Cait:
1. “Of course, 'the power of money,' class privilege, the dominion of wealth, had seemed potential enemies of 'the people' since the early years of the republic, and the language of labor reformers and union leaders in the postwar era rang in accents of antebellum campaigns against monopolies and banks.”
I found this interesting because of a TV segment on today about how having an influential last name or a lot of money in your bank accounts greatly helps your chances of getting into an Ivy League school. Experts were saying that middle and lower class bright students should be protesting the treatment, just like passage from the book.
2. I was hoping for clarification of the statement: “Thus, concluded Woodward, 'the South became a bulwark instead of a menace to the new order.'” I don’t understand how the compromise between Republicans and Democrats failed the industrial order.
Kevin:
1. In the trial of "Big Bill" Haywood, it didn't say that Harry Orchard, a.k.a Thomas Hogan, the man who confessed to the killing of former governor Frank Steunenberg, was a member of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM). It looks as if he was hired solely for this purpose. Was this common that men who committed these crimes usually had no ties to the the miners' cause and were solely "hit men" so to speak?
2. In the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. factory, it looks like there were no fire escapes on the side of the building. It was also mentioned that the doors were locked to prevent stealing. Were these the doors just to the main stairwell in the building? Was there an option to climb to the roof or jump to the the buiding adjacent to theirs? Also, it was stated that the building was supposedly thought to be fireproof. What was different about a building in 1911 that could have made it fireproof and safer than other buildings?Matt:
"Individual workers and labor organizations supported the Republicans during and just after the war years, as the radical wing of the party enacted a program of strengthening the federal government by extending its powers over both civil rights and banking."
"Support for emancipation, for equality (the 14th Amendment redefining citizenship as a federal rather than a state right), seemed of a piece with the Republican economic program."
"Labor groups looked toward Republican support for their demands, especially the eight-hour day."
Trachtenberg made many references on the Republican Party trying to solve the fued between capital and labor; rarely did he mention the Democratic Party. What were the Democratic opinions and ideas to solve the problems during this period of time?
Why did it take so many years to solve these problems when both the people and political figures believed something needed to be done?Ann-Marie:
While reading Trachtenberg chapter 3, it envoked many thoughts about an art class that I am taking this semester. Trachtenberg talks a lot of the effects of the progressive era, the new rising of what would be known as the “Gilded Age.” On page 79, Trachtenberg brings up these beautiful images of the wealthy people who profited from the industrial revolution uprooting themselves from the cities and moving themselves to the suburbs. “The wealthy left the congested residential areas for the secluded clean, and fresh suburban areas; they sent their children to exclusive schools, their wives to expensive resorts and summer homes and on trips abroad, themselves and their families to newly built elegant churches with comfortable pews there they could hear Sunday sermons about the virtues of wealth and the sorrows of poverty” (Trachtenberg, 79). This just made me think of the impressionistic period in art that was happening at this time. A turn against academic painting, this painterly style painted captured both sides of this progressive era. This chapter brought up the image of Hubert Von Herkomer “On Strike” as the middle class laborer waiting to return to work and “The Heavy Burden” by Honore Daumier shows the effects of the working class. The impressionist paintings show a lavish side to this time period, the upper class during leasure time, like paintings from Manet or Degas. Mary Cassett also painted the upper class in America at this time.
On Strke- http://www.victorianartinbritain.co.uk/paintings/herkomer_onstrike.jpg
The Heavy Burden- http://classicartrepro.com/data/large/Daumier/The_Heavy_Burden_Burrell_1856.jpg
The Boating Party- http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/cassatt/boating.jpgWoman reading in the Garden by Mary Cassatt, at left.
Jeff:
"The day of combination is here to stay. Individualism has gone, never to return." Rockefeller was one of the first of the new big bosses of America. Like the McDonalds and Microsoft’s of today Rockefeller start the trend of big business. Was this the correct path for America to take or did this lead us into a bad place?
The growing middle class was said to be made mostly of white America. Did this change lead to more racism and bad tension between the social classes?
Mike:"Black support lessened dramatically during the 1870's, as business-minded Republicans found willing friends among Southern Democrats. With the balance of commitment shifting from civil rights and equality toward more direct aid to industrial expansion (especially in the underdeveloped South, still reeling from the devastion of the war), Republicans were willing, in 1877, to barter Reconstruction and the federal occupation of the South, with its military protection of blacks, in exchange for the Presidency. Through the Compromise of 1877, the House of Representatives settled the disputed electoral count between Republican Rutherford Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden by declaring Hayes the victor by a single vote (76)."
It seems to me that this barter between Republicans of the North and Democrats of the South was not balanced. How could have this barter possibly taken place with what seems as imbalanced and the travesty of allowing Reconstruction be put on hold for capital gains within our federal government?
"By the late 1880's, that separation had become palpable in communities throughout the nation. Where workers and owners may once have shared common experiences, of community (in smaller towns and cities), schools, churches, civic groups, now barriers arose: the wealthy left congested residential areas for secluded, clean, and fres suburban areas, they sent their children to exclusive schools, their wives to expensive resorts and summer homes...(79)"
People leaving the old world left to begin a new life in America, a life free from aristocrats and wealthy nobles. Life in America promised for new opportunities of acquiring wealth and bettering his or her own life. However, we see by the late 1880's a big gap between the rich and the poor, the rich holding the poor down, and the poor unable to break free of their burdens. Is it innate human nature to have these social classes of rich and poor?Cristin:
“It is noteworthy that the violence of 1877 spurred middle-class organizations of charity and cultural enlightenment in towns and cities across the country. But intimations of disaster, of a cancerous growth attacking the nation's vital organs, did not subside. The 1880's brought even greater numbers of strikes and battles, reaching a crest in what labor historians call the Great Upheaval of 1886, the year of the Knights of Labor's great strike against Jay Gould's railroad in the Southwest, the peak of agitation for an eight-hour day, and the Haymarket riot in Chicago. The perception spread that America was in the grip of alien forces. But exactly who were the aliens became a bone of considerable contention.” ~ It is no wonder that this happened because the factories were stressful and horrible working conditions. It was only a matter of time before people got fed up with the conditions and revolted. The workers finally realized that they should not be treated as they were and strikes broke out in all factory cities.
“The vehemence of the Times, of journals like The Nation, and commentary from respectable middle-class pulpits such as Henry Ward Beecher's in Brooklyn, may have comforted some citizens with the notion that only virtue and discipline were wanted to restore harmony. But for many more, including communities in which small merchants and clergymen joined in support of aggrieved workers, the lack seemed more visible at the top of an increasingly lopsided society. After a harsh attack by police on demonstrating unemployed workers in Tompkins Square in New York in 1876, editor of the New York Sun (and later one of the prominent labor journalists of the period) John Swinton wrote angrily that "the power of money has become supreme over everything," securing "for the class who controls it all the special privileges" it required for "complete and absolute domination. This power must be kept in check," he wrote; "it must be broken or it will utterly crush the people."
~How could they think that people who are looting, causing crimes, unemployed, etc. would just stop what they were doing by “virtue and discipline?” That is not what the people wanted they wanted change.Kerri:
Did the increase of cultural diversity only come with the making of a new industrial working class?
It seems like strikes were brought upon with [the nation] becoming more industrialized. How were these all dealt with? Resolved?Frank:
"Such common imagery reflects the transitional character of the moment, the first disbelieving and disapproving recognition that the wage system had become a permanent fixture in American life. Dominated by craftsmen and seasoned industrial workers, labor organizations early in the period refused to accept this change and still drew on free labor rhetoric while proposing cooperatives and collective ownership of factories and businesses (p 78)."
If a situation like this was evolving in the industrial north, is it possible to assume that it was developing just as much in the agricultural south - in terms of the rejecting the new way business is carried out?
"On another level, struggles between labor and capital raged on the ground of culture, the meaning of the nation itself at stake (p 78)."
Obviously, a large problem is developing here over business and finances that is threatening the day-to-day life of not only the American government, but the American people. While reading through the following pages, it doesn't appear that the government did much to help this situation out of the hole. Considering that the United States is a capitalist country - why didn't the government make more attempts to stabilize business and protect the economy? This can be seen greatly by the statement, "After the Civil War, the practice of the special charter requiring a separate act if a legislature way to standard general laws and much simpler, more generous and less regulatory procedures (p 83)." Here, it seems as though the government is becoming less involved as opposed to more involved. Why is that?
