CLASS SETDBQ Project

To what extent did the Gilded Age affect the commencing of the Progressive Era?

DOCUMENT A

Jennie Curtis, President of ARU Local 269, the "Girls" Local Union, address to 1894 Convention of American Railway UnionPullman, both the man and the town, is an ulcer on the body politic. He owns the houses, the schoolhouse, and the churches of God in the town he gave his once humble name.

And, thus, the merry war — the dance of skeletons bathed in human tears — goes on; and it will go on, brothers, forever unless you, the American Railway Union, stop it; end it; crush it out.

DOCUMENT BWilliam Jennings Bryan, Cross of Gold, 9 July 1896No, my friends, that will never be the verdict of our people. Therefore, we care not upon what lines the battle is fought. If they say bimetallism is good, but that we cannot have it until other nations help us, we reply that, instead of having a gold standard because England has, we will restore bimetallism, and then let England have bimetallism because the United States has it. If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the uttermost. Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand 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.

DOCUMENT C

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DOCUMENT D

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Going Through the Form of Universal SuffrageBoss. "You have the liberty of Voting for any one you please; but we have the Liberty of Counting in any one we please.""Do your Duty as Citizens, and leave the rest to take its course." - New York Times

DOCUMENT EIn 1892 James Baird Weaver (1833-1912), nominee of the Populists, wrote regarding the railroad magnates

CLASS SET“In their delirium of greed the managers of our transportation systems disregard both private right and the public welfare. Today they will combine and bankrupt their weak rivals, and by the expenditure of a trifling sum possess themselves of properties which cost the outlay of millions. Tomorrow they will capitalize their booty for five times the cost, issue their bonds, and proceed to levy tariffs upon the people to pay dividends upon the fraud."Industrial millionaires were condemned in the Populist platform of 1892“The fruits of the toil of millions were boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few . . . and the possessors of these, in turn despise the Republic and endanger liberty. From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes-tramps and millionaires."

DOCUMENT FThe Square Deal, New York State Fair, Syracuse, 7 September 1903"Let the watchwords of all our people be the old familiar watchwords of honesty, decency, fair-dealing, and commonsense."... "We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less." "The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us."

DOCUMENT GNew York political "boss" Roscoe Conkling (1829-1888) denounced the civil-service reformers in the New York World (1877)"[The reformers] vocation and ministry is to lament the sins of other people. Their stock in trade is rancid, canting self-righteousness. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Their real object is office and plunder. When Dr. Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel, he was unconscious of the then undeveloped capabilities and uses of the word "Reform."DOCUMENT H

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The Modern Colossus of Railroads, 1879William H. Vanderbilt, flanked by Cyrus Field (left) and Jay Gould (right), towers over the scene. With the Interstate Commerce Act in 1887, the government began to weaken the magnates' grip over the nation's transportation system.

DOCUMENT IGeorge Washington Plunkitt, Newspaper Interviews, 1905

CLASS SET"Everybody is talkin' these days about Tammany men growin' rich on graft, but nobody thinks of drawin' the distinction between honest graft and dishonest graft. There's all the difference in the world between the two. Yes, many of our men have grown rich in politics. I have myself. I've made a big fortune out of the game, and I'm getttin' richer every day, but I've not gone in for dishonest graft—blackmailin' gamblers, saloonkeepers, disorderly people, etc.—and neither has any of the men who have made big fortunes in politics.

"There's an honest graft, and I'm an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by sayin' 'I seen my opportunities and I took 'em.'

"Just let me explain by examples. My party’s in power in the city, and it's goin' to undertake a lot of public improvements. Well, I'm tipped off, say, that they're going to lay out a new park at a certain place.

"I see my opportunity and I take it. I go to that place and I buy up all the land I can in the neighborhood. Then the board of this or that makes its plan public, and there is a rush to get my land, which nobody cared particular for before.

"Ain't it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment and foresight? Of course, it is. Well, that's honest graft."

DOCUMENT JTheodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), an ardent civil-service reformer, condemned the patronage system as"tending to degrade American politics, the men who are in office only for what they can make out of it are thoroughly unwholesome citizens, and their activity in politics if I is suffered to become a mere selfish scramble for plunder, where victory rests with the most greedy, the most cunning, the most brazen. The whole patronage system is inimical to American institutions; it forms one of the gravest problems with which democratic and republican government has to grapple."