Ch 21 Racism and Progressivism

Progressivism rose in a time where racism was at its highest in America.  In 1900 more than two-thirds of the nations 10 million blacks lived in the South as sharecroppers and tenant farmers.  Black men in the cities took jobs in factories, mines, docks, and railroads or became carpenters or bricklayers.  Most women went into jobs that were such as: domestic servants, seamstresses and laundry or tobacco workers.”Jim Crow” laws segregated streetcars, schools,parks,and even cemeteries.  Many southern cities imposed residential segregation by law until the Supreme Court restricted measures in 1917.  Segregation was enforced by violence, white rioters in Atlanta in 1906 murdered twenty-five blacks and burned many blacks homes.  African Americans had to depend on one another for child care and The urban black community included black-owned insurance companies and banks, and a small elite of entrepreneurs, teachers, and ministers.  President Woodrow Wilson racism was out of control, he allowed racial segregation in all levels of the government.

Quotes responses

“[W]hether he be artist or craftsman, engaged in management, industry or agriculture, everyone who works is a creator. Bent over a material that resists his efforts, a man by his work gives his imprint to it, acquiring, as he does so, perseverance, skill, and a spirit of invention. Further, when work is done in common, when hope, hardship, ambition, and joy are shared, it brings together and firmly unites the wills, minds, and hearts of men; in its accomplishment, men find themselves to be brothers.

   “28. Work of course can have contrary effects, for it promises money, pleasure, and power, invites some to selfishness, others to revolt; it also develops professional awareness, sense of duty and charity to one’s neighbor. When it is more scientific and better organized, there is a risk of its dehumanizing those who perform it, by making them its servants, for work is human only if it remains intelligent and free.” (PP 26-7, p.246).

This quote caught my attention because I agree with this quote.  As a society everyone contributes to help one another but of course we don’t choose to help one another for free.  Money revolves around everyone and with out it we wouldn’t have majority of the things we have today.  Money defines a person social class and the more money a person has the more power they hold.  Money and power brings out the ugliness of a person.  People tend to loose sight of right from wrong and the lower class starts becoming submissive to the higher class.  

“A workman’s wages should be sufficient to enable him to support himself, his wife and his children.” (CA 8, p. 445 ).

Unfortunately today a person gets paid by the level of education the person has.  School has become an important thing in today’s society.  Its hard to support a family with minimum wage, its the reason many of our parents today encourage us and motivate us to attend college.  A workman’s wage should be sufficient to enable him to support himself and his family but sadly in today’s society it doesn’t. 

“God gave the earth to the whole human race for the sustenance of all its members, without excluding or favoring anyone. This is the foundation of the universal destination of the earth’s goods.” (CA 31, p. 462 ).

God did create the human race without excluding anyone but humans exclude one another.  Humans tend to treat one another the way they want to.  God didn’t make anyone perfect and therefore we have faults.  Unfortunately not everyone thinks the same, God might have given us the world but many people feel like they deserve all of it. 

CH 18 Organizing Workers

Starting the eighteen century and on workers had organized trade unions to fight for wage reductions and provide benefits for their members in times of illness or accidents.  In 1866 Philadelphia labor leader William H. Sylvis called a convention in Baltimore to form a new organization.  The new organization was called National Labor Union.  They endorsed an eight hour day movement.  The eight hours was based on work, sleep and personal affairs.   The NLU supported the case of working women and urged black workers to organize as well but in racially separate unions.  In 1869 the Knight of Labor was an organization that took up where the NLU left off.  The Knight Labor demanded equal wages for woman and and to end child labor.  In 1886 more than seven hundred thousand workers were organized in nearly six thousand locals.  A more tightly focused union movement prospered by concentrating on wage issues under the American Federation of Labor who was led by Samuel Gompers.

Spanish Speaking American in the Southwest

The Treaty that ended the Mexican War in 1848 surrendered to the United States an immense territory, that in some parts became Texas, California, Arizona, and New Mexico.  Mexican controlled much of the Southwest.  They built churches, and they traded with the Indians.  The U.S failed to keep their pledge in protecting the liberty and property of Mexicans that remained in American soil instead they took control and forced much of the Spanish-speaking populations off the land.  

Texas cotton planters confiscated Mexican lands and began a racist campaign that labeled Mexicans non white.  A cycle of flood ruined many of the large southern California ranches owned by the californios.  Many them retreated into segregated urban neighborhoods called barrios.  In many western states, Mexicans, Native Americans, and Chinese experienced similar patterns of racial discrimination, manipulation, and exclusion.  White state legislators passed laws that made ownership of property difficult for non-Anglos.  Non-Anglos were tagged as shiftless and irresponsible since they did majority of the labor.

Spanish speaking Americans to Anglo society initially unfolded more smoothly in Arizona and New Mexico.  Examples of successful cooperation between Hispanic and White Americans helped moderate American settlers antagonistic attitudes.  Problems still continued in Arizona and New Mexico over property.  In the 1880s Mexican-American ranchers organized themselves into a self-protection vigilante group called Las Gorras Blancas (The White Caps).  The White Caps protested the enclosure of gazing lands.  Violence and discrimination against Spanish speaking citizens of the southwest began in the 1890s.  Whites would label the Mexican-Americans as violent and lazy.  The Spanish speaking citizens struggle for fair treatment and respect continued in the twentieth century. 

Ch 14, 15, 16

In Chapter 14 one of the sections that interested me the most was the Dred Scott Case.  This case was one of the Supreme Courts most controversial cases.  Dred Scott was a slaved man whose owner had taken him from the slave state of Missouri into Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory where slavery was prohibited. During the 1830s Dred Scott sued for his freedom on the fact that he was in a slave free territory.  The Court was faced with two dilemmas which was whether Dred Scott was a free man or not? And whether he had the right to sue in the federal court? Under the Missouri Compromise Dred Scott would technically be free but the Judicial decision was that it would not apply to him.

During wartime since most the men in the household left to war, they would have to tightened slave patrol and spread scare stories among the slaves.  Some slaves were still faithful to their owners but those who were given the chance to flee to Union lines usually did.  No slave uprising rose and the Confederate war continued to use slave labor. Thousands of slaves worked in war plants, toiled as teamsters and cooks in army camps, and served a nurses in field hospitals. With the lack of men in the household the slaves held no respect towards the women in the house.  They wouldn’t do their work or they would do it inefficiently some even destroyed property. 

In 1869 Jay Cooke took over a new transcontinental line in the Northern Pacific.  In 1873 the construction costs outran bond sales, and Cooke neglected his responsibilities and his bank shut down.  Firms collapsed as did the stock market and the Panic of 1873 led the nation into a five year depression.In two years eighteen thousand businesses went bankrupt and 3 million people were unemployed by 1878.  Then there was a rise of the Greenback party which were advocates who favored continued issuance of greenbacks and the free coinage of sliver, it was basically “easy money”.

Irish immigration and Manifest Destiny

 The Chapter starts of by stating that Between1815 and the mid 1820’s most Irish immigrants were Protestants.  In the mid 1820’s the Irish became more Catholic and more poorer.  Then there was a dramatic change between 1845 and the early 1850’s  because of “The Great Famine.”  The Great Famine was a time were a disease was caused by the potatoes they grew and it killed a million people.  Those who survived escaped and about 1.8 million Irish emigrated to the United States in the decade after 1845.  The newest Irish immigrants started from the bottom, they worked in dug streets, canals, and railroads. The woman worked as maids and textile workers.  Poverty was caused woman to start working at early ages.  The Irish who secured skilled or semiskilled jobs clashed with native-born white workers.

The section that I found most interesting later on in the chapter was the section of Manifest Destiny.As quoted from the book "The railroad and the telegraph, they said, had annihilated the problem of distance and made expansion safe." Reading this section reminded me of this painting that my teacher in middle school showed us that represented Manifest Destiny. This movement became the slogan of expansionists.  I uploaded the photo that I was talking about earlier and I think its a great representation of what we've read so far.  This picture depicts the people moving westward and the telegraph is being build along the way as we learned in chapter 11. This painting has so much symbolism within it that I think its interesting enough for me to share with all of you.

Chapter 11: Technology, Culture and Everyday Life

During 1840 and 1860 many Americans believed that technology was a God’s chosen instrument of progress.  Ralph Emerson, and influential spokesperson, thought the contrary.  Emerson believed that,“Machinery is dangerous. The weaver becomes the web, the machinist the machine.” Emerson thought that technology would eventually control us instead of us controlling the machine.  There were many technological improvements such as the steam engine, the cotton gin, the sewing machine and the telegraph.  John Deere was the inventor of the steel plow and Cyrus McCormick the inventor of the mechanical reaper. Sophisticated machines increased the production level.  The first transcontinental line was completed in 1860, telegraph companies and strung lines had stunning speed.  Technology didn’t just improve life but it lowered prices as well.

Technology transformed the lives of ordinary Americans.  Technology made it possible for middle class to enjoy luxuries formerly reserved for the rich, but it did widened the division between the middle class and the poor.  This was also a time where epidemic diseases struct society.  Physicians were seen negatively by the people because they weren’t able to explain what was occurring.  The public image of surgeons was improved by the discovery of anesthesia.    The relieve of pain during childbirth and menstruation was cured with the water cure.  There was also a popular phenomenon during the time called Phrenology which was the belief that one can read a person’s character by examining bumps on the skull.

Along with new technology there was also new entertainment for Americans.  The penny press was developed by James Gordon Bennett and it was cheap newspapers.  Theater was a huge way of entertainment.  The presence of prostitutes in the audience was only one of many factors that made theaters have a bad reputation.  The audience enjoyed not having to behave and being able to throw garbage to the characters or acting they didn’t like.  There were also forms of entertainment that reinforced negative stereotypes of African Americans such as the Black minstrel shows.  

There was a new philosophical movement which was romanticism.  Romantics emphasized emotion and inner feelings being able to focus on the individual and his or her unique response to nature and emotion.  Ralph Emerson emerged as the most influential spokesperson for those who sought a national literature and art.  Emerson contended the ideas of God and freedom were innate, not the result of reason.  Emerson’s influence attracted others such as Henry David Thoreau.  Thoreau was both a thinker and a doer. He wrote Civil Disobedience during his experience in jail because he didn’t want to pay poll taxes that would support the Mexican War.  Like Emerson, Thoreau was a transcendentalist as well.  During a retreat he took, Thoreau learned that anyone could satisfy his material wants with only a few week’s work each year of preserve the remainder of his time for examining life’s purpose.  Thoreau stated that the problems with American’s was that they turn themselves into “mere machines” to acquire pointless wealth.

Literature was on its rise as well.  Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe wrote fiction that paid little attention to Emerson’s call for literature treating the everyday experience of ordinary Americans.  Their works preoccupied with analysis of moral dilemmas and psychological states fulfilled Tocqueville’s prediction that writers in democratic nations, while rejecting traditional sources of fiction would explore the abstract and universal questions of human nature.  There was the Hudson River school where landscape painting took place that emphasized greatness and emotion.  The 1840s through the 1860s was a time of great improvement and new ideas on the rise.