Chapter 20

Democracy
and Empire

Toward
National
Governing
Class

The Growth
of
Government

Federal Revenues sky-rocketed from $257 million in 1878 to $567 in 1900. The
administrative bureaucracy grew dramatically from about 50,000 employees to 1871 to
100,000 only a decade later. The modern apparatus of departments, bureaus grew. United
States Department of the Interior created in 1840 grew into the largest and most
important federal office other than the Post Office.

Regulatory agencies sprung up: foremost among them was the Interstate Commerce commission
(ICC). The ICC was created in1887 to bring order to the growing patchwork of stat laws
concerning railroads. The five member commission appointed by the president approved freight
and passenger rates set by the railroads. The ICC did remained weak in the period. Its re-setting
policies usually voided by the Supreme court. But ICC commissioners could take public testimony
on possible violations examine company records and oversee enforcement of the law.

The
Machinery
of Politics

By the
1870s
partisan
politics had
become a
full time
occupation
with local
officials
went for
elections
every two
years.

The McKinley Tariff of 1890

increased the tax rate on
imported goods including sugar
from Hawaii. This made planters
to push even more strongly for

Tammany Hall in New

York City was a place
of corruption
1) the building of
Tammany Hall
2) appointment of
political position.
Corruption of the New
York was seen
throughout America.

Tamma
ny Hall
today in
New
York.

Tammany Hall
New York: William Tweed

Headed by William Tweed

Michael Hinky Dink of

Chicago, specialized in
giving municipal jobs to
local voters and holiday
food baskets to their
families. Hundreds of
smaller political rules
gave boodle;
Corruption and bribe

Spoils System and

Civil Service
Reform

As early as 1865 republican representative Thomas A Jenckes of Rhode Island proposed a

bill for civil service reform but the majority in Congress fearing that such a measure would
hamper candidates in their relentless pursuit of votes.

Credit Mobilier a company founded by elite Union Pacific

Railroad company members. Fraud and corruption was
used by syphoning money from Union Pacific to Credit
Mobilier

Political Vices of the Times

a corruption of greed
and self-interest
which occupied leaders
of politics
headed by political bosses
who tied together a
network of wards and
precinct captains each of
whom looked after certain
local constituents in return
for votes

The Grange

The Grange

Grangers fought for farmers freedom and rights.

The Interstate Commerce

Commission was the first
federal agency to ensure that
the rates railroads charged
farmers and merchants to
transport their goods were
reasonable and did not offer
more favorable treatment to
some shippers over others.
The ICC was involved with
Sherman an Anti trust Act
which banned combinations
and practices that restrained
free trade. The language was
so vague that the act prove
impossible to enforce

Munn v Illinois upheld the

constitutionality of an Illinois law that
established a state board elected to
eliminate price fixing and coupons
for special customers. This also
gave rights for poor to use grain
elevator. This bill was repealed with
Wabash vs. Illinois.

Wabash v. Illinois reverse Munn, Ruled

only the federal government not the states
could regulate railroads engaged in
interstate commerce . This decision
created extreme centralization with
Interstate Commerce Commission

Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905), was a

landmark United States Supreme Court case that
held that "liberty of contract" was implicit in the Due
Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The case involved a New York law that limited the
number of hours that a baker could work each day
to ten, and limited the number of hours that a
baker could work each week to 60. By a 54 vote,
the Supreme Court rejected the argument that the
law was necessary to protect the health of bakers,
deciding it was a labor law attempting to regulate
the terms of employment, and calling it an
"unreasonable, unnecessary and arbitrary
interference with the right and liberty of the
individual to contract."
Lochner is one of the most controversial decisions
in the Supreme Court's history, giving its name to
what is known as the Lochner era. In the Lochner
era, the Supreme Court issued several
controversial decisions invalidating federal and
state statutes that sought to regulate working
conditions during the Progressive Era and the
Great Depression. 60hrs a week 10hr day

The Farmers Alliance

Texas Populist orator Cyclone Davis

traveled the Great Plains with his
Thomas Jefferson writings and
quoted the evils of the banks and
large corporations

Workers
Search for
Power

Workers Search for

Power

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6tRp-zRUJs

In New York City

popular economist
and land reformer
henry George with
support of the citys
Central Labor council
of the Knights of
Labor and the Irish
put George into the
presidential tick with

Tammany Hall threw thousands of

Henry Georges votes into the
Hudson, Yet, George finished a
respectful second for mayor of
New York

Milwaukees
Peoples party
elected the
mayor a state
senator, six
assembly men
and one
member of
Congress

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6tRp-zRUJs

Women Build
an Alliance

Francis Willard the leader

of the WCTU stated
women must abandon
the idea that weakness
and dependence were
their nature and join
assertively in movements
to change society. Willard
stated it has been too
long for women to stay
away from societies

Feminism of equal rights was a womens movement which claimed the ballot as part of a
larger transformation of womens status. The movement continued to argue for womens
equality in employment, education and politics. But with increasing frequency the native
born middle class women who dominated the suffrage movement claimed the vote as
educated members of a superior race.

Elitism was used with

the NAWSA. Carrie Catt
suggested extending
the vote to native born
white women would
help to counteract the
growing power of the
ignorant foreign vote.

Populist Party

The Financial
Crisis of
1890s

Financial
Collapse and
Depression

1893 Depression causes:

1)USA market for imported goods
including manufactured in the United
States sharply contracted
2)Financial panic in England spread
across the Atlantic
3)Tight credit
4)Falling agricultural prices
5)Weakening banking systems
6)Over expansion (railroads and land
speculation)

Strikes: Coueur
Dalene,
Homestead and
Pullman

Wage cuts in the silver

and lead mines of
northern Idaho led to one
of he most bitter conflicts
in a decade. To put a
brake on organized labor,
mine owners formed a
protective association in
March 1892. the mining
companies announced a
wage cut throughout the
Coeur dAllee district.

Silver
miners blew
up a mine.
The United
States sent
in 1500
troops
break the
strike and
allowed
scab labor.
Miners

Homestead,
Pennsylvania members
of the Amalgamated
Iron and Steel Workers
the most powerful union
of the AFL were well
paid and proud of their
skills. Carnegie and his
chairman Henry C Frick
decided not only to
lower wages but also to
break the union. In
1892 when
Amalgamates Contract.

When Homesteads city

government and mayor
and police chief who
were union members
decided not to protect
Homestead, Frick
brought in 8000 National
Guard Members and
Pinkerton Police.
Frick reduced the worker
force by 25% lengthen
the the workday and cut
wages 25%. Within a
decade every major
steel company operated
with union interference

Pullman Strike

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgX0PW0i

Richard C Olney a former railroad

lawyer used his current office as
attorney general claiming the
American Railway union was
disrupting mail shipments
(actually Debs had banned such
interference ) to issue a bland
injunction against the strike. On
July 4, President Cleveland sent
army unites to Chicago over the
pro labor Illinois governor John

Social
Gospel

At the forefront of this

moment was the Young
Womens Christian
Association which by
1900 had more than 600
local chapter. The Y
sponsored a range of
services for need
Christian women, ranging
from homes for the
elderly and for unmarried
mothers to elaborate

The First Y was

built in Detroit
and was called
the University
Club

Politics of Reform
Politics of Order

The Free Silver

Issue

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yejtZgzB5Ik

The thesis achieved considerable popular interest and elaboration by many scholars in history, economics and other fields,[6] but is not universally
accepted.[7][8][9] Certainly the 1901 musical version of "Oz", written by Baum, was for an adult audience and had numerous explicit references to
contemporary politics,[2] though in these references Baum seems just to have been "playing for laughs."[10] The 1902 stage adaptation mentioned,
by name, President Theodore Roosevelt and other political celebrities.[11] For example, the Tin Woodman wonders what he would do if he ran out of
oil. "You wouldn't be as badly off as John D. Rockefeller," the Scarecrow responds, "He'd lose six thousand dollars a minute if that happened."[2]
Littlefield's knowledge of the 1890s was thin, and he made numerous errors, but since his article was published, scholars in history,[7] political
science[1] and economics[12] have asserted that the images and characters used by Baum closely resemble political images that were well known in
the 1890s. Quentin Taylor, for example, claimed that many of the events and characters of the book resemble the actual political personalities,
events and ideas of the 1890s.[11] Dorothynave, young and simplerepresents the American people. She is Everyman, led astray and seeking the
way back home.[11] Moreover, following the road of gold leads eventually only to the Emerald City, which may symbolize the fraudulent world of
greenback paper money that only pretends to have value.[11] It is ruled by a scheming politician (the Wizard) who uses publicity devices and tricks
to fool the people (and even the Good Witches) into believing he is benevolent, wise and powerful when really he is selfish and cruel. He sends
Dorothy into severe danger hoping she will rid him of his enemy the Wicked Witch of the West. He is powerless and, as he admits to Dorothy, "I'm a
very bad Wizard."[13]
Historian Quentin Taylor sees additional metaphors, including:
The Scarecrow as a representation of American farmers and their troubles in the late 19th century.
The Tin Man representing the American steel industry's failures to combat increased international competition at the time
The Cowardly Lion as a metaphor for the American military's performance in the Spanish-American War.
Taylor also claimed a sort of iconography for the cyclone: it was used in the 1890s as a metaphor for a political revolution that would transform the
drab country into a land of color and unlimited prosperity. It was also used by editorial cartoonists of the 1890s to represent political upheaval.[11]
Other putative allegorical devices of the book include the Wicked Witch of the West as a figure for the actual American West; if this is true, then the
monkeys could represent another western danger: Native Americans. One suggested interpretation is that the Winged Monkeys in the West could be
a symbol for Native Americans. The King of the Winged Monkeys tells Dorothy, "Once we were a free people, living happily in the great forest, flying
from tree to tree, eating nuts and fruit and doing just as we pleased without calling anybody master. [] This was many years ago, long before Oz
came out of the clouds to rule over this land."[10]
In fact, Baum proposed in two editorials he wrote in December 1890 for his newspaper, the Saturday Pioneer, the total genocidal slaughter of all
remaining indigenous peoples. "The Whites," Baum wrote, "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?"[14]
Other writers have used the same evidence to lead to precisely opposite allegorical interpretations.[7]

Populisms
Last
Campaign

In 1892, Donnelly wrote the preamble of the People's Party's Omaha Platform for the
presidential campaign of that year. He was nominated for Vice President of the United States in
1900 by the People's Party. Also known as the Populist Party, the People's Party was a
development of the national Farmers' Alliance, and had a platform that demanded
abandonment of the gold standard (and later for free silver), abolition of national banks, a
graduated income tax, direct election of senators, civil service reform, and an eight-hour day.
That year, Donnelly also campaigned for governor of Minnesota, but was defeated. Despite
Donnelly's leadership role in the People's Party which protested the railroad companies

Populism and The

Peoples Party

In re Debs, 158 U.S. 564 (1895),[1] was a United States Supreme Court decision handed
down concerning Eugene V. Debs and labor unions. Debs, president of the American
Railway Union, had been involved in the Pullman Strike earlier in 1894 and challenged
the federal injunction ordering the strikers back to work where they would face being
fired. The injunction had been issued because of the violent nature of the strike.
However, Debs refused to end the strike and was subsequently cited for contempt of
court; he appealed the decision to the courts.
The main question being debated was whether the federal government had a right to
issue the injunction, which dealt with both interstate and intrastate commerce and
shipping on rail cars. With an opinion written by Justice David Josiah Brewer, the court
ruled in a unanimous decision in favor of the U.S. government. Joined by Chief Justice
Melville Fuller and Associate Justices Stephen Johnson Field, John Marshall Harlan,
Horace Gray, Henry Billings Brown, George Shiras, Jr., Howell Edmunds Jackson, and
Edward Douglass White, the court ruled that the government had a right to regulate
interstate commerce and ensure the operations of the Postal Service, along with a
responsibility to "ensure the general welfare of the public." The decision somewhat
slowed the theretofore building momentum of labor unions, which had been making
gains in government in respect to legislation, Supreme Court decisions, etc. Debs would
go on to lose another Supreme Court case in Debs v. United States.

The Social Gospel

The
Republican
Triumph

Republican Triumph

Nativism
and Jim
Crow

Nativism and Jim Crow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij6DWZ-W-KA

As the Souths prison population rose the renting out

of convicts became a profitable business. Every
southern state placed at least a portion of its convict
the majority of them blacks imprisoned for minor
offenses in the hands of private businessmen.
Railroad mines and lumber companies competed for
this new form of cheap involuntary labor. Conditions

One sociologist who studied the turn of the century

South reported that in places of business blacks had to
stand back and wait until whites had between served.
They could not raise their voices or in other ways act
assertively in the presence of whites and they had to
give way on the streets. In shops whites but not blacks
were allowed to try on clothing.

In every year
between 1883 to
1905 more than 50
black people were
lynched in the
south. They were
murdered in the
South. Lynching

Sam Hose being burned alive

In Louisiana the number of blacks registered to vote from

130,000 in 1894 to 1,342 a decade later. But 80,000 white
voters also lost the right. Disenfranchisement led to the rise
of a generation of southern Demagogues.

Sam Hose (c. 1875 April 23, 1899) was an African American worker who was tortured and executed by
a lynch mob in Coweta County, Georgia.
Sam Hose, a.k.a. Sam Holt, was born Tom Wilkes in south Georgia near Marshallville (Macon County)
around 1875. He grew up on a Macon County farm owned by the Jones family. His mother was a longtime employee of the family.
Wilkes moved to Coweta County, where he assumed the alias Sam Hose. On April 12, 1899, Wilkes/Hose
was accused of murdering his employer, Alfred Cranford, after a heated argument. The argument was
the result of Hose requesting time off to visit his mother who was ill. Alfred Cranford threatened to kill
Hose and pointed a gun at him. Hose was working at the time with an ax in his hands. Due to the
threat, he defended himself and threw the ax, killing Cranford.[1] Wilkes fled the scene and the search
for him began shortly thereafter. Over the next few days, stories suggesting that Wilkes sexually
assaulted Cranford's wife and assaulted his infant child caused a furor. On April 23, 1899, Wilkes/Hose
was apprehended in Marshallville and returned by train to Coweta County.
A mob removed him from the train at gunpoint in Newnan, Georgia. Former Governor William Yates
Atkinson and Judge Alvan Freeman pleaded with the crowd to release Wilkes/Hose to the custody of the
authorities. Ignoring their pleas, the crowd marched northward toward the Cranford home. The lynch
mob grew, reaching an estimated 2000 individuals. Once news of the capture reached Atlanta, large
crowds boarded trains to Newnan. Mistakenly believing that these trains were loaded with troops, the
mob stopped just north of Newnan. Newspapers reported that Wilkes'/Hose's ears, fingers and genitals
were severed. The skin from his face was removed and his body was doused with kerosene. He was tied
to a tree and burned alive. Some members of the mob cut off pieces of his dead body as souvenirs.
According to Philip Dray's At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America, the noted
civil rights leader and scholar W. E. B. Du Bois, who lived in Atlanta at the time, was on his way to a
scheduled meeting with Atlanta Constitution editor Joel Chandler Harris to discuss the lynching, when

Lynching in 1915 in Marietta,

Georgia

BETWEEN 1850 and 1870 NEARLY ALL CHINESE

IMMIGRANTS HAD BEEN UNATTACHED MEN BROUGHT
IN BY LABOR CONTRACTORS TO WORK WESTERN
GOLD FIELDS AND RAILROAD CONSTRUCTION AND
FACTORIES IN THE EARLY 1870 CONGRES EXCLUED
CHINESE WOMEN FROM ENTERING THE COUNTRY
HORACE PAGE AND JAMES G BLAINE WERE IN FAVOR
OF THIS.

In 1884, Mamie, then eight years old, was denied admission to the Spring Valley School,
because of her Chinese ancestry. Her parents sued the San Francisco Board of Education. They
argued that the school board's decision was a violation of the California Political Code, which
stated:
"Every school, unless otherwise provided by law, must be open for the admission of all children
between six and twenty-one years of age residing in the district; and the board of trustees, or
city board of education, have power to admit adults and children not residing in the district,
whenever good reasons exist therefor. Trustees shall have the power to exclude children of filthy
or vicious habits, or children suffering from contagious or infectious diseases."
On January 9, 1885, Superior Court Justice McGuire handed down the decision in favor of the
Tapes. On appeal, the California Supreme Court upheld the decision.
He wrote that "To deny a child, born of Chinese parents in this state, entrance to the public
schools would be a violation of the law of the state and the Constitution of the United States."
Results[edit]
After the decision, the San Francisco school board lobbied for a separate school system for
Chinese and other "Mongolian" children. A bill passed through the California state legislature
giving the board the authority to establish the Oriental Public School in San Francisco.

In the 1880s, Chinese immigrants to California faced many legal and economic hurdles, including
discriminatory provisions in the California Constitution. As a result, they were excluded, either by
law or by bias, from many professions. Many turned to the laundry business and in San Francisco
about 89% of the laundry workers were of Chinese descent. They often worked long hours because
that was the only job they could find.
In 1880, the elected officials of city of San Francisco thought they had a clever way to deal with the
Chinese in the city. They passed an ordinance that persons could not operate a laundry in a wooden
building without a permit from the Board of Supervisors. The ordinance conferred upon the Board of
Supervisors the discretion to grant or withhold the permits. At the time, about 95% of the city's 320
laundries were operated in wooden buildings. Approximately two-thirds of those laundries were
owned by Chinese persons. Although most of the city's wooden building laundry owners applied for
a permit, none were granted to any Chinese owner, while virtually all non-Chinese applicants were
granted a permit.[2][citation needed]
Yick Wo ( , Pinyin: Y H, Americanization: Lee Yick), who had lived in California and had
operated a laundry in the same wooden building for many years and held a valid license to operate
his laundry issued by the Board of Fire-Wardens, continued to operate his laundry and was
convicted and fined $10.00 for violating the ordinance. He sued for a writ of habeas corpus after he
was imprisoned in default for having refused to pay the fine.
The California Statute at Issue[edit]

The Court, in a unanimous opinion written by Justice Matthews, found that the administration of
the statute in question was discriminatory and that there was therefore no need to even consider
whether the ordinance itself was lawful. Even though the Chinese laundry owners were usually
not American citizens, the court ruled they were still entitled to equal protection under the
Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Matthews also noted that the court had previously ruled that it
was acceptable to hold administrators of the law liable when they abused their authority. He
denounced the law as a blatant attempt to exclude Chinese from the laundry trade in San
Francisco, and the court struck down the law, ordering dismissal of all charges against other
laundry owners who had been jailed.
Legacy[edit]
Yick Wo had little application shortly after the decision. In fact, it was not long after that the Court
developed the "separate but equal" doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), in
practice allowing discriminatory treatment of African Americans. Yick Wo was never applied at
the time to Jim Crow laws which, although also racially neutral, were in practice discriminatory
against blacks. However, by the 1950s, the Warren Court used the principle established in Yick
Wo to strike down several attempts by states and municipalities in the Deep South to limit the
political rights of blacks. Yick Wo has been cited in well over 150 Supreme Court cases since it
was decided.

Significance: Upholding the constitutionality of the Geary Act of 1892, the controversial Fong Yue
Ting decision recognized that the U.S. Congress had almost unlimited discretion to establish all
aspects of the nations immigration policy, including the rules and procedures for alien registration
and deportation.
Because Fong Yue Ting was an immigrant laborer born in China to Chinese parents, he was
ineligible for U.S. naturalization. He wanted to continue living in the United States but did have the
certificate of residence that was required by the Geary Act. Following his arrest by a federal
marshal, a district judge of New York ordered his immediate deportation without a hearing of any
kind. Fong appealed the action, claiming that he had applied for a certificate but could not supply
the credible white witness required by the Geary Act. Because he had only Chinese
acquaintances, he argued that the laws requirement was unfair, but a federal court of appeals
quickly rejected his argument. Eventually, his case reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
By a 6-3 vote, a divided Supreme Court upheld the rulings of the two lower courts. Writing on
behalf of the majority, Justice Horace Gray cited a large number of court precedents and
authoritative books on international law. He declared that the power of every sovereign nation to
deport noncitizens was as absolute and unqualified as the right to prohibit and prevent their
entrance into the country. There was no reason, therefore, why Congress might not add
requirements for immigrants already residing in the country. Although the three dissenting justices
did not deny congressional authority to enact new requirements, they insisted that the due
process clause of the Fifth Amendment mandated that any person residing in the country be given

New
Imperialism

The Path to
Imperialism

Imperialism of
Righteousness

All the Worlds a

Fair

All the Worlds Fair

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wzyRepJuvM

A Splendid Little
War

Teller Amendment
stated that the
United States had
no intention of
annexing or
dominating the
island. This turned
out to be false.

War in Cuba

George W
Prioleau a black
cavalry man who
had fought at
San Juan Hill. Is
America any
better than

The Platt Amendment

was a very strong
disappointment by the
Cubans. Jose Marti
leader of the Cuban
rebels stated To
change masters is not
to be free The memory
of the betrayal of 1898
would help to inspire
another Cuban
revolution half a
century later.

War in the
Philippines

War in the Philippines

The second war in the Philippines 1899-1900 cost

more than 100,000 Filipinos and 4,200 Americans.
Emilio Aguinaldo used the same constitution as the
United States to start the Philippine Government in
1899 but the United States would not allow this.
McKinley decided to retain the possession of the
islands. Mark Twain stated, "We did not come into

The Foraker Act, Pub.L. 56191, 31 Stat. 77, enacted April 12, 1900, officially known as the
Organic Act of 1900, is a United States federal law that established civilian (albeit limited
popular) government on the island of Puerto Rico, which had recently become a possession of the
United States as a result of the SpanishAmerican War. Section VII of the Foraker Act also
established Puerto Rican citizenship.[1] President William McKinley signed the act on April 12,
1900[2] and it became known as the Foraker Act after its sponsor, Ohio Senator Joseph B.
Foraker. Its main author has been identified as Secretary of War Elihu Root.
The new government had a governor and an 11-member executive council appointed by the
President of the United States, a House of Representatives with 35 elected members, a judicial
system with a Supreme Court and a United States District Court, and a non-voting Resident
Commissioner in Congress.[3][4] The Executive council was all appointed: five individuals were
selected from Puerto Rico residents while the rest were from those in top cabinet positions,
including attorney general and chief of police (also appointed by the President). The Insular
Supreme Court was also appointed. In addition, all federal laws of the United States were to be in
effect on the island. The first civil governor of the island under the Foraker Act was Charles H.
Allen, inaugurated on May 1, 1900 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. This law was superseded in 1917 by
the JonesShafroth Act.

Critics of the
Empire

Critics of the Empire

James Bryce with

Andrew Carnegie.
Bryce called the
African Americans
children of
nature and
insisted that giving
them the right a
vote was a terrible
mistake which
produced
corruption. This

Godkin was
an AntiImperialist
leader who
was against
the
Philippine

Anti-Imperialism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM5EXL-0fww

Brook Adams was the

grandson of John
Quincy Adams He
predicted that
because of its
economic power the
United States would
soon out weight any
single empire.

Strangers in a New Land

IMMIGRANTS AND THE CITY

DOMESIC VIRTUE HAD A MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING OF
ROLES IN SOCIETY
FOR THE MOST PART, AMERICA VIEWED THESE NEW
IMMIGRANTS AS A THREAT TO THE FUTURE OF THEIR
SOCIETY
NEW IMMIGRANTS CLUNG TOGETHER WITH THEIR
CUSTOMS, TRADITIONS OF NATIV COUNTRIES
THERE WERE DIFFERENT ETHNIC BENEVOLENT
SOCIETIES PRESENT IN THE CITY: IRISH, POLISH, ITALIAN

Strangers in a New Land

4/5 of NYC and
Chicago's
population was
foreign born
ancestry.
Between 1877-1980
more than 6.3 million
immigrants came to
the United States