HIS 122 - Outline # 2
V. Populism - Late 19th century farmers' desperate, doomed cry for help, the last gasp of the agrarian past; or farmers' coming-of-age, their accommodation to a commercialized future.
A. Populists' strengths
1. Organizing spirit, overcoming natural isolation
a. For social reasons (The Grange - 1870s)
b. For economic reasons (The Alliance - 1880s)
c. For political reasons (The Populists - 1890s)
2. Regional bases
a. Plains-prairie rebelliousness
b. The South (effort to create a bi-racial coalition)
c. Appeal to urban workers
(1) Immigration restriction
(2) The 8-hour day
3. Charismatic leadership
William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" Speech at Democratic Convention of 1896
B. Reasons for Failure
1. Successful Republican effort to depict Populists and Bryan as radical, then to pre-empt Populists' appeal
2. "Bourbon backlash" in South, breaking bi- racial coalition by using "Jim Crow" laws to divide poor whites and blacks
3. Appeal to urban workers failed
4. Overemphasis on the silver issue
a. Short-term benefit, as inflation would help farmers escape existing debts
b. Long-term distraction from farmers' fundamental problem: overproduction; silver appeared a quick-fix, but was really an escape from modern complexities
5. Foreign distractions (see VI)
C. Seeds of success
1. Populists' platform
a. Appeal to urban workers
(1) Immigration restriction
(2) Eight-hour day
b. Democratic devices
(1) Direct election of U. S. Senators
(2) Referendum, initiative, recall
(3) Secret ballot
c. Effort to involve government in economy
(1) Banking, monetary reforms
(2) Government regulation of railroads
(3) Subtreasury plan
(4) Graduated income taxes
2. What do these Populist ideas have in common?
a. All call for a more active government role in the economy and society
b. All were eventually realized
VI. Imperialism
A. Why did the U. S. choose to become a world power in the 1890s?
1. Because of (not in spite of) domestic problems
2. Big business desire for new markets, new sources of raw materials, to break out of 1890s depression
3. Nationalism
a. Positive expression of American pride
b. Negative expression of American fears
(1) Nativism
(2) Superpatriotism
(3) Racism, religious bigotry
4. "Yellow journalism"
5. Situation in Cuba
B. The Spanish-American (the "Splendid Little") War
1. McKinley's Maine manifesto
2. War declared despite Spanish acquiescence
3. "Alone in Cuba"
4. Dewey's Pacific war
C. The road to imperialism
1. Cuba
a. Seemingly safe from U. S. ambitions following Teller Amendment
b. Platt Amendment subjected Cuban foreign policy to U. S. veto; U. S. bases in Cuba; U. S. economic domination
2. Hawaii - annexed 1898
3. The Philippines
a. The U. S. debate
(1) No!: Wm. J. Bryan, reformers, and some who feared U. S. citizenship would follow the flag
(2) Yes!: "Jingoes", along with business interests who saw Philippines as stepping stone to the "Great China Market" b. The Filipino debate: NO! (The Philippine Insurrection)
VII. Progressivism - A general response by diverse Americans to the challenge of the city and factory to traditional American values, 1900-1920.
A. The challenge
1. Working conditions
2. Living conditions
B. Participants
1. Radical progressives
a. Anarchists (Communists)
(Failed as violence alienated rather than inspired U. S. workers)
b. Socialists
(1) Reasons for movement's growth (1,000,000 votes in 1912)
(a) Desperation (see A. above)
(b) Charismatic leadership of Eugene Debs
(2) Reasons for decline after 1912
(a) U. S. workers' diversity and ...
(b) their persistent belief in the "American Dream" of individual upward mobility inhibited the class consciousness a successful Socialist movement would have required
(c) World War I
(d) Progressive reform successes (see C. below)
2. Progressive reformers' impulses/inspirations
a. Revived Christianity (the "Social Gospel")
b. Middle class guilt and/or status anxieties
c. "Muckraking journalism"
d. Conservative effort to pre-empt more radical changes and/or to "rationalize" the "free enterprise" system
e. New opportunities of American women
C. Progressive reform causes
1. Private and/or individual efforts (voluntarism)
2. Effort to get government more involved in American society and economy
a. Populist platform [Were progressives the lineal descendants of Populists?]
b. Government regulation of business
c. Efforts to protect children
d. Other things, including ...
(1) Prohibition
(2) A crusade against prostitution
(3) Women's suffrage
D. Three popular and fairly representative progressive reform ideas which may reveal the movement's ...
1. Strengths
a. Progressives' self-certainty that they were fighting for nothing less than paradise
b. Progressives' skillful depiction of victims, especially women, to rally support
c. World War I, which added urgency to these causes, enabling progressives to achieve ...
(1) Prohibition (18th Amendment - 1919)
(2) Federal government help in the crusade against prostitution (Mann or "White Slave" Act -1910)
(3) Women's Suffrage (19th Amendment - 1920)
2. Weaknesses
The self-certainty that energized progressives and led them to success in their specific reform causes blinded them to the long-term implications of their efforts, creating greater problems than those they sought to solve. They self-righteously attacked symptoms of diseases rather than the diseases themselves, so that their "we-know-what's-best-for-you" attitude was self-defeating, leading them to conclude that success in a specific cause would automatically produce paradise and/or to disillusionment when it did not, visible in ...
a. Prohibition
b. The crusade against prostitution
c. Women's suffrage
E. Progressive era foreign policy (Do you see similarities in progressive foreign and domestic policies?)
1. Impulses
a. Moralism
b. Imperialism
"Righteous conquest" "to make the world safe for democracy"
2. Progressive era administrations
a. TR: "A man, a plan, a canal - Panama"
b. Taft: "Dollar Diplomacy"
c. Woodrow Wilson
(1) Mexican situation
(2) World War I
(a) U. S. neutrality declared
(b) Wilson's pro-Britiish policies, leading to war
(3) The 14 Points - Wilson's vision of the postwar world
(a) No secret treaties
(b) Help colonies toward freedom
(c) Foreigners evacuate Russia
(d) Recognize nationalistic yearnings of Eastern Europe
(e) Avoid "war guilt" clause, heavy reparations for Germany
(f) A League of Nations
(4) The Versailles Peace Conference
(a) Deals among allies ratified
(b) "Mandate" system allowed allies to maintain colonies, e.g. France in Viet Nam
(c) Allied troops remained in Russia till1921, followed by diplomatic embargo
(d) Allies retained authority over Europe's minorities
(e) Germany punished, breeding bitterness, contributing to economic collapse and the rise of fascism
(f) Senate rejected U. S. membership in League of Nations; U. S. remained isolationist through the 1920s and 1930s
[Do you see a similar, and similarly self-defeating, "we-know-what's-best-for-you" attitude in progressives' efforts to ban liquor and "teach Mexicans to elect good men"?]
VIII. Post-progressive America, 1917-1929
A. The war at home, 1917-18 ( What happened to isolationism?)
1. Patriotism
2. Progressive pacifists dropped pacifism when war gave some progressive reforms a boost, at least initially
3. Propaganda (Creel Committee)
4. Government persecution of dissenters
a. Espionage Act, 1917
b. Sedition Act, 1918
B. "The Red Scare", 1918-1920 (What happened to internationalism?)
1. Disillusionment
a. With allies
b. With wartime and postwar sacrifices
2. Effort by big business to discredit labor movement
3. Government assistance in this effort, especially through Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer's Justice Department
C. The twenties: a decade of consensus or conflict?
1. Presidential politics
a. Election of 1920
b. Presidency of Calvin Coolidge
2. Social history - heroes of the twenties
Entertainment
Literature
Sports
Politics
Business
Crime
Ethnic heroes
Law
Aviation
Rural and small town Americans had little to cheer for in the decade. Even when they won little battles, they were losing the war to the seductive, new urban mass culture promoted by technology. In frustration, some lashed out, through groups like the Ku Klux Klan, at Catholics, immigrants, and especially African Americans.