The Gilded Age: Politics, Immigration, and Urban Life

1. Chapter 8 Politics, Immigration, and Urban Life

2. The Gilded Age • Gilded means covered with thin layer of gold • describe the thin layer of prosperity(wealth) that covered the poverty and corruption of much of society • Wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few, while many people were very poor.

3. Spoils System • after winning an election, politician gives government jobs to supporters as a reward for working toward victory

4. Republicans Appealed to industrialists, bankers, eastern farmers, blacks, Favored tight money supply backed by gold, high tariffs to protect business, gov aid to RR, limits on immigration, and blue laws Democrats Less fortunate people, northern urban immigrants, laborers, southern planters, western farmers Claimed to represent ordinary people Favored increase money supply backed by silver,lower tariffs on imported goods, higher farm prices, less gov aid to big business, fewer blue laws Gilded Age Political Parties

5. Blue laws • Laws forbidding “immoral” activities

6. 1884 presidential election • Campaign focused on scandals rather than issues • Cleveland opponents said that he had fathered child out of wedlock • Cleveland became the first Dem elected pres since 1856, despite scandal, thanks to the mugwumps, a group of Republicans that decided that Blaine was too corrupt to support.

7. Ma, Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa? He’s in Washington. Ha! Ha! Ha!

8. Grover Cleveland • Favored tight money policy, which favored big business (this is normally a republican policy) • Oppose high tariffs • Took back 80 acres of RR land • Supported RR regulation

9. Railroad Regulation • Munn vs. Illinois1887 allowed states to regulate RR practices w/i their borders *** established the constitutional practice of public regulation of private business that serves the public interest

10. 1887 Interstate Commerce Act • Allowed gov to regulate RR • Rates had to be set in proportion to distance traveled, outlawed special rates, outlawed free tickets.

11. 1888 presidential election • Cleveland lost to Republican Benjamin Harrison

12. 1892 presidential election • Grover Cleveland became the only president in U.S. history elected to two non-consecutive terms • 1893 Panic-millions of workers lost jobs, wages cut, gov offered no help • Coxey’s Army marched on Washington D.C. to demand that the gov create jobs

13. 1896 election • McKinley, Republican, won due to support from the urban workers and the middle class; won a second term in 1900 on the slogan “a full dinner pail” (prosperity)

14. McKinley’s assassination • On Sept. 6, 1901, McKinley was at the Temple of Music, greeting the public. Leon Frank Czolgosz waited in line with a pistol in his right hand concealed by a handkerchief. • at 4:07 P.M. Czolgosz fired twice at the president. The first bullet grazed the president’s shoulder. The second went through McKinley's stomach, colon, and kidney, and finally lodged in the muscles of his back.

15. What happened to Czolgosz? • Czolgosz was later found guilty of murder, and was electrocuted at Auburn Prison on October 29, 1901.

16. Section 2Immigrant Experience • Between 1865 and 1890, 10 million people entered the US • Individuals hope for personal liberties /social mobility • education, cheap land, and religious freedom

17. majority of immigrants traveled in steerage

18. In the late 1800s, the Russian government supported pograms, organized attacks on Jewish villages. Millions of Jews fled Russia and Eastern Europe to settle in American cities. 18

19. Ellis Island and Angel Island • 70% came through Ellis (European descent) • Asians enter through Angel Island in San Francisco or through Seattle • Faced quarantine for disease • After 1890 huge shift in where immigrants came from=most now from eastern and southern Europe

20. Statue of Liberty welcomed immigrants on Manhattan Island through the “Golden Door” after 1886. 20

21. Ellis Island-immigrants faced the dreaded medical inspection. Doctors examined eyes, ears and throats. The sick were quarantined to keep the disease from spreading. Officials had only minutes to check each new arrival. 21

22. Angel Island • Main port of entry for Chinese immigrants from 1910-1940 • Angel Island’s purpose was to keep immigrants out

23. immigrants heard stories that the USA was very wealthy • newcomers had to face reality • Had to find work quickly 23

24. Dream vs. Reality

25. ***Immigrants adjusted to their new lives by settling in neighborhoods with their own ethnic group, usually at port of entry. 25

26. CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT OF 1882 • This act provided 10-year halt to Chinese labor immigration • Labor unions did not want Chinese workers here.

27. Impact of Chinese Exclusion Act 1882 1869 1902 1892 1943

28. GENTLEMEN’S AGREEMENT: • Japan stop sending immigrants if schools stop segregating Asian students

29. MEXICANS COME TO U.S. TOO • Some became U.S. citizens when the nation acquired Mexican territory in 1848 as a result of the Mexican War. • About 1 million Mexicans arrived b/w 1910 to 1930 to escape war in their country. • U.S. needed workers after severe limitations placed on other workers from Asia • Newly irrigated western lands needed more farmers

30. Section 3Urbanization If you are an immigrant, is your life at all like what you expected in America? What were you “promised”? What did you actually find?

31. Rural to Urban migration • Migration to the cities a result of the technology that is present on the farm • Fewer farmhands are needed

32. City Life Many poor families crowded into the cities oldest sections. Middle-class people lived father out in row houses or new apartment buildings. Beyond them, the rich built fine homes with green lawns and trees. 32

33. Poor families: • crowed slums • streets were jammed with people, horses, pushcarts, and garbage • living space limited so builders devised new kind of apartment to hold more people • put up buildings six or seven stories high=tenements w/no windows, heat, or indoor bathrooms • Typhoid and cholera and raged for the tenants. Tuberculosis was the biggest killer. 33

34. Dumbbell Apartments

35. Dumbbell Apartments • Jacob Riis wrote “How the Other Half Lives”

36. African Americans: • hard times of prejudice and violence • blacks headed to northern cities 36

37. Urbanization =Poor sanitation • Horse manure piled up on streets • Sewage flowed through open gutters • Factory smoke filled the air • Garbage was dumped in the streets (no formal trash collection)

38. Urbanization - Fire • Building materials were flammable • No fire departments • No water • Overcrowding

39. CityBoss Ward Boss Local Precinct Workers And Captains Political Machine Organized group that controlled the activities of a political party in a city and offered services to voters and businesses in exchange for political or financial support.

40. Boss Tweed • Thomas Nast’s cartoons in Harper’s Weekly helped strip Tweed of his power • Mr. Tweed told Nast "Let's stop those damned pictures. I don't care so much what the papers write about me -- my constituents can't read, but damn it, they can see pictures.”

41. Section 4REFORMERS HELP THE POOR: • Social Gospel movement…Early reform program. Leaders preached that people reached salvation by helping the poor. • Attack causes of poverty and vice, not blame poor

42. Social Gospel preached charity and justice. • Labor reform • English classes • Child care • Clothing • Established settlement houses

43. Settlement houses • Usually founded by college educated men and women • Community centers to serve needs • Founders lived in poor neighborhoods • Most famous was Hull House, founded by Jane Addams

44. Temperance Movement • Sought to ban alcohol • Seen as root of evil, poverty, abuse

45. Carry Nation • Most famous prohibitionist • Famous for smashing bars with hatchet and Bible • Blamed alcohol for links b/t saloons, immigrants, and political bosses

46. Purity Crusaders • Vice became big business in cities • Gambling, alcohol, prostitution, drugs • Tried to end “vice” in community; take back the hood. • Result: laws like the Comstock Law that prohibited the sending of obscene material through the mail, like birth control info