Mark Twain and Jane Addams

Critics in the Industrial Age.

The Opening of the WestThe destruction of Native American

culture. “Reconcentration”, destruction, and the

Dawes Severality Act.Mining and the West.

Small vs. corporate mining: The Mining Law of 1872

The land boom.Railroads: the transcontinentals.Cattle culture.

Industrial Trends in Post-Civil War America

Growth and the pace of change. Manufactured goods produced: rises from

$1.8 billion in 1859 to $13 billion in 1899. Gross Domestic Product up 44% between

1874 and 1883. Industry as a driving economic force.

The shift away from agriculture. New industrial products penetrate the

American consumer market. Increased productivity from new technology.

Industrial Organization The new realities of the business environment.

Economies of scale and the wave effect. Concentration of capital for production. Management and coordination: vertical and horizontal

integration.

Answers to the challenges of business. Corporations in the industrial age. Trusts and holding companies.

Monopoly The railroads as the first modern monopolies. The new trusts: U.S. Steel and Standard Oil. The popular reaction to the trusts: the rise of unionism.

Industrial Age Politics Local politics.

The city machines: corruption and “fixing”. Class and urban growth in machine politics.

The national scene. Personality politics, money, and vote fraud. Patronage, Garfield’s assassination, and the

Pendleton Act of 1883. Populism and it’s effects.

The Granger movement and the Populists. The silver question: the “Crime of ’73”, the Sherman

Silver Purchase Act, and the collapse of Baring Bros. The election of 1896.

Silverites and Goldbugs: the Democratic split. Bryan vs. McKinley: the new politics.

Mark Twain and Imperialism. Twain’s life.

Twain’s early life and his formative years. Twain as middle class critic. Twain and anti-imperialism.

The Spanish-American War Early imperialism in the Americas. The “splendid little war.” Philippine insurrection and the true face of

imperialism. The Anti-Imperialism League. The aftermath of imperial expansion: new territory

and new policies.

The New Urban America Urban growth.

Class and the patterns of growth: ghettoes, suburbs, transport and the “Rule of 45”.

Service problems and their solutions. Segregation of space and city planning.

The new urban Americans. Economic class and industrial society. Laissez-faire vs. socialism: “Horatio Alger” and the

popular imagination. The new immigration: the padrone system, Social

Darwinism and the Exclusion Act of 1882.

Jane Addams Addams as a reformer.

Marxism and the early reformers. Hull House and direct aid to the poor.

Labor unrest and the underclass. The Homestead Steel Strike. Henry Clay Frick and private security forces. The breaking of the Amalgamated Association of

Iron and Steel Workers. The Pullman Strike. Eugene Debs and the American Railway Union. “Interfering with the mails” and the use of Federal

troops as strikebreakers. The western mine strikes.