Chapter 26 The Great West and Agricultural Revolution

Chapter 26The Great West and Agricultural Revolution

The Clash of Cultures on the Plains

In 1860 Native Americans numbered about 360,000 living throughout the trans-Mississippi West.

But with migration of more settlers coming into this area, there also came conflict.

White soldiers and settlers from before the Civil War had already spread disease killing many.

Hunting bison, the main food source for many tribes, also led to fighting between tribes for the dwindling resource.

The Fights

VS

VS

VS

Comanche Apache

Chippewa Cheyenne

Kiowa Pawnee


The federal government hoped to quite the problems between the tribes with various treaties. Treaties were signed at Fort Laramie in 1851 and at Fort Atkinson in 1853.

These treaties established boundaries on territory for the tribes, this in turn was the beginning of the reservation system.

There was to be two Indian “colonies” to the north, and another to the south left open for white settlers.

The problems with the treaties though, was that it greatly conflicted with the lifestyle of the Plain Indians, who were not used to much authority outside of the family, and were not accustomed to living within a defined area.


In the 1860sthe federal government herded the Indians into still smaller confines, mainly the “Great Sioux Reservation”

The Indians ultimately agreed to this on terms that they would be left alone and provided with food and other supplies, but due to corruption, many of these supplies were either of very poor quality or never arrived.

Indian Wars(1864-1890)

The end of the Civil War meant more expansion for the whites. They wanted to move further westward, but there were still Indians blocking the way.

The US then decided to send the army to the native fronts in order to ward off the Indians.

Mainly was a bunch of skirmishes from Sand Creek Massacre to the Battle of Wounded knee.

The Indians were putting up a fight, as their arrows were fast than the US rifles.

This changed with the birth of the .45 colt revolver (invented by Samuel Colt) and the Winchester repeating rifle.

The Blacks also had part of the U.S. army. 1/5 of them occupied it and they were known as “Buffalo Soldiers” by the Indians.

Receding Native Population

On November 29, 1864, volunteers from Colorado attacked the Cheyenne Indians on Sand Creek Leaded by Colonel J.M. Chivington.

This outcome “surprised” the government and they actually offered the Indians a safe place on their own reservation as pardon for the incident.

Trying to stop the building of Bozeman Trail to the Montana goldfields in 1866 a Sioux war party slaughtered all of Captain William J. Fetterman’s 81 men, leaving not one survivor.

Bitter feeling from these attacks led to a cycle of continuing warfare.

After the Fetterman massacre the Treaty of Laramie was signed in 1868, ending further construction on the Bozeman Trail


But conflict arose in 1867 when Custer led a “scientific” expedition into the Black Hills of South Dakota, part of the “Great Sioux reservation”.

They announced discovery of gold and many in search of gold came rushing into the Black Hills.

In 1876 Custer and his 264 men attempted to suppress angered Sioux Indians and return them to the reservation, but they turned out to be well-armed and about 2,500 in number. This became known as the Battle of Little BigHorn.

With the reservation being led by Crazy Horse and sitting Bull, the Sioux won pretty easily

In 1877 when the U.S. authorities tried to move a group of Oregon Indians (Nez Perce) onto a reservation, the Indian Chief Joseph and a group of some 700 Indians ran for Canada on a 1700 mile, 3 month trek only to surrender.

Only 40 miles away from the Canadian border, freedom, the U.S. caught up to them and defeated them at The Battle of Bear Paw.


While they were promised return to their ancestral lands in Idaho, they were instead sent to a reservation in Kansas, where about 40% died of disease.

Even more challenging to subdue were the Apache Indians in New Mexico and Arizona, led by Geronimo. They were pursued into Mexico by the federal government, and they were eventually surrendered after the women were exiled to Florida.

The relentless fighting eventually shattered the spirit of the Native Americans, and they continued to be pushed onto reservations.

The main factors that lead to the “taming” of the Indians included the railroad tracks, that now ran through the heart of the west and could easily bring troops, farmers, and other settlers. Diseases that they showed no resistance to, and the virtual extermination of the buffalo, doomed their nomadic way of life.

Bellowing Herds of BisonWhen white Americans first arrived tens of

millions of buffalo blackened the western prairies. They were the staff of life for the Native Americans.

When the Civil War ended some 25 million still roamed on the western plains.

In 1868 a Kansas Pacific Locomotive had to wait 8 hours for a herd of buffalo to cross the tracks

Many railroad construction workers had buffalo as a large part of their food supply. William Cody, or “Buffalo Bill” killed over 4,000 animals while employed for the Kansas Pacific.

With the building of railroads came the slaughter of many buffalo, now they were more commonly being killed for individual parts, or even for enjoyment.

By 1885 there were fewer than 1,000 buffalo left.

The Plains Indians

The Plains Indians were the last of the Native Americans to give in to the military power of the whites. They long defended their land but after the Indian wars the various tribes struggled on jealousy and guarding their way of life.

Even though packed onto reservations, and subject to changing Federal Indian policies, the Plains Indians here managed to much of their ancestral culture.

Before Europeans arrived the Plains were made up of some 30 different tribes; each that spoke their own language, protected their own religion, and formed their own government.

The Plains Indians When different tribe members met, communication depended on a sign language.

While the Indians were not only hunters, a large portion of their resources came from buffalo. Women often were expert farmers raising pumpkins, squash, corn, and beans. The hunted bison was also butchered by women.

They made spoons from hooves and containers from intestines. Sinews were stretched into bow strings and buffalo hair into rope. Meat not immediately eaten was dried and preserved.

Moving at first was very challenging for the Plain Indians, they packed all their belongings onto wheeless carts called travois, which were then dragged by dogs.

The Plains IndianBut when the Spanish conquistadors came, the horses that got lose were acquired by Indians and quickly spread throughout the plains.

The horse revolutionized Indian societies, making more efficient hunters that promised to banish hunger, but this also ignited more fierce competition, and wars of aggression and revenge became increasingly bitter and frequent.

But after many battles the Plain Indians found themselves crammed into tiny reservations, clinging to their traditions. While much of their culture still persists today, the free-ranging way of life is long way.

The End of the Trail By the 1880s the national conscience began to stir.

Helen Hunt Jackson influenced many with her books A Century of Dishonor and Ramona which both helped to inspire sympathy for the Indians.

With humanities wanting to treat the Indians nicely, and hard-liners supporting the current policy of forced contained and brutal punishment, neither had much respect for the culture.

Christian reformers, who often administered education on the reservations, would sometimes withhold food to force Indians to give up their tribal religious, and assimilate to white society.

The End of the Trail

In 1884 they persuaded the federal government to outlaw the sacred sun dance.

In 1890 at the Battle of the Wounded Knee the army fought a Dakota Sioux that the sun dance had spread to. An estimated 200 Indian men, women, and children were killed to 29 invading solider deaths.

In 1887 the Dawes Severalty Act dissolved many tribes as legal entities, wiped out tribal ownership of land, and set up individual Indian family heads with 160 free acres. And if they behaved like “good white settlers” then they could get title to their land and citizenship in 25 years.

Carlisle Indian SchoolFounded in 1879 at Carlisle, PA by Captain Richard Henry Pratt.

He was a Civil War and Indian War veteran that believed that the Indians should adapt to white standards.

This Indian Boarding school best exemplifies the desires of the Dawes Act.

The School’s main goal was to train Indians to be “white” in every way but color.

Most noted graduate was Jim Thorpe, one of the best athletes in American History. http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/native-

american-comic-billy-smith/1184669

The End of the Trial

Only in 1934 with the Indian Reorganization Act did they try to restore the tribal basis of Indian life.

With this the Indian population slowly mounted in 1887 there were about 243, 000 total but a census in 2000 counted more than 1.5 million Native Americans, urban and rural.

Only in 1934 with the Indian Reorganization Act did they try to restore the tribal basis of Indian life.

Mining: From Dishpan to Ore Breaker

Indian conquest and the railroad gave life to the mining frontier.

The discovery of gold in Colorado in 1858 led to avid “59ers” that rushed to rip at the Rockies. Even though there were more miners then minerals, many stayed and found silver deposits and golden grain.

“59ers” also flooded into Nevada after the Comstock Lode had been uncovered, amounting to over $340 million in gold and silver.

Nevada had been railroaded in 1864 prematurely to provide 3 electoral votes for Lincoln.

Smaller “lucky strikes” drew miners to Montana, Idaho, and other western states.

Boomtown aka “Hellorados” sprouted like magic and when the excitement was over left ghost towns.

Mining: From Dishpan to Ore Breaker

Once the loose surface gold was gobbled up machinery was imported to smash gold-bearing quartz. But this was costly so usually only corporations could fund such expenditures.

Machines and corporations took of equality earning the right to vote in Wyoming (1889), Utah (1870), Colorado (1896), and Idaho (1896).

Mining contributed to finance the civil war, build the railroads, intensified the conflict of whites and Indians, “Silver Senators” who promoted the mining of silver.

American folklore and literature can be seen through Bret Harte and Mark Twain.

Ex: The Society upon the Stanislaus (Harte) & Miners (Twain).

Beef Bonanzas and the Long Drive

After the civil war ended the several million cattle in Texas were mainly killed for their hides, as there was no way of getting the meat profitably to the market.

But when railroads reached to the west, cattle could now be shipped bodily, and the meat packing industry emerged as a new main pillar of the economy.

With newly refrigerated railroad cars, the meat could be sent fresh to the east coast.

The “Long Drive” feed the slaughter houses. Texas cowboys (white, black, and Mexican) drove herds over the plains until they reached a railway terminal.

These herds numbered anywhere from 1,000-10,000.

For those who did not encounter Indians, stampedes, cattle fever, or other hazards the Long Drive provided profitable.

Beef Bonanzas and the Long DriveFrom 1866 to 1888 over 4 million cattle made their way from the

Texas cattle bowl to the east coast.

But just like the railroad made the Long Drive, it also unmade the Long Drive, it brought out the homesteader and the sheepherder, who built too many fences to be cut down by the cowboys.

A harsh winter in 1886-87 with blizzards and temperatures reaching 68 degrees below 0 left many cattle starving and freezing.

These factors combined with overgrazing and overexpansion took their toll, and the cowboys slowly gave way to the plowboys.

The only way to keep the beef industry going proved to be avoiding overproduction by fencing their ranches, laying winter feed, and breeding fewer but meatier cattle.

They also learned to organize, and in the 1880s the Wyoming stock-growers virtually controlled the state.

These bowlegged Knights of the saddle became part of American folklore. And the perhaps five thousand black herders especially enjoyed the newfound freedom.

The Farmers’ Frontier

• Western farmers were ecstatic with new Homestead Act of 1862. The law allowed a settler to acquire as much as 160 acres of land by living on it for five years and paying a nominal fee of about $30 while improving it.

• Land had previously been sold primarily for revenue, but after the act, about half a million families took advantage of it who couldn’t afford the large landholdings.

• At the same time, five times as many families purchased their land from railroads, land companies, or states.

The Farmers’ Frontier• Not all free land from the government was as well watered

as the Mississippi basin, 2/3 of settlers’ land was mainly in the Great Plains, and suffered droughts

• Fraud was a major part of the “Homesteaders” who were hired by corporations to grab up useable land from real farmers and claim to build a “ 12-by-14” dwelling which turned out to be measured in inches

• The railroads also sold land to Americans and European immigrants.

• The soil of the wild west was thought to be sterile because of the lack of forest, but once it had been broken by the “Sodbusters” and oxen, it was astonishingly fruitful.

• Since there were no trees, they built houses out of sod they dug from the ground and resorted to burning corncobs for warmth

• But the perfect soil doesn’t last for long

The Farmers’ Frontier• Higher wheat prices drew people to the west, past the

100 meridian line, which had already been discussed as the line where irrigation had to start for plants to grow, but headstrong farmers ignored geologist John Wesley Powell’s warnings and suffered severe droughts and greatly effected population.

• “There is no God west of Salina” –Hapless homesteader

• “Dry Farming” led to the “Dust Bowl” several decades later

• Eventually a strain of tough wheat was imported from Russia and blossomed into billowing yellow fields. Corn was replaced with drought-resistant grains like sorghum. Joseph F. Glidden perfected barbed wire solved the problem for making fences without trees

• It took over a century after Powell’s warnings for a national irrigation system to be installed and hydraulic engineers did more for the west than all the cowboys ever did.

• “We enjoy pushing rivers around.”

The Far West Comes of Age

• 7 more states were added to the Union between 1870s-1890s: Colorado, North and South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming. 1896 welcomed Utah in after the Mormons banned polygamy in 1890. Three more states were left to finish the puzzle of the contagious United States.

• Although the federal government didn’t make Oklahoma open to settlers until April 22, 1889, many jumped the gun and arrived earlier, illegally, and who’s horses had to face the shots of federal troops. Once settling on taken Indian land was legal, 50,000 “boomers” were waiting at the lines and exploded into the territory. By the end of the year, Oklahoma boasted a 60,000 persons population. Less than two decades later, they became the “Sooner State” in 1907

The Fading FrontierYellowstone park was obtained in 1872, and was followed by Yosemite and Sequoia parks in 1890. But the soil in the West was yet to be exhausted.

In 1890, all frontier lines were broken, inspiring Frederick Jackson Turner’s 1893 “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”. As the nineteenth century came to a close, the eager American citizens were horror struck to discover that their once vast country was not so vast anymore. The land that was suppose to take 500 years to settle was going or had gone.

Though Americans were more mobile than their European counterparts, it was hard for the unemployed to leave the city sidewalks for farming land.

Most city dwellers didn’t have any idea about how to farm, but the possibility that their potential employees could leave drove wages in cities higher. Chicago, Denver, and San Francisco were full of failed farmers who found their fortunes.

After 1880, the area between the Pacific coast and the Rocky Mountains was the most urbanized region measured by the percentage of people living in cities.

The Turner Thesis

Pretty much describes the changing life of the American man on the Frontier.

He stressed the process and impact it had on pioneers going through the process. Frontier-ception???

Thesis mainly captures Americans escaping the European way of life during the 19th Century.

The Fading FrontierAmerican history is only completely understandable if the westward moving experience is taken into account. The book of American colonization started with Columbus and ends with the taming and settling of the trans-Mississippi West. Americans had gone from the West Indies to the Chesapeake shore, from the valleys of the Hudson and Connecticut Rivers to the valleys of the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers.

The West still has a very distinct culture that was created when many peoples mixed. Native American, Hispanic, and Asian cultures mixed with Americans and played a massive role in social and economic development.

The country and experiences pioneers faced have been immortalized by writers and painters to mythic proportions. Those farmers started the buds that Western civilization bloomed from. The life we live, they dreamed of; the life they lived, we can only dream.

The Farm Becomes a Factory

Farms began to turn from self-sufficient places to corporation-owned, machine-run, dependent settlement.

The first catalogue was sent out in 1872 from the Chicago firm of Aaron Montgomery Ward; it was a single sheet.

As industry was growing, farms became more tied to banking, railroading, and manufacturing. New steam engines could do three jobs at one time. Plowing, seeding, and harrowing could happen simultaneously. Harvest speed increased in the 1870s with the invention of the twine binders and in the 1880s, with the “combine” which reaped and bagged grain while being drawn by twenty to forty horses. Invention increases meant price increases and farmers weren’t first class businessmen so were inclined to blame higher up people for their shortcomings

Agricultural modernization drove many marginal farmers off the land, thus swelling the ranks of the new industrial work force. Few farmers remanded, but those who did built America’s bread basket. Bonanza wheat farms, some larger than 15 thousand acres existed in Minnesota and North Dakota and foreshadowed the gigantic agribusiness of the twentieth century.

California, from the beginning, was a big agricultural business. Spanish Mexican land grants were formed into huge estates and plantations. Once rails supported refrigerated cars, California fruit and vegetable crops picked by underpaid Mexican and Chinese migrants were bought for an inflated price in the urban markets of the East.

Deflation Dooms the DebtorThe market of the cotton crop economy repeated itself

with wheat and corn farmers; prices flat lined and bankruptcy flooded the farm belts in the 1880s.

Foreign markets were now more predominate competitors.

There simply wasn’t enough money to go around. In 1870 the currency in circulation for each person was $19.42 and in twenty years only increased to $22.67.

Farmers were caught in an ugly circle of debt of highly priced machinery and transportation for their decreasing crops and mortgages ate up the little money deprived farmers had left with interest rates going from 8 to 40 percent.

The workers of the field yelled to the Wall street sharks that they had developed the land they charged them for.

By 1880, ¼ of all American farms were operate by tenants and sharecropping marked the South.

The new industrial feudalism fed the world, and the farmers were sinking to Old World serf status.

Unhappy FarmersGrasshoppers came in rain clouds over the already mortgaged farmer and the cotton-boll weevil wreaked havoc in the South in the 1890s.

Soil was dying because of erosion of the fertile topsoil and droughts in the trans-Mississippi West. Many farmers had to pack up their homestead and go “home to the wife’s folks” .

The government wasn’t helping at any level. Land assessing, taxes and protective tariffs were high. Luckless farmers had no other choice but to sell their products at low, unprotected market prices in exchange for expensive manufactured items.

They were also at the mercy of the harvester trust, the barbed-wire trust, and the fertilizer trust all which controlled output. Middlemen were also a profit decreaser for farmers.

Railroads charged rates so high that farmers who burned their corn for heat would loose less than by shipping it. Also, if they complained about the prices, their shipments might arrive spoiled or not even have a place on the cars to go to market.

By 1890, ½ of the population was still farmers, but they were unorganized and individualistic and independent natured, so they weren’t able to rise against the well-oiled machine of manufacturers and railroad barons. It took them almost half a century to organize in Roosevelt’s New Deal days, and only then by the federal government.

The Farmers Take Their Stand

In Post-Civil War days, indebted famers called for more paper money. Impoverished, some one stepped forward to save them all.

In 1867, The National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry was organized and headed by Oliver H. Kelley, a Mason. Firstly, he wanted to enhance the lives of farm men and women cursed with loneliness through social, educational, and fraternal activities. The Grange hosted picnics, concerts, and lectures, a godsend for them. His four-ply hierarchy was also hailed; Laborer to Husbandman for men and Maid to matron for women. By 1875, they boosted 800,000 members, mostly in the Midwest and South.

The Farmers Take Their Stand

The Grangers gradually raised their goals from individual self-improvement to all farmers’ collective plight. To get out of the clutched of trusts, they established their own stores, cooperatively owned grain elevators, and warehouses. One financial disaster resulted from mismanagement of an attempt to manufacture their town harvesting machinery.

Grangers made their way to the capitals of Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and other grain-growing regions. Once in office, they helped their fellow farmer, passing laws on everything from railroad fees to public control of private business for the general welfare. But, not all of their laws were drawn up smartly, and their influence fades after the Supreme Court’s Wabash decision.

The Greenback Labor party also took in many venting farmers with a program for improving the lot of labor. The many substantial influences in the elections of the late 1870s and early 1880s with 14 members of Congress, and a presidential candidate, General James B. Weaver, who polled only 3% of the popular vote after speaking to over half a million people.

Oliver H. KelleyBorn in Boston, 1826

Moved to Minnesota, 1849, became a farmer

Joined U.S Bureau of Agriculture, traveled the nation during the War

Felt that he had to gather the farmers of America to rebuild the country.

Founded the Grange with William Saunders, Francis McDowell, John Trimble, Aaron Grosh, John Thompson, William Ireland, and Caroline Hall

Died In 1913.

Prelude to PopulismThe Farmers’ Alliance, founded in Lampasas, Texas in the late 1876, and by 1890 there was more than a million members.

The alliance weakened itself by:Ignoring:

Tenant farmers

Sharecroppers

Farm workers

An exclusion of blacks into the alliance

And in the 1880’s a separate Colored Farmers’ National Alliance was formed, and by 1890, it had received over a quarter million members

Prelude to PopulismFrom the Farmers’ Alliances, a the People’s party (populists) emerged in the early 1890’s

They attacked Wall Street, and the “money trust”. They called for nationalized railroads, telephone, and telegraph; and for a graduated income tax as well as a “sub-treasury” which would provide farmers with loans for crops stored in government owned warehouses

Also what played a role was the free coinage of silver; and a pamphlet titled “coin’s financial school” was circulated (written by William Hope Harvey). In this gold was an ogre who beheaded silver, a maiden

Prelude to PopulismA Populist“calamity howler” was Mary Elizabeth (AKA Mary Yellin’) who was nicknamed the“Kansas Pythoness” she also had demanded that Kansas raise“less corn and more Hell”

In 1892 Populists shocked the traditional parties, when they won several congressional seats, and received more than a million votes for their presidential candidate, James B. Weaver

Coxey’s ArmyAfter the panic of 1893 and the depression that followed, large groups of unemployed began marching to protest their desperate state

The populists saw this as an opportunity for political allies

“General” Jacob S. Coxey, a quarry owner, set out for Washington in 1894; on a platform, that we relieve unemployment by some $500 million in legal tender notes, issued by the treasury

Coxey’s son was named Legal Tender Coxey after his cause

The march failed when Coxey and his followers were arrested for walking on the grass at the nation’s capital

Le Armeé de Coxey

The official name was “Army of the Commonweal in Christ”

Wanted the government to institute a publics work program to get people back to work, a la New Deal.

Started with 100 men in Massillon , Ohio. Went east from their, through Penn.

Western half of the movement was led by “Generale” Charles T. Kelly. Never made it past the Ohio

Actual armées formed in the Northwest. One group, led by William Hogan, stole a train and fought off U.S Marshals until Montana. Then they got arrested

The Pullman StrikeEugene Debs helped organize the American Railway Union, which held about 150, 000 members

The Pullman Palace Car Company, had a town for its employees near Chicago, and was hit hard by the depression and cut wages one third while still keeping the rent on the company houses

This caused the workers to strike, lashing out and even in some cases overturning cars; striking from Chicago to the Pacific coast. Shut down all traffic west of Chicago.

The American Federation of Labor declined to support the strikers giving it “respectability”

Strike involved 250,000 workers across 27 states at its peak.

The Pullman Strike

Members of the Union refused to couple Pullman and Wagner cars, and effectively shut both companies down.

ARU said if one switchman was fired, whole union would strike.

Many blacks crossed picket lines because they were fearful the racist ARU would lock them out of another market

Fueled the fire, both labor and racial

June 29, 1894-Debs organizes peaceful protest. Couple buildings burned downed, locomotive derailed

The Pullman Strike

Attorney general Richard Olney, urged a dispatch of federal troops, on the grounds that the strikers were interfering with the transit of U.S. mail

President Cleveland supported Olney and declared: “if it takes the entire army and navy to deliver a single postal card in Chicago, that card will be delivered”

Cleveland said strike was against the Sherman Anti-Trust Act

Miles sent with federal troops and 12,000 US Marshals to break strike.

Then the shooting started

Strikers, More Striking

The shooting led to more violence.

Over the course of the strike, 13 workers were killed and 57 were wounded

6,000 workers did roughly $340,000 in property damage

Roughly $818,000,000 in today’s dollars.

Strike crushed. Debs sentenced to 6 months for organizing the strike.

Eugene V. Debs

November 1855-October 1926

Born in Terra Haute, Hoosierland, or Indiana.

Elected to Indiana house in 1884 as a democrat

While in Jail, taught himself socialism. (Socialism=“nice” communism)

Dropped out of high school at 14.

Ran for president four times, and once from prison(1920). Never received an electoral vote

Founded the Industrial Workers of the World

Golden McKinley and Silver Bryan

For the election of 1896, it seemed that even with the depression and jobless, that monetary policy would be the issue to turn the election

This was whether to maintain the gold standard, or to inflate the currency by monetizing silver

The leading candidate for the republican’s was William McKinley a former congressman from Ohio, he had risen to the rank of major in the military

Marcus Alonzo Hanna was a strong supporter of McKinley and even said “I love McKinley” Hanna made his fortune in iron, and wanted to make McKinley president, he believed that a prime function of the government was to aid business


The republican platform declared for the gold standard, and praised the protective tariff

Cleveland no longer led the democrats, who met in Chicago in July 1896 to choose a new candidate

The candidate was William Jennings Bryan from Nebraska when he stepped onto the platform in front of fifteen thousand people and said: “we will answer the demands for a gold standard by saying to them: ‘you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold’”

The next day Bryan was nominated


The platform of Bryan demanded inflation through the unlimited coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 ounces of silver to 1 of gold, although the market ratio was 32 to 1

There were democratic “gold bugs” who disagreed with the party over the silver issue and led to many of them including Cleveland hoping that McKinley would win

Thus, the democrats having the main plank of the populist party (the 16 to 1) ratio many populists supported the party and so there was the“Demo-Pop” party

Class Conflict: Plow holders Versus Bondholders

Hanna assumed that he could make the main issue of the election the tariff, but Bryan took full force with the silver issue, sweeping through 27 states, 18,000 miles; and made nearly 600 speeches; and 36 in one day

Republicans sneered “in God we trust, with Bryan we bust”

Hanna was now chairman of the republican national committee, and shined as a money raiser; as he piled up an enormous slush fund, from the trusts and plutocrats; this was used for mainly propaganda


The McKinleyites had the largest campaign chest so far in American history at all levels, it was about $16 million to the democrats $1 million (which is ironic because its 16 to 1…the silver ratio…)

There were however “dirty tricks employed to help McKinley win, like employers providing incentives for a vote for McKinley to its employees

And so the methods of Hanna worked, and on election day McKinley won with 271 to 176 votes from the electoral college, and 7,102,246 to 6,492,559 popular votes


*Quote on pg.622

Many of the votes came from fixed wage earners, like factory workers, who had no need for inflation the main point of Bryan’s campaign

Bryan’s defeat marked the last serious effort to win the white house with mostly agrarian votes, laying the future of presidential politics to the cities, with there growing amounts of immigrants

This election also marked the republican hold on the white house for the next sixteen years, and all but eight of the next thirty-six

Republican Stand-pattism Enthroned

McKinley took the inaugural oath in 1897 and was noted because he did not ever seem to perspire on the extremely muggy day

He was an “ear-to-the-ground” politician who never was out from the majority opinion; and his cautious nature caused him to shy away from reform

Business was given pretty much free reign and were able to develop without any serious restraints

Republican Stand-pattism Enthroned

The Wilson-Gorman law was not raising enough money, and the republicans thought they had purchased the right to additional tariff protections by their large contributions to Hanna’s chest

So following it, the Dingley tariff bill was jammed through the house in 1897 from the work of Reed, and received over 850 amendments onto it

As prosperity returned, the money issue that overshadowed politics since the Civil War faded away

The Gold Standard Act of 1900 passed, and quit any final silver opposition, and provided that paper currency be redeemed freely in gold

Documents

Chapter 26 The Great West and Agricultural Revolution