The Great West & the Agricultural Revolution 1865-1896 Part II (1-56) A.P. US History Mr. Houze 1

The Great West &the Agricultural Revolution

1865-1896

Part II (1-56)A.P. US History

Mr. Houze

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Pt. II: Reviewing the Chapter – After mastering this chapter you should be able to

• Describe the revolutionary changes in farming on the Great Plains

• Describe the economic forces that drove farmers into debt, and describe how the Grange, the Farmer’s Alliances, and the Populist Party organized to protest their oppression

• Explain the closing of the frontier, and the long-term significance of the frontier for American history

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III. Land FeverB. The Farmer’s Frontier

• In the post-Civil War period, hundreds of thousands of Americans moved west

• Between 1870 and 1890, this westward migration accelerated – during which time more land was settled than in all the previous history of the country

• The land rush in America’s trans-Mississippi West was stimulated by two factors:(1) the Homestead Act’ of 1862, which granted 160 acres

of land free to any settler who “established a permanent residence” and lived on the land for five years, and

(2) the transcontinental railroads, which not only opened new areas to settlement but also actively recruited settlers

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A Union Pacific Advertisement

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III. Land FeverB. The Farmer’s Frontier (cont.)

• In the ‘Gilded Age’, the agrarian West, like the mining West, shared the period’s pervasive addiction to speculation and exploitation of natural resources and labor for gain

• Prior to completion of the transcontinental railroads, those lured by the West’s promise of land and a better future crossed the plains in covered wagons – the journey then took six months and countless people lost their lives in the process

• By the 1880s, four competing transcontinental rail lines brought settlers west under much safer conditions in less than a week

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• Those who pulled up stakes and journeyed west faced a variety of challenges, both man-made and natural, including blizzards, droughts, prairie fires, tornadoes, plagues of locusts, and crop-destroying hailstorms

• In addition, settlers in the West had to contend with isolation, loneliness, disease, and the ordinary accidents that could befall even the best farmers

• For women, life on the frontier translated into backbreaking labor – even for ordinary tasks such as obtaining water and fuel for cooking

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• Just to get started, a western homesteader needed approximately $1,000 to build a house, purchase draft animals, sink a well, fence his property, and purchase seed – some ‘sodbusters’ tried to make do with much less

• Between 1860 and 1900, 2.5 million farms were establish-ed, and of those only one in five was homesteaded – the others were sold by land speculators, railroads, and land companies

• By the late 19th century, growing numbers of western settlers, unable to afford land of their own, ended up working for wages on privately owned commercial farms financed with eastern capital

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Plowing the Sod in Montana

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• Despite the challenges, many homesteaders and settlers succeeded in establishing successful lives in the West

• By the 1870s, much of the ‘best land’ was already taken – grabbed up by (1) land speculators who raised prices beyond the means of poorer settlers, (2) given to the railroads by Congress as land grants to help finance construction of the transcontinental lines, or (3) given to states to finance education

• This situation often left poor settlers with few choices beyond settling on marginal, less desirable plots of land – particularly in an area known as the ‘Great American Desert’ [western Kansas, Nebraska, and eastern Colorado]

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Nebraska Homestead, 1887 – Family ProudlyPoses Before Their Sod House

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• In the 1870s, settlers on these marginal lands west of the ‘100th meridian’ [an imaginary line running north to south from the Dakotas through west Texas] faced additional challenges

• The ‘100th meridian’ separated two climatological regions, (1) the well-watered east, which received annual rainfall of twenty-two inches or more per year, and (2) the semiarid west, which received much less annual rainfall

• In the early 1880s, the region west of the ‘100th meridian’ received unusually high amounts of rainfall – leading some farmers to believe the climatic change was permanent

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• Many agricultural experts warned farmers that areas of the ‘Great American Desert’ west of the ‘dry line’ would not support a 160 acre homestead – their warnings went unheeded as western land speculators and agents continued to sell land

• In 1874, John Wesley Powell, director of the U.S. Geological Survey, warned that agriculture west of the ‘100th meridian’ was impossible without massive irrigation

• Then, in the late 1880s, a six year drought hit the region – lasting six years, the drought continued into the 1890s and devastated farms west of the ‘dry line’

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John Wesley Powell and Others – Surveyingthe Green River in Utah, 1871

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• Farmers in the region quickly went broke and retreated from the Plains – many going back to the Midwest and East from which they came

• Despite such setbacks, land fever still gripped Americans toward the end of the 19th century

• In 1889, the U.S. government took possession of two million acres of land located in ‘Indian Territory’ [Oklahoma] and opened it to settlement by white Americans – this became the spectacular ‘Oklahoma Land Rush’, the last of its kind in the 19th century

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• Prior to the opening of the Oklahoma Territory, federal government troops patrolled the land, keeping an estimated 50,000 homesteaders massed along its border out – rounding up those who tried to stake their claim ‘sooner’ than others

• At noon on April 22, 1889, federal officers fired pistol shots signaling the start of the great land rush – by the end of the year Oklahoma had 60,000 inhabitants and in 1907 it became the ‘Sooner State’

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Homesteaders Await the Opening of the Cherokee Strip - Oklahoma Territory, September 16, 1893

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III. Land FeverC. The Fading Frontier

• In 1890, the U.S. Census Bureau declared the frontier be-tween East and West officially closed – leaving Americans insecure with a sense that an old world was passing away

• In 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner debuted his thesis, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”, at the ‘Columbian Exposition’ in Chicago

• In it, he argued that America’s frontier experience molded the national character and the West – transforming ‘Europeans’ into tough, self-reliant, inventive ‘Americans’

• He also asked what new forces would shape America’s national character since the frontier was officially closed

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IV. The Farmers’ RevoltA. From the ‘Grange’ to ‘Populism’

• In the late 19th century, American farmers faced a series of challenges, including (1) drought on the prairies, (2) high import tariffs, (3) fluctuating crop prices, (4) currency deflation and contraction, (5) high debt, (6) over-assessed property values, and (7) price gouging by the railroads

• Farmers, about one-half of the population, had historically been poorly organized to deal with these problems

• In 1867, the ‘National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry [the ‘Grange’] was formed - the first real effort by farmers to organize for social, educational, fraternal, and political purposes

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IV. The Farmers’ RevoltA. From the ‘Grange’ to ‘Populism’ (cont.)

• Farmer’s grievances were also expressed through the ‘Greenback Labor Party’, which combined demands for inflation of the money supply with demands to improve the pay and conditions of labor

• In 1878, the ‘Greenback Labor Party’ reached its peak influence when it successfully polled over a million votes and elected fourteen new members to the U.S. Congress

• Following judicial reverses, notably the ‘Wabash’ case in 1886, the ‘Granger’s influence faded but the organizations lived on

• Paralleling the ‘Granger’ movement was the ‘Farmers’ Alliance’ movement founded in Lampasas County, Texas in the late 1870s

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• As the alliance movement grew, the farmer groups consolidated into two regional alliances, (1) the ‘Northwestern Farmers Alliance’ and (2) the more radical ‘Southern Farmers Alliance’

• By 1890, the radical Southern Farmers’ Alliance, which had spread to Arkansas, Louisiana, and Georgia, had more than three million members

• The Southern Farmers’ Alliance worked with the ‘Colored Farmers’ Alliance [founded in Texas in the 1880s] to forge a common cause

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• At the core of the ‘Alliance’ movement were the farmers’ cooperatives that sought to negotiate better prices for their crops through ‘bulking’ – selling their crops together

• In addition, the ‘Farmers Alliances’ set up cooperative trade stores and exchanges in an effort to bypass merchants and creditors – their efforts met with stiff opposition by merchants, bankers, wholesalers, and manufacturers who made it impossible for cooperatives to get credit

• As a result, farmers began to demand fundamental changes in the money and credit systems of the United States – realizing that without such changes the cooperative movement would fail

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• In 1886, the ‘Farmers’ Alliance’ supported workers striking the ‘Texas and Pacific Railroad’ owned by Jay Gould – stating that farmers were workers and laborers too in a common cause with wage laborers

• The ‘Southern Farmers’ Alliance’ supported the striking railroad workers with food, supplies, and a public proclamation calling for a boycott of Gould’s railroad

• In 1886, Texas farmers united to demand railroad regula-tion, currency and credit reforms, and land reforms – reforms difficult to achieve because ‘Democrats’ and ‘Republicans’ supported commercial interests

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• By 1892, the ‘Southern Farmers’ Alliance’ and advocates of a third party movement formed the ‘People’s Party’ – launching the ‘Populist Movement’ in America

• The ‘Populists’ strongly criticized America’s industrial society and proposed the idea of a subtreasury – a plan that would allow farmers to store nonperishable crops in government storehouses

• ‘Populists’ believed that a government-owned ‘subtreasury’ for crop storage would (1) charge reasonable rates until market prices rose, (2) allow farmers to borrow against their crops in the form of commodity credit from the federal government, and (3) eliminate the crop-lien system in the South

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IV. The Farmers’ RevoltA. From the ‘Grange’ to ‘Populism (cont.)

• Western ‘Populists’ viewed land speculators and railroads, not merchants, as the primary enemy – they demanded (1) land reform, (2) a plan to reclaim excessive lands granted to railroads or sold to foreign investors, and (3) government ownership of railroads and telegraph systems

• The ‘Populist’ platform also called for a graduated income tax, free coinage of silver, and the issuance of ‘greenbacks’ – measures designed to increase the money supply and bring down the cost of credit

• The ‘Populists’ supported the demands of working-class laborers including an eight-hour workday and an end to contract labor

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The Plight of Farmers, 1865-1910 – Price Indexes for Farm Products & Consumer Goods

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• Finally, ‘Populists’ also called for direct election of U.S. Senators, and electoral reforms including the ‘secret ballot’, the ‘initiative’, the ‘recall’, and the ‘referendum’ – measures that were later enacted during the ‘Progressive Era’

• ‘Populism’ was more than just a response to hard times – it presented an alternative vision of American economic democracy

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Thomas E. Watson – Helped Create the‘Populist’ Party

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Mary Elizabeth Lease – Outspoken Leaderof the ‘Populists’

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V. The Labor WarsA. Coxey’s Army & the ‘Pullman Strike’

• The ‘Panic of 1893’ and the depression it spawned strengthened the ‘Populist’ argument that farmers and laborers were victimized by an oppressive economy con-trolled by capitalists and an unresponsive political system

• At the height of the depression, approximately fifty percent of the country’s workforce was unemployed – sending armies of desperate workers across the country begging for work and handouts of food

• As a consequence, cities and towns across America began to enact vagrancy laws and impose stiff fines and jail terms on the growing hoards of unemployed they increasingly viewed as tramps and threats to social order

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V. The Labor WarsA. Coxey’s Army & the ‘Pullman Strike’ (cont.)

• Late 19th century ‘laissez faire’ politics and ‘social Darwin-ist’ principles had convinced a majority of federal, state, and local elected officials that it was inappropriate for government to provide relief and intervene in the economy

• By the spring of 1894, masses of unemployed Americans began to march on Washington, D.C. to call attention to their plight and demand that Congress enact public works programs to end unemployment

• The most famous march was that of ‘Coxey’s Army’ – led by Jacob S. Coxey, a wealthy quarry owner from Massillon, Ohio who sympathized with the plight of unemployed workers

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• Jacob Coxey’s list of demands included a public works program to be financed by approximately $500 million in legal tender notes issued by the U.S. Treasury – an inflationary scheme he believed would put men to work building needed roads across America

• On May 1, 1894, ‘Coxey’s Army’ arrived in Washington and marched onto the Capitol grounds – a violation of their parade permit which resulted in mass arrests and assaults by police against the demonstrators

• Jacob Coxey was jailed, charged with trespassing on the grass - by August, the armies of unemployed dissolved away with little to show for their efforts

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Coxey’s Army Before the Capitol, 1894

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• Symbolically, ‘Coxey’s Army’, like the ‘Populists’, called into question the basic values of the new industrial order – demonstrating that ordinary citizens could organize outside the established political system to influence politics

• The ‘Panic of 1893’ and the depression that followed increased the number of unemployed to 3 million by 1894 – a figure approximating half of the working population

• At the ‘Pullman Palace Car Company workers were angry as they (1) were forced to pay high rents for company-owned housing, (2) lived under the constant fear of eviction, and (3) had seen their wages cut almost 30 percent in 1893

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V. The ‘Labor Wars’A. Coxey’s Army & the ‘Pullman Strike’

• George M. Pullman, the company’s founder, had intended the company town to be a model of cleanliness, orderliness, and convenient amenities

• Such amenities included superior housing, parks, play-grounds, an auditorium, a library, a hotel, shops, markets, etc. - George M. Pullman expected the town to be finan-cially self-supporting and deliver a 6 percent return on his investments

• As a result, Pullman refused to lower rents when the depression began in 1893 – rents that ran 10 to 20 percent higher than those in nearby towns

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V. The ‘Labor Wars’A. Coxey’s Army & the ‘Pullman Strike’ (cont.)

• Paralleling these economic inequalities at Pullman was the company’s attempt to control the work process – substi-tuting piecework for day wages and undermining skilled craftworkers

• In the spring of 1894, Pullman workers rebelled against these changes and joined the ranks of the ‘American Railway Union’ (ARU) led by the charismatic Eugene Victor Debs

• The ARU was dedicated to organizing all railway workers – the skilled and unskilled ranging from engineers to engine cleaners

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• George Pullman responded to the ARU’s efforts to unionize his plant by firing three union leaders the day after they led a delegation to protest wage cuts

• In May 1894, Pullman workers retaliated by going out on strike – appealing to the ARU to support their cause

• The conflict quickly escalated when the ARU membership voted to boycott Pullman cars and switchmen in other states refused to handle any train carrying Pullman cars

• When the ‘General Managers Association’ [managers from twenty-four different railroads] recruited strikebreakers and fired protesting switchmen, the strike spread to entire train crews and affected twenty-seven states and territories

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• By July 2, 1894, rail service from New York to California lay paralyzed – however, no major riots broke out and no serious property damage occurred

• Despite its relatively peaceful nature, railroad managers distorted and misrepresented the strike, sending out press releases describing the violence supposedly engaged in by the strikers

• Strikers did engage in minor actions including the stopping of trains – forcing train crews to uncouple Pullman cars and leave them on sidings

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• In Washington, D.C., Attorney General Richard B. Olney, a former railroad lawyer, was determined to put down the strike – convincing President Grover Cleveland to order federal troops to intervene to protect the U.S. mails

• Eugene Debs, who had originally opposed the Pullman strike, advised members of the ARU across the country to avoid violence, use no force to stop trains, and to respect law and order

• Despite his instructions, two conservative Chicago judges issued an injunction that (1) prohibited Debs from speaking in public and (2) made the boycott a crime punishable by jail sentence for contempt of court

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• Despite the intervention of troops and the court ordered injunctions, railroads remained paralyzed

• Ultimately, the court injunctions worked and the strike was broken when Debs was arrested and imprisoned for contempt of court

• Government officials also raided and ransacked the headquarters of the ARU – leaving the union broken and demoralized

• In prison, Debs, reflecting on the Pullman strike, concluded that with the courts and government allied with industrialists in the interest of defending private property, workers would have to take control of the state itself

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• Eugene Debs entered prison a committed trade unionist – six months later he emerged a committed socialist – at first he supported the ‘Populist’ party until its demise after the 1896 election

• In 1900, Eugene Debs formed the ‘Socialist Party’ and ran for president five times as the party’s candidate

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Eugene V. Debs – Founder ofthe Socialist Party of America

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VI. Depression PoliticsB. McKinley, Bryan & the Election of 1896

• The ‘Election of 1896’ reflected the grievances of long-suffering farmers and down-and-out workers hit hard by the depression that began in 1893 – it also reflected sectional and racial animosities

• The ‘Populists’ raised fears among conservatives because they attacked Wall Street, big business, and the banks – once again advocating (1) currency inflation through coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1, (2) federal ownership of railroads, telephone, and telegraph companies, (3) direct election of U.S. Senators, (4) a graduated income tax, (5) a one-term limit on the presidency, (6) adoption of the initiative, recall, and referendum, (7) a shorter workday, and (8) immigration restrictions

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VI. Depression PoliticsB. McKinley, Bryan & the Election of 1896 (cont.)

• As the Populist Party’s rhetoric heated up, conservatives began to fear their radical demands for change – possibly even a revolution

• Conservatives took the ‘Populists’ very seriously – particularly after their strong performance in the 1892 presidential election and the 1894 congressional elections

• As the November presidential election of 1896 approached, conservatives stepped up their criticisms of leading Populists, including Kansas governor Lorenzo Lewelling, Mary Elizabeth Lease (the ‘Kansas Pythoness’), Ignatius Donnelly (a three-time Minnesota congressman), and William Hope Harvey (author of ‘Coin’s Financial School’)

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The ‘Morgan’ Silver Dollar& the Twenty Dollar Gold Piece

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• They were variously referred to as cranks, lunatics, idiots, socialists, communists, and ‘calamity howlers’ by critics

• By 1896, the depression had intensified calls for reform not only from the ‘Populists’ but throughout the electorate

• In the South, many white southern farmers refused to support a ‘Populist’ candidate for president because ‘Populists’ openly courted black farmers – racial prejudice obscured the common economic interests of black and white farmers

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• Republicans nominated William McKinley of Ohio on a platform that (1) endorsed the gold standard, (2) praised the protective tariff, and (3) condemned economic hard times as well as the Democrats inability to solve America’s problems

• The Democratic Party was split by open rebellion with large segments in the West and South - repudiating Presi-dent Grover Cleveland because of his support for the gold standard

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McKinley Campaign Poster

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• At the Chicago Democratic convention, divisions in the party were clearly evident as keynote address speaker William Jennings Bryan whipped delegates into a frenzy with his famous ‘Cross of Gold’ speech which spoke to the grievances of farmers and laborers as well as called for free coinage of silver at 16 to 1

• Motivated by the spirit of revolt within the Democratic Party, and Bryan’s keynote address, delegates moved to nominate William Jennings Bryan as their candidate for president – a development that posed a dilemma for ‘Populists’

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William Jennings Bryan – Campaigned for‘Free Coinage’ of Silver

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• Although ‘Populists’ and ‘Democrats’ supported many of the same principles, they split on whether the ruling Democrats could effectively lead a crusade for reforms

• At the ‘People’s Party’ convention, western ‘Populists’ called for fusion with the Democratic Party and an endorsement of Bryan – but many objected to Bryan’s choice of Arthur M. Sewall [a railroad director and bank president] as his vice-presidential candidate

• Eventually, the Democrats accepted the ‘Populists’ choice of Tom Watson of Georgia as the vice-presidential candidate in return for their support of William Jennings Bryan’s presidential candidacy

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Presidential Candidate Bryan As a SnakeDevouring the Democratic Party - 1896

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• The ‘Election of 1896’ was one of the most fiercely fought and pivotal presidential elections in American history – one which pitted Republican William McKinley [backed by wealthy Ohio iron industrialist and party boss Marcus Alonzo Hanna] against William Jennings Bryan, a gifted speaker but relative newcomer to politics

• On election day, Americans went to the polls in unprecedented numbers – four out of every five registered voters cast their ballots

• Bryan received the support of many southern and western states as well as the vote of western and southern industrial workers

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• McKinley won the support of the industrial Midwest and northeastern states as well as the vote of eastern industrial workers who feared that a ‘Populist’ victory would threaten their jobs and industrialism itself

• Election returns showed that McKinley won twenty-three states to Bryan’s twenty-two – but the election and the electoral vote winner hinged on from 100 to 1,000 votes in several key states

• In the final count, McKinley defeated Bryan [271 electoral votes to 176] – McKinley’s victory crushed the ‘Populist Party’ and the agrarian revolt with it

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The ‘Election of 1896’

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• Despite its defeat, the ‘Populist Party’ set a domestic agenda for the next twenty years – a period in which the ‘Progressives’ would enact many of the ideas spawned by the agrarian revolt, including banking and currency reform, electoral reform, and an enlarged role for the federal government in the economy

• By 1897, prosperity returned to the American economy, the ‘money issue’ faded away, and farm prices rose – all in the first year of McKinley’s presidency

• In addition, moderate inflation allowed prices to rise after new discoveries of gold in Canada’s ‘Klondike’, Alaska, South Africa, and Australia allowed gold prices to fall

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Nome City, Alaska, 1899 – The Gold RushCreated These Boom Towns

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Documents

The Great West & the Agricultural Revolution 1865-1896 Part II (1-56) A.P. US History Mr. Houze 1