CHAPTER 20

Politics and Expansion in an Industrializing Age,1877–1900

uly 2, 1881, was a muggy summer day in Washington, D.C., and President JJames A. Garfield was leaving town for a visit to western Massachusetts. At 9:30 A.M., as he strolled through the railroad station, shots rang out. Garfield fell, a bullet in his back. The shooter, Charles Guiteau, immediately surren- dered. At first, doctors thought the president would recover. But Garfield, a vet- eran who had seen the long-term effects of gunshot wounds, knew better. “I am a dead man,” he told them. His doctors tried everything. But as the doc- tors probed the wound with bare hands and unsterilized instruments, blood poisoning set in. On September 19, Garfield died. The nation mourned. An Ohio farm boy, Will Boyer, was shocked to hear the news from another farmer as he walked along a country road. Garfield embodied the American dream of the self-made man. Born in a log cabin in CHAPTER OUTLINE Ohio (he was the last log-cabin president), he had worked his way through Williams College, preached in the Disciples of Christ Church, taught at Party Politics in an Era of Social and Economic Upheaval, 1877–1884 Hiram College, practiced law, and won election to the Ohio senate. He fought in the Civil War, went to Congress in 1863, and was elected president in Politics of Privilege, Politics of 1880—thereby sealing his death warrant. As for Guiteau, the jury rejected his Exclusion, 1884–1892 insanity plea, and in June 1882 he was hanged. The 1890s: Politics in a Depression Decade

The Watershed Election of 1896 Expansionist Stirrings and War with Spain, 1878–1901

609 610 CHAPTER 20 Politics and Expansion in an Industrializing Age, 1877–1900

A decent, well-meaning man, Garfield also embod- party was able to control the political process. But in ied a political generation that seemed more preoccupied 1896, the election of President William F. McKinley, who with the spoils of office than with the problems of ordi- would also die from an assassin’s bullet, brought the bit- nary people. In Congress Garfield had been tainted by ter battle over economic standards to an end and ush- the 1873 Crédit Mobilier scandal and other corruption ered in a generation of Republican domination of charges. His presidential nomination in 1880 had result- national politics. Having been elected in a campaign ed from a split in the Republican party between two rival focused on the restoration of prosperity, McKinley stum- factions, the Stalwarts and the Half-Breeds, that vied bled into war with Spain, substantially increased U.S. with each other over the distribution of patronage jobs. territorial holdings, and established new outposts from The obscure Guiteau, a Stalwart who had supported which American corporations could gain access to over- Garfield, expected to be rewarded with a high diplomat- seas markets. Why it took twenty years to resolve the ic post. When this failed to materialize, his delusionary debate over economic policy and achieve a realignment mental state worsened. Viewing Garfield’s death as “a in national politics, how the Republicans triumphed political necessity,” he believed that the Stalwarts would over the protests of farmers and laborers, and what hail him as a hero. (Indeed, he had selected as his gun a effect the Republican vision had on territorial expansion .44-caliber “British Bulldog” pistol because it would look are the subjects of this chapter. good in a museum.) While contemporary critics like Henry Adams This chapter focuses on four major questions: viewed Garfield’s assassination as an example of the absurdity of late-nineteenth century politics—a time, ■ How did the Democratic and Republican parties Adams sneered, of “little but damaged reputations”— build coalitions of loyal followers out of their diverse historians today see it as a sign of how closely contested ethnic and regional constituencies? and highly emotional political battles were. The phe- ■ How did environmental factors influence the rise of nomenal expansion of large corporations, the settle- the Grange and the Farmers’ Alliance movements? ment of the trans-Mississippi West, and the surge in urban growth put intense pressure on the political ■ Why was the election of 1896 a watershed event? process. At stake was not only the government’s proper Why did William Jennings Bryan fail to win the role in the stimulation and regulation of America’s presidency? explosive industrial growth, but also the thorny issues of ■ Why did the United States go to war with Spain and how to assimilate the new immigrants, control chaotic become an imperial power? urban life, gain access to new markets, and encourage territorial expansion. These intense debates over economic and social PARTY POLITICS IN AN ERA policy involved nothing less than contending visions of OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC how industrial growth should or should not be regulated UPHEAVAL, 1877–1884 and who should benefit financially. The struggle to con- trol economic expansion reached its peak in the 1890s Between 1877 and 1894 four presidents squeezed into when a new third party, the Populists, joined with the office by the narrowest of margins; control of the House Democrats to challenge corporate control of the econo- of Representatives changed hands five times; and seven my. The Populist campaign for “free silver,” a monetary new western states were admitted into the Union. policy that would back currency with silver reserves Competition between political parties was intense. No instead of gold, implied strong support for reforms that one party could muster a working majority. would have relieved the exploitation of labor and the To meet these challenges, Republicans, Democrats, abysmal working conditions that accompanied the surg- and third-party leaders sought desperately to reshape ing industrialization of this period. Representing the their political organizations to win over and cement the opposite position, the Republican party’s support for loyalty of their followers. While the Democrats rebuilt high tariffs and the gold standard represented a commit- their strength in the South and mounted new chal- ment to encouraging the growth of large corporations, to lenges, Republicans struggled to maintain the loyalties freeing industry to expand without regulation, and to of the working class, to strengthen their support from developing new markets. business, and to fight off the threat of new third parties. From the mid-1870s to the mid-1890s, power see- Not until 1896, in the aftermath of a massive depression sawed back and forth between the political parties. No that hit when the Democrats and a new third party, the Party Politics in an Era of Social and Economic Upheaval, 1877–1884 611

Populists, were in office, did the Republicans consoli- instrument to protect family life. Hostility to slavery was date their power and build a coalition that would control based in part on the assumption that slaveholding cor- Congress and the presidency for the next fifteen years. roded family values. The Democrats, in contrast, had Between 1876 and 1896, the intense competition viewed emancipation as a threat to patriarchal order between parties produced an incredible turnout of vot- and racial control. ers. Although most women did not yet have the vote and After the Civil War, these positions hardened into blacks were increasingly being disenfranchised, more political ideologies. Republicans justified their support than 80 percent of eligible white males often voted, and for the tariff and defended their commitment to Union in particularly hard-fought state and local elections, the widow’s pensions as a protection for the family home percentage could rise to 95 percent. Voter participation a and female wage earners. Men, in particular, associated century later would equal scarcely half that level. loyalty to party with a sense of masculinity. Democrats Higher voter turnout resulted in part from the countered, using metaphors of the seduction and rape attempts of the major parties to navigate the stormy of white women by external forces and labeling economy created by postwar industrial and geographic Republican programs as classic examples of the perils of expansion, the influx of millions of immigrants, and the using excessive government force. High tariffs imperiled pell-mell growth of cities (see Chapters 18 and 19). At the the family and threatened economic disaster. same time that voter turnout shot up, however, political Despite their differences over the tariff and mone- parties sidestepped many of the issues created by indus- tary policy, neither Republicans nor Democrats believed trialization such as taxation of corporations, support for that the national government had any right to regulate those injured in factory accidents, and poverty relief. corporations or to protect the social welfare of workers. Nor was the American labor movement, unlike its coun- Many members of the dominant parties, particularly terparts in Europe, able to organize itself effectively as a among the middle and upper classes, embraced the political force (see Chapter 18). Except for the Inter- doctrine of laissez-faire—the belief that unregulated state Commerce Act of 1887 and the largely symbolic competition represented the best path to progress. Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, Washington generally According to this view, the federal government should ignored the social consequences of industrialization and promote economic development but not regulate the focused instead on encouraging economic growth. industries that it subsidized. How can we explain this refusal and, at the same Rather than looking to Washington, people turned time, account for the enormous popular support for to local or state authorities. On the Great Plains, angry parties? The answer lies in the political ideology of the farmers demanded that their state legislatures regulate period and the two major symbolic and economic issues railroad rates. In the cities, immigrant groups competed that preoccupied lawmakers nationally. The first in- for political power while native-born reformers periodi- volved the economic issues of the tariff and the money cally attempted to oust the political machines. supply. The second issue focused on civil-service re- Moreover, city and state governments vied with form, aimed at awarding government jobs on the basis each other for control. Cities often could not change of merit rather than political connections. their system of government, alter their tax structure, or regulate municipal utilities without state approval. When Chicago wanted to issue permits to street pop- Contested Political Visions corn vendors, for example, the Illinois legislature had to Political parties in the late nineteenth century energized pass a special act. voters not only by appealing to economic self-interest, Party loyalty for both Republicans and Democrats as was evident in support for industrialization and pen- was reinforced by a sense of personal grievance that sions for Civil War veterans and their widows, but also by resulted from the belief, often true, that the other party linking their programs to deeply held beliefs about the had engaged in election fraud to steal elections. nature of the family and the proper role of government. Although both parties, in both the North and the South, In its prewar years, the Republican party had enhanced practiced fraud by rigging elections, throwing out oppo- economic opportunities for common people by using sition votes, and paying for “floaters” who moved from governmental authority to expand railroads, increase precinct to precinct to vote, each developed a sense of tariff protection for industry, and provide land subsidies moral outrage at the other’s behavior that invigorated to farmers. With encouragement from evangelical min- party spirit. isters, it had also espoused a belief in female moral By linking economic policy to family values, both superiority and a willingness to use government as an national parties reinforced the appeal of their platforms 612 CHAPTER 20 Politics and Expansion in an Industrializing Age, 1877–1900

and, in the process, encouraged the participation of Ohio; and northern cities with large immigrant popula- women in the political process. Although most women tions. In the South the white Democratic party elite could not vote, they played an active role in politics in viewed Republicans as villains who had devastated their this period. Francis Willard and her followers in the lands and set up fraudulent carpetbag governments in Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), for the defeated Confederacy. The Democrats campaigned example, helped create a Prohibition and Home for minimal government expenditures, opposed tariff Protection Party in the 1880s. A decade later western increases, and generally attacked what they considered women Populists won full suffrage in Colorado, Idaho, to be “governmental interference in the economy.” and Utah. In addition to resisting government support for the economy, Democrats staunchly defended their immi- grant followers. On the state and local levels, they fierce- Patterns of Party Strength ly opposed prohibition and other attempts to limit alco- In the 1870s and 1880s each party had its own ideological hol use and license saloons. They also advocated appeal and centers of regional strength. The Democrats support for parochial schools and opposed attempts to ruled the South; southern sections of border states like require immigrant children to attend only those schools that taught in English. The Republicans, who reigned in rural and small- town New England, Pennsylvania, and the upper Midwest and who drew support from the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a social and political lobbying organization of northern Civil War veterans, often “waved the bloody shirt,” reminding voters that their party had led the nation during the Civil War. “The Democratic Party,” wrote one Republican, “may be described as a common sewer and loathsome recepta- cle, into which is emptied every element of treason North and South.” To solidify their followers, the Republicans ran a series of former Union army generals for president and voted generous veterans’ benefits. State and local party leaders managed campaigns. They chose the candidates, raised money, organized ral- lies, and—if their candidate won—distributed public jobs to party workers. Chieftains like the former saloon- keepers “Big Jim” Pendergast of Kansas City, a Democrat, and George B. Cox of Cincinnati, a Republican, turned out the vote by taking care of constituents, handing out municipal jobs, and financing campaigns with “contri- butions” extracted from city employees. Although the struggle to define the legitimate use of governmental authority shaped the general debate between the two major parties on the federal level, fam- ily tradition, ethnic ties, religious affiliation, and local issues often determined an individual’s vote. Outside the South, ethnicity and religion were the most reliable pre- dictors of party affiliation. Catholics, especially Irish Catholics, and Americans of German ancestry tended to vote Democratic. Old-stock northerners, in contrast, including 75 percent of Methodists and Congregation- alists, 65 percent of Baptists, and 60 percent of Presbyterians voted Republican. Among immigrant groups, most British-born Protestants and 80 percent of Party Politics in an Era of Social and Economic Upheaval, 1877–1884 613

Swedish and Norwegian Lutherans voted Republican, as of gold or silver coins or U.S. Treasury notes redeemable did African Americans, North and South. Although intol- for gold or silver. (Currency from some sixteen hundred erant of racial differences, the Democrats were generally state banks was also in circulation, worsening a chaotic more accepting of religious diversity than were the monetary situation.) Republicans. To complicate matters, opposing groups clashed As a result of the effect of ethnicity on politics, elec- over the money question. Bankers and creditors, most toral skirmishes between groups often centered on cul- business leaders, economists, and politicians believed tural differences, as native-born Protestants tried to that economic stability required a strictly limited cur- force on the immigrants their own views on gambling, rency supply. Debtors, especially southern and western prostitution, temperance, and Sabbath observance. No farmers, favored expanding the money supply to make it issue on the local level aroused more conflict than pro- easier for them to pay off their debts. The monetary hibition. Irish whiskey drinkers, German beer drinkers, debate focused on a specific question: should the Civil and Italian wine drinkers were equally outraged by War paper “greenbacks” that were still in circulation be antiliquor legislation. State and local prohibition pro- retained and even expanded, or phased out, leaving only posals always aroused passionate voter interest. a currency backed by gold (see Chapter 15). The hard times associated with the Panic of 1873 sharpened this The Hayes White House: dispute. Virtue Restored The Greenback party (founded 1877) advocated an expanded money supply, health and safety regulations In this era of locally based politics and a diminished for the workplace, and other measures to benefit work- presidency, the state leaders who ran party politics tend- ers and farmers. In the 1878 midterm elections, with the ed to favor appealing but pliable presidential candi- support of labor organizations angered by the govern- dates. Rutherford B. Hayes fit the mold perfectly. A ment’s hostility in the labor unrest of 1877, Greenback lawyer and Civil War general wounded in action, Hayes candidates won fourteen seats in Congress. had won admiration as an honest governor of Ohio. His As prosperity returned, the Greenback party faded, major presidential achievement was to restore respect but the money issue did not. The debate now focused on for the office after the Grant scandals. With his flowing the coinage of silver. In 1873, with little silver being beard, the benevolent Hayes brought dignity and deco- mined, Congress instructed the U.S. mint to stop mak- rum to the White House. In part, this reflected the influ- ing silver coins. Silver had been “demonetized.” But new ence of his wife, Lucy, an intelligent, college-educated discoveries in Nevada (see Chapter 17) soon increased woman of great moral earnestness. The Hayeses and the silver supply, and debtor groups now demanded that their five children often gathered after dinner for hymns the government resume the coinage of silver. and family prayers. Enthusiastically backed by the silver-mine owners, In contrast to the bibulous Grant, Hayes drank only silver forces won a partial victory in 1878, when moderately. He also recognized the political strength of Congress required the Treasury to buy up to $4 million the temperance movement. “Lemonade Lucy” Hayes worth of silver each month and mint it into silver dollars. supported the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. But the Treasury, dominated by monetary conservatives, After one White House dinner, Hayes’s secretary of state sabotaged the law’s intent by refusing to circulate the sil- grumbled, “It was a brilliant affair. The water flowed like ver dollars that it minted. champagne.” Frustrated silver advocates tried a new approach in the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890. This measure Regulating the Money Supply instructed the Treasury to buy, at current market prices, In the 1870s politicians confronted a tough problem of 4.5 million ounces of silver monthly—almost precisely economic policy: how to create a money supply ade- the output of the nation’s silver mines. The act further quate for a growing economy without producing infla- required the government to issue Treasury notes, tion. Americans’ almost superstitious reverence for gold redeemable in gold or silver, equivalent to the cost of and silver added to the difficulty of establishing a coher- these purchases. This law did slightly increase the ent monetary policy. The only trustworthy money, many money supply; but as silver prices fell in 1893 and after, believed, was gold or silver, or certificates exchangeable the government paid far less for its monthly purchases for these precious metals. Reflecting this notion, all the and therefore issued fewer Treasury notes. The contro- federally issued currency in circulation in 1860 consisted versy over silver dragged on. 614 CHAPTER 20 Politics and Expansion in an Industrializing Age, 1877–1900

and ordered the resignation of two high officials. Both The Spoils System men had ties to Conkling, the leader of the Stalwart fac- For decades successful candidates in national, state, and tion; one, Chester A. Arthur, was Conkling’s top lieu- local elections had rewarded supporters and contribu- tenant in passing out jobs. When the two ignored Hayes’s tors with jobs ranging from cabinet seats and ambas- order, the president suspended them. Hayes’s action sadorships to lowly municipal posts. To its defenders, won praise from civil-service reformers, but Conkling this system, originally called rotation in office, seemed simply ridiculed “snivel service” and “Rutherfraud B. the most democratic means of filling government posi- Hayes.” tions, and it provided upward mobility for lucky appointees. But unqualified and incompetent appli- Civil-Service Reform Succeeds cants often got jobs simply because of their party loyalty. Once in office, these appointees had to contribute to the When Congressman James A. Garfield, who had ties to reelection campaigns of their political patrons. Because the Half-Breed faction, won the 1880 Republican presi- of such abuses, this mode of filling public jobs came to dential nomination, the delegates, to soften the blow to be called the spoils system after the old expression, “To Conkling, chose Chester A. Arthur, the Conkling loyalist the victor belong the spoils.” Hayes had recently fired, as Garfield’s running mate. For years, a small but influential group of upper- Since Garfield enjoyed excellent health, the choice of the class reformers, including Missouri Senator Carl Schurz totally unqualified Arthur seemed safe. and editor E. L. Godkin of the Nation, had campaigned The Democrats nominated a career army officer for a professional civil service based on merit. Well bred, from Pennsylvania, Winfield Scott Hancock, and the well educated, and well heeled, these reformers favored Greenbackers gave the nod to Congressman James B. a civil service staffed by “gentlemen.” Whatever their Weaver of Iowa. Garfield’s managers stressed his Civil class biases, the reformers had a point. A professional War record and his log-cabin birth. By a razor-thin mar- civil service was needed as government grew more gin of under forty thousand votes (of 9.2 million cast), complex. Garfield edged out Hancock; Weaver trailed far behind. Cautiously embracing the civil-service cause, When Garfield chose Blaine as secretary of state President Hayes launched an investigation of the cor- and named a Conkling opponent as the New York City ruption-riddled New York City customs office in 1877 customs collector, Conkling, in a political maneuver, Politics of Privilege, Politics of Exclusion, 1884–1892 615 resigned from the Senate. He hoped that the New York Fed up with both the Democrats’ and Republicans’ legislature would reelect him and thereby strengthen fraud and inattention to the needs of rural Americans, his political power. But Conkling miscalculated. The debt-ridden, drought-stricken farmers mounted a spir- legislature chose another senator and ended Conkling’s ited protest. While the Grange and Farmers’ Alliance career. movements condemned the monopolistic practices of Garfield’s assassination in 1881, which brought to grain and cotton buyers, in the post-Reconstruction the White House Vice President Arthur, the very symbol South the white majority took steps to consolidate their of patronage corruption, gave a powerful emotional political power by denying the region’s black citizens thrust to the cause, as civil-service reformers portrayed their most basic rights. the fallen president as a spoils-system martyr. In 1883 Congress enacted a civil-service law introduced by 1884: Cleveland Victorious Senator George Pendleton of Ohio (Garfield’s home state) and drafted by the Civil Service Reform League At a tumultuous Chicago convention in 1884, the that had been created two years earlier. The Pendleton Republicans nominated their best-known leader, James Civil Service Act set up a commission to prepare com- G. Blaine. A gifted orator with a keen memory for names petitive examinations and establish standards of merit and faces, Blaine spoke for the younger, more dynamic for a variety of federal jobs; it also forbade political can- wing of the Republican party eager to shed the taint of didates from soliciting contributions from government “Grantism,” promote economic development, and take workers. The Pendleton Act initially covered only about a greater interest in foreign policy. 12 percent of federal employees but was gradually But Blaine’s name had been smirched in the tawdry expanded. The creation of a professional civil service politics of the Gilded Age. In Blaine’s 1876 senatorial helped bring the federal government in step with the campaign, his opponents had published letters in which modernizing trends transforming society. Blaine, as Speaker of the House, offered political favors As for Chester A. Arthur, the fact that he proved to be to a railroad company in exchange for stock. For civil- a mediocre president pleasantly surprised those who service reformers, Blaine epitomized the hated patron- had expected him to be an utter disaster. Some feared age system. To E. L. Godkin, he “wallowed in spoils like a that Roscoe Conkling would be “the power behind the rhinoceros in an African pool.” throne,” but Arthur supported civil-service reform and Sensing Blaine’s vulnerability, the Democrats chose proved quite independent. Fed up with the feuding a sharply contrasting nominee, Grover Cleveland of New Republicans, in 1882 the voters gave the Democrats a York. In a meteoric political rise from reform mayor of strong majority in the House of Representatives. In 1884, Buffalo to governor, Cleveland had fought the bosses for the first time since the 1850s, they would put a and spoilsmen. Short, rotund, and resembling a bulldog, Democrat in the White House: Grover Cleveland. Cleveland was his own man. The shrewdness of the Democrats’ choice became apparent when Godkin, Carl Schurz, and other POLITICS OF PRIVILEGE, Republican reformers bolted to Cleveland. They were POLITICS OF EXCLUSION, promptly nicknamed Mugwumps, an Algonquian term 1884–1892 for a renegade chief. But Cleveland had liabilities, including the fact that The stalemate between the two major parties in their as a young man he had fathered an illegitimate child. battle to establish the standards for economic growth Cleveland admitted the indiscretion, but the continued under President Cleveland. Although no radi- Republicans still jeered at rallies: “Ma, Ma, where’s my cal, Cleveland challenged powerful interests by calling pa?” Cleveland also faced opposition from Tammany for cuts in the tariff and in veterans’ pensions. In 1888 Hall, the New York City Democratic machine that he had aroused business groups and the veterans’ lobby rallied fought as governor. If Tammany’s immigrant voters to defeat Cleveland and elect Benjamin Harrison of stayed home on election day, Cleveland could lose his Indiana, a former Civil War general, in one of the most own state. But in October a New York City clergyman corrupt campaigns in American history. Harrison fur- denounced the Democrats as the party of “Rum, ther alienated voters by passing a high tariff and an Romanism, and Rebellion.” Blaine failed to immediately expanded pension law that increased the number of repudiate the remark. The Cleveland campaign man- pensioners by 43 percent. agers widely publicized this triple insult to Catholics, to 616 CHAPTER 20 Politics and Expansion in an Industrializing Age, 1877–1900

patriotic Democrats tired of the “bloody shirt,” and to the budget surplus as a corrupting influence. In his drinkers. This blunder and the Mugwumps’ defection annual message to Congress in 1887, Cleveland argued allowed Cleveland to carry New York State by twelve that lower tariffs would not only cut the federal surplus hundred votes, and with it the election. but would also reduce prices and slow the development of trusts. Although the Democratic campaign of 1888 gave little attention to the issue, Cleveland’s talk of low- Tariffs and Pensions ering the tariff struck many corporate leaders as highly In some respects, Cleveland fits the passive image of threatening. Gilded Age presidents. He had early embraced the belief Cleveland stirred up another hornet’s nest when he that government must not meddle in the economy. In took on the Grand Army of the Republic. Veterans’ dis- Andrew Jackson’s day, laissez-faire had been a radical ability pensions cost the government millions of dollars idea endorsed by ambitious small entrepreneurs who annually. No one opposed pensions for the deserving, wanted business conditions favorable to competition; but by the 1880s fraudulent claims had become a public by the 1880s it had become the rallying cry of a corpo- scandal. Unlike his predecessors, Cleveland investigated rate elite opposed to any public regulation or oversight. these claims and rejected many of them. In 1887 he Sharing this outlook, Cleveland asserted the power of vetoed a bill that would have pensioned all disabled vet- the presidency mostly through his vetoes and displayed erans (even if their disability had nothing to do with mil- a limited grasp of industrialization’s impact. Vetoing a itary service) and their dependents. The pension list bill that would have provided seeds to drought-stricken should be an honor roll, he declared, not a refuge for farmers in Texas, he warned that people should not frauds. expect the government to solve their problems. One public matter did arouse Cleveland’s energies: 1888: Big Business the tariff, an issue involving a tangle of conflicting eco- and the GAR Strike Back nomic and political interests. Tariff duties were a major source of revenue in the era before a federal income tax, By 1888 some influential interest groups had concluded so the tariff was really a form of taxation. But which that Cleveland must go. When Blaine decided not to imported goods should be subject to duties, and how challenge him, the Republicans turned to Benjamin much? Opinions differed radically. Harrison of Indiana, the grandson of William Henry The producers of such commodities as coal, hides, Harrison. A corporation lawyer and former senator, timber, and wool demanded tariff protection against Harrison was so aloof that some ridiculed him as the foreign competition, and industries that had prospered human iceberg. His campaign managers learned to behind tariff walls—iron and steel, textiles, machine whisk him away after speeches before anyone could talk tools—wanted protection to continue. Many workers in with him or experience his flabby handshake. these industries agreed, convinced that high tariffs Harrison’s managers also developed a new style of meant higher wages. Other manufacturers, however, electioneering. They brought delegations to Indian- while seeking protection for their finished products, apolis and hammered at the tariff issue. Falsely portray- wanted low tariffs on the raw materials they required. ing Cleveland as an advocate of “free trade”—the elimi- Massachusetts shoe manufacturers, for example, urged nation of all tariffs—they warned of the bad effects of high duties on imported shoes but low duties on import- such a step. The high protective tariff, they argued, ed hides. Most farmers, by contrast, hated the protective ensured prosperity, decent wages for industrial workers, tariff, charging that it inflated farm-equipment prices and a healthy home market for farmers. and, by impeding trade, made it hard to sell American The Republicans amassed a $4 million campaign farm products abroad. fund from worried business leaders. (Because the Cleveland’s call for lower tariffs arose initially from Pendleton Civil Service Act had outlawed campaign con- the fact that in the 1880s the high tariff, generating mil- tributions by government workers, political parties lions of dollars in federal revenue, was feeding a growing depended more than ever on corporate donors.) This budget surplus. This surplus tempted legislators to dis- war chest purchased not only posters and buttons but tribute the money in the form of veterans’ pensions or also votes. expensive public-works programs, commonly called Despite such chicanery, Cleveland got almost a pork-barrel projects, in their home districts. With his hundred thousand more votes than Harrison. But horror of paternalistic government, Cleveland viewed Harrison carried the key states of Indiana and New York Politics of Privilege, Politics of Exclusion, 1884–1892 617

FIGURE 20.1 1.8 Civil War Pensions and Pensioners, 1866–1917 1.6 The pension system for Union army Disbursements veterans represented a major federal 1.4 Pensioners (millions) welfare program in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 1.2 Source: William H. Glasson, Federal Military Pensions in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1 1918), p. 273. 0.8

0.6

0.4 Disbursements ($100 million per year)

0.2

0 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 and won in the electoral college. The Republicans held per infestations consumed nearly half the midwestern the Senate and regained the House. When Harrison wheat crop between 1873 and 1877. Although overall piously observed that Providence had aided the production surged after 1870, the abundant harvests Republican cause, his campaign chairman snorted, undercut prices. Wheat tumbled from $2.95 a bushel in “Providence hadn’t a damn thing to do with it. ...[A] 1866 to $1.06 in 1880 (see Figure 20.2). Countless farm- number of men...approach[ed] the gates of the peni- ers who had borrowed heavily to finance homesteads tentiary to make him president.” and expensive new machinery went bankrupt or barely Harrison swiftly rewarded his supporters. He survived. One struggling Minnesota farmer wrote the appointed as commissioner of pensions a GAR official governor in 1874, “[W]e can see nothing but starvation who, on taking office, declared “God help the surplus!” in the future if relief does not come.” The pension rolls soon ballooned from 676,000 to nearly When relief did not come, the farmers responded by a million (see Figure 20.1). This massive pension system setting up cooperative ventures. In 1867, under the lead- (which was coupled with medical care in a network of ership of Oliver H. Kelley, a Department of Agriculture veterans’ hospitals) became America’s first large-scale clerk, midwestern farmers formed the Grange, or public-welfare program. In 1890 the triumphant “Patrons of Husbandry,” as it was officially called. Republicans also enacted the McKinley Tariff, which Membership climbed to more than 1.5 million in the try- pushed rates to an all-time high. ing years of the early 1870s. Patterned after the Masonic Rarely has the federal government been so sub- Order, the Grange offered information, emotional sup- servient to entrenched economic interests and so out of port, and fellowship. For the inexperienced homestead- touch with the plight of the disadvantaged as during the er, it made available a library of the latest findings on 1880s. But discontent was rising. The midterm election planting and livestock raising. For the lonely farm fami- of 1890, when the Democrats gained sixty-six congres- ly, the Grange organized biweekly social gatherings, sional seats to win control of the House of Repre- including cooperative meals and lively songfests. sentatives, awakened the nation to a tide of political But the Grange’s central concern was farmers’ eco- activism engulfing the agrarian South and West. This nomic plight. An 1874 circular announced the organiza- activism, spawned by chronic problems in rural tion’s primary purpose: to help farmers “buy less and America, had a long history. produce more, in order to make our farms more self- sustaining.” Grangers embraced the Jacksonian belief that the products of the soil were the basis of all honor- The Grange Movement able wealth and that the producer classes—people who As discussed in Chapter 17, Great Plains farming proved worked with their hands—formed the true backbone of far riskier than many had anticipated. Terrible grasshop- society. Members sought to restore self-sufficiency to 618 CHAPTER 20 Politics and Expansion in an Industrializing Age, 1877–1900

FIGURE 20.2 160 Consumer Prices and Farm- Product Prices, 1865–1913 140 As cycles of drought and debt battered Great Plains wheat growers, a Kansas farmer wrote, “At the age of 52, after a 120 long life of toil, economy, and self-denial, I find myself and family virtually paupers.” 100

80 Index

60

40

20

0 1865 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910

Farmers’ income exceeds their Price index for farm expenditures on consumer products products (1913 =100) Farmers’ income falls short of their Consumer price expenditures on consumer products index (1913 =100)

the family farm. Ignoring the contradiction in farmers’ regulating interstate railroad rates, Congress passed the banding together to help individuals become more Interstate Commerce Act (1887), reaffirming the federal independent, they negotiated special discounts with government’s power to investigate and oversee railroad farm-machinery dealers and set up “cash-only” cooper- activities and establishing a new agency, the Interstate ative stores and grain-storage elevators to cut out the Commerce Commission (ICC), to do just that. Although “middlemen”—the bankers, grain brokers, and mer- the commission failed to curb the railroads’ monopolis- chants who made money at their expense. tic practices, it did establish the principle of federal reg- Grangers vehemently attacked the railroads, which ulation of interstate transportation. routinely gave discounts to large shippers, bribed state Despite promising beginnings, the Grange move- legislators, and charged higher rates for short runs than ment soon faltered. The railroads, having lost their battle for long hauls. These practices stung hard-pressed farm- on the national level, lobbied state legislatures and won ers. Although professing to be nonpolitical, Grangers in repeal of most of the rate-regulation laws by 1878. Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa lobbied state Moreover, the Grange system of cash-only cooperative legislatures in 1874 to pass laws fixing maximum rates stores failed because few farmers had ample cash. for freight shipments. Ultimately, the Grange ideal of complete financial inde- The railroads appealed to the Supreme Court to pendence proved unrealistic. Under the conditions that declare these “Granger laws” unconstitutional. But in prevailed on the Plains, it was impossible to farm with- Munn v. Illinois (1877) the Court not only rejected the out borrowing money. railroads’ appeal but also upheld an Illinois law setting a How valid was the Grangers’ analysis of the farmers’ maximum rate for the storage of grain. The regulation of problems? The Grangers blamed greedy railroads and grain elevators, declared the Court’s majority, was legiti- middlemen for their difficulties, but the situation was mate under the federal Constitution’s grant of police not that simple. The years 1873–1878 saw the entire powers to states. When the Court in Wabash v. Illinois economy in a depression; railroad operators and mer- (1886) modified this position by prohibiting states from chant middlemen, no less than farmers, had to scramble Politics of Privilege, Politics of Exclusion, 1884–1892 619 to survive. Farm commodity prices did fall between 1865 and 1900, but so, too, did the wholesale prices of manufactured goods, including items needed on the farm. Even the railroads’ stiff freight charges could be justified in part by the scarcity of western settlement and the seasonality of grain shipments. Still, the farmers and the Grange lead- ers who voiced their grievances had rea- son to complain. Farmers who had no control over the prices of their crops were at the mercy of local merchants and farm- equipment dealers who exercised monop- olistic control over the prices that they could charge. Similarly, railroads some- times would transport wheat to only one mill. Some even refused to stop at small towns to pick up local wheat shipments. Policies like these struck the farmers as completely arbitrary and made them feel powerless. Hamlin Garland captured farmers’ despair in his Main-Travelled Roads (1891) and Son of the Middle Border (1917), describing barely surviving fami- lies who “rose early and toiled without intermission, till the darkness fell on the plain, then tumbled into bed, every bone and muscle aching with fatigue.” The Farmers’ Alliance movement began in Texas in When the prices of corn, wheat, and cotton briefly the late 1870s as poor farmers gathered to discuss their revived after 1878, many farmers deserted the Grange. hardships. Soon an organization took shape, promoted Although the Grange lived on as a social and education- by activists who organized hundreds of local alliances. al institution, it lost its economic clout because it was The alliance idea advanced eastward across the lower ultimately unable to improve its members’ financial South, especially after Texan Charles W. Macune, a self- position. For all its weaknesses, the Grange movement trained lawyer and a physician, assumed leadership in did lay the groundwork for an even more powerful wave 1887. By 1889 Macune had merged several regional of agrarian protest. organizations into the National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union, or Southern Alliance. A parallel black organization, the National Colored Farmers’ Alliance, The Alliance Movement had meanwhile emerged in Arkansas and spread to While the Grange was centered in the Midwest and the other southern states. Great Plains, the Farmers’ Alliance movement first arose Like the Grange, the Farmers’ Alliance initially advo- in the South and West, where farmers grappled with cated farmers’ cooperatives to purchase equipment and many of the same problems. In the cotton South, small supplies and to market their cotton. These cooperatives planters found themselves trapped by the crop-lien sys- mostly failed, however, because farmers lacked the capi- tem, mortgaging future harvests to cover current tal to finance them. Still, by 1890 the Southern Alliance expenses. Mired in debt, many gave up their land and boasted 3 million members, with an additional 1.2 mil- became tenants or sharecroppers. About a third of lion claimed by the National Colored Farmers’ Alliance. southern farmers were tenants by 1900. One historian Alliance members generally comprised not only the has aptly called the South in these years “a giant pawn- poorest farmers but also those most dependent on a sin- shop.” gle crop and most geographically isolated. As they 620 CHAPTER 20 Politics and Expansion in an Industrializing Age, 1877–1900

attended alliance rallies and picnics, read the alliance of a conservative politician in his district and noted that newspaper, and listened to alliance speakers, hard-hit he had no such finery, a hostile newspaper editor farm families felt less cut off and increasingly aware of labeled him “Sockless Jerry” Simpson, the nickname he their political potential. An Arkansas member wrote in carried to his grave. When Mary Lease advised Kansas to 1889, “Reform never begins with the leaders, it comes “raise less corn and more hell,” another editor sneered: from the people.” “[Kansas] has started to raise hell, as Mrs. Lease advised, Meanwhile, alliance fever hit the Great Plains as and [the state] seems to have an overproduction. But well. In the drought-plagued years of 1880 and 1881, that doesn’t matter. Kansas never did believe in diversi- alliances sprang up in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and fied crops.” Minnesota. But the protest spirit faded as renewed rain- From all this activity, a political agenda took form. In fall revived confidence and lured thousands of settlers to 1889 the Southern and Northwestern Alliances loosely the northern plains. The boom triggered frenzied land merged and adopted a political litmus test for candi- speculation. Kansas farms that had sold for $6.25 an acre dates in the 1890 midterm elections. Their overall goal in the 1860s went for $270 an acre in 1887. Railroads was to reform the American economic system. Their promoting settlement along their routes fed the boom objectives, which focused on increasing government mentality. action on behalf of farmers and workers, included tariff In 1886–1887, however, drought returned. From reduction, a graduated income tax, public ownership of 1887 to 1897, only two Great Plains wheat crops were the railroads, federal funding for irrigation research, a worth harvesting. Searing winds shriveled the half-ripe ban on landownership by aliens, and “the free and grain as locusts and chinch bugs gnawed away the rest. unlimited coinage of silver.” To make matters worse, wheat prices fell as world pro- The 1890 elections revealed the depth of agrarian duction increased. disaffection. Southern Democrats who endorsed Many settlers returned East. “In God we trusted, in alliance goals won four governorships and control of Kansas we busted,” some scrawled on their wagons. eight state legislatures. On the Great Plains, alliance- Western Kansas lost 50 percent of its population endorsed candidates secured control of the Nebraska between 1888 and 1892. But others hung on, and the legislature and gained the balance of power in Northwestern Alliance grew rapidly. By 1890 the Kansas Minnesota and South Dakota. In Kansas the candidates Alliance claimed 130,000 members, followed closely by of the alliance-sponsored People’s party demolished all alliances in Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Minnesota. Like opposition. Three alliance-backed senators, together the Southern Alliance, the Northwestern Alliance first with some fifty congressmen (including Watson and experimented with cooperatives and gradually turned to Simpson), went to Washington as angry winds from the politics. hinterlands buffeted the political system. Southern Alliance leaders Tom Watson of Georgia But differences soon surfaced. Whereas North- and Leonidas Polk of North Carolina urged southern western Alliance leaders favored a third party, the farmers, black and white, to act together. For a time, this Southern Alliance, despite Watson’s and Polk’s advice, message of racial cooperation in the interest of reform rejected such a move, fearing it would weaken the offered promise. In Kansas, meanwhile, Jerry Simpson, a southern Democratic party, the bastion of white rancher who lost his stock in the hard winter of supremacy. By 1892, however, some Southern Alliance 1886–1887, became a major alliance leader. Mary E. leaders had reluctantly adopted the third-party idea, Lease, a Wichita lawyer, burst on the scene in 1890 as a since many Democrats whom they had backed in 1890 fiery alliance orator. had ignored the alliance agenda once in office. In Other women, veterans of the Granger or prohibi- February 1892 alliance leaders organized the People’s tion cause, also rallied to the new movement, founding Party of the United States, generally called the Populist the National Women’s Alliance (NWA) in 1891. Declared party. At the party convention that August, cheering del- the NWA, “Put 1,000 women lecturers in the field and egates nominated for president the former Civil War revolution is here.” By no coincidence, a strong feminist general and Greenback nominee James B. Weaver of strain pervades Ignatius Donnelly’s The Golden Bottle Iowa. Courting the South, they chose as Weaver’s run- (1892), a novel portraying the agrarian reformers’ social ning mate the Virginian James Field, who had lost a leg vision. fighting for the Confederacy. As the movement swelled, the opposition turned The Populist platform restated the alliance goals nasty. When Jerry Simpson mentioned the silk stockings while adding a call for the direct popular election of sen- Politics of Privilege, Politics of Exclusion, 1884–1892 621 ators and other electoral reforms. It also endorsed a slaves except as a docile labor force or as political pawns. plan devised by alliance leader Charles Macune by However, southern white opinion demanded an end to which farmers could store their nonperishable com- the hated “Negro rule,” and local Democratic party offi- modities in government warehouses, receive low- cials pursued this objective. Suppressing the black vote interest loans using the crops as collateral, and then sell was a major goal. At first, black disfranchisement was the stored commodities when market prices rose. achieved by intimidation, terror, and vote fraud, as Ignatius Donnelly’s ringing preamble pronounced the blacks were either kept from the polls or forced to vote nation on “the verge of moral, political, and material Democratic. Then in 1890 Mississippi amended its state ruin” and called for a return of the government “to the constitution in ways that effectively excluded most black hands of ‘the plain people’ with which class it originated.” voters, and other southern states soon followed suit. Because the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) guaran- teed all male citizens’ right to vote, disfranchisement African-Americans had to be accomplished indirectly by such means as lit- After Reconstruction eracy tests, poll taxes, and property requirements. The As the Populists geared up for the 1892 campaign, racist intent of these devices became obvious when pro- another group of citizens with far more profound griev- cedures were introduced to ensure that they affected ances found themselves pushed even farther to the mar- only black voters. One stratagem, the so-called grandfa- gins of American public life. The end of Reconstruction ther clause, exempted from these electoral requirements in 1877 and the restoration of power to the southern anyone whose ancestor had voted in 1860. Black disfran- white elites, the so-called redeemers (see Chapter 16), chisement proceeded erratically over the South, but by spelled bad news for southern blacks. The redeemer the early twentieth century, it was essentially complete. coalition of large landowners, merchants, and “New Disfranchisement was only one part of the system of South” industrialists had little interest in the former white supremacy laboriously erected in the South. In a 622 CHAPTER 20 Politics and Expansion in an Industrializing Age, 1877–1900

parallel development that culminated in the early twen- Georgia’s Tom Watson, sought to build an interracial tieth century, state after state passed laws imposing movement. Watson denounced lynching and the con- strict racial segregation in many realms of life (see vict-lease system. When a black Populist leader pursued Chapter 21). by a lynch mob took refuge in his house during the 1892 Black caterers, barbers, bricklayers, carpenters, and campaign, Watson summoned two thousand armed other artisans lost their white clientele. Blacks who went white Populists to defend him. But most white Populists, to prison—sometimes for minor offenses—faced the abetted by rabble-rousers like “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman of convict-lease system, by which cotton planters, railroad South Carolina, clung to racism. Watson complained builders, coal-mine operators, and other employers that most poor whites “would joyously hug the chains “leased” prison gangs and forced them to work under of...wretchedness rather than do any experimenting slave-labor conditions. on [the race] question.” The convict-lease system not only enforced the The white elite, eager to drive a wedge in the protest racial hierarchy but also played an important economic movement, inflamed lower-class white racism. The agri- role as industrialization and agricultural change came to cultural crisis of the period, which included a precipi- the South. The system brought income to hard-pressed tous decline in cotton prices, had driven poor white ten- state governments and provided factories, railroads, ant farmers in the South to the brink of despair. Those mines, and large-scale farms with a predictable, control- who lost control of their farms felt that they not only lable, and cheap labor supply. The system also intimi- faced economic ruin, but that they also risked loss of dated free laborers. One observer commented, “[O]n their manhood. Conscious of themselves as a racial account of the convict employment, strikes are of rare group, they feared that if they fell further down the eco- occurrence.” Recognizing this danger, free miners in nomic ladder they would lose the racial privileges that Tennessee successfully agitated against the employment came from their “whiteness” and be treated like blacks, of convict labor in their state in the 1890s. Thousands Mexicans, and the foreign born. Hence, they were died under the brutal convict-labor system. It survived swayed by conservative Atlanta editor Henry W. Grady into the early decades of the twentieth century, ulti- when he warned against division among white south- mately succumbing to humanitarian protest and to eco- erners: the region’s only hope, he said, was “the clear and nomic changes that made it unprofitable. unmistakable domination of the white race.” The ultimate enforcer of southern white supremacy Even as they raised the bugaboo of “Negro rule,” the was the lynch rope. Through the 1880s and 1890s, about white elite manipulated the urban black vote as a a hundred blacks were lynched annually in the United weapon against agrarian radicalism, driving Tom States, mainly in the South. The stated reasons, often Watson to despair. On balance, the rise of southern the rape of a white woman, frequently arose from agrarian protest deepened racial hatred and ultimately rumor and unsubstantiated accusations. (The charge of worsened blacks’ situation. “attempted rape” could cover a wide range of behaviors While southern blacks suffered racist oppression, unacceptable to whites.) the federal government stood aside. A generation of The lynch mob demonstrated whites’ absolute northern politicians paid lip service to egalitarian prin- power. In Festival of Violence, their 1995 computer- ciples but failed to apply them to blacks. assisted study of 2,805 Southern lynchings, Stewart E. The Supreme Court similarly abandoned blacks. Tolnay and E. M. Beck found that more than 80 percent The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) had granted blacks involved black victims. Lynchings most commonly citizenship and the equal protection of the laws, and the occurred in the Cotton Belt, and they tended to peak at Civil Rights Act of 1875 outlawed racial discrimination times of economic distress when cotton prices were on juries, in public places such as hotels and theaters, falling and job competition between poor whites and and on railroads, streetcars, and other such con- poor blacks was most intense. By no coincidence, lynch- veyances. But the Supreme Court soon ripped gaping ing peaked in 1892 as many poor blacks embraced the holes in these protective laws. Farmers’ Alliance movement and rallied to the Populist In the Civil Rights Cases (1883), the Court declared party banner. Fifteen black Populists were killed in the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. The Georgia alone, it has been estimated, during that year’s Fourteenth Amendment protected citizens only from acrimonious campaign. governmental infringement of their civil rights, the jus- The relationship between southern agrarian protest tices ruled, not from acts by private citizens such as rail- and white racism was complex. Some Populists, like road conductors. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the justices Politics of Privilege, Politics of Exclusion, 1884–1892 623 upheld a Louisiana law requiring segregated railroad their community. Two black-owned banks, in Richmond cars. Racial segregation was constitutional, the Court and Washington, D.C., were chartered in 1888. The held, if equal facilities were made available to each race. North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company, organized (In a prophetic dissent, Associate Justice John Marshall in 1898 by John Merrick, a prosperous Durham barber, Harlan observed, “Our Constitution is color blind.” evolved into a major enterprise. Bishop Henry M. Turner Segregation, he added, violated the constitutional prin- of the African Methodist Episcopal church urged blacks ciple of equality before the law.) With the Supreme to return to Africa and build a great Christian nation. Court’s blessing, the South segregated its public school Turner made several trips to Africa in pursuit of his system, ignoring the caveat that such separate facilities proposal. must be equal. White children studied in nicer buildings, African-American protest never wholly died out. used newer equipment, and were taught by better-paid Frederick Douglass urged that blacks press for full teachers. Not until 1954 did the Court abandon the “sep- equality. “Who would be free, themselves must strike the arate but equal” doctrine. Rounding out their dismal first blow,” he proclaimed in 1883. Blacks should meet record, in 1898 the justices upheld the poll tax and liter- violence with violence, insisted militant New York black acy tests by which southern states had disfranchised leader T. Thomas Fortune. blacks. Other blacks answered southern racism by leaving Few northerners protested the South’s white- the region. In 1879 several thousand moved to Kansas supremacist society. Until the North condemned lynch- (see Chapter 16). Some ten thousand migrated to ing outright, declared the aged abolitionist Frederick Chicago between 1870 and 1890. Blacks who moved Douglass in 1892, “it will remain equally involved with north soon found, however, that although white the South in this common crime.” The restoration of sec- supremacy was not official policy, public opinion tional harmony, in short, came at a high price: acquies- cence by the North in the utter debasement of the South’s African-American citizenry. Further, the sepa- ratist principle endorsed in Plessy had a pervasive impact, affecting blacks nationwide, Mexicans in Texas, Asians in California, and other groups. Blacks responded to their plight in various ways. The nation’s foremost black leader from the 1890s to his death in 1915 was Booker T. Washington. Born in slavery in Virginia in 1856, the son of a slave woman and her white master, Washington attended a freedman’s school in Hampton, Virginia, and in 1881 organized a black state vocational school in Alabama that eventually became Tuskegee University. Although Washington secretly contributed to lawyers who challenged segrega- tion, his public message was accommodation to a racist society. In a widely publicized address in Atlanta in 1895, he insisted that the first task of America’s blacks must be to acquire useful skills such a farming and carpentry. Once blacks proved their economic value, he predicted, racism would fade; meanwhile, they must patiently accept their lot. Washington lectured widely, and his autobiography, Up From Slavery (1901), recounted his rise from poverty thanks to honesty, hard work, and kindly patrons—themes familiar to a generation reared on Horatio Alger’s self-help books. Other blacks responded resourcefully to the racist society. Black churches provided emotional support, as did black fraternal lodges like the Knights of Pythias. Some African-Americans started businesses to serve 624 CHAPTER 20 Politics and Expansion in an Industrializing Age, 1877–1900

sanctioned many forms of de facto discrimination. 1892: Populists Challenge Northern black laborers, for example, encountered the Status Quo widespread prejudice. The Knights of Labor welcomed blacks and by the mid-1880s had an estimated sixty The Populist party platform adopted in July 1892 offered thousand black members. Its successor, the American an angry catalog of agrarian demands. That same Federation of Labor, officially forbade racial discrimina- month, thirteen people died in a gun battle between tion, but in practice many of its member unions exclud- strikers and strikebreakers at the Homestead steel plant ed blacks. near Pittsburgh, and President Harrison sent federal The rise of the so-called solid South, firmly estab- troops to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where a silver-mine lished on racist foundations, had important political strike had turned violent. Events seemed to justify the implications. For one thing, it made a mockery of the Populists’ warnings of chaos ahead. two-party system in the South. For years, the only mean- Faced with domestic turmoil and fearful that the ingful election south of the Potomac was the Democratic powerful European socialist movement would spread to primary. Only in the 1960s, in the wake of sweeping the United States, both major parties acted cautiously. social and economic changes, would a genuine two- The Republicans renominated Harrison and adopted a party system emerge there. The large bloc of southern platform that ignored escalating unrest. The Democrats Democrats elected to Congress each year, accumulating turned again to Grover Cleveland, who in four years out seniority and power, exerted a great and often reac- of office had made clear his growing conservatism and tionary influence on public policy. Above all, they mobi- his opposition to the Populists. Cleveland won by more lized instantly to quash any threat to southern white than 360,000 votes, a decisive margin in this era of close supremacy. Finally, southern Democrats wielded enor- elections. A public reaction against labor violence and mous clout in the national party. No Democratic con- the McKinley Tariff hurt Harrison, while Cleveland’s sup- tender for national office who was unacceptable to them port for the gold standard won conservative business stood a chance. support. Above all, the caste system that evolved in the post- Populist strength proved spotty. James B. Weaver got Reconstruction South shaped the consciousness of just over a million votes—8.5 percent of the total—and those caught up in it, white and black alike. White novel- the Populists elected five senators, ten congressmen, ist Lillian Smith described her girlhood in turn-of-the- and three governors. The new party carried Kansas and century Florida and Georgia, “From the day I was born, registered some appeal in the West and in Georgia, I began to learn my lessons....I learned it is possible to Alabama, and Texas, where the alliance movement had be a Christian and a white southerner simultaneously; taken deep root. But it made no dent in New England, to be a gentlewoman and an arrogant callous creature at the urban East, or the traditionally Republican farm the same moment; to pray at night and ride a Jim Crow regions of the Midwest. It even failed to show broad car the next morning; ...to glow when the word democ- strength in the upper Great Plains. “Beaten! Whipped! racy was used, and to practice slavery from morning to Smashed!” moaned Minnesota Populist Ignatius night.” Donnelly in his diary. Throughout most of the South, racism, ingrained Democratic loyalty, distaste for a ticket headed by a for- THE 1890S: POLITICS IN A mer Union general, and widespread intimidation and DEPRESSION DECADE vote fraud kept the Populist vote under 25 percent. This failure killed the prospects for interracial agrarian Discontent with the major parties and their commitment reform in the region. After 1892, as Populism began to to supporting unrestricted business enterprise, which revive in the South and Midwest, many southern politi- had smoldered during the 1870s and 1880s, burst into cians seeking to appeal to poor whites—including a dis- flames in the 1890s. As banks failed and railroads went illusioned Tom Watson—stayed within the Democratic bankrupt, the nation slid into a grinding depression. The fold and laced their populism with racism. crises of the 1890s laid bare the paralysis of the federal government—dominated by a business elite—when con- The Panic of 1893: fronted by the new social realities of factories, urban Capitalism in Crisis slums, immigrant workers, and desperate farmers. In response, irate farmers, laborers, and their supporters Cleveland soon confronted a major crisis, an economic created a new party, the Populists, to change the system. collapse in the railroad industry that quickly spread. In The 1890s: Politics in a Depression Decade 625 the economic boom of the 1880s, railroads had led the crisis of the early 1890s battered the entire economy as way, triggering speculation among investors. Some rail- banks and other businesses failed. A full-scale depres- roads had fed the speculative mania by issuing more sion gripped the nation. stock (and enticing investors with higher dividends) The crisis took a heavy human toll. Industrial unem- than their business prospects warranted. Weakened by ployment soared into the 20 to 25 percent range, leaving agricultural stagnation, railroad growth slowed in the millions of factory workers with no money to feed their early 1890s, affecting many related industries, including families and heat their homes. Recent immigrants faced iron and steel. The first hint of trouble ahead came in disaster. Jobless men tramped the streets and rode February 1893 with the failure of the Philadelphia and freight trains from city to city seeking work. Reading Railroad. The unusually harsh winters of 1893 and 1894 made This bankruptcy came at a time of weakened confi- matters worse. In New York City, where the crisis quickly dence in the gold standard, the government’s pledge to swamped local relief agencies, a minister reported actu- redeem paper money for gold on demand. This dimin- al starvation. Amid the suffering, a rich New Yorker ished confidence had several sources. First, when a lead- named Bradley Martin threw a lavish costume ball cost- ing London investment bank collapsed in 1890, hard- ing several hundred thousand dollars. Popular outrage pressed British investors sold millions of dollars worth of over this flaunting of wealth in a prostrate city forced stock in American railroads and other corporations and Martin and his family to move abroad. converted their dollars to gold, draining U.S. gold Rural America, already hard-hit by declining agri- reserves. Second, Congress’s lavish veterans’ benefits cultural prices, faced ruin. Farm prices dropped by more and pork-barrel appropriations during the Harrison than 20 percent between 1890 and 1896. Corn plummet- administration drained government resources just as ed from fifty cents to twenty-one cents a bushel; wheat, tariff revenues were dropping because of the high from eighty-four cents to fifty-one cents. Cotton sold for McKinley Tariff. Third, the 1890 Sherman Silver Purchase five cents a pound in 1894. Act further strained the gold reserve. This measure Some desperate Americans turned to protest. In required the government to pay for its monthly silver Chicago workers at the Pullman factory reacted to purchases with treasury certificates redeemable for successive wage cuts by walking off the job in June 1894 either silver or gold, and many certificate holders chose (see Chapter 18). In Massillon, Ohio, self-taught mone- to convert them to gold. Finally, the election of Grover tary expert Jacob Coxey proposed as a solution to unem- Cleveland in 1892 further eroded confidence in the dol- ployment a $500 million public-works program funded lar. Although Cleveland endorsed the gold standard, his with paper money not backed by gold but simply desig- party harbored many advocates of inflationary policies. nated “legal tender” (just as it is today). A man of action Between January 1892 and March 1893, when as well as ideas, Coxey organized a march on Cleveland took office, the gold reserve had fallen sharply Washington to lobby for his scheme. Thousands joined to around $100 million, the minimum considered neces- him en route, and several hundred actually reached sary to support the dollar. This decline alarmed those Washington in late April 1894. Police arrested Coxey and who viewed the gold standard as the only sure evidence other leaders when they attempted to enter the Capitol of the government’s financial stability. grounds, and his “army” broke up. Although some con- The collapse of a railroad early in 1893 thus trig- sidered Coxey eccentric, his proposal closely resembled gered an economic crisis whose preconditions already programs that the government would adopt during the existed. Fear fed on itself as panicky investors converted depression of the 1930s. their stock holdings to gold. Stock prices plunged in May As unrest intensified, fear clutched middle-class and June; gold reserves sank; by the end of the year, sev- Americans. A church magazine demanded that troops enty-four railroads and more than fifteen thousand put “a pitiless stop” to outbreaks of unrest. To some commercial institutions, including six hundred banks, observers, a bloody upheaval seemed imminent. had failed. After the Panic of 1893 came four years of hard times. Business Leaders Hunker Down The Depression of 1893–1897 In the face of suffering and turmoil, Cleveland retreated By 1897 about a third of the nation’s railroad mileage was into a laissez-faire fortress. Boom-and-bust economic in bankruptcy. Just as the railroad boom had spurred the cycles were inevitable, he insisted, echoing the conven- industrial prosperity of the 1880s, so had the railroad tional wisdom of the day; the government could do 626 CHAPTER 20 Politics and Expansion in an Industrializing Age, 1877–1900

Washington and Wall Street. Cleveland’s readiness to use force against the Pullman strikers and against Jacob Coxey’s peaceful marchers deepened such suspicions. In the ongoing maneuverings of competing interest groups, corporate interests held the whip hand, as a bat- tle over the tariff made clear. Although Cleveland favored tariff reform, the Congress of 1893–1895— despite its Democratic majorities—generally yielded to high-tariff lobbyists. The Wilson-Gorman Tariff of 1894 lowered duties somewhat, but made so many concessions to protectionist interests that Cleveland disgustedly allowed it to become law without his signature. Hinting at changes ahead, the Wilson-Gorman Tariff imposed a modest income tax of 2 percent on all income over $4,000 (about $40,000 in purchasing power today). But in Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. (1895), the Supreme Court narrowly held the law unconstitutional, ruling that the federal government could impose such a direct tax on personal property only if it were apportioned according to the population of each state. Whether one looked at the executive, the legislature, or the judiciary, Washington’s subordination to a single interest group, the moneyed class, seemed absolute. Cleveland’s policies split the Democratic party. Farm leaders and silver Democrats condemned his opposition to the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. South Carolina’s Ben Tillman, running for the Senate in 1894, nothing. Failing to grasp the larger picture, Cleveland proclaimed, “[T]his scoundrel Cleveland...is an old focused on a single peripheral issue: defending the gold bag of beef and I am going to Washington with a pitch- standard. As the gold reserve dwindled, he blamed the fork and prod him in his fat old ribs.” This split in the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, and in August 1893 he Democratic ranks affected the elections of 1894 and called on Congress to repeal it. Silver advocates protest- 1896 and reshaped politics as the century ended. ed, but Congress followed Cleveland’s wishes. The depression also helped reorient social thought. Nevertheless, the gold drain continued. In early Middle-class charitable workers, long convinced that 1895, with the gold reserve down to $41 million, individual character flaws caused poverty, now real- Cleveland turned to Wall Street. Bankers J. P. Morgan and ized—as socialists proclaimed and as the poor well August Belmont agreed to lend the government $62 mil- knew—that even sober and hardworking people could lion in exchange for U.S. bonds at a special discount. succumb to economic forces beyond their control. As With this loan, the government purchased gold to the social work profession took form in the early twenti- replenish its reserve. Meanwhile, Morgan and Belmont eth century, its members spent less time preaching to resold the bonds for a substantial profit. This complicat- the poor and more time investigating the social sources ed deal did help restore confidence in the government’s of poverty. economic stability. The gold drain stopped, and when Laissez-faire ideology weakened in the 1890s as the Treasury offered $100 million in bonds early in 1896, many depression-worn Americans adopted a broad- they sold quickly. ened view of the government’s role in dealing with the Cleveland saved the gold standard, but at a high social consequences of industrialization. In the early price. His dealings with Morgan and Belmont, and the twentieth century, this new view would activate power- bankers’ handsome profits on the deal, confirmed radi- ful political energies. The depression, in short, not only cals’ suspicions of an unholy alliance between brought suffering; it also taught lessons. The Watershed Election of 1896 627

THE WATERSHED ELECTION MAP 20.1 The Election of 1896 OF 1896 4 6 Republican gains in the 1894 midterm election revealed 3 3 4 9 4 4 the depths of revulsion against Cleveland and the 15 3 4 12 36 Democrats, who were blamed for the hard times. As 3 14 4 13 32 6 8 10 3 23 3 1896 approached, the monetary question became the 3 24 15 6 8 8 4 12 17 overriding symbolic issue. Conservatives clung to the 10 12 1 11 gold standard; agrarian radicals rallied to the banner of OKLA. 12 ARIZ. NEW TERR. IND. 1 TERR. MEXICO TERR. 8 9 “free silver.” At the 1896 Democratic convention, the TERR. 13 9 11 nomination went to a young champion of the silver 15 8 cause, William Jennings Bryan. Despite Bryan’s elo- 4 8 quence, Republican William McKinley emerged victori- 1 Divided ous (see Map 20.1). His triumph laid the groundwork for Percentage a major political realignment that would influence Electoral Popular of Popular American politics for a generation. Vote Vote Vote Republican 271 7,102,246 51.1 William McKinley Democratic 176 6,492,559 47.7 1894: Protest Grows Louder William J. Bryan With the depression at its worst and President Grover Minor parties – – 315,398 1.2 Cleveland deeply unpopular, the midterm election of 1894 spelled Democratic disaster. The Republicans, gaining 5 seats in the Senate and 117 in the House, won policies depressed prices and devastated farmers. both houses of Congress. They also secured control of Unfortunately, these underlying realities were rarely several key states—including New York, Illinois, and expressed clearly. The silverites’ most influential propa- Wisconsin—as immigrant workers, battered by the ganda, William H. Harvey’s widely distributed Coin’s depression, abandoned their traditional Democratic Financial School (1894), explained the monetary issue in allegiance. simplified partisan terms, denounced “the conspiracy of Populist candidates garnered nearly 1.5 million Goldbugs,” and insisted that the free coinage of silver votes in 1894, an increase of more than 40 percent over would banish debt and end the depression. their 1892 total. Populism’s most impressive gains occurred in the South. Although several western states Silver Advocates Capture that had voted Populist in 1892 returned to their tradi- the Democratic Party tional Republican allegiance in 1894, the overall results heartened Populist leaders. At the 1896 Democratic convention in Chicago, western The serious economic divisions that split Americans and southern delegates adopted a platform— including in the mid-1890s focused especially on a symbolic issue: a demand for the free and unlimited coinage of silver at free silver. Cleveland’s rigid defense of the gold standard the ratio to gold of sixteen to one—that in effect repudi- forced his opponents into an equally exaggerated obses- ated the Cleveland administration. The front-running sion with silver, obscuring the genuine issues that divid- candidate was Congressman Richard Bland of Missouri, ed rich and poor, creditor and debtor, and farmer and a silverite. But behind the scenes, the groundwork was city-dweller. Whereas conservatives tirelessly upheld the being laid for the nomination of a dark horse, William gold standard, agrarian radicals extolled silver as a uni- Jennings Bryan, a thirty-six-year-old Nebraska lawyer versal panacea. They were urged on and sometimes and politician. During two terms in Congress financed by western silver-mine owners who stood to (1891–1895), he championed western agrarian interests. profit if silver again became a monetary metal. Joining Christian imagery with economic analysis, Each side had a point. Gold advocates recognized Bryan delivered his major convention speech in the that a nation’s paper money must be based on more debate over the platform. In an era before electronic than a government’s ability to run printing presses and amplification, his booming voice easily reached the that uncontrolled inflation could be catastrophic. The upper gallery of the cavernous hall. Bryan praised west- silver advocates knew from experience how tight-money ern farmers and scorned advocates of the gold standard. 628 CHAPTER 20 Politics and Expansion in an Industrializing Age, 1877–1900

By the time he reached his rousing conclusion—“You audiences in twenty-nine states. One skeptical editor shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown compared him to Nebraska’s notoriously shallow Platte of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of River: six inches deep and a mile wide at the mouth. gold”—the wildly cheering delegates had identified their McKinley’s campaign was shrewdly managed by candidate. Mark Hanna, a Cleveland industrialist. Dignified and The silverites’ capture of the Democratic party pre- aloof, McKinley could not match Bryan’s popular touch. sented a dilemma to the Populists. They, too, advocated Accordingly, Hanna built the campaign not around the free silver, but only as one reform among many. To back candidate but around posters, pamphlets, and newspa- Bryan would be to abandon the broad Populist program. per editorials that warned of the dangers of free silver, Furthermore, fusion with the Democrats could destroy caricatured Bryan as a rabid radical, and portrayed their influence as a third party. Yet the Populist leaders McKinley and the gold standard as twin pillars of recognized that a separate Populist ticket would likely prosperity. siphon votes from Bryan and ensure a Republican victo- Drawing on a war chest possibly as large as $7 mil- ry. Reluctantly, the Populists endorsed Bryan, while pre- lion, Hanna spent lavishly. J. P. Morgan and John D. serving a shred of independence (and confusing voters) Rockefeller together contributed half a million dollars, by naming their own vice-presidential candidate, Tom far more than Bryan’s total campaign contributions. Like Watson of Georgia. The Populists were learning the diffi- Benjamin Harrison in 1888, McKinley stayed home in culty of organizing an independent political movement Canton, Ohio, emerging from time to time to read in a nation wedded to the two-party system. speeches to visiting delegations. Carefully orchestrated The Republicans, meanwhile, had nominated for- by Hanna, McKinley’s deceptively bucolic “front-porch” mer governor William McKinley, who as an Ohio con- campaign involved elaborate organization. All told, gressman had given his name to the McKinley Tariff of some 750,000 people trekked to Canton that summer. 1890. The Republican platform embraced the high pro- On election day, McKinley beat Bryan by over six tective tariff and endorsed the gold standard. hundred thousand votes (see Map 6.1). He swept the Northeast and the Midwest and even carried three farm states beyond the Mississippi—Iowa, Minnesota, and 1896: Republicans Triumphant North Dakota—as well as California and Oregon. Bryan’s Bryan tried to sustain the momentum of the Chicago strength was limited to the South and the sparsely set- convention. Crisscrossing the nation by train, he deliv- tled Great Plains and mountain states. The Republicans ered his free-silver campaign speech to hundreds of retained control of Congress. Expansionist Stirrings and War with Spain, 1878–1901 629

Why did Bryan lose despite the depression and the elsewhere, these measures aroused little protest. Bryan protest spirit abroad in the land? Certainly, Republican won renomination in 1900, but the fervor of 1896 was scare tactics played a role. But Bryan’s candidacy carried missing. The Republican campaign theme of prosperity its own liabilities. His core constituency, while passion- easily won McKinley a second term. ately loyal, was limited. Seduced by free silver and The elections of 1894 and 1896 produced a Bryan’s oratory, the Democrats had upheld a platform Republican majority that, except for Woodrow Wilson’s and a candidate with little appeal for factory workers, two presidential terms (1913–1921), would dominate the urban middle class, or the settled family farmers of national politics until the election of Franklin D. the midwestern corn belt. Urban voters, realizing that Roosevelt in 1932. Bryan’s defeat and the Republicans’ higher farm prices, a major free-silver goal, also meant emergence as the party of prosperity and the sound dol- higher food prices, went heavily for McKinley. Bryan’s lar killed the Populist party and drove the Democrats weakness in urban America reflected cultural differ- back to their regional base in the South. But although ences as well. To urban Catholics and Jews, this moralis- populism collapsed, a new reform movement called tic, teetotaling Nebraskan thundering like a Protestant progressivism was emerging. Many of the Populists’ revival preacher seemed utterly alien. reform proposals would be enacted into law in the pro- Finally, despite their telling critique of laissez-faire gressive years. capitalism, the Populists’ effort to define a humane and democratic alternative relied heavily on visions of a pre- modern economic order of independent farmers and EXPANSIONIST STIRRINGS entrepreneurs. Although appealing, this vision bore little AND WAR WITH SPAIN, relationship to the new corporate order taking shape in 1878–1901 America. The McKinley administration quickly translated its The same corporate elite that dominated late-nine- conservative platform into law. The Dingley Tariff (1897) teenth-century domestic politics influenced U.S. foreign pushed rates to all-time high levels, and the Currency policy as well, contributing to surging expansionist pres- Act of 1900 officially committed the United States to the sures. Not only business leaders but also politicians, gold standard. With returning prosperity, rising farm statesmen, and editorial writers insisted that national prices after 1897, and the discovery of gold in Alaska and greatness required America to match Europe’s imperial 630 CHAPTER 20 Politics and Expansion in an Industrializing Age, 1877–1900

expansion. Fanned by sensationalistic newspaper cover- like Roosevelt and Lodge, built upon the social age of a Cuban struggle for independence and by elite Darwinist rhetoric of the day and argued that war, as a calls for greater American international assertiveness, vehicle for natural selection, would test and refurbish war between the United States and Spain broke out in American manhood, restore chivalry and honor, and 1898. create a new generation of civic-minded Americans. This gendered appeal to renew American masculinity both counterbalanced concerns about women’s political Roots of Expansionist Sentiment activism and helped forge the disparate arguments for Since the first European settlers colonized North expansionism into a simpler, more visceral plea for America’s Atlantic coast, the newcomers had been an international engagement that had a broad appeal. expansionist people. By the 1840s the push westward A series of diplomatic skirmishes between 1885 and had acquired a name: Manifest Destiny. The expansion- 1895 revealed the newly assertive American mood and ist impulse had faded as the Civil War and then industri- paved the way for the war that Roosevelt desired. In the alization absorbed American energies, but it revived mid-1880s, quarrels between the United States and strongly after 1880 as politicians and opinion molders Great Britain over fishing rights in the North Atlantic and proclaimed America’s global destiny. in the Bering Sea off Alaska reawakened Americans’ The example set by other nations encouraged this latent anti-British feelings as well as the old dream of expansionist sentiment. By the 1890s Great Britain, acquiring Canada. A poem published in the Detroit France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, and Japan were busily News (adapted from an English music-hall song) sup- collecting colonies from North Africa to the Pacific plied the nickname that critics would apply to the pro- islands. National greatness, it appeared, demanded an moters of expansion—jingoists: empire. We do not want to fight, In corporate circles, meanwhile, the opinion spread But, by jingo, if we do, that continued prosperity required overseas markets. We’ll scoop in all the fishing grounds With industrial capacity expanding and the labor force And the whole dominion too! growing, foreign markets offered a “safety valve” for potentially explosive pressures in the U.S. economy. The fishing-rights dispute was resolved in 1898, but Secretary of State James Blaine warned in 1890 that U.S. by then attention had shifted to Latin America. In 1891, productivity was outrunning “the demands of the home as civil war raged in Chile, U.S. officials seized a Chilean market” and insisted that American business must look vessel that was attempting to buy guns in San Diego. abroad. Soon after, a mob in Valparaiso, Chile, killed two Advocates of a stronger navy further fueled the unarmed sailors on shore leave. President Harrison expansionist mood. In The Influence of Sea Power upon practically called for war. Only when Chile apologized History (1890), Alfred T. Mahan equated sea power with and paid an indemnity was the incident closed. national greatness and urged a U.S. naval buildup. Since Another Latin American conflict arose from a a strong navy required bases abroad, Mahan and other boundary dispute between Venezuela and British naval advocates supported the movement to acquire Guiana in 1895 (see Map 20.2). The disagreement wors- foreign territories, especially Pacific islands with good ened after gold was discovered in the contested territory. harbors. Military strategy, in this case and others, often When the British rejected a U.S. arbitration offer and masked the desire for access to new markets. condescendingly insisted that America’s revered Monroe Religious leaders proclaimed America’s mission to Doctrine had no standing in international law, a livid spread Christianity. This expansionist argument some- Grover Cleveland asked Congress to set up a commis- times took on a racist tinge. As Josiah Strong put it in his sion to settle the disputed boundary even without 1885 work Our Country, “God is training the Anglo- Britain’s approval. As patriotic fervor pulsed through the Saxon race for its mission”—a mission of Christianizing nation, the British in 1897 accepted the commission’s and civilizing the world’s “weaker races.” findings. A group of Republican expansionists, led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, diplomat John Pacific Expansion Hay, and Theodore Roosevelt of New York, preached imperial greatness and military might. “I should wel- Meanwhile, the U.S. navy focused on the Samoan come almost any war,” declared Roosevelt in 1897, “. . . Islands in the South Pacific, where it sought access to the this country needs one.” Advocates of expansionism, port of Pago Pago as a refueling station. Britain and Expansionist Stirrings and War with Spain, 1878–1901 631

Alaska 1867 RUSSIA

Bering Sea CANADA

Aleutian Islands 1867

KOREA P A C I F I C O C E A N UNITED STATES ATLANTIC JAPAN OCEAN CHINA Midway Islands Boxer 1867 U.S. acquires exclusive rights to lease naval Rebellion Hawaiian Islands Gulf of bases, 1898 1900 1898 Mexico DOMINICAN REP. MEXICO CUBA Puerto Rico Wake I. Santiago 1898 Philippine 1899 Johnston I. Caribbean Sea Islands Guam 1898 GUATEMALA 1898 1898 HONDURAS Kingman Reef 1858 NICARAGUA VENEZUELA Howland I. Palmyra I. 1898 PANAMA 1857 Equator Baker I. 1857 Jarvis I. 1857 BRITISH NETHERLANDS GUIANA EAST INDIES

American Samoa 1899

AUSTRALIA

Valparaiso CHILE Acquired by war, occupation, or unilateral resolution

0 2000 Miles Acquired by purchase or treaty

0 2000 Kilometers

MAP 20.2 U.S. Territorial Expansion in the Late Nineteenth Century The major period of U.S. territorial expansion abroad came in a short burst of activity in the late 1890s, when newspapers and some politicians beat the drums for empire.

Germany had ambitions in Samoa as well, and in March Harbor, near Honolulu. American economic dominance 1889 the United States and Germany narrowly avoided a and the influx of foreigners angered Hawaiians. In 1891 naval clash when a hurricane wrecked both fleets. they welcomed Liliuokalani, a strong-willed woman Secretary of State Blaine’s wife wrote to one of their chil- hostile to Americans, to the Hawaiian throne. dren, “Your father is now looking up Samoa on the map.” Meanwhile, in 1890, the framers of the McKinley Once he found it, negotiations began, and the United Tariff, pressured by domestic sugar growers, eliminated States, Great Britain, and Germany established a three- the duty-free status enjoyed by Hawaiian sugar. In way “protectorate” over the islands. January 1893, facing ruin as Hawaii’s wholesale sugar Attention had by that time shifted to the Hawaiian prices plunged 40 percent, the planters deposed Islands, which had both strategic and economic signifi- Queen Liliuokalani, proclaimed the independent cance for the United States (see Map 20.2). New England Republic of Hawaii, and requested U.S. annexation. The trading vessels had visited Hawaii as early as the 1790s, U.S. State Department’s representative in Hawaii cabled and Yankee missionaries had come in the 1820s. By the Washington, “The Hawaiian pear is now fully ripe, and 1860s American-owned sugar plantations worked by this is the golden hour for the United States to pluck it.” Chinese and Japanese laborers dotted the islands. Under But the grab for Hawaii troubled Grover Cleveland, an 1887 treaty (negotiated after the planters had forcibly who sent a representative to investigate the situation. imposed a new constitution on Hawaii’s native ruler, This representative’s report questioned whether the Kala–kaua), the United States built a naval base at Pearl Hawaiian people actually desired annexation. 632 CHAPTER 20 Politics and Expansion in an Industrializing Age, 1877–1900

Cleveland’s scruples infuriated expansionists. When dence in 1976 concluded that a shipboard ammunition William McKinley succeeded Cleveland in 1897, the explosion, set off by a fire in a coal bunker, had caused acquisition of Hawaii rapidly moved forward. In 1898 the blast. But at the time neither Washington nor the yel- Congress proclaimed Hawaii an American territory. low press was in any mood to view the tragedy as acci- Sixty-one years later, it joined the Union as the fiftieth dental. Newspaper headlines screamed of a “Spanish state. mine,” and war spirit flared high. Despite further Spanish concessions, McKinley sent a war message to Congress on April 11, and legislators Crisis over Cuba enacted a joint resolution recognizing Cuba’s independ- By 1898 American attention had shifted to the Spanish ence and authorizing force to expel the Spanish. An colony of Cuba, ninety miles off Florida, where in 1895 amendment introduced by Senator Henry M. Teller of an anti-Spanish rebellion had broken out. This revolt, Colorado renounced any U.S. interest in “sovereignty, organized by the Cuban writer José Martí and other jurisdiction, or control” in Cuba and pledged that Cuban exiles in New York City, won little support from America would leave the island alone once independ- U.S. business, which had $50 million invested in Cuba ence was assured. and annually imported $100 million worth of sugar and other products from the island. Nor did the rebels ini- The Spanish-American War, 1898 tially secure the backing of Washington, which urged Spain to grant Cuba a degree of autonomy. The war with Spain involved only a few days of actual But the rebels’ cause aroused popular sympathy in combat. The first action came on May 1, 1898, when a the United States. This support increased with revela- U.S. fleet commanded by George Dewey steamed into tions that the Spanish commander in Cuba, Valeriano Manila Bay in the Philippines and destroyed or captured Weyler, was herding vast numbers of Cubans into con- all ten Spanish ships anchored there, at the cost of centration camps. Malnutrition and disease turned 1 American and 381 Spanish lives (see Map 20.3). In these camps into hellholes in which perhaps two hun- mid-August U.S. troops occupied the capital, Manila. dred thousand Cubans died. In Cuba the fighting centered on the military strong- Fueling American anger was the sensationalized hold of Santiago de Cuba on the southeastern coast. On reporting of two competing New York City newspapers, May 19 a Spanish battle fleet of seven aging vessels William Randolph Hearst’s Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s sailed into the Santiago de Cuba harbor, where five U.S. World. The Journal’s color comic strip, “The Yellow Kid,” battleships and two cruisers blockaded them (see Map provided a name for Hearst’s debased editorial ap- 20.4). On July 1, in the war’s only significant land action, proach: yellow journalism. The Hungarian immigrant American troops seized two strongly defended Spanish Pulitzer normally had higher standards, but in the cut- garrisons on El Caney Hill and San Juan Hill overlooking throat battle for readers, Pulitzer’s World matched the Santiago de Cuba. Leading the volunteer “Rough Riders” Journal’s sensationalism. Both editors exploited the unit in the capture of San Juan Hill was Theodore Cuban crisis. Headlines turned rumor into fact, and fea- Roosevelt, who at last got his taste of war. ture stories detailed “Butcher” Weyler’s atrocities. When On July 3 the Spanish attempted to pierce through a young Cuban woman was jailed for resisting a rape the American blockade to the open sea. U.S. naval fire attempt by a Spanish officer, a Hearst reporter helped raked and sank their archaic vessels. Spain lost 474 men the woman escape and brought her triumphantly to in this gallant but doomed show of the flag. Americans New York. might have found a cautionary lesson in this sorry end In 1897 a new, more liberal Spanish government to four hundred years of Spanish rule in the New World, sought a peaceful resolution of the Cuban crisis. But but few had time for somber musings. The Washington Hearst and Pulitzer continued to inflame the public. On Post observed, “A new consciousness seems to have February 8, 1898, Hearst’s Journal published a private come upon us—the consciousness of strength—and letter by Spain’s minister to the United States that with it a new appetite, the yearning to show our described McKinley as “weak” and “a bidder for the strength..., [t]he taste of empire. . . .” John Hay was admiration of the crowd.” Irritation over this incident more succinct. It had been, he wrote Roosevelt, “a splen- turned to outrage when on February 15 an explosion did little war.” rocked the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana harbor and Many who served in Cuba found the war far from killed 266 crewmen. A painstaking review of the evi- splendid. Ill trained and poorly equipped, the troops Expansionist Stirrings and War with Spain, 1878–1901 633

MAP 20.3 MAP 20.4 Dewey’s Route in the Philippines, 1898 The Cuban Campaign, 1898

CHINA FORMOSA UNITED STATES American forces Hong Kong (TAIWAN) (Br.) (Japanese) Spanish forces American victories Hainan PACIFIC Gulf of Tampa U.S. naval blockade D OCEAN Mexico e w FLORIDA e Spanish possessions y

Luzon BAHAMAS PHILIPPINE USS Maine sunk (Br.) Feb. 1898 FRENCH ISLANDS INDOCHINA Manila Havana ATLANTIC South China OCEAN Sea CUBA

Santiago

HAITI PUERTO Sulu RICO BRITISH Sea NORTH Mindanao JAMAICA DOMINICAN (Br.) BORNEO REPUBLIC

El Caney Manila surrenders Caribbean July 1, 1898 SARAWAK Aug. 13, 1898 Santiago (Br.) Sea

Bataan Manila Santiago Bay Harbor Kettle Hill Manila July 1, 1898 NETHERLANDS San Juan Hill EAST INDIES July 1, 1898 Corregidor Spanish fleet Dewey destroyed Spanish fleet destroyed May 1, 1898 July 3, 1898 went into summer combat in the tropics wearing heavy Despite the racism, African-Americans served with woolen uniforms. While 379 American soldiers died in distinction once they reached Cuba. Black troops played combat, more than 5,000 succumbed to food poisoning, key roles in the taking of both San Juan Hill and El Caney yellow fever, malaria, and other diseases during and Hill. Of the total U.S. troops involved in the latter action, after the war. some 15 percent were black. Several thousand black troops fought in Cuba. The Spanish sought an armistice on July 17. In the Some, such as the twenty-fourth infantry and tenth cav- peace treaty signed that December in Paris, Spain recog- alry, were seasoned regular-army veterans transferred nized Cuba’s independence and, after a U.S. payment of from bases in the West. Others were volunteers from var- $20 million, ceded the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and the ious states. At assembly points in Georgia, and then at Pacific island of Guam to the United States. Americans the embarkation port of Tampa, Florida, these troops now possessed an island empire stretching from the encountered the racism of a Jim Crow society. Tampa Caribbean to the Pacific. restaurants and bars refused them service; Tampa From 1898 to 1902 the U.S. army governed Cuba whites disparaged them. On June 6, after weeks of racist under the command of General Leonard Wood. Wood’s treatment, some black troops exploded in riotous rage, administration improved public health, education, and storming into restaurants, bars, and other establish- sanitation but nevertheless violated the spirit of the 1898 ments that had barred them. White troops from Georgia Teller Amendment. The troops eventually withdrew, restored order. Although white and black troops sailed to though under conditions that limited Cuban sovereign- Cuba on the same transport ships (actually, hastily con- ty. The 1901 Platt Amendment, attached to an army verted freighters), the ships themselves were segregated, appropriations bill offered by a Connecticut senator at with black troops often confined to the lowest quarters the request of the War Department, authorized in the stifling heat, denied permission to mingle on deck American withdrawal only after Cuba agreed not to with the other units, and in other ways discriminated make any treaty with a foreign power limiting its inde- against. pendence and not to borrow beyond its means. The TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Photoengraving

efore 1890 books, magazines, and newspapers ing presses, the creation of new rolls of paper of uniform Bwere unable to print photographs. Publishers who thickness, the development of new inks, and, most wanted to use photographs had to turn to engravers and important of all, the creation of a new way to transfer a illustrators to redraw them as lithographs or block prints, photograph to a printing plate. an expensive and time-consuming process. Then in the The solutions to all these problems gradually 1890s, a series of inventions combined to enable pub- emerged in the 1880s. First, printers invented a method lishers to print black-and-white images quickly and inex- to print shades of gray by exposing a bichromated gela- pensively. The result revolutionized the process of report- tin film to light. When washed in water, a gelatin relief of ing the news. the negative was created which, under pressure, pro- Before a photographic image could be printed, duced an impression on a lead plate. The hollows in the inventors had to solve a number of problems. First, they lead plate could then contain varying amounts of ink and had to develop a system for printing a range of shades thus print different shades of gray. But printing these between white and black. A method also had to be plates required paper of higher quality and more uniform devised for breaking a photograph up into a series of thickness than that used previously. dots. The resulting images had to be transferred to print- To turn the picture into a series of lines and dots, the ing plates that could work on large, continuous feed, image was “screened.” A finely ruled glass screen was rotary presses. In all, printing black-and-white photo- created by etching a piece of glass with thousands of graphs required the redesign of high-speed rotary print- lines running in the vertical direction, blackening the

634 depressions, and gluing the glass to a second piece of glass whose etched lines ran in a horizontal direction. When a photograph was exposed through this screen, the picture was broken up into thousands of dots. The density of dots in a particular area of the photographic plate determined the blackness of that area. The new halftone photographic film was printed on a sensitized metallic surface that was then etched to produce the desired printing plate. Any blurred areas on the halftone plate could be retouched by engravers to improve the quality of the image. Photoengraving, which was often called halftone printing, allowed pictures to be printed directly from photographs and cut the cost from $300 a picture to less than $20 without sacrificing quality. In the 1890s magazines such as McClure’s, Cosmopolitan, Munsey’s, and Ladies Home Journal quickly exploited the new process. Newspapers, once they had discovered how to transfer this process to the softer, more porous newsprint, quickly followed suit. Adolph Och’s New York Times, and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal published Sunday news- magazines heavily illustrated with photographs of sports celebrities and socialites, reduced the price of their papers, and vastly expanded circulation. The publication of halftone photographs gave maga- zines and newspapers a contemporary, journalistic look, which created a sense of immediacy—of being ”inside” and behind the scenes. Pictures, short articles, and sen- sational language introduced immigrant and middle- class readers alike to the accidents, crimes, and murders lete the artists that magazines and newspapers had pre- that made up what one magazine editor called the viously relied on for wood engravings, pen drawings, and “whirlpool of real life.” In the process the media helped etchings. While the photographs might seem more create cultural communities that were connected not by “real,” they, too, were subject to cropping and distortion. shared interaction but by shared information. Some pic- Nevertheless, publishers now recognized that pub- tures took armchair travelers to exotic overseas destina- lished photographs possessed the power to persuade tions; others gave ordinary Americans a peek into the pri- and inspire. In the political realm, parties moved from vate lives of celebrities, as when Theodore Roosevelt mobilizing voters to advertising charismatic candidates, invited cameras into the family quarters of the White like Theodore Roosevelt, whose colorful lives could be House. The vast increase in published photographs also endlessly photographed. Like it or not, photographs spurred public action to tackle child labor, slum housing, would become an increasingly important force in the and industrial safety. public’s understanding of politics and world events. Advertisers were quick to take advantage of the new technology to spur interest in bicycles, cereals, and other Focus Questions consumer items. Cosmopolitan magazine ran an article on “bicycling for women” that featured the latest attire. • Under William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, Critics protested that photographs reinforced the large urban newspapers at the turn of the century tendency to react without thinking. A picture might be became more sensationalistic and greatly expanded worth a thousand words, but its value would be far lower, their circulation. How did photoengraving affect the they asserted, if it replaced published articles that ana- kinds of stories that could be covered? lyzed society’s problems. Finally, the halftone photo- • What impact did photoengraving have on the con- graph, with its low cost and accessibility, rendered obso- ception of what “art” is?

635 636 CHAPTER 20 Politics and Expansion in an Industrializing Age, 1877–1900

one of them wrote, “Dewey took Manila with the loss of one man— and all our institutions.” The mili- tary fever that accompanied expansionism also dismayed the anti-imperialists. Some labor leaders feared that imperial expansion would lead to compe- tition from cheap foreign labor and products. In February 1899 the anti- imperialists failed by one vote to prevent Senate ratification of the expansionist peace treaty with Spain. McKinley’s overwhelming reelection victory in 1900 and the defeat of expansionist critic William Jennings Bryan eroded the anti-imperialists’ cause. Nevertheless, at a time of jingois- tic rhetoric and militaristic pos- turing, they had upheld an older and finer vision of America.

United States also reserved the right to intervene in Guerrilla War in the Philippines, Cuba when it saw fit and to maintain a naval base there. 1898–1902 With U.S. troops still occupying the island, the Cuban constitutional convention of 1901 accepted the Platt The worst fears of the anti-imperialists were subse- Amendment, which remained in force until 1934. Under quently borne out by events in the Philippines. When the its terms the United States established a naval base at Spanish-American War ended, President McKinley was Guantánamo Bay, near Santiago de Cuba, which it still faced with the urgent problem of what to do about this maintains. U.S. investments in Cuba, some $50 million group of Pacific islands that had a population of more in 1898, soared to half a billion dollars by 1920. than 5 million people. At the war’s outset, few Americans knew that the Philippines belonged to Spain or even where they were. Without a map, McKinley later con- Critics of Empire fessed, “I could not have told where those darn islands The victories of the expansionists in Cuba and the were within two thousand miles.” Philippines did not bring universal praise. Some But the victory over Spain whetted the appetite for Americans, who had opposed imperialism for more than expansion. To the U.S. business community, the a decade, were dismayed by the results. Although few in Philippines offered a stepping-stone to the China mar- number, the critics, like the Mugwumps who had chal- ket. McKinley, reflecting the prevailing mood as always, lenged the spoils system, were influential. Indeed, some reasoned that the Filipinos were unready for self-gov- of them, like Carl Schurz and E. L. Godkin, were former ernment and would be gobbled up if set adrift in a world Mugwumps. Other anti-imperialists included William of imperial rivalries. McKinley further persuaded him- Jennings Bryan, settlement house founder Jane Addams, self that American rule would enormously benefit the novelist Mark Twain, and Harvard philosopher William Filipinos, whom he called “our little brown brothers.” A James. Steel king Andrew Carnegie gave thousands of devout Methodist, he explained that America’s mission dollars to the cause. In 1898 these critics of empire had was “to educate the Filipinos, and to uplift and civilize formed the Anti-Imperialist League. and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very For the United States to rule other peoples, the anti- best we could by them.” (In fact, most Filipinos were imperialists believed, was to violate the principles of the already Christian, a legacy of centuries of Spanish rule.) Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. As Having prayerfully reached his decision, McKinley Conclusion 637 instructed the American peace negotiators in Paris to insist on U.S. acquisition of the Philippines. Uplifting the Filipinos required a struggle. In 1896 young Emilio Aguinaldo had organized a Filipino inde- pendence movement to drive out Spain. In 1898, with arms supplied by George Dewey, Aguinaldo’s forces had captured most of Luzon, the Philippines’ main island. When the Spanish surrendered, Aguinaldo proclaimed Filipino independence and drafted a democratic consti- tution. Feeling betrayed when the peace treaty ceded his country to the United States, Aguinaldo ordered his rebel force to attack Manila, the American base of opera- tions. Seventy thousand more U.S. troops were shipped to the Philippines, and by the end of 1899 this initial Filipino resistance had been crushed. These hostilities became the opening phase of a long guerrilla conflict. Before it ended, over 125,000 American men had served in the Philippines, and 4,000 had been killed. As many as 20,000 Filipino independ- ence fighters died. As in the later Vietnam War, casualties and suffering ravaged the civilian population as well. Aguinaldo was captured in March 1901, but large-scale guerrilla fighting went on through the summer of 1902. In 1902 a special Senate committee heard testimony from veterans of the Philippines war about the execu- tion of prisoners, the torture of suspects, and the burn- ing of villages. The humanitarian mood of 1898, when Americans had rushed to save Cuba from the cruel Spaniards, seemed remote indeed. In retrospect, the might steal jobs from white labor. From the debate over American troops’ ambivalent attitudes about the peo- the annexation of Hawaii in 1898 to the end of the war ples of the Philippines, while deplorable, are not hard to against Philippine independence in 1902, white understand. Despite America’s self-image as a beacon of Americans recoiled from making these “barbarian peo- liberty and a savior of the world’s peoples, many ples” a part of the United States. Not fit to manage their Americans in the 1880s and 1890s had been deeply trou- own affairs, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Hawaiian and Filipino bled by the new immigrants from southern and eastern peoples were placed in a protective status that denied Europe and had expressed concerns over “backward” their independence but kept them under U.S. control and “useless” races. As American nationalism was refor- To stabilize relations in the Philippines, Congress mulated in this cauldron of immigration, imperialism, passed the Philippine Government Act in 1902, which and the “winning of the West,” racist attitudes about vested authority in a governor general to be appointed Native peoples and foreigners intermixed with rhetori- by the president. The act also provided for an elected cal pleas for supervision and stewardship. In the Filipino assembly and promised eventual self-govern- process, as was evident in the treatment of American ment. Progress toward this goal inched forward, with Indians (see Chapter 17), well-meaning paternalism intervals of semimilitary rule. In 1946, nearly half a cen- often degenerated into deadly domination. tury after Admiral Dewey’s guns had boomed in Manila The subjugation of the Philippines followed years of Bay, independence finally came to the Philippines. expansionism that proclaimed America’s debut on the world stage and underscored the global reach of U.S. CONCLUSION capitalism. Nevertheless, most Americans remained ambivalent about the acquisition of territory. While anti- By 1900 immigration, the settlement of the frontier West, imperialist Mark Twain could acidly condemn “the and rapid industrial expansion had pushed America to Blessings of Civilization Trust,” labor leader Samuel the forefront of the world economy and had sparked a Gompers warned that “an inundation of Mongolians” major realignment in American politics. After nearly two 638 CHAPTER 20 Politics and Expansion in an Industrializing Age, 1877–1900

decades of hard-fought elections in which political con- won by playing down moral reforms such as prohibition trol had seesawed back and forth between the major and emphasizing patriotism and fiscal responsibility parties, the Republicans now held power. instead. When the dust settled, Republicans had won It had been difficult to achieve dominance. The over the urban-industrial core of the nation—the dynamic growth of the American economy together with Northeast and much of the Midwest. They would control rapid urbanization and a massive influx of immigrants the House of Representatives for twenty-eight out of the had initially strained the political process. As the parties thirty-six years following 1894. The South, in contrast, struggled to define their vision of the proper role of gov- had now become a Democratic stronghold. ernment in stimulating economic development, they Once elected, McKinley’s administration was drawn were forced to deal with ethnic, cultural, and racial by events in Cuba and jingoistic advocates within his issues that included prohibition, church schools, and segregation. All this was further complicated by the CHRONOLOGY, 1877–1900 Democratic party’s attempt to throw off the limits imposed by Reconstruction and gain political control of 1878 Congress requires U.S. Treasury to purchase silver. the South. 1880 James Garfield elected president. On the national level, both parties built a loyal fol- 1881 Assassination of Garfield; Chester A. Arthur becomes lowing by linking their positions to deeply held beliefs president. about the family and the proper role of government. 1883 Pendleton Civil Service Act. Republicans justified their support for the tariff and sol- 1884 Grover Cleveland elected president. diers’ pensions in terms of patriotic protection of the Wabash v. Illinois family. Democrats countered that a high-tariff policy 1887 Interstate Commerce Act. was indicative of precisely the kind of excessive govern- 1888 Benjamin Harrison elected president. mental force that would destroy family life. On the local level, both parties secured loyal voters by stressing eth- 1889 National Farmers’ Alliance formed. nic and cultural issues. Democrats courted the new 1890 Sherman Silver Purchase Act. immigrants, while Republicans catered to rural and Sherman Anti-Trust Act. McKinley Tariff pushes tariffs to all-time high. small-town native-born Americans in the Northeast and Midwest. 1893 Panic of 1893; depression of 1893–1897 begins. Drain of Treasury’s gold reserve. In the competition for new voters, the needs of rural Repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. Americans were often overlooked. Caught between Overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii. declining prices for grain and cotton, and high railroad Chicago World’s Fair. and bank rates, farmers struggled to make ends meet. 1894 “Coxey’s Army” marches on Washington. Their precarious position was further strained by years Pullman strike. of drought, insect infestation, and overspecialization in Wilson-Gorman Tariff. one crop. In desperation, farmers turned first to the 1895 Supreme Court declares federal income tax Grange and Farmers’ Alliance movements and then to unconstitutional. the Populist party for help. In the South, after first court- Banker’s loans end drain on gold reserves. ing black farmers, members of the Farmers’ Alliance and United States intervenes in Venezuela-British Guiana later the Populists joined with Democrats to disenfran- boundary dispute. chise black voters. Using lynching and intimidation, 1896 Free-silver forces capture Democratic party and Democrats seized control of southern politics. nominate William Jennings Bryan. In the face of these threats, the Republican party in William McKinley elected president. 1896 raised huge sums from big business to turn back 1898 Spanish-American War. the Populist challenge and take control of national poli- 1898–1902 Guerilla uprising in Philippines. tics. The fusion of the Populists and Democrats behind 1900 Currency Act officially places United States on William Jennings Bryan and the silver issue created gold standard. problems of its own. Although he carried the South and 1901 Platt Amendment retains U.S. role in Cuba. almost all the Midwest, the teetotaling Bryan had little Assassination of McKinley; Theodore Roosevelt appeal for urban workers and the middle class who becomes president. believed that a monetary policy based on free silver 1902 Philippines Government Act. promised only inflation and higher prices. McKinley For Further Reference 639 own party into the Spanish-American War and the sub- Rebecca Edwards, Angels in the Machinery: Gender in sequent acquisition of Hawaii, Samoa, Guam, the American Party Politics from the Civil War to the Philippines, and Cuba. Although the Republicans pre- Progressive Era (1997). An innovative exploration of ferred the term “expansionism” to “imperialism,” the women’s role in the political process and in the forma- move to acquire new bases for the access to global mar- tion of political ideology. William F. Holmes, ed., American Populism (1994). A well- kets fit the party’s probusiness stance. But expansion selected set of nineteen scholarly essays interpreting the into the Pacific created its own obstacles when the U.S. agrarian reform movement and surveying its varied became involved in a guerilla war with Philippine aspects. nationalists. Facing mounting criticism at home, the Ari Hoogenboom, Rutherford B. Hayes:Warrior and expansionists adopted the Teller and Platt Amendments, President (1995). A detailed, sympathetic, and balanced which foreshadowed eventual disengagement from the assessment of an able and decent public figure con- acquisition of foreign territory. strained by the political realities of his time; a good Notwithstanding these foreign interventions, the introduction to the political and economic issues of fundamental question of late nineteenth-century post-Reconstruction America. American politics persisted: could a government Matthew F. Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States designed for the needs of a small agrarian society serve Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1877–1900 (2000). An innovative study of the intercon- an industrialized nation of factories and immigrant- nections between politics, racism, and American eco- crowded cities? The answer was by no means clear. nomic development. Although issues such as patronage, the tariff, veteran’s Michael Perman, Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in benefits, and monetary policy had enabled the industri- the South, 1888–1908 (2001). An important examination al system to grow dramatically, the needs of farmers, of the Democratic party’s systematic disfranchisement of workers, and immigrant Americans had largely been black voters. ignored. The Republicans successfully carried the field David M. Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Trade and Investment: in 1896, but the insistence of Populists and other critics American Economic Expansion in the Hemisphere, that government play an assertive role in solving social 1865–1900 (1998). An astute analysis of the direct and and economic problems would form the political envi- indirect governmental support for trade expansionism in ronment of the progressive movement. the late nineteenth century.

WEBSITES OR URTHER EFERENCE F F R The Last Days of a President: Films of McKinley and the READINGS Pan-American Exposition, 1901, in Buffalo, New York Library of Congress, American Memory Series Cesar J. Ayala, American Sugar Kingdom: The Plantation http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/papr/mckhome.html Economy of the Spanish Caribbean, 1898–1934 (1999). This site provides a view of America’s self-image as a A careful analysis of the consolidation of the sugar world power. industry and its effect on U.S. foreign policy and on the people living in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican The Spanish-American War in Motion Pictures, 1898–1901 Republic. Library of Congress, American Memory Series http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/papr/mckhome.html Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (1992). A richly textured work that Contains helpful background essays for Edison films of explores the complexity of the topic and pays close the conflict. attention to nonelite men and women. Theodore Roosevelt, His Life and Times in Film, Richard F. Bensel, The Political Economy of American 1898–1919 Industrialization, 1877–1900 (2000). An astute analysis, Library of Congress, American Memory Series based on a close reading of party platforms, of the con- http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/trfhtml/trfhome.html nections between the tariff, monetary policy, veterans Includes an introductory essay and a contemporary benefits, and industrial expansion. assessment of Roosevelt as a media personality. Robert Cherny, American Politics in the Gilded Age (1997). For additional readings please consult the bibliography at A careful overview of the ethnic and institutional basis of the end of the book. the late nineteenth-century political process.