CM9: the transformation of American society Flashcards
1
Q
What are the dates of the transformation of American society?
A
1865 - 1900
2
Q
National expansion
A
- Growth of the Nation
- 1880: about 50 million people
- 1900: 76 million - Immigration:
- figures 1880-1900
- legislation (1882: Chinese Exclusion Act)
- evolution of transportation
- working and living conditions - Westward migration:
- 1867: purchase of Alaska
- New states joining the US - Urban growth:
- end of the frontier
- move towards urban life
3
Q
The West
A
- mineral empire:
- Gold and silver
- Gold Rush (1848-1852) - open range:
- texas cattle business
- end of the open range - expansion of the railroads:
- connection with the Pacific
- development in the South - indian policy:
- situation in late 1860s
- 1869: the Board of Indian Commissioners
- 1887: the Dawes Act
4
Q
California Gold Rush
A
- Gold Rush: rapid influx of fortune seekers in California
- 1848: John Sutter and James W. Marshall found flakes of gold in a steambed
- Sutter was bankrupt by 1852 (his property overrun, his goods and livestock stolen…)
- Prospectors sailed from the East (around Cape Horn or accross Panama)
- By August 1848: 4,000 gold miners were in the area
- A year later: about 80,000 ‘forty-niners’ had arrived at the California goldfields
- By 1853: 250,000 ; work was hard, prices high and living conditions primitive
- Organized capital and machinery progressively replaced individual efforts
- Permanent settlements with organized governments and law enforcement
- Some of those = ghost towns after the gold was exhausted
5
Q
Impact of Gold Rush in California
A
Demographics boomed:
- Before the discovery of gold: the territory’s population was about 160,000 people, the mast majority of whom = Native Americans
- By 1855: more than 300,000 people had arrived
- The massive influx gave rise to numerous cities and towns, with San Francisco gaining particular prominence
- The Gold Rush was credited with hastening statehood for California in 1850
6
Q
The open range
A
- Short period of time: 1866-1890
- Areas: western Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming + other Western states and territories = huge pasturelands for the herds of the Texas ranchmen
- Cattle trails went from western Texas northward, through Indian territory, and into the central and northern Great Plains
- Mid-1880s: enormous amounts of British capital went to the U.S. for investment in open-range ranching + American businessmen (profits of raising beef for domestic consumption or overseas shipment)
- Cooperation from the government
- Banned fencing of lands on either the public domain or Indian reservations
- Awarded beef contracts to cattle companies
- Beef was distributed among western Indians who were left without a food supply when the buffalo herds were destroyed
7
Q
End of the open range
A
- 1886-1887: disastrously cold winter = end of the open range
- Investors were ruined
- Hundreds of thousands of cattle perished in the thick snow and ice
- Farmers took over and fenced the lands
- 1890: little remained to indicate what had once been a booming business on the open range.
8
Q
Industrialization of the U.S. economy
A
- The growth of industry
- The dispersion of industry
- Industrial combinations
- Foreign commerce
- Unions
- The Haymarket Riot
9
Q
Growth of industry
A
- Prosperity in late 1870s
- Iron & steel industry 1880: 1,500,000 tons of steel to 1900: 11,000,000 tons
- Factors:
- Exploitation of Western resources (gold, silver, tobacco and Cotton, wheat)
- Construction of railroads
- Technological advances (typewriter, telephone, phonograph, ; automobile, Refrigerator car (on a train); petroleum products; increase of gas and electric power)
- Major inventions
- Energy sources
- Corporate form of business organization
- New powerful entrepreneurs (Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt…)
10
Q
Dispersion of industry
A
- Wide geographic distribution
- The steel industry
- Meat-packing = midwestern monopoly
- Textile & lumbering = South
11
Q
Industrial combinations
A
- A trust = new type of industrial organization: voting rights of a controlling number of shares of competing firms are entrusted to a small group of men, or trustees –> able to prevent competition among the companies they controlled.
- The trust was a popular vehicle for the creation of monopolies
- By 1890, there were trusts in whiskey, lead, cottonseed oil and salt
- After 1892 when the courts of Ohio ruled that the trust violated the state’s antimonopoly laws, trusts became holding companies.
- Holding companies or mergers = the favourite forms for the creation of monopolies, though the term trust remained in the popular
vocab as a common description of any monopoly - 1882: the Standard Oil Trust
- 1890: the American Tobacco Company
- 1891: the American Sugar Refining Company
12
Q
Names and dates of life of the Robber Barons
A
- John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937)
- Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)
13
Q
Foreign commerce
A
- Increase of exportation ; mainly agricultural products
- The U.S merchant marine
14
Q
Unions
A
- Tensions between employers and workers
- 1869: the Knights of Labor
- 1877: the Great Railroad Strike
15
Q
Haymarket Riot
A
- 1886: action against the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company in Chicago
- Emergence of the AFL (American Federation of Labor); Samuel Gompers = President
