center of Populist agitation
  • Current historiography tends to criticize the Populist movement for its "delusions, myths and foibles
  • Their desires, as well as the Wizard's cleverness in answering them, are all self-delusion. Each of these characters carries within him the solution to his own problem, were he only to view himself objectively.
  • Like any good politician he gives the people what they want
  • hroughout the story Baum poses a central thought; the American desire for symbols of fulfillment is illusory. Real needs lie elsewhere.
  • In this way Baum tells us that the Silver crusade at least brought back Dorothy's lovely spirit to the disconsolate plains farmer. Her laughter, love and good will are no small addition to that gray land, although the magic of Silver has been lost forever as a result.
  • Thereby farm interests achieve national importance, industrialism moves West and Bryan commands only a forest full of lesser politicians.
Kay Bradley

Digital History The Great Depression in Global Perspective - 0 views

www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm

Great Depression depression economics history

shared by Kay Bradley on 29 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • International trade fell 30 percent
  • "Beggar-thy-neighbor" trade policies were a major reason why the Depression persisted as long as it did.
  • 30 million people were unemploye
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • One response to the depression was military dictatorship
  • collapse in raw material and agricultural commodity prices led to social unrest,
  • fascism and militarism
  • Hitler outlawed labor unions
  • restructured German
  • industry into a series of cartels
  • massive program of military rearmament
  • totalitarian communism.
  • Stalin's
  • welfare capitalism
  • Canada
  • Great Britain
  • France
  • Under welfare capitalism, government assumed ultimate responsibility for promoting a reasonably fair distribution of wealth and power and for providing security against the risks of bankruptcy, unemployment, and destitution.
  • the economic decline brought on by the Depression was steeper and more protracted in the United States.
  • European countries significantly reduced unemployment by 1936. However, the American jobless rate still exceeded 17 percent as late as 1939, when World War II began in Europe. It did not drop below 14 percent until 1941.
  • It produced a major political realignment
  • committed, to varying degrees, to interventionist government.
  • he Depression strengthened the federal presence in American life, producing such innovations as national old age pensions, unemployment compensation, aid to dependent children, public housing, federally subsidized school lunches, insured bank deposits, the minimum wage, and stock market regulation.
  • fundamentally altered labor relations
  • national labor policy protective of collective bargaining.
  • transformed the farm economy by introducing federal price supports and rural electrification
  • fundamental transformation in public attitudes.
  • t led Americans to view the federal government as the ultimate protector of public well-being.
Kay Bradley

US History Tours Powered by Google Earth - 2 views

www.wwnorton.com/...historytours.aspx

US History technology

shared by Kay Bradley on 29 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • Kay Bradley on 29 Sep 10
     
    Really fun! Contents: * Pre-Columbian Sites and Their Significance * The Revolutionary War * The Lewis & Clark Expedition * Indian Removal * The Path to Civil War * The Emergence of a National Park System * Conflicts in WWII: Pearl Harbor, Midway, D-Day, Stalingrad, Okinawa & Others * The Road to Civil Rights * Vietnam Conflicts: Dien bien Phu, Ia Drang, Khe Sanh, My Lai, Kent State & Others * The 20th Century Power Grid: From Hydro-Electric to Nuclear Power
Kay Bradley

NMAH | Exhibitions - 0 views

americanhistory.si.edu/...category.cfm

shared by Kay Bradley on 27 Feb 11 - Cached
  • Kay Bradley on 27 Feb 11
     
    National Museum of AMerican HIstory Online Exhibitions.
Alex Sommer

New Deal Findings: First New Deal Programs (1933-1936) - 2 views

-Summarized with the 3R's of FDR's program: relief, recovery, reform -FDR led the Democratic party and voiced liberal, pro-union policies -Republicans mostly opposed legislation passed during the N...

started by Kay Bradley on 24 Mar 11 1 follow-up, last by Alex Sommer on 29 Mar 11
Kay Bradley

A Cascade of Crises - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...rump-capitol-neil-sheehan.html

shared by Kay Bradley on 09 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Kay Bradley on 09 Jan 21
     
    "Most other longtime democracies have much shorter lags between an election and the transfer of power. In Britain, a new government usually takes office the next day. In Canada, France, India and Japan, it happens within a few weeks. "In the four months between Franklin Roosevelt's election and his 1933 inauguration, much of the world descended into chaos. Adolf Hitler took power in Germany, and the Reichstag - the Parliament building - burned. Japan quit the League of Nations. In the U.S., hundreds of banks shut down. Lynchings surged in the South. "The country, numb and nearly broken, anxiously awaited deliverance," as David Kennedy wrote in his Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the era." "
Kay Bradley

L. Frank Baum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...L._Frank_Baum

Wizard of Oz Baum Gilded Age

shared by Kay Bradley on 13 Feb 13 - Cached
  • In December 1890, Baum urged the wholesale extermination of all America's native peoples in a column he wrote on December 20, 1890, nine days before the Wounded Knee Massacre.[13] Later, on January 3, 1891, Baum reverted to the subject in an editorial response to the event: The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth.[14]
  • While Baum was in South Dakota, he sang in a quartet that included a man who would become one of the first Populist (People's Party) Senators in the U.S., James Kyle
  • In 1900, Baum and Denslow (with whom he shared the copyright) published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to much critical acclaim and financial success.[18] The book was the best-selling children's book for two years after its initial publication.[citation needed] Baum went on to write thirteen more novels based on the places and people of the Land of Oz.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Jokes in the script, mostly written by Glen MacDonough, called for explicit references to President Theodore Roosevelt, Senator Mark Hanna, and oil magnate John D. Rockefeller. Although use of the script was rather free-form, the line about Hanna was ordered dropped as soon as Hamlin got word of his death in 1904.[citation needed]
  • On May 5, 1919, Baum suffered from a stroke.
  • Baum wrote two editorials about Native Americans for the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer which have provoked controversy in recent times because of his assertion that the safety of White settlers depended on the wholesale genocide of American Indians
  • The first piece was published on December 20, 1890, five days after the killing of the Lakota Sioux holy man, Sitting Bull (who was being held in custody at the time). Following is the complete text of the editorial: Sitting Bull, most renowned Sioux of modern history, is dead. He was not a Chief, but without Kingly lineage he arose from a lowly position to the greatest Medicine Man of his time, by virtue of his shrewdness and daring. He was an Indian with a white man's spirit of hatred and revenge for those who had wronged him and his. In his day he saw his son and his tribe gradually driven from their possessions: forced to give up their old hunting grounds and espouse the hard working and uncongenial avocations of the whites. And these, his conquerors, were marked in their dealings with his people by selfishness, falsehood and treachery. What wonder that his wild nature, untamed by years of subjection, should still revolt? What wonder that a fiery rage still burned within his breast and that he should seek every opportunity of obtaining vengeance upon his natural enemies.
  • The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are. History would forget these latter despicable beings, and speak, in latter ages of the glory of these grand Kings of forest and plain that Cooper loved to heroize. We cannot honestly regret their extermination, but we at least do justice to the manly characteristics possessed, according to their lights and education, by the early Redskins of America.[32][33] Following the December 29, 1890, massacre, Baum wrote a second editorial, published on January 3, 1891: The peculiar policy of the government in employing so weak and vacillating a person as General Miles to look after the uneasy Indians, has resulted in a terrible loss of blood to our soldiers, and a battle which, at best, is a disgrace to the war department. There has been plenty of time for prompt and decisive measures, the employment of which would have prevented this disaster.
  • An eastern contemporary, with a grain of wisdom in its wit, says that "when the whites win a fight, it is a victory, and when the Indians win it, it is a massacre."[32][34]
  • The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past.
  • These two short editorials continue to haunt his legacy. In 2006, two descendants of Baum apologized to the Sioux nation for any hurt their ancestor had
  • caused
  • Baum's mother-in-law, Woman's Suffrage leader Matilda Joslyn Gage, had great influence over Baum's views. Gage was initiated into the Wolf Clan and admitted into the Iroquois Council of Matrons for her outspoken respect and sympathy for Native American people; it would seem unlikely that Baum could have harbored animosity for them in his mature years.
  • Although numerous political references to the "Wizard" appeared early in the 20th century, it was in a scholarly article by Henry Littlefield,[36] an upstate New York high school history teacher, published in 1964 that there appeared the first full-fledged interpretation of the novel as an extended political allegory of the politics and characters of the 1890s. Special attention was paid to the Populist metaphors and debates over silver and gold.[37] As a Republican and avid supporter of Women's Suffrage, it is thought that Baum personally did not support the political ideals of either the Populist movement of 1890–92 or the Bryanite-silver crusade of 1896–1900. He published a poem in support of William McKinley.[38
  • Since 1964 many scholars, economists and historians have expanded on Littlefield's interpretation, pointing to multiple similarities between the characters (especially as depicted in Denslow's illustrations) and stock figures from editorial cartoons of the period. Littlefield himself wrote to The New York Times letters to the editor section spelling out that his theory had no basis in fact, but that his original point was, "not to label Baum, or to lessen any of his magic, but rather, as a history teacher at Mount Vernon High School, to invest turn-of-the-century America with the imagery and wonder I have always found in his stories."[39]
  • Baum's newspaper had addressed politics in the 1890s, and Denslow was an editorial cartoonist as well as an illustrator of children's books. A series of political references are included in the 1902 stage version, such as references by name to the President and a powerful senator, and to John D. Rockefeller for providing the oil needed by the Tin Woodman. Scholars have found few political references in Baum's Oz books after 1902.[citation needed] When Baum himself was asked whether his stories had hidden meanings, he always replied that they were written to please children and generate an income for his family
  • The Baums believed in God, but felt that religious decisions should be made by mature minds and not religious authorities. As a result, they sent their older sons to "Ethical Culture Sunday School" in Chicago, which taught morality, not religion.[41][42]
Kay Bradley

United States presidential election, 1896 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

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united states election Bryan Populist farmer

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  • One month after McKinley's nomination, the silverites took control of the Democratic convention held in Chicago on July 7–11. Most of the Southern and Western delegates were committed to implementing the free silver ideas of the Populist Party.
  • An attorney, former congressman, and unsuccessful U.S. Senate candidate named William Jennings Bryan filled the void
  • Bryan hailed from Nebraska and spoke for the farmers who were suffering from the economic depression following the Panic of 1893.
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  • Bryan delivered one of the greatest political speeches in American history, the "Cross of Gold" Speech
  • Bryan presented a passionate defense of farmers and factory workers struggling to survive the economic depression, and he attacked big-city business owners and leaders as the cause of much of the economic suffering.
  • He called for reform of the monetary system and an end to the gold standard, and promised government relief efforts for farmers and others hurt by the economic depression.
  • Several third parties were active in 1896. By far the most prominent was the Populist Party
  • Formed in 1892, the Populists represented agrarian interests in the South, West, and rural Midwest.
  • In the 1892 presidential election Populist candidate James B. Weaver had carried four states, and in 1894 the Populists had scored victories in congressional and state legislature races in a number of Southern and Western states.
  • By 1896 some Populists believed that they could replace the Democrats as the main opposition party to the Republicans.
  • At their national convention in 1896, the Populists chose Bryan as their presidential nominee.
  • With this election, the Populists began to be absorbed into the Democratic Party; within a few elections the party would disappear completely
Kay Bradley

Candidates and the Truth About America - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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america exceptionalism statistics world rank nytimes com

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  • dismal statistics on child poverty, declaring it an outrage that of the 35 most economically advanced countries, the United States ranks 34th, edging out only Romania
  • educational achievement, noting that this country comes in only 28th in the percentage of 4-year-olds enrolled in preschool
  • 14th in the percentage of 25-to-34-year-olds with a higher education
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  • infant mortality, where the United States ranks worse than 48 other countries and territories,
  • the United States trails most of Europe, Australia and Canada in social mobility.
  • America is indeed No. 1, he might declare — in locking its citizens up, with an incarceration rate far higher than that of the likes of Russia, Cuba, Iran or China
  • in obesity, easily outweighing second-place Mexico and with nearly 10 times the rate of Japan
  • in energy use per person, with double the consumption of prosperous Germany.
  • This national characteristic, often labeled American exceptionalism, may inspire some people and politicians to perform heroically, rising to the level of our self-image
  • Democrats are more loath than Republicans to look squarely at the government debt crisis indisputably looming with the aging of baby boomers and the ballooning cost of Medicare
  • the self-censorship it produces in politicians is bipartisan, even if it is more pronounced on the left for some issues and the right for others.
  • epublicans are more reluctant than Democrats to acknowledge the rise of global temperatures and its causes and consequences.
  • An American politician who speaks too candidly about the country’s faults, she went on to say, risks being labeled with that most devastating of epithets: un-American.
Kay Bradley

Our Documents - Transcript of Monroe Doctrine (1823) - 0 views

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Monroe diplomacy international relations

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  • The Monroe Doctrine was expressed during President Monroe's seventh annual message to Congress, December 2, 1823:
  • to the minister of the United States at St. Petersburg to arrange by amicable negotiation the respective rights and interests of the two nations on the northwest coast of this continent.
  • Government of Great Britain, which has likewise been acceded t
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  • that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers. . .
  • declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety
  • we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States
  • Our policy in regard to Europe
  • is, not to interfere in the internal concerns of any of its powers;
  • It is impossible that the allied powers should extend their political system to any portion of either continent without endangering our peace and happiness; nor can anyone believe that our southern brethren, if left to themselves, would adopt it of their own accord
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