Social/economic Developments (1865-1890)

Question 1

Social/economic key issues

Answer 1

1. Mass immigration
2. Social/regional divisions
3. African Americans
4. Growth of the economy - urbanisation/agriculture
5. Rise of big businesses/cartels/trusts

Question 2

African Americans position after reconstruction era?

Answer 2

• white segregationists tried to regain their old social dominance over AAs
• 1877 -> compromise = democrats have hold on ‘solid south’ + when troops withdraw - AAs lose legal rights

Question 3

African Americans after emancipation (negative)

Answer 3

• became sharecroppers
• black codes became Jim Crow laws/ grandfather clause - AAs lost the right to vote in many states + were segregated in all aspects of society
• lynchings were common

Question 4

Advancements for AA 1877-90?

Answer 4

• many AAs moved away, chose new surnames, married, set up new churches, founded new schools
• new public schools opened + 3 AA universities (Fisk, Howard, Hampton)
• Booker T. Washington headed the tuskagee institute in Alabama 1881-1915 -> trained AA teachers, but accommodated white supremacy
• illiteracy rates amongst AA dropped from 90% in 1860 to 50% in 1880

Question 5

How did economic developments impede Black Civil Rights 1877-1915

Answer 5

• the failure of the Freedmen ’ Bureau and white landowners’ exploitation meant it was difficult to profit from sharecropping + become independent - tying the majority of blacks to agriculture
• crop lien system - prevented blacks profiting from the high demand for crops
• overproduction in cotton farming - put cap on prices + profits
• sharecropping remained the major form of employment for the majority of blacks, who remained in poverty
• some blacks did manage to buy their own land - 25% of black farmers owned their land
• south to north migration was rare but some migrated within the south into urban areas where industry was slowly developing and unskilled labour was available
• railroad expansion in south + textile industry took of

Question 6

What social division were there?

Answer 6

• the speed + intensity of immigration + urbanisation created tension + division
• nativism grew - a belief that people whose parents were born in US wanted to protect the US from ‘alien’ ways - there was tension between ‘new’ and ‘old’ immigrants over jobs/housing
• growth in anti-Chinese feeling - ‘Yellow Peril’ was encourage by the media
• farmers and workers set up their own organisations such as the Granger Movement and Knights of Labour
• there was a push for female suffrage + the temperance movement (anti-alcohol)

Question 7

How were Chinese immigrants treated?

Answer 7

• resentment encouraged by the media through the ‘Yellow Peril’
• 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act passed to stop the immigration of Chinese workers (prevented them from gaining citizenship)
• Chinese had arrived since 1840s (gold rush), 1860s (railroads) and 1870s onwards (textile, tobacco, shoes, farm workers)
• cheap labour, good work ethic but resented by white workers

Question 8

Regional divisions: North/East

Answer 8

• hugely affected by industrialisation + urbanisation
• booming cities/areas of NY, Chicago, Ohio
• 1860 - 90 -> NY population doubled
• railroads made a huge impact
• clash in 1877 -> Great Railraod Strike, West Virginia (wage cuts) spread to Maryland, Pennsylvania and Philadelphia - president Hayes sent in federal troops
• 1870-71 orange riots - Irish Protestants vs. Catholics in New York

Question 9

Regional Divisions: The New South

Answer 9

• dominates by divisions between African Americans and whites (resentment amongst whites)
• AA uncertain whether to push for change
• biggest division between south and the rest of the US - New South was the Old South (11 old confederate states felt isolated)

Question 10

Regional Divisions: Wild West

Answer 10

• rapid settlement due to government + ordinary people
• whites broke treaties with Native Americans tribes
• sudden booms - railroads started to dominate

Question 11

Divisions between Native Americans and white settlers

Answer 11

• whites destroyed Indian way of life - open spaces fenced, Native Americans confined to reservations
• poor white farmers felt pushed out by growing exploitation of the West - often reliant on railroads for supplies + exporting their produce
• Granger movement appeared in 1867 as a cooperative to help farmers with land/loans etc and then put up candidates in elections

Question 12

Impact of growing economy on agriculture?

Answer 12

• agriculture still hugely influential - over 1/2 population rural + farm population increased 10m -> 25m 1865-90
• more land was cultivated; Homestead Act 1862 made thousands of acres available as free land to settlers - railroads bought a lots + sold on at a profit
• technological advances (reapers, threshers) encourage large scale agriculture + a rise in exports - but farmers were vulnerable to- Panic 1873 due to too much speculation + many banks failed

Question 13

Impact of the growth of the economy on the North East?

Answer 13

• expanding markets - towns expanding
• larger hubs meant bigger distribution networks
• Pittsburg - shipping meat products, cereals and canned food to northeast, Wisconsin; dairy
• railroads hugely important - but had monopoly power + set their own prices

Question 14

Impact of the growth in the economy on the south?

Answer 14

• king cotton still ruled
• small farmers found it hard to buy land some fell back into being tenant farmers/sharecroppers - struggled to access loans
• some economic development- railroad expansion, (exporting cotton, sugar and tobacco - but economy lagged behind the rest

Question 15

Impact of the growth in the economy to the west?

Answer 15

• Homestead Act 1862 - accelerated migration to west
• union pacific railroad completed 1869
• Native Americans land colonised by 1877
• west carved up to be railroads, ranches, farms and mining towns - vast amount of land cultivated e.g. Nebraska + Missouri
• 1889 Oklahoma Land Rush - railroad transported thousands westward - lending money + taking crops as payment
• 1860 west population- 760,000 1890 - 6 million
• steel industry very jmportant - ploughs, barbed wire, railroads etc

Question 16

What was the west like?

Answer 16

• difficult place to live; climate harsh + open to natural disasters
• lang marginal and dry
• prices for goods flunctuated - years of drought after 1887 marked the end of the previous good average annual rainfalls

Question 17

How did urbanisation change the economy?

Answer 17

• immigration, industrialisation and urbanisation changed the economy + society
• larger towns + cities in north
• all cities grew creating new market forces + business/job opportunities

Question 18

Rise of big businesses/cartels

Answer 18

• primary industries boomed first e.g. 1859 Oil wells developed in western Pennsylvania
• 1874 - small companies merged into standard oil
• late 1870s = development of large business empires - Andrew Carnegie US steel, John D Rockefeller Standard Oil
• railroads powerhouse of US industry - fierce competition = bigger companies swallowed up little ones - Cornelius Vanderbilt

Question 19

Rise of steel

Answer 19

• steel/oil dominated industry in 1880s
• 1875 steel production = 360,000 tonnes, by 1900 = 60 million tonnes
• Andrew Carnegie first steelworks 1870s Pennsylvania + bought out chain of others + consolidated Carnegie Steel Company by 1892

Question 20

Rise of oil

Answer 20

• first oil hit Titusville, Pennsylvania 1859
• Rockefeller + partners founded Standard Oil Company 1870
• 1872 Cleveland Massacre - Standard Oil bought up 22/26 main competitors