11: Robber Barons and Rebels Flashcards
Before the Civil War, it took 61 hrs to produce an acre of wheat, in 1900, it took this many hours
3hrs
Name 5 innovations that became widespread between the Civil War and 1900
Answers include: Steam, electricity, steel, oil to light homes streets and factories, railroads and steam powered trains, telephone, typewriter, adding machine, manufactured ice for meatpacking, pneumatic drills,
What drove some of the population boom of cities in early 20th century?
Farmers who couldn’t afford new machinery or railroad rates moving to cities
How many railroad workers were killed or injured in 1889 according to the Interstate Commerce Commission
22,000
True or False: By 1900, J.P. Morgan controlled 1/3 of the country’s railroad mileage
False, 1/2 (100,000 miles)
Standard Oil Company of Ohio was started by this man
John D. Rockefeller
This early “entrepreneur” made his fortune in steel
Andrew Carnegie
This President’s message to businesses sounds almost exactly like Joe Biden’s: “a transfer of executive control from one party to another does not mean any serious disturbance of existing conditions”
Grover Cleveland
How did the Supreme Court interpret the Sherman Act in its 1895 ruling U.S. v. E. C. Knight Co.?
Said monopoly of sugar refining was a monopoly in manufacturing, and not commerce, so could not be regulated by Congress through the Sherman Act
What did the Supreme Court declare unconstitutional in Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company)
An attempt to tax high incomes at a higher rate
Why did the Supreme Court rule in 1877 that grain elevators could be regulated?
Because they were not simply private property, but invested with “a public interest”
One year after the decision in Munn v. Illinois (grain elevator), this association began organizing to reverse the decision, eventually succeeding
American Bar Association
Despite ostensibly passed to protect negro rights, the Supreme Court saw only 19 14th amendment cases about Negro rights, and this many about corporations (between 1890 and 1910)
288
In 1893, Supreme Court Justice David J. Brewer said that “The long majority of men are unwilling to endure that long self-denial and saving which makes accumulations possible . . . and hence it always will be true, that the wealth of a nation is in the hands of a ___”
Few
The line: “So great is the regard of the law for private property, that it will not authorize the least violation of it; no, not even for the common good of the whole community” was said in this text
Blackstone’s Commentaries
Author Russell Conwell, founder of Temple University, writer of “Acres of Diamonds”, wrote this about the poor
“there is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings”
John D. Rockefeller helped found this University
U of Chicago
Why did mill owners in Lowell want educated workers?
“When the latter (employees) are well-educated and the former (employers) are disposed to deal justly, controversies and strikes can never occur, nor can the minds of the masses be prejudiced by demagogues and controlled by temporary and factious considerations”
Idaho and Montana forbade textbooks propagating these doctrines
Political
About new immigrants in 1880s-90s: “There was desperate economic _________ among the newcomers
Competition
What happened in Rock Springs, Wyoming in 1885
Whites attacked 500 Chinese miners and killed 28
350,000 workers in 11,562 establishments went on strike for this in 1886
Eight-hour work day
The bomb thrown at police in Haymarket square during the 8-hour strikes (the Haymarket Affair) resulted in the arrests and death sentences of 8 anarchist leaders based solely on their what? (hint: there was no actual evidence linking them to the specific crime)
Writings, ideas, and speeches
There were 1,400 of these in 1886 involving 500,000 workers (hint: year known as “The year of the great uprising of labour)
Strikes
Black workers working these fields organized, demanding a dollar a day
Sugar
Which industry workers fought against iron-clad contracts in Tennessee by burning stockades and setting free convicts that had been brought in to replace them (1891)
Miners
In 1891 half of this city went on strike
New Orleans
The strike at Carnegie’s steel plant in 1892 occurred in this town
Homestead, Pennsylvania
642 banks failed and 16,000 businesses closed down during an economic crisis in this year
1893
Eugene Debs helped found this Union in 1893
The Americana Railway Union
Pullman strikers got the American Railway Union to ask members all over the country not to handle Pullman cars, which had this effect
A boycott of nearly all trains - a nationwide strike
What was the culmination of Pullman strike
Grover Cleveland ordered federal troops to Chicago and they violently squashed the rebellion (14,000 police, militia, and troops needed)
Farmers in the west found the price of their produce going down while shipping and loans became more expensive. Why?
Because monopolists could control prices but decentralized farmers could not
True or False” Post-civil war a fixed-to-gold money supply meant de-flation, dollars became more scarce and valuable making it harder to pay off loans
True
Describe the crop-lien system
The farmer gave the merchant a mortgage on his crop with interest because he didn’t have money to pay for supplies. Would get further into debt until the merchant took his farm
This organization undertook “the most massive organizing drive by any citizen institution of 19th century America” (i.e. recruiting)
The Farmer’s Alliance
The Farmer’s Alliance had this many members in 1889
400,000
What was the farmer’s alliance one victory?
Boycotting jute bags collectively and getting the price lowered
The Farmer’s Alliance birthed this political party
The People’s Party (or populist party)
This party, founded in Dallas in 1891, was interracial and radical
The Texas People’s party
What did blacks do in Grimes County
Win local offices (interracial cooperation)
True or False: The Democratic Party won voters away from the Populist party by appealing to southern racism
True
Quote by C. Vann Woodward: “Never before or since have the two races in the South come so close together as they did during the _______ struggles.”
Populist
True or False: The Farmer and Labour movements worked closely together
False, there were only occasional connections
What electoral circumstance led to the Populist movement’s downfall?
Entanglement with the Democratic party
Which President, representing corporate interests, won the 1896 election (the first election in which election financing was massive)
William McKinley
