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The year 1896 marks the approximate beginning of the Progressive Era, and reform peaked during the period before America’s entry into World War I in 1917. But in a larger sense, the reform impulse in America was present even in colonial times, and it continued into the modern era. Today few Americans would claim that this country provides a level playing field for all citizens and workers, or that our political system is free from corruption of one sort or another. Thus the progressive beat goes on. During the “reckless decade” of the 1890s the impulse for reform was driven by the Populist Party, which was made up of farmers, small businessmen and reform-minded leaders who were willing to confront the growing problems in the country. The situation was summarized dramatically in the Populist Party platform, issued at its convention in Omaha in 1892, which read in part: The conditions which surround us best justify our cooperation: we meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized; most of the States have been compelled to isolate the voters at the polling-places to prevent universal intimidation or bribery. The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled; public opinion silenced; business prostrated; our homes covered with mortgages; labor impoverished; and the land concentrating in the hands of the capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right of organization for self-protection; imported pauperized labor beats down their wages; a hireling standing army, unrecognized by our laws, is established to shoot them down, and they are rapidly degenerating into European conditions. The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; 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.
Reaction Paper News Article
Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclosed to Congress
2011-11-28 00:01:00.31 GMT
By Bob Ivry, Bradley Keoun and Phil Kuntz
Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve and the big
banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the
largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the
world can see what it was missing.
The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so
deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008,
their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took
tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time
they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no
one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13
billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market
rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.
Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government
regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed
the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled
out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the
next collapse.
A fresh narrative of the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009
emerges from 29,000 pages of Fed documents obtained under the
Freedom of Information Act and central bank records of more than
21,000 transactions. While Fed officials say that almost all of
the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, details
suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret
funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the
biggest banks to grow even bigger.
‘Change Their Votes’
“When you see the dollars the banks got, it’s hard to make
the case these were successful institutions,” says Sherrod
Brown, a Democratic Senator from Ohio who in 2010 introduced an
unsuccessful bill to limit bank size. “This is an issue that
can unite the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. There are
lawmakers in both parties who would change their votes now.”
The size of the bailout came to light after Bloomberg LP,
the parent of Bloomberg News, won a court case against the Fed
and a group of the biggest U.S. banks called Clearing House
Association LLC to force lending details into the open.
The Fed, headed by Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, argued that
revealing borrower details would create a stigma -- investors
and counterparties would shun firms that used the central bank
as lender of last resort -- and that needy institutions would be
reluctant to borrow in the next crisis. Clearing House
Association fought Bloomberg’s lawsuit up to the U.S. Supreme
Court, which declined to hear the banks’ appeal in March 2011.
$7.77 Trillion
The amount of money the central bank parceled out was
surprising even to Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal
Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he
“wasn’t aware of the magnitude.” It dwarfed the Treasury
Department’s better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief
Program, or TARP. Add up guarantees and lending limits, and the
Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing
the financial system, more than half the value of everything
produced in the U.S. that year.
“TARP at least had some strings attached,” says Brad
Miller, a North Carolina Democrat on the House Financial
Services Committee, referring to the program’s executive-pay
ceiling. “With the Fed programs, there was nothing.”
Bankers didn’t disclose the extent of their borrowing. On
Nov. 26, 2008, then-Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive
Officer Kenneth D. Lewis wrote to shareholders that he headed
“one of the strongest and most stable major banks in the
world.” He didn’t say that his Charlotte, North Carolina-based
firm owed the central bank $86 billion that day.
‘Motivate Others’
JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon told shareholders in a
March 26, 2010, letter that his bank used the Fed’s Term Auction
Facility “at the request of the Federal Reserve to help
motivate others to use the system.” He didn’t say that the New
York-based bank’s total TAF borrowings were almost twice its
cash holdings or that its peak borrowing of $48 billion on Feb.
26, 2009, came more than a year after the program’s creation.
Howard Opinsky, a spokesman for JPMorgan, declined to
comment about Dimon’s statement or the company’s Fed borrowings.
Jerry Dubrowski, a spokesman for Bank of America, also declined
to comment.
The Fed has been lending money to banks through its so-
called discount window since just after its founding in 1913.
Starting in August 2007, when confidence in banks began to wane,
it created a variety of ways to bolster the financial system
with cash or easily traded securities. By the end of 2008, the
central bank had established or expanded 11 lending facilities
catering to banks, securities firms and corporations that
couldn’t get short-term loans from their usual sources.
‘Core Function’
“Supporting financial-market stability in times of extreme
market stress is a core function of central banks,” says
William B. English, director of the Fed’s Division of Monetary
Affairs. “Our lending programs served to prevent a collapse of
the financial system and to keep credit flowing to American
families and businesses.”
The Fed has said that all loans were backed by appropriate
collateral. That the central bank didn’t lose money should
“lead to praise of the Fed, that they took this extraordinary
step and they got it right,” says Phillip Swagel, a former
assistant Treasury secretary under Henry M. Paulson and now a
professor of international economic policy at the University of
Maryland.
The Fed initially released lending data in aggregate form
only. Information on which banks borrowed, when, how much and at
what interest rate was kept from public view.
The secrecy extended even to members of President George W.
Bush’s administration who managed TARP. Top aides to Paulson
weren’t privy to Fed lending details during the creation of the
program that provided crisis funding to more than 700 banks, say
two former senior Treasury officials who requested anonymity
because they weren’t authorized to speak.
Big Six
The Treasury Department relied on the recommendations of
the Fed to decide which banks were healthy enough to get TARP
money and how much, the former officials say. The six biggest
U.S. banks, which received $160 billion of TARP funds, borrowed
as much as $460 billion from the Fed, measured by peak daily
debt calculated by Bloomberg using data obtained from the
central bank. Paulson didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The six -- JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup Inc., Wells
Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley --
accounted for 63 percent of the average daily debt to the Fed by
all publicly traded U.S. banks, money managers and investment-
services firms, the data show. By comparison, they had about
half of the industry’s assets before the bailout, which lasted
from August 2007 through April 2010. The daily debt figure
excludes cash that banks passed along to money-market funds.
Bank Supervision
While the emergency response prevented financial collapse,
the Fed shouldn’t have allowed conditions to get to that point,
says Joshua Rosner, a banking analyst with Graham Fisher & Co.
in New York who predicted problems from lax mortgage
underwriting as far back as 2001. The Fed, the primary
supervisor for large financial companies, should have been more
vigilant as the housing bubble formed, and the scale of its
lending shows the “supervision of the banks prior to the crisis
was far worse than we had imagined,” Rosner says.
Bernanke in an April 2009 speech said that the Fed provided
emergency loans only to “sound institutions,” even though its
internal assessments described at least one of the biggest
borrowers, Citigroup, as “marginal.”
On Jan. 14, 2009, six days before the company’s central
bank loans peaked, the New York Fed gave CEO Vikram Pandit a
report declaring Citigroup’s financial strength to be
“superficial,” bolstered largely by its $45 billion of
Treasury funds. The document was released in early 2011 by the
Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a panel empowered by
Congress to probe the causes of the crisis.
‘Need Transparency’
Andrea Priest, a spokeswoman for the New York Fed, declined
to comment, as did Jon Diat, a spokesman for Citigroup.
“I believe that the Fed should have independence in
conducting highly technical monetary policy, but when they are
putting taxpayer resources at risk, we need transparency and
accountability,” says Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, the top
Republican on the Senate Banking Committee.
Judd Gregg, a former New Hampshire senator who was a lead
Republican negotiator on TARP, and Barney Frank, a Massachusetts
Democrat who chaired the House Financial Services Committee,
both say they were kept in the dark.
“We didn’t know the specifics,” says Gregg, who’s now an
adviser to Goldman Sachs.
“We were aware emergency efforts were going on,” Frank
says. “We didn’t know the specifics.”
Disclose Lending
Frank co-sponsored the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and
Consumer Protection Act, billed as a fix for financial-industry
excesses. Congress debated that legislation in 2010 without a
full understanding of how deeply the banks had depended on the
Fed for survival.
It would have been “totally appropriate” to disclose the
lending data by mid-2009, says David Jones, a former economist
at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York who has written four
books about the central bank.
“The Fed is the second-most-important appointed body in
the U.S., next to the Supreme Court, and we’re dealing with a
democracy,” Jones says. “Our representatives in Congress
deserve to have this kind of information so they can oversee the
Fed.”
The Dodd-Frank law required the Fed to release details of
some emergency-lending programs in December 2010. It also
mandated disclosure of discount-window borrowers after a two-
year lag.
Protecting TARP
TARP and the Fed lending programs went “hand in hand,”
says Sherrill Shaffer, a banking professor at the University of
Wyoming in Laramie and a former chief economist at the New York
Fed. While the TARP money helped insulate the central bank from
losses, the Fed’s willingness to supply seemingly unlimited
financing to the banks assured they wouldn’t collapse,
protecting the Treasury’s TARP investments, he says.
“Even though the Treasury was in the headlines, the Fed
was really behind the scenes engineering it,” Shaffer says.
Congress, at the urging of Bernanke and Paulson, created
TARP in October 2008 after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers
Holdings Inc. made it difficult for financial institutions to
get loans. Bank of America and New York-based Citigroup each
received $45 billion from TARP. At the time, both were tapping
the Fed. Citigroup hit its peak borrowing of $99.5 billion in
January 2009, while Bank of America topped out in February 2009
at $91.4 billion.
No Clue
Lawmakers knew none of this.
They had no clue that one bank, New York-based Morgan
Stanley, took $107 billion in Fed loans in September 2008,
enough to pay off one-tenth of the country’s delinquent
mortgages. The firm’s peak borrowing occurred the same day
Congress rejected the proposed TARP bill, triggering the biggest
point drop ever in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The bill
later passed, and Morgan Stanley got $10 billion of TARP funds,
though Paulson said only “healthy institutions” were eligible.
Mark Lake, a spokesman for Morgan Stanley, declined to
comment, as did spokesmen for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.
Had lawmakers known, it “could have changed the whole
approach to reform legislation,” says Ted Kaufman, a former
Democratic Senator from Delaware who, with Brown, introduced the
bill to limit bank size.
Moral Hazard
Kaufman says some banks are so big that their failure could
trigger a chain reaction in the financial system. The cost of
borrowing for so-called too-big-to-fail banks is lower than that
of smaller firms because lenders believe the government won’t
let them go under. The perceived safety net creates what
economists call moral hazard -- the belief that bankers will
take greater risks because they’ll enjoy any profits while
shifting losses to taxpayers.
If Congress had been aware of the extent of the Fed rescue,
Kaufman says, he would have been able to line up more support
for breaking up the biggest banks.
Byron L. Dorgan, a former Democratic senator from North
Dakota, says the knowledge might have helped pass legislation to
reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, which for most of the last
century separated customer deposits from the riskier practices
of investment banking.
“Had people known about the hundreds of billions in loans
to the biggest financial institutions, they would have demanded
Congress take much more courageous actions to stop the practices
that caused this near financial collapse,” says Dorgan, who
retired in January.
Getting Bigger
Instead, the Fed and its secret financing helped America’s
biggest financial firms get bigger and go on to pay employees as
much as they did at the height of the housing bubble.
Total assets held by the six biggest U.S. banks increased
39 percent to $9.5 trillion on Sept. 30, 2011, from $6.8
trillion on the same day in 2006, according to Fed data.
For so few banks to hold so many assets is “un-American,”
says Richard W. Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of
Dallas. “All of these gargantuan institutions are too big to
regulate. I’m in favor of breaking them up and slimming them
down.”
Employees at the six biggest banks made twice the average
for all U.S. workers in 2010, based on Bureau of Labor
Statistics hourly compensation cost data. The banks spent $146.3
billion on compensation in 2010, or an average of $126,342 per
worker, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s up
almost 20 percent from five years earlier compared with less
than 15 percent for the average worker. Average pay at the banks
in 2010 was about the same as in 2007, before the bailouts.
‘Wanted to Pretend’
“The pay levels came back so fast at some of these firms
that it appeared they really wanted to pretend they hadn’t been
bailed out,” says Anil Kashyap, a former Fed economist who’s
now a professor of economics at the University of Chicago Booth
School of Business. “They shouldn’t be surprised that a lot of
people find some of the stuff that happened totally
outrageous.”
Bank of America took over Merrill Lynch & Co. at the urging
of then-Treasury Secretary Paulson after buying the biggest U.S.
home lender, Countrywide Financial Corp. When the Merrill Lynch
purchase was announced on Sept. 15, 2008, Bank of America had
$14.4 billion in emergency Fed loans and Merrill Lynch had $8.1
billion. By the end of the month, Bank of America’s loans had
reached $25 billion and Merrill Lynch’s had exceeded $60
billion, helping both firms keep the deal on track.
Prevent Collapse
Wells Fargo bought Wachovia Corp., the fourth-largest U.S.
bank by deposits before the 2008 acquisition. Because depositors
were pulling their money from Wachovia, the Fed channeled $50
billion in secret loans to the Charlotte, North Carolina-based
bank through two emergency-financing programs to prevent
collapse before Wells Fargo could complete the purchase.
“These programs proved to be very successful at providing
financial markets the additional liquidity and confidence they
needed at a time of unprecedented uncertainty,” says Ancel
Martinez, a spokesman for Wells Fargo.
JPMorgan absorbed the country’s largest savings and loan,
Seattle-based Washington Mutual Inc., and investment bank Bear
Stearns Cos. The New York Fed, then headed by Timothy F.
Geithner, who’s now Treasury secretary, helped JPMorgan complete
the Bear Stearns deal by providing $29 billion of financing,
which was disclosed at the time. The Fed also supplied Bear
Stearns with $30 billion of secret loans to keep the company
from failing before the acquisition closed, central bank data
show. The loans were made through a program set up to provide
emergency funding to brokerage firms.
‘Regulatory Discretion’
“Some might claim that the Fed was picking winners and
losers, but what the Fed was doing was exercising its
professional regulatory discretion,” says John Dearie, a former
speechwriter at the New York Fed who’s now executive vice
president for policy at the Financial Services Forum, a
Washington-based group consisting of the CEOs of 20 of the
world’s biggest financial firms. “The Fed clearly felt it had
what it needed within the requirements of the law to continue to
lend to Bear and Wachovia.”
The bill introduced by Brown and Kaufman in April 2010
would have mandated shrinking the six largest firms.
“When a few banks have advantages, the little guys get
squeezed,” Brown says. “That, to me, is not what capitalism
should be.”
Kaufman says he’s passionate about curbing too-big-to-fail
banks because he fears another crisis.
‘Can We Survive?’
“The amount of pain that people, through no fault of their
own, had to endure -- and the prospect of putting them through
it again -- is appalling,” Kaufman says. “The public has no
more appetite for bailouts. What would happen tomorrow if one of
these big banks got in trouble? Can we survive that?”
Lobbying expenditures by the six banks that would have been
affected by the legislation rose to $29.4 million in 2010
compared with $22.1 million in 2006, the last full year before
credit markets seized up -- a gain of 33 percent, according to
OpenSecrets.org, a research group that tracks money in U.S.
politics. Lobbying by the American Bankers Association, a trade
organization, increased at about the same rate, OpenSecrets.org
reported.
Lobbyists argued the virtues of bigger banks. They’re more
stable, better able to serve large companies and more
competitive internationally, and breaking them up would cost
jobs and cause “long-term damage to the U.S. economy,”
according to a Nov. 13, 2009, letter to members of Congress from
the FSF.
The group’s website cites Nobel Prize-winning economist
Oliver E. Williamson, a professor emeritus at the University of
California, Berkeley, for demonstrating the greater efficiency
of large companies.
‘Serious Burden’
In an interview, Williamson says that the organization took
his research out of context and that efficiency is only one
factor in deciding whether to preserve too-big-to-fail banks.
“The banks that were too big got even bigger, and the
problems that we had to begin with are magnified in the
process,” Williamson says. “The big banks have incentives to
take risks they wouldn’t take if they didn’t have government
support. It’s a serious burden on the rest of the economy.”
Dearie says his group didn’t mean to imply that Williamson
endorsed big banks.
Top officials in President Barack Obama’s administration
sided with the FSF in arguing against legislative curbs on the
size of banks.
Geithner, Kaufman
On May 4, 2010, Geithner visited Kaufman in his Capitol
Hill office. As president of the New York Fed in 2007 and 2008,
Geithner helped design and run the central bank’s lending
programs. The New York Fed supervised four of the six biggest
U.S. banks and, during the credit crunch, put together a daily
confidential report on Wall Street’s financial condition.
Geithner was copied on these reports, based on a sampling of e-
mails released by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.
At the meeting with Kaufman, Geithner argued that the issue
of limiting bank size was too complex for Congress and that
people who know the markets should handle these decisions,
Kaufman says. According to Kaufman, Geithner said he preferred
that bank supervisors from around the world, meeting in Basel,
Switzerland, make rules increasing the amount of money banks
need to hold in reserve. Passing laws in the U.S. would undercut
his efforts in Basel, Geithner said, according to Kaufman.
Anthony Coley, a spokesman for Geithner, declined to
comment.
‘Punishing Success’
Lobbyists for the big banks made the winning case that
forcing them to break up was “punishing success,” Brown says.
Now that they can see how much the banks were borrowing from the
Fed, senators might think differently, he says.
The Fed supported curbing too-big-to-fail banks, including
giving regulators the power to close large financial firms and
implementing tougher supervision for big banks, says Fed General
Counsel Scott G. Alvarez. The Fed didn’t take a position on
whether large banks should be dismantled before they get into
trouble.
Dodd-Frank does provide a mechanism for regulators to break
up the biggest banks. It established the Financial Stability
Oversight Council that could order teetering banks to shut down
in an orderly way. The council is headed by Geithner.
“Dodd-Frank does not solve the problem of too big to
fail,” says Shelby, the Alabama Republican. “Moral hazard and
taxpayer exposure still very much exist.”
Below Market
Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and
Policy Research in Washington, says banks “were either in bad
shape or taking advantage of the Fed giving them a good deal.
The former contradicts their public statements. The latter --
getting loans at below-market rates during a financial crisis --
is quite a gift.”
The Fed says it typically makes emergency loans more
expensive than those available in the marketplace to discourage
banks from abusing the privilege. During the crisis, Fed loans
were among the cheapest around, with funding available for as
low as 0.01 percent in December 2008, according to data from the
central bank and money-market rates tracked by Bloomberg.
The Fed funds also benefited firms by allowing them to
avoid selling assets to pay investors and depositors who pulled
their money. So the assets stayed on the banks’ books, earning
interest.
Banks report the difference between what they earn on loans
and investments and their borrowing expenses. The figure, known
as net interest margin, provides a clue to how much profit the
firms turned on their Fed loans, the costs of which were
included in those expenses. To calculate how much banks stood to
make, Bloomberg multiplied their tax-adjusted net interest
margins by their average Fed debt during reporting periods in
which they took emergency loans.
Added Income
The 190 firms for which data were available would have
produced income of $13 billion, assuming all of the bailout
funds were invested at the margins reported, the data show.
The six biggest U.S. banks’ share of the estimated subsidy
was $4.8 billion, or 23 percent of their combined net income
during the time they were borrowing from the Fed. Citigroup
would have taken in the most, with $1.8 billion.
“The net interest margin is an effective way of getting at
the benefits that these large banks received from the Fed,”
says Gerald A. Hanweck, a former Fed economist who’s now a
finance professor at George Mason University in Fairfax,
Virginia.
While the method isn’t perfect, it’s impossible to state
the banks’ exact profits or savings from their Fed loans because
the numbers aren’t disclosed and there isn’t enough publicly
available data to figure it out.
Opinsky, the JPMorgan spokesman, says he doesn’t think the
calculation is fair because “in all likelihood, such funds were
likely invested in very short-term investments,” which
typically bring lower returns.
Standing Access
Even without tapping the Fed, the banks get a subsidy by
having standing access to the central bank’s money, says Viral
Acharya, a New York University economics professor who has
worked as an academic adviser to the New York Fed.
“Banks don’t give lines of credit to corporations for
free,” he says. “Why should all these government guarantees
and liquidity facilities be for free?”
In the September 2008 meeting at which Paulson and Bernanke
briefed lawmakers on the need for TARP, Bernanke said that if
nothing was done, “unemployment would rise -- to 8 or 9 percent
from the prevailing 6.1 percent,” Paulson wrote in “On the
Brink” (Business Plus, 2010).
Occupy Wall Street
The U.S. jobless rate hasn’t dipped below 8.8 percent since
March 2009, 3.6 million homes have been foreclosed since August
2007, according to data provider RealtyTrac Inc., and police
have clashed with Occupy Wall Street protesters, who say
government policies favor the wealthiest citizens, in New York,
Boston, Seattle and Oakland, California.
The Tea Party, which supports a more limited role for
government, has its roots in anger over the Wall Street
bailouts, says Neil M. Barofsky, former TARP special inspector
general and a Bloomberg Television contributing editor.
“The lack of transparency is not just frustrating; it
really blocked accountability,” Barofsky says. “When people
don’t know the details, they fill in the blanks. They believe in
conspiracies.”
In the end, Geithner had his way. The Brown-Kaufman
proposal to limit the size of banks was defeated, 60 to 31. Bank
supervisors meeting in Switzerland did mandate minimum reserves
that institutions will have to hold, with higher levels for the
world’s largest banks, including the six biggest in the U.S.
Those rules can be changed by individual countries.
They take full effect in 2019.
Meanwhile, Kaufman says, “we’re absolutely, totally, 100
percent not prepared for another financial crisis.”
For Related News and Information:
Federal Reserve news: NI FED <GO>
Government relief programs: GGRP <GO>
Bloomberg bailout scorecard: WDCI CHART <GO>
Top financial news: FTOP <GO>
Fed portal: FED <GO>
Fed lending graphic: http://bloom.bg/n69kTY
--Editors: Robert Friedman, John Voskuhl
Performance Indicators: DBQ is same as DBQ for semester project for 360/363. As I cannot attach to Mindomo as per the price of a premium subscription.
Performance Indicators
** There is an American Imperialism map activity/ Fill-in map/ Worksheet **
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will be able to complete a map illustrating American imperialism during the Progressive Era. 2. Students will be able to analyze and discuss the arguments for and against imperialist expansion during the late 1800s and early 1900s. 3. Students will be able to answer the following questions: 1. According to Kipling, and in your own words, what was the “White Man’s Burden”? 2. What reward did Kipling suggest the “White Man” gets for carrying his “burden”? 3. Who did Kipling think would read his poem? What do you think that this audience might have said in response to it? 4. For what audiences do you think H.T. Johnson and George McNeil wrote their poems? How do you think those audiences might have responded to “The Black Man’s Burden” and “The Poor Man’s Burden”? http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6609/
Performance Indicators 1. Students will analyze and discuss some of Roosevelt's accomplishments when he was at Sagamore. 2. Students will identify three reasons Roosevelt chose Long Island, and this spot in particular.
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will be able to analyze and discuss the Jim Crow Era as it relates to the important people, issues and events during the Progressive Era.
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will be able to analyze and discuss using a historical perpective, from both sides of Steffens' argument.
Teaching With Documents:
The Volstead Act and Related Prohibition Documents
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/volstead-act/
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will be able to analyze and discuss the arguments for and against temperance/prohibition. 2. Students will be able to summarize the social environment in which these movements originated from.
Performance Indicators: Students will be able to analyze how individuals and groups are affected by strikes and discuss the impact on the families, towns and businesses involved.
Women's Suffrage Overview:
Immediately after the Civil War, Susan B. Anthony, a strong and outspoken advocate of women's rights, demanded that the Fourteenth Amendment include a guarantee of the vote for women as well as for African-American males. In 1869, Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association. Later that year, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and others formed the American Woman Suffrage Association. However, not until the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919 did women throughout the nation gain the right to vote.
During the late 1800s and early 1900s, women and women's organizations not only worked to gain the right to vote, they also worked for broad-based economic and political equality and for social reforms. Between 1880 and 1910, the number of women employed in the United States increased from 2.6 million to 7.8 million. Although women began to be employed in business and industry, the majority of better paying positions continued to go to men. At the turn of the century, 60 percent of all working women were employed as domestic servants. In the area of politics, women gained the right to control their earnings, own property, and, in the case of divorce, take custody of their children. By 1896, women had gained the right to vote in four states (Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah). Women and women's organizations also worked on behalf of many social and reform issues. By the beginning of the new century, women's clubs in towns and cities across the nation were working to promote suffrage, better schools, the regulation of child labor, women in unions, and liquor prohibition.
Not all women believed in equality for the sexes. Women who upheld traditional gender roles argued that politics were improper for women. Some even insisted that voting might cause some women to "grow beards." The challenge to traditional roles represented by the struggle for political, economic, and social equality was as threatening to some women as it was to most men.
Citation:
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/progress/suffrage/
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will be able to write an essay arguing for or against the 19th Amendment from a historical perspective.
Overview:
The Progressive Movement was an effort to cure many of the ills of American society that had developed during the great spurt of industrial growth in the last quarter of the 19th century. Disturbed by the inefficiencies and injustices of the post-Civil War and post-Reconstruction eras of the late 19th century (1865-1901), the progressives were committed to changing and reforming society. Embracing Humanist philosophies, they believed in science, technology, expertise—and especially education—as the grand solution to society's weaknesses. Significant changes enacted at the national levels included the imposition of an income tax with the Sixteenth Amendment, direct election of Senators with the Seventeenth Amendment, Prohibition with the Eighteenth Amendment, and women's suffrage through the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The Scopes Trial in 1925 accelerated the process of withdrawal and separation of Evangelicals from society. The so-called "Monkey Trial" pitted evolution and biblical creationism against each other. H.L. Mencken and others in the secular press heaped ridicule upon the Fundamentalists. Creationists won the court case in Dayton, Tennessee, but Fundamentalists lost the larger battle. The press-generated image of the Fundamentalists as a backwoods ignoramus was locked indelibly in the American consciousness.
Toward the end of the 19th century, liberal forces arose within American Protestantism that turned from belief in the traditional orthodox Christian doctrines. Many liberal Protestants shifted the emphasis away from personal salvation toward an effort to redeem society.
Progressive philosophies began to infiltrate the Church as activists from different religious groups formed to enact prohibition amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Two important groups were formed during this period including the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the Anti-Saloon League.
Social Gospel Movement
The Social Gospel was a movement away from seeing individual man as sinful and in need of personal salvation. Social Gospel preachers pointed to societal evil and called on individuals to join together and, with God's help, eradicate the evil forces that were at work in corporate society. Evil forces in society were seen as corrupting the individual. Humans were essentially good. Society was evil.
These advocates of social reform undertook to clear slums, to end child labor practices and to eliminate a host of other social evils. They put a major emphasis on education. If society could be redeemed humankind could create a perfect habitat here on this earth.
Citation:
http://www.jeremiahproject.com/culture/natureofman.html
Make a list:
Carnegie = the wealthy should give back to the community
Riis = need public housing and laws to control landlords
Steffens = do away with political machines
Tarbell = government needs to enforce the Sherman Anti- Trust Act and control corruption
Addams = (in this piece) individual volunteers must give of their time and resources to aid the downtrodden.
Then we vote (anonymously, on paper) on who would have made society more democratic.
Citation:
http://urbandreams.ousd.k12.ca.us/lessonplans/capitalism/lessonplan06.html
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will analyze and discuss how life changed as a result of technological advances made during the progressive era. 2. Students will be able to summarize the effects of developing technology on society/individuals during the progressive era.
Acts, Bills, and Laws, 1906 - The Theodore Roosevelt Administration
The first Pure Food and Drug Act was passed in 1906. The purpose was to protect the public against adulteration of food and from products identified as healthful without scientific support. The original Pure Food and Drug Act was amended in 1912, 1913, and 1923. A greater extension of its scope took place in 1933.
The muckrakers had successfully heightened public awareness of safety issues stemming from careless food preparation procedures and the increasing incidence of drug addiction from patent medicines, both accidental and conscious. Scientific support came from Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, the Department of Agriculture's chief chemist, who published his findings on the widespread use of harmful preservatives in the meat-packing industry. The experience of American soldiers with so-called “embalmed beef” during the Spanish-American War added impetus to the movement.
President Theodore Roosevelt began the process by ensuring the passage of the Meat Inspection Act of 1906, which was followed by the Pure Food and Drug Act, passed in 1906 to become effective at the start of 1907. It was to be applied to goods shipped in foreign or interstate commerce. The purpose was to prevent adulteration or misbranding. Adulteration was defined in various ways. For confectionary, adulteration would be the result of any poisonous color or flavor, or of any other ingredients harmful to human health. Food was adulterated if it contained filthy or decomposed animal matter, poisonous or deleterious ingreidents, or anything that attempted to conceal inferior components. Provisions included
Creation of the Food and Drug Administration, which was entrusted with the responsibility of testing all foods and drugs destined for human consumption
The requirement for prescriptions from licensed physicians before a patient could purchase certain drugs
The requirement of label warnings on habit-forming drugs.
An offending manufacturer or distributor could be prosecuted by the Federal government, except that a distributor was not liable to such action if he could show an adequate guarantee from the vendor.
Passage of the measure in Congress was not assured. The lobbying association representing the medicine makers was vocal and well-funded, as were representatives of the “beef trust” and other food producers. Some members of Congress, especially a number of Southern senators, opposed the bill as constitutionally unsound.
The active involvement of Theodore Roosevelt, who was repulsed by slaughterhouse practices described in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, successfully overcame the lawmakers’ reluctance.
The first casualty of this legislation was the patent medicine industry; few of the nostrums gained certification from the FDA. The law was strengthened in 1912 when additional provisions were added to combat fraudulent labeling. In 1913, the law was supplemented with a provision requiring packaged goods to show their weight. In 1923, "filled" milk was defined and its interstate shipment made illegal.
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will analyze and discuss working conditions and food safety as highlighted in Sinclair's writings.
Richard Makarick, History Major, St. John's University
Current Occupation, Vice-President, Bank Of New York.
Richard is a top executive at one of our state's oldest banks. Rich will talk about the FTC, and some of the current issues on Wall Street. Such as the general consensus among Wall Streeters to repeal the Glass-Steagull Act. Rich will also speak about the Occupy Wall Street protests from the view of a Wall Street banker.
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will analyze and discuss the validity of big banks, and relate what we learned today to the progressive era.
notes
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will explain the role of regulatory agencies in the economy? 2. Students will discuss how effective are they in responding to market failures? Explain. Include examples and details to support your answer.
Booker T. Washington Overview
Booker T. Washington was born about five years before the Civil War
began. By the end of the 19th century, he was one of the best-known men
(black or white) in America.
Booker was born into slavery. The cabin where Booker was born, was
also the plantations kitchen. His mother was the cook. Cooking back then
was not as easy as it is now. Cooking was done on a fireplace. Booker
would gather the wood for the fire. Sometimes Booker's mother would
give her children part of a chicken that was cooked for the slave owners.
Most of the time Booker would eat a potato or a cup of milk. The living
conditions were also very different. The cabin had no glass for the
windows and there were holes in the walls. Booker and the others slept on
a dirt floor, on bundles of rags.
Booker had many different jobs to do on the plantation. He would
carry water out to the workers in the field, take corn to the mill, and
other jobs that were asked of him.
In 1865 when he was about 10 years old the slaves were freed.
Booker and his family left the plantation and headed for Virginia.
Booker's stepfather was already there and sent a wagon and some mules
so that Booker and his family could meet him in West Virginia. The trip
took weeks. The wagon was filled with a few things they had. The
children walked beside the wagon. When they reached their new home in
Virginia, it was no better than the one they had left behind. It may have
been even worse.
Booker worked with his father and brother in a salt mine. They put
salt into barrels. Booker had the desire to learn how to read. His mother
bought him some books to help him learn. Finally, Booker was able to
attend school. He had to wake up early and work 5 hours before and 2
hours after school.
At school, the teacher asked the children their names. Booker
noticed that all of the children had two names. When the teacher asked
him his name he said "Booker Washington." Later he found out that his
last name was Taliaferro. He kept that as his middle name. He was called
Booker T. Washington.
When Booker was 15 years old he worked for a lady named Mrs. Viola
Ruffin. He worked hard, cleaning for her. He worked for her because she
allowed him to learn after work.
In the fall of 1872 Booker left for Hampton Institute in eastern
Virginia. He didn't have very much money, didn't know anyone there, or
if they would accept him. He just headed east until he got to Hampton. It
was 500 miles. He arrived and got a job as a janitor to pay for his
schooling.
Hampton Institute provided vocational training for blacks. That
means it taught students to be farmers, carpenters, teachers, brick
makers, or to do other useful jobs. Students learned skills and to take
pride in their work. Booker was one of the best students. When the
president of Hampton Institute was asked to recommend someone to head
a new training institute for blacks at Tuskegee, Alabama, he suggested
Booker for the job.
When Booker got there he found basically nothing. They met in an old
church, and there were no other teachers. Booker and his students went to
work. They cut down trees, cleared land, dug wells, and built buildings.
They achieved three goals at once. The school got built; the students
learned important and useful trades; and their labor paid for their tuition.
By 1900, Tuskegee had 40 buildings and some fine teachers. Booker T.
Washington was renowned as the voice of the black people. A newspaper
reporter described him as "a remarkable figure; tall, bony, straight as a
Sioux chief, high forehead, straight nose, heavy jaws, and strong,
determined mouth, with big white teeth, piercing eyes and a commanding
manner (Hakim, pg. 176)." Arthur M. Schlesinger said, ôHe was a tall,
commanding, muscular man, with piercing black eyes that had dreams in
them. But it was when he spoke that he was most impressive. He could
have a cheering crowd on its feet in a matter of minutesö (Hakim, pg174).
Booker T. Washington believed that the way to gain equality was
through education. If the Blacks were educated, hard workers they would
reach their goals. He had seen this in his own life and believed that it was
true to all.
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will be able to analyze and discuss the positions of DuBois and Washington. 2. Students will be able to analyze and discuss what was Booker T. Washington's greatest strength and weakness? Same for DuBois.
Group Activity: Give your students a chance to discover the answers to these questions. Divide students into groups of four or five, and give each group copies of one of the following articles: "American Labor," "Mother Jones," "Samuel Gompers," "Fair Labor Standards Act" or "Seattle General Strike: Laundry Workers". Tell students to work with their group to read their articles and answer the following questions: 1. According to your article, who led the push for the minimum wage and a limit to the workweek? 2. Why did they want these changes? 3. Who opposed them and why? 4. What tactics did supporters of the minimum wage and the limited workweek use to achieve their goals? 5. What tactics did opponents use? 6. What terms in this article were new to you? Can any of your fellow students explain what they mean? 7. Tell students to write down their answers to each of these questions, because they will be presenting their findings to other students in a few minutes. 8. Allow students ten minutes or more to work on their answers. Then divide the students into new groups. Each group should include one member of each of the former groups. In other words, each group should contain one person who read each of the articles you passed out. 9. Tell students to work with their groups to complete a brief history of the movement to create a minimum wage and the 40 hour workweek. The history should answer the following questions. 10. What people and organizations are responsible for the federal minimum wage and the 40-hour workweek? 11. How long did these people/organizations struggle for these changes? 12. How did these people and organizations make voices heard? 13. What were working conditions like before the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938? 14. If we were to lead a movement for improved working conditions today (for instance, raising the "subminimum" for under-20 workers to the same minimum wage other workers enjoy), how would we do it? 15. What terms and ideas from this history are new to you? What ideas do you want to learn more about? 16. Give students enough time to discuss and compile their answers. Then ask each group to present its findings. You may want to ask each different group to present on just one of the questions. 17. Make a note of students' answers to the last question. Concepts such as collective bargaining or sit down strikes may be foreign to your students. Explain them or give your students a chance to research and define the terms themselves. Students will build on this knowledge in the next lesson.
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will be able to define and discuss strategies and tactics of labor organizers. 2. Students will be able to identify the main figures of the labor movement.
Extension Activity: To take the lesson a step farther, students who have Internet access can investigate news coverage of the recent union action at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago. Ask students to identify the tactics these activists used and the demands they made. Your students can do additional research to discover the outcome of the strike. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_Windows_and_Doors 2. http://archive.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/09/republic-windows-and-doors-official-in-custody.html 3. http://www.ueunion.org/ue_republic.html
Primary Source Document
Excerpt from Omaha Party Platform
During the “reckless decade” of the 1890s the impulse for reform was driven by the Populist Party, which was made up of farmers, small businessmen and reform-minded leaders who were willing to confront the growing problems in the country. The situation was summarized dramatically in the Populist Party platform, issued at its convention in Omaha in 1892, which read in part:
The conditions which surround us best justify our cooperation: we meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized; most of the States have been compelled to isolate the voters at the polling-places to prevent universal intimidation or bribery. The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled; public opinion silenced; business prostrated; our homes covered with mortgages; labor impoverished; and the land concentrating in the hands of the capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right of organization for self-protection; imported pauperized labor beats down their wages; a hireling standing army, unrecognized by our laws, is established to shoot them down, and they are rapidly degenerating into European conditions. The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; 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.
Additional Lesson plan material: Using Photographs to Teach Social Justice: Exposing Homelessness and Poverty.
Big, Bad Business
For the wealthy classes, the businessmen, entrepreneurs and those generally referred to as “capitalists” or “robber barons,” the motivation to support progressive reform can be included under the heading of the aforementioned enlightened self interest. They recognized the need for reform partly because of the attention to social and working conditions paid by sociologists and others. These “human engineers” recognized that pushing workers relentlessly was not the path to greater efficiency.
It is a well-known fact of business practice today that providing workers with benefits, rest periods, more comfortable working conditions and amenities leads to greater productivity and thus greater profits in the long term. While those motives may be seen as selfish, they were also enlightened to the extent that they made the lives of the working classes more tolerable. Additionally, the proprietary or ownership class of businessmen also recognized that if reforms were not instituted from the top, they would certainly begin at the bottom, as had been demonstrated during the labor unrest of the late 19th century. Thus businessmen, who wanted most of all to preserve the capitalist system, eventually welcomed progressive reform.
One of the best examples of a businessman reformer was Henry Ford, a millionaire capitalist responsible for the assembly line and other major advances in automobile production. As the first entrepreneur to pay his workers five dollars a day, he led the movement for better conditions for workers. Rather than running the Ford Motor Company from an aloof position, he often wandered through production areas, asking workers how they were doing. Ford was no saint, but he was a leader in improving conditions for the working class.
In more modern times, courses at business schools have regularly addressed methods of keeping up worker morale in order to stimulate efficiency, covering everything from the color of paint on office walls to workplace amenities such as exercise rooms and lounges. Such benefits as day care assistance for working mothers and maternity or family leave for both wives and husbands are still regularly discussed in the media. The computer technology industry has been noted for its generous amenities provided for workers. A large computer manufacturer in Texas, for example, realizing that high-tech workers often like to keep strange hours, holds its cafeteria in the assembly plant open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, even if only a handful of employees are present. Workers may work on the schedule of their own choosing. In many ways the progressive movement has never ended.
Similar kinds of motives were at work in the political arena. Those in positions of power at all levels saw their power threatened if the people became discontented. With information available through newspapers, magazines and books written by the muckraking journalists of the era, politicians recognized that American democracy was far from fully democratic. Thus Constitutional amendments such as the direct election of senators and women's suffrage were products of the Progressive Era at the national level. At the state and local levels many kinds of reforms of the political system were instituted to give the people a greater voice in the democratic process.
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will be able to dicuss and explain income distribution in a market economy. 2. Students will be able to analyze and discuss how finances affect our everyday lives.
Clayton Antitrust Act
1914
Print this Page.
An Act to supplement existing laws against unlawful restraints and monopolies, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That "antitrust laws," as used herein, includes the Act entitled "An Act to protect trade and commerce against unlawful restraints and monopolies," approved July second, eighteen hundred and ninety; sections seventy-three to seventy-seven, inclusive, of an Act entitled "An Act to reduce taxation, to provide revenue for the Government, and for other purposes," of August twenty-seventh, eighteen hundred and ninety-four; an Act entitled "An Act to amend sections seventy-three and seventy-six of the Act of August twenty-seventh, eighteen hundred and ninety-four, entitled ’An Act to reduce taxation, to provide revenue for the Government, and for other purposes,’ " approved February twelfth, nineteen hundred and thirteen; and also this Act.
"Commerce," as used herein, means trade or commerce among the several States and with foreign nations, or between the District of Columbia or any Territory of the United States and any State, Territory, or foreign nation, or between any insular possessions or other places under the jurisdiction of the United States, or between any such possession or place and any State or Territory of the United States or the District of Columbia or any foreign nation, or within the District of Columbia or any Territory or any insular possession or other place under the jurisdiction of the United States: Provided, That nothing in this Act contained shall apply to the Philippine Islands.
The word "person" or "persons" wherever used in this Act shall be deemed to include corporations and associations existing under or authorized by the laws of either the United States, the laws of any of the Territories, the laws of any State, or the laws of any foreign country.
Section 2. That it shall be unlawful for any person engaged in commerce, in the course of such commerce, either directly or indirectly to discriminate in price between different purchasers of commodities, which commodities are sold for use, consumption, or resale within the United States or any Territory thereof or the District of Columbia or any insular possession or other place under the jurisdiction of the United States, where the effect of such discrimination may be to substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in any line of commerce: Provided, That nothing herein contained shall prevent discrimination in price between purchasers of commodities on account of differences in the grade, quality, or quantity of the commodity sold, or that makes only due allowance for difference in the cost of selling or transportation, or discrimination in price in the same or different communities made in good faith to meet competition: And provided further, That nothing herein contained shall prevent persons engaged in selling goods, wares, or merchandise in commerce from selecting their own customers in bona fide transactions and not in restraint of trade.
Section 3. That it shall be unlawful for any person engaged in commerce, in the course of such commerce, to lease or make a sale or contract for sale of goods, wares, merchandise, machinery, supplies or other commodities, whether patented or unpatented, for use, consumption or resale within the United States or any Territory thereof or the District of Columbia or any insular possession or other place under the jurisdiction of the United States, or fix a price charged therefor, or discount from, or rebate upon, such price, on the condition, agreement or understanding that the lessee or purchaser thereof shall not use or deal in the goods, wares, merchandise, machinery, supplies or other commodities of a competitor or competitors of the lessor or seller, where the effect of such lease, sale, or contract for sale or such condition, agreement or understanding may be to substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in any line of commerce.
Section 4. That any person who shall be injured in his business or property by reason of anything forbidden in the antitrust laws may sue therefor in any district court of the United States in the district in which the defendant resides or is found or has an agent, without respect to the amount in controversy, and shall recover threefold the damages by him sustained, and the cost of suit, including a reasonable attorney’s fee.
Section 5. That a final judgment or decree hereafter rendered in any criminal prosecution or in any suit or proceeding in equity brought by or on behalf of the United States under the antitrust laws to the effect that a defendant has violated said laws shall be prima facie evidence against such defendant in any suit or proceeding brought by any other party against such defendant under said laws as to all matters respecting which said judgment or decree would be an estoppel as between the parties thereto: Provided, This section shall not apply to consent judgments or decrees entered before any testimony has been taken: Provided further, This section shall not apply to consent judgments or decrees rendered in criminal proceedings or suits in equity, now pending, in which the taking of testimony has been commenced but has not been concluded, provided such judgments or decrees are rendered before any further testimony is taken.
Whenever any suit or proceeding in equity or criminal prosecution is instituted by the United States to prevent, restrain or punish violations of any of the antitrust laws, the running of the statute of limitations in respect of each and every private right of action arising under said laws and based in whole or in part on any matter complained of in said suit or proceeding shall be suspended during the pendency thereof.
Section 6. That the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce. Nothing contained in the antitrust laws shall be construed to forbid the existence and operation of labor, agricultural, or horticultural organizations, instituted for the purposes of mutual help, and not having capital stock or conducted for profit, or to forbid or restrain individual members of such organizations from lawfully carrying out the legitimate objects thereof; nor shall such organizations, or the members thereof, be held or construed to be illegal combinations or conspiracies in restraint of trade, under the antitrust laws.
Section 7. That no corporation engaged in commerce shall acquire, directly or indirectly, the whole or any part of the stock or other share capital of another corporation engaged also in commerce, where the effect of such acquisition may be to substantially lessen competition between the corporation whose stock is so acquired and the corporation making the acquisition, or to restrain such commerce in any section or community, or tend to create a monopoly of any line of commerce.
No corporation shall acquire, directly or indirectly, the whole or any part of the stock or other share capital of two or more corporations engaged in commerce where the effect of such acquisition; or the use of such stock by the voting or granting of proxies or otherwise, may be to substantially lessen competition between such corporations, or any of them, whose stock or other share capital is so acquired, or to restrain such commerce in any section or community, or tend to create a monopoly of any line of commerce.
This section shall not apply to corporations purchasing such stock solely for investment and not using the same by voting or otherwise to bring about, or in attempting to bring about, the substantial lessening of competition. Nor shall anything contained in this section prevent a corporation engaged in commerce from causing the formation of subsidiary corporations for the actual carrying on of their immediate lawful business, or the natural and legitimate branches or extensions thereof, or from owning and holding all or a part of the stock of such subsidiary corporations, when the effect of such formation is not to substantially lessen competition.
Nor shall anything herein contained be construed to prohibit any common carrier subject to the laws to regulate commerce from aiding in the construction of branches or short lines so located as to become feeders to the main line of the company so aiding in such construction or from acquiring or owning all or any part of the stock of such branch lines, nor to prevent any such common carrier from acquiring and owning all or any part of the stock of a branch or short line constructed by an independent company where there is no substantial competition between the company owning the branch line so constructed and the company owning the main line acquiring the property or an interest therein, nor to prevent such common carrier from extending any of its lines through the medium of the acquisition of stock or otherwise of any other such common carrier where there is no substantial competition between the company extending its lines and the company whose stock, property, or an interest therein is so acquired.
Nothing contained in this section shall be held to affect or impair any right heretofore legally acquired: Provided, That nothing in this section shall be held or construed to authorize or make lawful anything heretofore prohibited or made illegal by the antitrust laws, nor to exempt any person from the penal provisions thereof or the civil remedies therein provided.
Section 8. That from and after two years from the date of the approval of this Act no person shall at the same time be a director or other officer or employee of more than one bank, banking association or trust company, organized or operating under the laws of the United States, either of which has deposits, capital, surplus, and undivided profits aggregating more than $5,000,000; and no private banker or person who is a director in any bank or trust company, organized and operating under the laws of a State, having deposits, capital, surplus, and undivided profits aggregating more than $5,000,000 shall be eligible to be a director in any bank or banking association organized or operating under the laws of the United States. The eligibility of a director, officer, or employee under the foregoing provisions shall be determined by the average amount of deposits, capital, surplus, and undivided profits as shown in the official statements of such bank, banking association, or trust company filed as provided by law during the fiscal year next preceding the date set for the annual election of directors, and when a director, officer, or employee has been elected or selected in accordance with the provisions of this Act it shall be lawful for him to continue as such for one year thereafter under said election or employment.
No bank, banking association or trust company, organized or operating under the laws of the United States, in any city or incorporated town or village of more than two hundred thousand inhabitants, as shown by the last preceding decennial census of the United States, shall have as a director or other officer or employee any private banker or any director or other officer or employee of any other bank, banking association, or trust company located in the same place: Provided, That nothing in this section shall apply to mutual savings banks not having a capital stock represented by shares: Provided further, That a director or other officer or employee of such bank, banking association, or trust company may be a director or other officer or employee of not more than one other bank or trust company organized under the laws of the United States or any State where the entire capital stock of one is owned by stockholders in the other: And provided further, That nothing contained in this section shall forbid a director of class A of a Federal reserve bank, as defined in the Federal Reserve Act, from being an officer or director or both an officer and director in one member bank.
That from and after two years from the date of the approval of this Act no person at the same time shall be a director in any two or more corporations, any one of which has capital, surplus, and undivided profits aggregating more than $1,000,000, engaged in whole or in part in commerce, other than banks, banking associations, trust companies and common carriers subject to the Act to regulate commerce, approved February fourth, eighteen hundred and eighty seven, if such corporations are or shall have been theretofore, by virtue of their business and location of operation, competitors, so that the elimination of competition by agreement between them would constitute a violation of any of the provisions of any of the antitrust laws. The eligibility of a director under the foregoing provision shall be determined by the aggregate amount of the capital, surplus, and undivided profits, exclusive of dividends declared but not paid to stockholders, at the end of the fiscal year of said corporation next preceding the election of directors, and when a director has been elected in accordance with the provisions of this Act it shall be lawful for him to continue as such for one year thereafter.
When any person elected or chosen as a director or officer or selected as an employee of any bank or other corporation subject to the provisions of this Act is eligible at the time of his election or selection to act for such bank or other corporation in such capacity his eligibility to act in such capacity shall not be affected and he shall not become or be deemed amenable to any of the provisions hereof by reason of any change in the affairs of such bank or other corporation from whatsoever cause, whether specifically excepted by any of the provisions hereof or not, until the expiration of one year from the date of his election or employment.
Section 9. Every president, director, officer or manager of any firm, association or corporation engaged in commerce as a common carrier, who embezzles, steals, abstracts or willfully misapplies, or willfully permits to be misapplied, any of the moneys, funds, credits, securities, property or assets of such firm, association or corporation, arising or accruing from, or used in, such commerce, in whole or in part, or willfully or knowingly converts the same to his own use or to the use of another, shall be deemed guilty of a felony and upon conviction shall be fined not less than $500 or confined in the penitentiary not less than one year nor more than ten years, or both, in the discretion of the court.
Prosecutions hereunder may be in the district court of the United States for the district wherein the offense may have been committed.
That nothing in this section shall be held to take away or impair the jurisdiction of the courts of the several States under the laws thereof; and a judgment of conviction or acquittal on the merits under the laws of any State shall be a bar to any prosecution hereunder for the same act or acts.
Section 10. That after two years from the approval of this Act no common carrier engaged in commerce shall have any dealings in securities, supplies or other articles of commerce, or shall make or have any contracts for construction or maintenance of any kind, to the amount of more than $50,000, in the aggregate, in any one year, with another corporation, firm, partnership or association when the said common carrier shall have upon its board of directors or as its president, manager or as its purchasing or selling officer, or agent in the particular transaction, any person who is at the same time a director, manager, or purchasing or selling officer of, or who has any substantial interest in, such other corporation, firm, partnership or association, unless and except such purchases shall be made from, or such dealings shall be with, the bidder whose bid is the most favorable to such common carrier, to be ascertained by competitive bidding under regulations to be proscribed by rule or otherwise by the Interstate Commerce Commission. No bid shall be received unless the name and address of the bidder or the names and addresses of the officers, directors and general managers thereof, if the bidder be a corporation, or of the members, if it be a partnership or firm, be given with the bid.
Any person who shall, directly or indirectly, do or attempt to do anything to prevent anyone from bidding or shall do any act to prevent free and fair competition among the bidders or those desiring to bid shall be punished as prescribed in this section in the case of an officer or director.
Every such common carrier having any such transactions or making any such purchases shall within thirty days after making the same file with the Interstate Commerce Commission a full and detailed statement of the transaction showing the manner of the competitive bidding, who were the bidders, and the names and addresses of the directors and officers of the corporations and the members of the firm or partnership bidding; and whenever the said commission shall, after investigation or hearing, have reason to believe that the law has been violated in and about the said purchases or transactions it shall transmit all papers and documents and its own views or findings regarding the transaction to the Attorney General.
If any common carrier shall violate this section it shall be fined not exceeding $25,000; and every such director, agent, manager or officer thereof who shall have knowingly voted for or directed the act constituting such violation or who shall have aided or abetted in such violation shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be fined not exceeding $5,000, or confined in jail not exceeding one year, or both, in the discretion of the court.
Section 11. That authority to enforce compliance with sections two, three, seven and eight of this Act by the persons respectively subject thereto is hereby vested: in the Interstate Commerce Commission where applicable to common carriers, in the Federal Reserve Board where applicable to banks, banking associations and trust companies, and in the Federal Trade Commission where applicable to all other character of commerce, to be exercised as follows:
Whenever the commission or board vested with jurisdiction thereof shall have reason to believe that any person is violating or has violated any of the provisions of sections two, three, seven and eight of this Act, it shall issue and serve upon such person a complaint stating its charges in that respect, and containing a notice of a hearing upon a day and at a place therein fixed at least thirty days after the service of said complaint. The person so complained of shall have the right to appear at the place and time so fixed and show cause why an order should not be entered by the commission or board requiring such person to cease and desist from the violation of the law so charged in said complaint. Any person may make application, and upon good cause shown may be allowed by the commission or board, to intervene and appear in said proceeding by counsel or in person. The testimony in any such proceeding shall be reduced to writing and filed in the office of the commission or board. If upon such hearing the commission or board, as the case may be, shall be of the opinion that any of the provisions of said sections have been or are being violated, it shall make a report in writing in which it shall state its findings as to the facts, and shall issue and cause to be served on such person an order requiring such person to cease and desist from such violations, and divest itself of the stock held or rid itself of the directors chosen contrary to the provisions of sections seven and eight of this Act, if any there be, in the manner and within the time fixed by said order. Until a transcript of the record in such hearing shall have been filed in a circuit court of appeals of the United States, as hereinafter provided, the commission or board may at any time, upon such notice and in such manner as it shall deem proper, modify or set aside, in whole or in part, any report or any order made or issued by it under this section.
If such person fails or neglects to obey such order of the commission or board while the same is in effect, the commission or board may apply to the circuit court of appeals of the United States, within any circuit where the violation complained of was or is being committed or where such person resides or carries on business, for the enforcement of its order, and shall certify and file with its application a transcript of the entire record in the proceeding, including all the testimony taken and the report and order of the commission or board. Upon such filing of the application and transcript the court shall cause notice thereof to be served upon such person and thereupon shall have jurisdiction of the proceeding and of the question determined therein, and shall have power to make and enter upon the pleadings, testimony, and proceedings set forth in such transcript a decree affirming, modifying, or setting aside the order of the commission or board. The findings of the commission or board as to the facts, if supported by testimony, shall be conclusive. If either party shall apply to the court for leave to adduce additional evidence, and shall show to the satisfaction of the court that such additional evidence is material and that there were reasonable grounds for the failure to adduce such evidence in the proceeding before the commission or board, the court may order such additional evidence to be taken before the commission or board and to be adduced upon the hearing in such manner and upon such terms and conditions as to the court may seem proper. The commission or board may modify its findings as to the facts, or make new findings, by reason of the additional evidence so taken, and it shall file such modified or new findings, which, if supported by testimony, shall be conclusive, and its recommendation, if any, for the modification or setting aside of its original order, with the return of such additional evidence. The judgment and decree of the court shall be final, except that the same shall be subject to review by the Supreme Court upon certiorari as provided in section two hundred and forty of the Judicial Code.
Any party required by such order of the commission or board to cease and desist from a violation charged may obtain a review of such order in said circuit court of appeals by filing in the court a written petition praying that the order of the commission or board be set aside. A copy of such petition shall be forthwith served upon the commission or board, and thereupon the commission or board forthwith shall certify and file in the court a transcript of the record as hereinbefore provided. Upon the filing of the transcript the court shall have the same jurisdiction to affirm, set aside, or modify the order of the commission or board as in the case of an application by the commission or board for the enforcement of its order, and the findings of the commission or board as to the facts, if supported by testimony, shall in like manner be conclusive.
The jurisdiction of the circuit court of appeals of the United States to enforce, set aside, or modify orders of the commission or board shall be exclusive.
Such proceedings in the circuit court of appeals shall be given precedence over other cases pending therein, and shall be in every way expedited. No order of the commission or board or the judgment of the court to enforce the same shall in any wise relieve or absolve any person from any liability under the antitrust Acts.
Complaints, orders, and other processes of the commission or board under this section may be served by anyone duly authorized by the commission or board, either (a) by delivering a copy thereof to the person to be served, or to a member of the partnership to be served, or to the president, secretary, or other executive officer or a director of the corporation to be served; or (b) by leaving a copy thereof at the principal office or place of business of such person; or (c) by registering and mailing a Copy thereof addressed to such person at his principal office or place of business. The verified return by the person so serving said complaint, order, or other process setting forth the manner of said service shall be proof of the same, and the return post-office receipt for said complaint, order, or other process registered and mailed as aforesaid shall be proof of the service of the same.
Section 12. That any suit, action, or proceeding under the antitrust laws against a corporation may be brought not only in the judicial district whereof it is an inhabitant, but also in any district wherein it may be found or transacts business; and all process in such cases may be served in the district of which it is an inhabitant, or wherever it may be found.
Section 13. That in any suit, action, or proceeding brought by or on behalf of the United States subpoenas for witnesses who are required to attend a court of the United States in any judicial district in any case, civil or criminal, arising under the antitrust laws may run into any other district: Provided, That in civil cases no writ of subpoena shall issue for witnesses living out of the district in which the court is held at a greater distance than one hundred miles from the place of holding the same without the permission of the trial court being first had upon proper application and cause shown.
Section 14. That whenever a corporation shall violate any of the penal provisions of the antitrust laws, such violation shall be deemed to he also that of the individual directors, officers, or agents of such corporation who shall have authorized, ordered, or done any of the acts constituting in whole or in part such violation, and such violation shall be deemed a misdemeanor and upon conviction therefor of any such director, officer, or agent he shall be punished by a fine of not exceeding $5,000 or by imprisonment for not exceeding one year, or by both, in the discretion of the court.
Section 15. That the several district courts of the United States are hereby invested with jurisdiction to prevent and restrain violations of this Act, and it shall be the duty of the several district attorneys of the United States, in their respective districts, under the direction of the Attorney General, to institute proceedings in equity to prevent. and restrain such violations. Such proceedings may be by way of petition setting forth the case and praying that such violation shall be enjoined or otherwise prohibited. When the parties complained of shall have been duly notified of such petition, the court shall proceed, as soon as may be, to the hearing and determination of the case; and pending such petition, and before final decree, the court may at any time make such temporary restraining order or prohibition as shall be deemed just in the premises. Whenever it shall appear to the court before which any such proceeding may be pending that the ends of justice require that other parties should be brought before the court, the court may cause them to be summoned, whether they reside in the district in which the court is held or not, and subpoenas to that end may be served in any district by the marshal thereof.
Section 16. That any person, firm, corporation, or association shall be entitled to sue for and have injunctive relief, in any court of the United States having jurisdiction over the parties, against threatened loss or damage by a violation of the antitrust laws, including sections two, three, seven and eight of this Act, when and under the same conditions and principles as injunctive relief against threatened conduct that will cause loss or damage is granted by courts of equity, under the rules governing such proceeding’s, and upon the execution of proper bond against damages for an injunction improvidently granted and a showing that the danger of irreparable loss or damage is immediate, a preliminary injunction may issue: Provided, That nothing herein contained shall be construed to entitle any person, firm, corporation, or association, except the United States, to bring suit in equity for injunctive relief against any common carrier subject to the provisions of the Act to regulate commerce, approved February fourth, eighteen hundred and eighty-seven, in respect of any matter subject to the regulation, supervision. or other jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission.
Section 17. That no preliminary injunction shall be issued without notice to the opposite party.
No temporary restraining order shall be granted without notice to the opposite party unless it shall clearly appear from specific facts shown by affidavit or by the verified bill that immediate and irreparable injury, loss, or damage will result to the applicant before notice can be served and a hearing had thereon. Every such temporary restraining order shall be indorsed with the date and hour of issuance, shall be forthwith filed in the clerk’s office and entered of record, shall define the injury and state why it is irreparable and why the order was granted without notice, and shall by its terms expire within such time after entry, not to exceed ten days, as the court or judge may fix, unless within the time so fixed the order is extended for a like period for good cause shown, and the reasons for such extension shall be entered of record. In case a temporary restraining order shall be granted without notice in the contingency specified, the matter of the issuance of a preliminary injunction shall be set down for a hearing at the earliest possible time and shall take precedence of all matters except older matters of the same character; and when the same comes up for hearing the party obtaining the temporary restraining order shall proceed with the application for a preliminary injunction, and if he does not do so the court shall dissolve the temporary restraining order. Upon two days’ notice to the party obtaining such temporary restraining order the opposite party may appear and move the dissolution or modification of the order, and in that event the court or judge shall proceed to hear and determine the motion as expeditiously as the ends of justice may require.
Section two hundred and sixty-three of an Act entitled "An Act to codify, revise, and amend the laws relating to the judiciary," approved March third, nineteen hundred and eleven, is hereby repealed.
Nothing in this section contained shall be deemed to alter, repeal, or amend section two hundred and sixty-six of an Act entitled "An Act to codify, revise, and amend the laws relating to the judiciary," approved March third, nineteen hundred and eleven.
Section 18. That, except as otherwise provided in section 16 of this Act, no restraining order or interlocutory order of injunction shall issue, except upon the giving of security by the applicant in such sum as the court or judge may deem proper, conditioned upon the payment of such costs and damages as may be incurred or suffered by any party who may be found to have been wrongfully enjoined or restrained thereby.
Section 19. That every order of injunction or restraining order shall set forth the reasons for the issuance of the same, shall be specific in terms, and shall describe in reasonable detail, and not by reference to the bill of complaint or other document, the act or acts sought to be restrained, and shall be binding only upon the parties to the suit, their officers, agents, servants, employees, and attorneys, or those in active concert or participating with them, and who shall, by personal service or otherwise, have received actual notice of the same.
Section 20. That no restraining order or injunction shall be granted by any court of the United States, or a judge or the judges thereof, in any case between an employer and employees, or between employers and employees, or between employees, or between persons employed and persons seeking employment, involving, or growing out of, a dispute concerning terms or conditions of employment, unless necessary to prevent irreparable injury to property, or to a property right, of the party making the application, for which injury there is no adequate remedy at law, and such property or property right must be described with particularity in the application, which must be in writing and sworn to by the applicant or by his agent or attorney.
And no such restraining order or injunction shall prohibit any person or persons, whether singly or in concert, from terminating any relation of employment, or from ceasing to perform any work or labor, or from recommending, advising, or persuading others by peaceful means so to do; or from attending at any place where any such person or persons may lawfully be, for the purpose of peacefully obtaining or communicating information, or from peacefully persuading any person to work or to abstain from working; or from ceasing to patronize or to employ any party to such dispute, or from recommending, advising, or persuading others by peaceful and lawful means so to do; or from paying or giving to, or withholding from, any person engaged in such dispute, any strike benefits or other moneys or things of value; or from peaceably assembling in a lawful manner, and for lawful purposes; or from doing any act or thing which might lawfully be done in the absence of such dispute by any party thereto; nor shall any of the acts specified in this paragraph be considered or held to be violations of any law of the United States.
Section 21. That any person who shall willfully disobey any lawful writ, process, order, rule, decree, or command of any district court of the United States or any court of the District of Columbia by doing any act or thing therein, or thereby forbidden to be done by him, if the act or thing so done by him be of such character as to constitute also a criminal offense under any statute of the United States, or under the laws of any State in which the act was committed, shall be proceeded against for his said contempt as hereinafter provided.
Section 22. That whenever it shall be made to appear to any district court or judge thereof, or to any judge therein sitting, by the return of a proper officer on lawful process, or upon the affidavit of some credible person, or by information filed by any district attorney, that there is reasonable ground to believe that any person has been guilty of such contempt, the court or judge thereof, or any judge therein sitting, may issue a rule requiring the said person so charged to show cause upon a day certain why he should not be punished therefor, which rule, together with a copy of the affidavit or information, shall be served upon the person charged, with sufficient promptness to enable him to prepare for and make return to the order at the time fixed therein. If upon or by such return, in the judgment of the court, the alleged contempt be not sufficiently purged, a trial shall be directed at a time and place fixed by the court: Provided, however, That if the accused, being a natural person, fail or refuse to make return to the rule to show cause, an attachment may issue against his person to compel an answer, and in case of his continued failure or refusal, or if for any reason it be impracticable to dispose of the matter on the return day, he may be required to give reasonable bail for his attendance at the trial and his submission to the final judgment of the court. Where the accused is a body corporate, an attachment for the sequestration of its property may be issued upon like refusal or failure to answer.
In all cases within the purview of this Act such trial may be by the court, or, upon demand of the accused, by a jury; in which latter event the court may impanel a jury from the jurors then in attendance, or the court or the judge thereof in chambers may cause a sufficient number of jurors to be selected and summoned, as provided by law, to attend at the time and place of trial, at which time a jury shall be selected and impaneled as upon a trial for misdemeanor; and such trial shall conform, as near as may be, to the practice in criminal cases prosecuted by indictment or upon information.
If the accused be found guilty, judgment shall be entered accordingly, prescribing the punishment, either by fine or imprisonment, or both, in the discretion of the court. Such fine shall be paid to the United States or to the complainant or other party injured by the act constituting the contempt, or may, where more than one is so damaged, be divided or apportioned among them as the court may direct, but in no case shall the fine to be paid to the United States exceed, in case the accused is a natural person, the sum of $1,000, nor shall such imprisonment exceed the term of six months: Provided, That in any case the court or a judge thereof may, for good cause shown, by affidavit or proof taken in open court or before such judge and filed with the papers in the case, dispense with the rule to show cause, and may issue an attachment for the arrest of the person charged with contempt; in which event such person, when arrested, shall be brought before such court or a judge thereof without unnecessary delay and shall be admitted to bail in a reasonable penalty for his appearance to answer to the charge or for trial for the contempt; and thereafter the proceedings shall be the same as provided herein in case the rule had issued in the first instance.
Section 23. That the evidence taken upon the trial of any persons so accused may be preserved by bill of exceptions, and any judgment of conviction may be reviewed upon writ of error in all respects as now provided by law in criminal cases, and may be affirmed, reversed, or modified as justice may require. Upon the granting of such writ of error, execution of judgment shall be stayed, and the accused, if thereby sentenced to imprisonment, shall be admitted to bail in such reasonable sum as may be required by the court, or by any justice, or any judge of any district court of the United States or any court of the District of Columbia.
Section 24. That nothing herein contained shall be construed to relate to contempts committed in the presence of the court, or so near thereto as to obstruct the administration of justice, nor to contempts committed in disobedience of any lawful writ, process, order, rule, decree or command entered in any suit or action brought or prosecuted in the name of, or on behalf of, the United States, but the same, and all other cases of contempt not specifically embraced within section twenty-one of this Act, may be punished in conformity to the usages at law and in equity now prevailing.
Section 25. That no proceeding for contempt shall be instituted against any person unless begun within one year from the date of the act complained of; nor shall any such proceeding be a bar to any criminal prosecution for the same act or acts; but nothing herein contained shall affect any proceedings in contempt pending at the time of the passage of this Act.
Section 26. If any clause, sentence, paragraph, or part of this Act shall, for any reason, be adjudged by any court of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, such judgment shall not affect, impair, or invalidate the remainder thereof, but shall be confined in its operation to the clause, sentence, paragraph, or part thereof directly involved in the controversy in which such judgment shall have been rendered.
Differentiated Instruction:
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will be able to analyze and discuss the outcomes/benefits of the Clayton Anti-Trust Act.
Extension Activity: Describe the facts in the Microsoft case and identify the parts of the case where the actions of the company collide with antitrust law.
Extension Activity Reading Document
Students will take a look at the United States
v. Microsoft, a case involving the allegation that Microsoft violated the
Sherman Act. The government argued that Microsoft had monopoly power
and used it to illegally maintain its monopoly of the operating system for
personal computers by creating barriers to market entry, exclusionary
contracts and other anticompetitive activity. At the time Microsoft had 95%
of the market and there were significant barriers to entry into that market.
Specifically, Microsoft began manufacturing its windows operating system so
that its own browser would be part of the product, in effect offering it to the
public at a cost of zero. At the same time, Microsoft used its monopoly
position in the operating system to force manufacturers of personal
computers to agree not to install the competing browser from Netscape.
According to the courts, Microsoft saw that Netscape could eventually
become the platform for a competing operating system and decided to block
Netscape to keep this from happening.
Microsoft defended its actions by arguing that what they were doing was
innovation and that their behavior was not exclusionary but was justifiable
competitive conduct. This is a complicated case and the documentary only
focuses on some of the strategies that Microsoft used to maintain its
monopoly and drive out competition.
The federal courts upheld the allegation of illegally maintaining a monopoly,
Microsoft filed an appeal but then the government settled the case with
Microsoft on terms that remain controversial to this day. The documentary
shows the opposing views and strong opinions of those connected to the
case.
You may want to ask students if they have ever played the “Monopoly” game.
What makes a monopoly in that game? It is when one has all the similar
properties of one color. The player (owner) can then charge higher rent to
people who land on that property. This is not the legal definition of
monopoly though exclusive ownership can lead to monopoly.
Community Resource People
You might want to invite a lawyer specializing in antitrust law or someone
from your county prosecutor or state Attorney General’s Office as a resource
person for this lesson. Send a copy of the lesson when confirming the date
and location of the class.
SAMUEL GOMPERS 1850-1924
EUGENE V. DEBS 1855-1926
Unlike many places in the world, the unions and labor movement in America failed to form a powerful political party. One of the reasons was a man named Samuel Gompers. Born in London, Gompers moved with his family to New York in 1863. He got a job working in a cigar factory, joined the Cigar Maker’s Union and rose to become its president. Gompers rejected the idea that workers needed radical intellectuals to help them achieve their goals. “I saw that betterment for workingmen must come primarily through workingmen,” he wrote. “I saw the danger of entangling alliances with intellectuals who did not understand that to experiment with the labor movement was to experiment with human life.”
In 1886, Gompers gathered together a wide range of unions to form the American Federation of Labor. He advocated “Pure and Simple Unionism” meaning that unions would avoid forming a political party in order to preserve the unity of the labor movement. By 1903, the American Federation of Labor represented more than one and a half million union members and was becoming a force to be reckoned with in American life. At that year’s AFL convention, Gompers forever parted ways with his old allies:
“I want to tell you Socialists,” he said, “that I have studied your philosophy … I have kept close watch upon your doctrines for thirty years; have been closely associated with many of you, … And I want to say that I am entirely at variance with your philosophy … Economically, you are unsound; socially you are wrong; industrially, you are an impossibility.”
Samuel Gompers, founder of the AFL (1880s, George Meany Memorial Archives)
Led by Eugene V. Debs the Socialist Party of America split off of the American Federation of Labor. Between 1900 and 1920, Debs ran for US President five times. At its peak, the Socialist Party won 6% of the popular vote with Debs in the presidential election of 1912.
World War I formed a major turning point for unions and socialists. Debs’ Socialist Party was adamantly anti-war, where Gompers’ AFL supported President Wilson’s decision to enter the war. Most trade unionists followed Gompers. In 1918 Debs was arrested for publicly speaking out against the government’s prosecution of war protestors, charged with sedition and sentenced to ten years in jail. Campaigning from prison, Debs made his final bid for president in 1920, winning a little more than 3% of the popular vote.
For more information, read interviews with:
Michael Kazin
Georgetown University
Author, Populist Persuasion: An American History
Home The Film The Timeline Leaders and Thinkers Resources For Teachers
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http://www.pbs.org/heavenonearth/leaders_thinkers_gompers_debs.html
Primary Sources
PROLOGUE TO THE COMPANION BOOK, HEAVEN ON EARTH
Text PDF (Requires Adobe Acrobat)
Read about Muravchik’s personal connection to the history of socialism.
SOCIALISM AT HIGH TIDE: 1985
APPENDIX 1: HEAVEN ON EARTH
Text PDF (Requires Adobe Acrobat)
Table showing which nations were governed under Socialism, Communism or Third-World Socialism during 1985.
THIRD WORLD SOCIALIST COUNTRIES
APPENDIX 2: HEAVEN ON EARTH
Text PDF (Requires Adobe Acrobat)
Table showing the years under which nations in the developing world had socialist governments.
“SOCIALISM’S LAST STAND” COMMENTARY, MARCH 1, 2002
Text PDF (Requires Adobe Acrobat)
“SOCIALISM VS. RELIGION” AMERICAN ENTERPRISE, JULY 14, 2002
Text PDF (Requires Adobe Acrobat)
“DUSTBIN OF HISTORY” FOREIGN POLICY, DECEMBER, 2002
Text PDF (Requires Adobe Acrobat)
All articles used by permission of Joshua Muravchik.
Additional Sources/ Group Reading and Discussion
THE RISE: SAMUEL GOMPERS & AMERICAN LABOR
JOSHUA MURAVCHIK
AUTHOR, HEAVEN ON EARTH
In the Marxist scheme of things the most advanced capitalist country was the one that was supposed to be transformed first, and that was the United States of America. But ironically, socialism never gained the popularity in America that it gained in almost all other countries. Basically because its main constituency or supposed constituency, the working class, the labor unions simply didn't accept it. They wrestled with it for a while and then rejected it
NARRATOR: In America, the split between trade unions and socialists goes all the way back to the very beginnings of the organized labor movement in the late nineteenth century.
NARRATOR: Spurred by Marx and Engels, workers' movements across Europe were gaining strength - and most were embracing socialism as their guiding philosophy. In America, too, workers were organizing. But they would choose a very different path - led by a straight-talking cigarmaker named Samuel Gompers.
MICHAEL KAZIN
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
AUTHOR, POPULIST PERSUASION: AN AMERICAN HISTORY
The irony about Sam Gompers was that he was a Marxist who formed an anti-Marxist trade union. Gompers was born in a poor family in London and moved to the United States in his teens. Becomes a skilled cigar maker, and all this time he is a socialist. He's reading Marx. He's reading Engels. He's reading other classics of European socialism and he believes that the best way to organize workers, to demand their emancipation the best way to achieve socialism, is by making the trade unions themselves stronger.
NARRATOR: Gompers rejected the idea that workers needed radical intellectuals to help them achieve their goals. "I saw that betterment for workingmen must come primarily through workingmen," he wrote. "I saw the danger of entangling alliances with intellectuals who did not understand that to experiment with the labor movement was to experiment with human life."
Gompers and his allies favored something called "pure and simple unionism." It meant using strikes and boycotts to fight for better pay and benefits rather than taking political action to create a whole new system.
In 1886 Gompers helped found the American Federation of Labor, uniting individual unions across the country. As the AFL's first president, his salary would be less than he earned rolling cigars.Gompers' leadership of American workers would be challenged by socialists within and without the AFL. In 1901, some of these socialists came together to form the Socialist Party of America. At the party's helm was a rival labor leader, a railway man named Eugene V. Debs.
MICHAEL KAZIN
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
AUTHOR, POPULIST PERSUASION: AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Debs is a fascinating figure because he's one of the perennial candidates who runs for office many times and is more popular than, than the party he runs with. He runs for president five times as a Socialist Party candidate. He achieves at most six percent of the vote, which he gets in 1912. But he's an enormously, popular, charismatic figure. Much more than Gompers ever was.
GRACE PALLADINO
CO-EDITOR, THE SAMUEL GOMPERS PAPERS
Originally Gompers had hoped he and Debs would work together. Um, but he, he… ended up calling Debs the apostle of failure. He was involved with the utopian socialist program. Then he was involved with the Western Labor Union, then the American Labor Union, and then the IWW. And Gompers felt any attempt to organize a rival trade union was in effect doing the employers job
NARRATOR: By 1903, the American Federation of Labor represented more than one and a half million union members and was becoming a force to be reckoned with in American life. At that year's AFL convention, Gompers forever parted ways with his old allies:
"I want to tell you Socialists," he said, "that I have studied your philosophy … I have kept close watch upon your doctrines for thirty years; have been closely associated with many of you, … And I want to say that I am entirely at variance with your philosophy … Economically, you are unsound; socially you are wrong; industrially, you are an impossibility."
Despite Gompers' opposition, the Socialist Party continued to gain strength. Surprisingly, the party drew more support from farmers than from industrial workers. One of the greatest centers of socialist support was Oklahoma. Eugene Debs won more than 16 percent of the presidential vote there in 1912.
But America's entry to World War I brought a turning point for the Party.
MICHAEL KAZIN
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
AUTHOR, POPULIST PERSUASION: AN AMERICAN HISTORY
In World War I, socialists in this country and around the world had to decide: will they support their individual nations in the war, or will they support the international socialist brotherhood and oppose the war of workers against other workers? And the American socialist party, unlike the European socialist parties, decides to oppose the U.S. government and to oppose World War I. And most trade unionists, Gompers as their leader, support the war.
GRACE PALLADINO
CO-EDITOR, THE SAMUEL GOMPERS PAPERS
The more moderate socialists leave the party, um, and actually work with Gompers in the AFL. The more radical socialists start speaking out against the war and they are arrested. Eugene Debs gets arrested in 1918, gets sentenced to ten years in jail, and by the time he comes out of jail in 1921, when he's pardoned, the Socialist Party is pretty much a shell.
NARRATOR: The Party would never regain its prewar strength, not even during the Great Depression. Gompers and the American Federation of Labor - later the AFL-CIO - had won out as the principal voice of America's workers.
Additional Sources/ Group Discussion
MICHAEL KAZIN
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
AUTHOR, POPULIST PERSUASION: AN AMERICAN HISTORY
In many ways Americanism proved to be a substitute for socialism for a lot of workers. After all, Americanism has always stood for the average person being able to make it, that the American standard of living is something that all Americans should be able to enjoy. And so the idea of class equality is something that undergirded the strength of socialism in Europe but it's always been part of the American vision, as well. So in many ways Americanism trumped socialism and made socialism unnecessary as a vision for a lot of American workers.
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will be able to analyze and discuss both Gompers' and Debs' ideas. 2. Students will be able to discuss the concept of "voluntarism".
Extension Activity: Using what you have learned, answer these two questions: 1. What the United States would have been like if Eugene V. Debs had been elected president? 2. What would modern day America be like if Debs' ideology had taken hold and endured? 3. Contrast reactions to socialism in America and Russia.
In the late 1800's powerful railroad trusts beagn abusing their power and raised rates on farmers to astronomical levels. Many farmers went bankrupt, others were forced to pay rates that placed them near bankruptcy. Farmers recognized that something needed to be done to combat the power of the trusts. An organization called The Grange was created to represent the farmers. It was Grange movements philosophy that railroads were a public utility even though they were privatley owned and operated because they are public in nature. As such they could be regulated by the government. Granger legislation that regulated railroads was passed in 14 states.
Inn the case Munn v. Illinois (1877) Midwestern farmers felt that they were being victimized by the exorbitant freight rates they were forced to pay to the powerful railroad companies. As a result, the state of Illinois passed a law that allowed the state to fix maximum rates that railroads and grain elevator companies could charge.
The Supreme Court of the United States upheldthe Illinois law because the movement end storage of grain were considered to be closely related to public interest. This type of economic activity could be governed by state legislatures, whereas purely private contracts could only be governed by the courts. The Court held that laws affecting public interest could be made or charged by state legislatures without interference from the courts. The Court said, "For protection against abuse by legislatures, the people must resort to the polls, not the courts."
In response to Granger legislation the railroads again filed suit in Federal court. They charged in Wabash Railroad v Illinois that states could not regulate interstate trade and that the railroads were involved in interstate trade. The court agreed citing Gibbons v Ogden as the precedent. In response to the repeal of state level Grange legislation the Federal Government passed the Interstate Commerce Commission Act which created the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to regulate the railroads. This siginfied the beginning of the end of the laissez faire era as it was the first time the government stepped in to regulate buisness.
Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railway Co. v. Illinois
(1886) An Illinois statute imposed a penalty on railroads that charged the same or more money for passengers or freight shipped for shorter distances than for longer distances. The railroad in this case charged more for goods shipped from Gilman, Illinois, to New York, than from Peoria, Illinois, to New York, when Gilman was eightysix miles closer to New York than Peoria. The intent of the statute was to avoid discrimination against small towns not served by competing railroad lines and was applied to the intrastate (within one state) portion of an interstate (two or more states) journey. At issue was whether a state government has the power to regulate railroad prices on that portion of an interstate journey that lies within its borders.
The Supreme Court of the United States held the Illinois statute to be invalid and that the power to regulate interstate railroad rates is a federal power which belongs exclusively to Congress and, therefore, cannot be exercised by individual states. The Court said the right of continuous transportation from one end of the country to the other is essential and that states should not be permitted to impose restraints on the freedom of commerce. In this decision, the Court gave great strength to the commerce clause of the Constitution by saying that states cannot impose regulations concerning price, compensation, taxation, or any other restrictive regulation interfering with or seriously affecting interstate commerce. [One year after Wabash, Congress enacted the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). This commission had the power to regulate interstate commerce.]
More legislation to limit the power of the trusts followed:
Interstate Commerce Commission Act (1887)
First federal law regulating the abuse of monopoly power. Banned certain unfair business practices in the railroad industry.
Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)
Made it illegal to create, or attempt to create, a monopoly. Banned any "conspiracy in restraint of trade."
Clayton Antitrust Act (1914)
Sought to prevent the creation of monopolies by defining specific illegal practices. Strengthened the Sherman Act.
Federal Trade Commission Act (1914)
Created the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC has the responsibility to carry out the provisions of the Clayton Antitrust Act and to enforce federal law in regard regulation of business.
Robinson - Patman Act (1936)
Protects small retailers from unfair competition by chain stores and other large scale competitors.
Celler - Kefauver Act (1950)
Outlawed mergers or acquisitions that would lessen competition or create a monopoly.
Primary Sources:
Growth of Government Intervention in the Economy
From U.S. Department of State.
.
In the early days of the United States, government leaders largely refrained from regulating business. As the 20th century approached, however, the consolidation of U.S. industry into increasingly powerful corporations spurred government intervention to protect small businesses and consumers. In 1890, Congress enacted the Sherman Antitrust Act, a law designed to restore competition and free enterprise by breaking up monopolies. In 1906, it passed laws to ensure that food and drugs were correctly labeled and that meat was inspected before being sold. In 1913, the government established a new federal banking system, the Federal Reserve, to regulate the nation's money supply and to place some controls on banking activities.
The largest changes in the government's role occurred during the "New Deal," President Franklin D. Roosevelt's response to the Great Depression. During this period in the 1930s, the United States endured the worst business crisis and the highest rate of unemployment in its history. Many Americans concluded that unfettered capitalism had failed. So they looked to government to ease hardships and reduce what appeared to be self-destructive competition. Roosevelt and the Congress enacted a host of new laws that gave government the power to intervene in the economy. Among other things, these laws regulated sales of stock, recognized the right of workers to form unions, set rules for wages and hours, provided cash benefits to the unemployed and retirement income for the elderly, established farm subsidies, insured bank deposits, and created a massive regional development authority in the Tennessee Valley.
Many more laws and regulations have been enacted since the 1930s to protect workers and consumers further. It is against the law for employers to discriminate in hiring on the basis of age, sex, race, or religious belief. Child labor generally is prohibited. Independent labor unions are guaranteed the right to organize, bargain, and strike. The government issues and enforces workplace safety and health codes. Nearly every product sold in the United States is affected by some kind of government regulation: food manufacturers must tell exactly what is in a can or box or jar; no drug can be sold until it is thoroughly tested; automobiles must be built according to safety standards and must meet pollution standards; prices for goods must be clearly marked; and advertisers cannot mislead consumers.
By the early 1990s, Congress had created more than 100 federal regulatory agencies in fields ranging from trade to communications, from nuclear energy to product safety, and from medicines to employment opportunity. Among the newer ones are the Federal Aviation Administration, which was established in 1966 and enforces safety rules governing airlines, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHSTA), which was created in 1971 and oversees automobile and driver safety. Both are part of the federal Department of Transportation.
Many regulatory agencies are structured so as to be insulated from the president and, in theory, from political pressures. They are run by independent boards whose members are appointed by the president and must be confirmed by the Senate. By law, these boards must include commissioners from both political parties who serve for fixed terms, usually of five to seven years. Each agency has a staff, often more than 1,000 persons. Congress appropriates funds to the agencies and oversees their operations. In some ways, regulatory agencies work like courts. They hold hearings that resemble court trials, and their rulings are subject to review by federal courts.
Despite the official independence of regulatory agencies, members of Congress often seek to influence commissioners on behalf of their constituents. Some critics charge that businesses at times have gained undue influence over the agencies that regulate them; agency officials often acquire intimate knowledge of the businesses they regulate, and many are offered high-paying jobs in those industries once their tenure as regulators ends. Companies have their own complaints, however. Among other things, some corporate critics complain that government regulations dealing with business often become obsolete as soon as they are written because business conditions change rapidly.
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will be able to, discuss (in detail) the "Pivotal Questions". 2. Students will be able to list and discuss three benefits for the masses from large trusts (i.e. Carnegie)
Extension Activity: 1. Compare and contrast the Roosevelt and Taft administrations in regards to trust-busting/government regulation. List 3 similarities and 3 differences.
Instructional Strategy: Deliberative Instruction and group activities, analysis of primary and secondary sources, reading and discussion. Power Point presentation and/or Smartboard Interactive lesson.
Performance Indicators 1. Students will identify and discuss three reasons why child labor was accepted and exploited during the Progressive Era. 2. Students will identify the problems confronted by people in the past, analyze how decisions for action were made and propose alternative solutions. Students will analyze and discuss how political, economic, and social history are connected.
Instructional Strategy: Deliberative discussion and group activities, analysis of primary and secondary sources, reading and discussion. Power Point presentation and/or Smartboard Interactive lesson.
Group activity: During the week before this lesson, segregate the class-seating chart in various ways. One day, sit the girls on one side of the room and boys on the other. You may continue with other groupings based on age, height, etc. Ask the students for their feelings during each of the segregating experiences. Then, ask them to suppose what it was like when school lunch lines and water fountains were segregated.
Performance Indicators: Students will identify and discuss the facts and arguments from the Plessy v. Ferguson case. Students will be able to explain the realtionship between the decision in Plessy v. Ferguson and the enactment of Jim Crow laws in the south.
Political Cartoon Group activities Worksheets Readings
Instructional Strategy: Deliberative discussion, analysis of primary and secondary sources, reading and discussion.
The Progressives and Direct Democracy (Overview)
The 1890's are often viewed today as a happy time period when Americans lived uncomplicated lives with few problems to worry about. But, time has a way of covering up the negative and the ugly. Rather than being a "happy time," the 1890's may have been one of the worst times for Americans.
First of all, the 1890's was a time when a very few individuals and families made fantastic fortunes and lived the life of kings. By the turn of the century Andrew Carnegie, the steel tycoon, made over $20 million a year tax-free (there were no income taxes then). Yet, the vast majority of Americans were barely getting by. One of Carnegie's steelworkers would have earned about $450 a year working 12-hour shifts six days a week.
This was also a time when thousands of immigrants were flooding into the country from Europe. Many of these immigrants remained in the eastern industrial cities working for low wages in dirty and dangerous jobs. During the 1890's, the United States had one of the highest industrial accident rates in the world. Yet, workers who were severely injured or crippled could rarely collect any compensation.
Strikes were illegal at this time. Workers who attempted to go out on strike were often arrested or even beaten up by company thugs. A particularly ugly situation developed at Andrew Carnegie's Homestead steel works outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1892. Open warfare broke out between strikers and private guards hired by Carnegie to break the strike. Rifles and even cannons were used in a series of battles between the two sides that left 10 dead.
Times were tough for rural Americans, too. Farmers constantly complained that their lives were ruled by eastern bankers and railroad men. Farmers had to contend with high interest rates for loans in order to buy land, seed and farm equipment. They also had to pay outrageous freight rates set by the railroads in order to get their products to market. Many farm foreclosures resulted when crops failed or prices for farm products dropped.
All these economic problems increased in 1893 when a severe economic depression struck. Many thousands of Americans lost their jobs, farms and homes. The prevailing attitude of government, however, was to stay out of the way of private business. Little was done by the government, from Congress on down to city councils, to reduce the economic suffering of the people.
Corruption and Reform
During the early years of the new century, those individuals who tried to approach government with proposals to improve the lot of factory workers, farmers and small businessmen had little success. Especially at the local and state levels of government, lawmakers were often controlled by political machines and special interest groups. At this time, local and state government reached a low point in American history. Greed, corruption, and outright bribery were common among many politicians.
A New York Times editorial of July 3, 1911, complained that "Respectable and well-meaning men all over the State and especially in this city, are going about saying: 'What is the use? You only replace one lot of rascals by another, generally worse."' Across the country in California, the Southern Pacific Railroad controlled the state legislature and dictated how the state should be run. This was always to the benefit of the railroad. In many states at this time, railroads and other large corporations saw to it that legislatures did nothing to interfere with their profits, power and privilege.
By the early 1900's, reform minded individuals and groups spoke out increasingly against the "robber barons," as the big bankers, industrialists and railroad men were called. Farm, labor, and small business groups along with ministers and journalists charged that the enormous wealth of big business was secured by exploiting hardworking Americans. Political cartoonists portrayed big corporations like the Southern Pacific Railroad as grasping octopuses. A particular target of the reformers were city and state governments that often cooperated or were regularly paid off by the big business interests.
The period from 1890 to 1917 was a time of intense reform activity in the United States. Many different reform movements existed at this time, ranging from farmers who wanted to regulate railroad freight rates, to women fighting for the right to vote, to city social workers trying to improve the health of immigrant children. Generally, these advocates of reform were middle class professionals and small businessmen, both Republicans and Democrats. They wanted changes to take place in American society, but not radical or revolutionary changes. They wanted government to take a more active role in regulating big business. They also realized that before meaningful changes could take place, the stranglehold over local and state government by corrupt politicians and the huge corporations had to be broken. The reformers of this time called themselves "progressives."
The Progressive Movement
The first successes of the progressive reformers were achieved in city governments. Corrupt city officials were publicly exposed, voted out of office, and replaced by reform leaders. Under progressive administrations, cities like Toledo, Ohio, established the minimum wage, the eight-hour day, and paid vacations for workers.
Some cities took over the ownership of gas, water and electric utilities. In many cities, employees were hired and promoted through a civil service system that eliminated the old method of paying off political debts with overpaid city jobs. City government itself was reformed. Party politics was removed in some cities when candidates for mayor, city council, and the school board ran in nonpartisan elections. In spite of their successes at the local level of government, progressives realized that it was at the state level that the most important changes had to take place.
The Progressive Movement won its first important victory at the state level of government with the election of Robert M. La Follette as governor of Wisconsin in 1900. A Republican, "Battling Bob" La Follette served three two-year terms as governor. From 1901 to 1906, La Follette spearheaded numerous progressive reforms. His leadership helped Wisconsin establish a railroad regulation commission to set fair freight rates. A graduated state income tax that taxed the rich at a higher rate was passed into law. A pure food law was voted in. A corrupt political practices act became law. A direct primary system was enacted allowing political party members rather than party bosses to nominate candidates. "Battling Bob" also modernized state government with the so-called "Wisconsin Idea." This involved participation in government by experts such as political scientists, economists and educators.
The astounding success of La Follette's progressivism in Wisconsin swept the country. Soon, other reform-minded leaders were adapting La Follette's ideas to their own states. When Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, became governor of New Jersey in 1911, he put into practice many of La Follette's reforms. In California, Hiram Johnson was elected governor in 1910 after attacking the domination of state government by the Southern Pacific Railroad. In a remarkable legislative session in 1911, Johnson pushed through many progressive changes inspired by La Follette's experience in Wisconsin. Johnson went even further when he successfully stumped the state for a state constitutional amendment providing for the initiative, referendum and recall.
The Progressive Movement also influenced national politics. When Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, became President after McKinley was assassinated in 1901, he promoted a number of reforms at the national level of government. Federal laws dealt with the regulation of corporations and railroads, government meat inspection, workmen's compensation for industrial accidents, and wilderness conservation. When Woodrow Wilson became president, he, too, transformed many of his progressive ideas into national legislation.
Perhaps the highpoint of the national Progressive Movement was the formation of the Progressive Party in 1912. This party was made up mainly of Republicans who felt that party leaders had turned their backs on progressive goals. The Progressive Party presidential candidate was Theodore Roosevelt, who believed that the man who had replaced him in the White House, Republican William Howard Taft, had failed to promote progressive reforms.
The 1912 platform of the Progressive Party contained most of the ideas that the progressives held dear to their hearts. The platform attacked the "unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics." It went on to support such reforms as the direct election of U.S. senators, women's suffrage, industrial safety laws, a minimum wage for women, the eight-hour day, unemployment insurance, an inheritance tax, collective bargaining for workers, a ban on child labor, and the initiative, referendum and recall. The platform was an agenda for needed legislation in the new century. Nearly all the ideas promoted by the Progressive Party in 1912 eventually became law. This was the Progressive Party legacy. It led the United States into modern times.
Despite widespread popularity, Teddy Roosevelt and his vice-presidential running mate, California's Hiram Johnson, lost to Woodrow Wilson. Over the next few years many Progressive Party candidates were defeated. By 1917, the party had ceased to exist. With the entrance of the U.S. into World War I in 1917, the interests of Americans were directed overseas. The Progressive Movement quietly disappeared, although La Follette and other progressives remained prominent in politics for many years.
The Swiss Connection
In 1909, George Judson King, an officer of the Ohio Direct Legislative League, visited Switzerland. A progressive, King was interested in studying the various forms of direct democracy practiced by the Swiss. He discovered that Switzerland had adopted a national referendum procedure in 1874 following a period of political corruption. The Swiss added a nationwide initiative for constitutional amendments in 1891. While in Switzerland, King interviewed several government leaders asking them what they thought about the referendum and initiative. One official told him, "The Swiss people recognize in the initiative and referendum their shield and sword. With the shield of the referendum they ward off legislation they do not desire; with the sword of the initiative they cut the way for the enactment of their own ideas into law."
Other Americans before and after King who visited Switzerland were also impressed with how the referendum and initiative worked. They returned to the U.S. with their favorable observations, and made the referendum and initiative an important part of the progressive agenda for reform. While Governor of New Jersey, Woodrow Wilson stated that the referendum and initiative were "the safeguard of politics." Direct democracy, Wilson said, "takes power from the boss and places it in the hands of the people."
The first state to adopt the initiative idea into its constitution was South Dakota in 1898. Utah followed in 1900, and Oregon did the same in 1902. Sixteen more states provided for the initiative process between 1906 and 1918 during the heyday of the Progressive Movement. The remaining four states with the initiative (Alaska, Wyoming, Illinois and Florida) did not adopt this form of direct democracy until after 1950. The
District of Columbia got the initiative last in 1977. Seventeen of the twenty-three initiative states lie west of the Mississippi River.
Getting The "I and R" In Oregon
Oregon was not the first state to get the initiative and referendum. But, the story of how the "I and R" were finally added to its state constitution illustrates how the progressives fought for their reforms in many states around the turn of the century.
Like many states in the 1890's, Oregon was largely in the hands of the wealthy corporations, particularly the railroads. The state government had become inefficient and corrupt. One journalist of the time described the Oregon state legislature as being filled with "briefless lawyers, farmless farmers, business failures, bar-room loafers, Fourth-of-July-orators, and political thugs." The majority of the lawmakers were ignorant, illiterate and lazy. Legislative sessions at Salem, the state capital, took place along with public drunkenness and flocks of prostitutes ready to offer their services to the lawmakers.
The economic depression of 1893 ruined many Oregon farmers. The farmers blamed Wall Street, the railroads, and their own corrupt state government. Into this situation stepped a man with a strange name: William Simon U'Ren.
Born in Wisconsin and educated in Colorado, U'Ren was a wanderer. Over the years he had worked as a blacksmith, bookkeeper, and lawyer. When he arrived in Oregon in 1892, U'Ren joined a group of reform minded farmers in Clackamas County. After reading about the Swiss experience with direct democracy, U'Ren launched a ten year crusade for an initiative and referendum, the "I and R," in Oregon.
U'Ren organized a petition drive calling for an amendment to the state constitution that would provide for the "I and R." Many women working for the right to vote aided U'Ren. Female teachers frequently spoke in favor of the "I and R" at meetings and social gatherings held in schoolhouses all over the state. When the legislative session met at Salem in 1895 (it met every two years), U'Ren had 15,000 signatures on petitions calling for the "I and R." However, the Republican political machine that controlled the legislature at that time opposed the reforms. So, the lawmakers ignored U'Ren and his petitions.
U'Ren decided to change his tactics. He later said, "I now decided to get the reforms by using our enemies' own methods-by fighting the devil with fire." First, U'Ren ran for a seat in the state legislature in 1896. After winning the election, he organized a revolt in the legislative session of 1897. U'Ren managed to put together a group of lawmakers who for one reason or another opposed the political leaders of the legislature. Although U'Ren's group was in the minority, it refused to participate in any legislative business. The rebels even refused to take their oath of office. These actions effectively prevented a quorum, so lawmaking came to a standstill. Absolutely nothing happened during the entire legislative session of 1897.
During the next regularly scheduled session of the state legislature, U'Ren again threatened to stop all official business unless the political bosses agreed to support his "I and R" constitutional amendment. The politicians gave in and the legislature approved the amendment. However, constitutional amendments had to be passed by two succeeding legislative sessions before being submitted to the people for ratification. So, U'Ren had to wait until 1902 before the "I and R" finally became part of the state constitution. However, by this time the initiative and referendum were so popular in the state that almost everyone was behind it. In the words of one journalist, it was a "quiet revolution." William Simon U'Ren later became a progressive governor of Oregon.
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will analyze and discuss who actually controlled many of the state legislatures at the turn of the century. 2. Students will discuss and list two facts about Robert LaFollette, Woodrow Wilson, Hiram Johnson, William U'Ren, and Theodore Roosevelt. 3. Students will analyze and discuss any similarities you see between the Progressive Era (1890-1917) and today? How are the two time periods similar?
Conclusion: The closure for this lesson is [that is, the learner will demonstrate comprehension by doing…]: Final clarification, asking the students if there are any other questions. Have students respond to the following question, in writing, five minutes before the period ends: Students will: Write down three questions you have about today’s lesson.
Extension Activity: Where did the progressives get the idea for the initiative? Research the different forms of direct democracy used in this country. Weekend Homework, This will count as quiz grade. Discuss question and answer, must be at least three paragraphs.
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will be able to analyze and discuss a monopoly or trust. 2. Students will be able to identify three problems associated with a monopoly. 3. Students will be able to identify how monopolies affected Americans. 4. Students will be able to interpret Teddy Roosevelt's opinions of big business and regulation through reading primary source speeches. 5. Students will be able to interpret political cartoons relating to monopolies, and explain how many Americans felt about the power of trusts.
Political Cartoons:
Image 1: Cartoon of Theodore Roosevelt with "Trust Pigs" - typical of cartoons portraying Roosevelt's "anti-trust" legislative agenda. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. http://www.fairfightfilm.org/press/Stills/index.php
Image 2: Farmer versus railroad cartoon. Wood engraving by Wust Publishing in New York newspaper, August 14th, 1873. Courtesy Library of Congress. http://www.fairfightfilm.org/press/Stills/index.php
Image 3: Political cartoon showing a Standard Oil tank as an octopus with many tentacles wrapped around the steel, copper, and shipping industries, as well as a state house, the U.S. Capitol, and one tentacle reaching for the White House. From J. Ottmann Lith, Co., 1904 Sept. 7. Udo Keppler Artist. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
http://www.fairfightfilm.org/press/Stills/index.php
Image 4: Teddy Roosevelt with "trust-busting" stick, circa 1904. Source unknown. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
http://www.fairfightfilm.org/press/Stills/index.php
Image 5 The Vulture's Roost. Trusts as vultures (led by Standard Oil/Rockefeller) roosting on roof of Senate. Drawing by E.W. Kemble in Collier's, Feb. 1905. Courtesy Library of Congress. http://www.fairfightfilm.org/press/Stills/index.php
Image 6: A political cartoon by C.J. Taylor entitled "King of the World" depicts John D. Rockefeller and the monopoly held by Standard Oil.
http://www.americanhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display.aspx?categoryid=27& searchtext=trusts&type=simple&option=all &searchsites=1%2c2%2c3%2c4%2c5%2c6%2c7%2c8%2c &entryid=290208&issublink=true&fromsearch=false
Image 7: This editorial cartoon, published around 1900, shows Uncle Sam shining a light on "big trusts," represented by a king. Library of Congress http://www.worldbookonline.com/wb/Media?id=pc308486&st=trusts
Image 8: W. A. Rogers was a champion for common honesty and an unrelenting foe of corrupt government, especially in his adopted home, New York. His political cartoons were featured in the New York Herald and Harper's Weekly. It was the latter that included this "trust busting" cartoon in 1903. (Bettmann/CORBIS)
http://ap.grolier.com/picturepopup?productid=gme&assetid= uh366&templatename=/article/picturepopup.html
Image 9: This cartoon from the November 4, 1906, St. Louis Post-Dispatch shows Roosevelt aiming a cannon at the oil trust. Courtesy of St. Louis Post-Dispatch http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://americanhistory.si.edu/ PRESIDENCY/images/medium /05_G_037_M.jpg&imgrefurl= http://americanhistory.si.edu/PRESIDENCY/2b5.html&h=202&w=200&sz
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Image 10: Rockefeller as an industrial emperor, 1901 cartoon from Puck magazine.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl= http://content.answers.com/main/content/ wp/en/thumb/9/ 9a/300px-Jdr-king.JPG &imgrefurl= http://www.answers.com/ topic/john-d-rockefeller&h=465&w=300&sz=41&hl=en&start=5&um=1&usg=__ Wsif6QCcuJEH3ZK_wLSg-b5NASk= &tbnid=9prmMqIlTp_9EM:&tbnh=12
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Image 11: http://media.artdiamondblog.com/images2/VanderbiltCartoon.jpg
Image 12: Squeezing the trusts as Roosevelt Watches.
http://www.wallstreetmuseum.org/quiz4cartoons.html
Image 13: Most notable is a political cartoon depicting Theodore Roosevelt as King Turkey, and a commentary on his Big Stick policy, with new born chicks perched upon Roosevelt's "Big Stick" representing extravagance, postal scandal, foreign complication, imperialism, hatched from "peace", "trust regulator", "anti imperialism" and "simple life." A single chick upon his back representing "illegal trust."
http://www.down-jersey.com/sale.html
Special Thanks to Facing History and Ourselves with whom I have done several professional development workshops.
Extension Activity: Which companies would you consider to be monopolies today? Do you believe that all monopolies are bad and should be outlawed? If so, why? If not, how would you distinguish between a good monopoly and a bad one?
Extension Activity: 1. Define: Eugenics, Eugenicist, Racism, Racist 2. Was Margaret Sanger either of these? Explain why or why not.
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will: Describe which event(s) prompted the outcry for Women's rights. 2. Students will: Identify leading figures of the women's rights movement? 3. Students will summarize Sanger’s intent for implementing women's rights,
Name:
Date:
Class:
Mr. Martin
Quiz 1:
In lessons 1-6, we investigated two political, two economic, and two social struggles to achieve equity and justice. Using a Venn diagram, compare and contrast two of the struggles to achieve equity and justice. *The six choices will be written on the board.
Extension Activities 1. Explore the collections "Votes for Women" Suffrage Pictures: 1850-1920 and Votes for Women: 1848-1921, to find out more about these women, their arguments, and their strategies; 2. Compare and contrast the American and British suffragist movements; 3. Apply the tactics used by the suffragists to a controversial issue in your community; or 4. Examine a similar social movement (the Progressives, the anti-Viet Nam war movement) in terms of its arguments, tactics, and goals. .
Iron Jawed Angels: This Movie is a Must See for everyone, especially for young women of today! It will give you a glimpse into the enormous effort that became a movement known as "The First Wave Of Feminism" The American Suffrage Movement. Our Foremothers fought hard, never flinched, and never looked back. **No Copyright Infringement intended. I do not intend on making a profit selling to others, I do not own this material, I am not abusing the copyright in any way. All Right and ownership belong to HBO.**
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will identify two major players in the Women's suffrage movement. 2. Students will analyze and discuss specific differences and similarities between and among those who advocated for Women's suffrage. 3. Students will examine and discuss the different ways "suffrage" can be interpreted. (Are not all men created equal?) Why did women have to fight so hard and wait so long for the right to vote?
This is a link to a primary source analysis tool.
Information can be filled in, saved, and/or printed upon completion of worksheet.
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/usingprimarysources/resources/Primary_Source_Analysis_Tool.pdf
Conclusion: The closure for this lesson is [that is, the learner will demonstrate comprehension by doing…]: Final clarification, asking the students if there are any other questions. Have students respond to the following questions, in writing, five minutes before the period ends: Students will: Write down three questions you have about today’s lesson.
Introduction:
Roosevelt’s Square Deal
At the dawn of the twentieth century, America was at a crossroads. Presented with abundant opportunity, but also hindered by significant internal and external problems, the country was seeking leaders who could provide a new direction. The political climate was ripe for reform, and the stage was set for the era of the Progressive Presidents, beginning with Republican Theodore Roosevelt.
Teddy Roosevelt was widely popular due to his status as a hero of the Spanish-American War and his belief in “speaking softly and carrying a big stick.” Taking over the presidency in 1901 after the assassination of William McKinley, he quickly assured America that he would not take any drastic measures. He then demanded a “Square Deal” that would address his primary concerns for the era—the three C’s: control of corporations, consumer protection, and conservation.
http://www.hippocampus.org/course_locator?course=AP%20US%20History%20II&lesson=53&topic=1&width=800&height=684&topicTitle=Roosevelt%27s%20Square%20Deal&skinPath
Extension Activity: Political Campaign: Divide class into small groups. Have the students design a 1904 presidential campaign for Theodore Roosevelt Each campaign should include the following: a. A platform statement based on T.R.'s quotations and his first term (1901- 1904). b. Three campaign posters--these should be creative and attract attention and support. c. One ad or speech exposing the weakness of the Democratic Party and candidate. Each group should present their T.R. campaign. The following sites are useful sources for TR quotations: http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/life/quotes.htm http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/theodore_roosevelt.html
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will analyze and discuss Teddy Roosevelt’s role in trust-busting? 2. Students will investigate the events that took place during his administration regarding trust-busting? [Note: Use student video as transition to next days lesson onTR and Square Deal.
Primary Source Document:
Theodore Roosevelt tells the secrets of “a Square Deal” to farmers at the New York State Agricultural Association, Syracuse, NY, September 7, 1903.
In speaking on Labor Day at the annual fair of the New York State Agricultural Association, it is natural to keep especially in mind the two bodies who compose the majority of our people and upon whose welfare depends the welfare of the entire State. If circumstances are such that thrift, energy, industry, and forethought enable the farmer, the tiller of the soil, on the one hand, and the wage-worker on the other, to keep themselves, their wives, and their children in reasonable comfort, then the State is well off, and we can be assured that the other classes in the community will likewise prosper. On the other hand, if there is in the long run a lack of prosperity among the two classes named, then all other prosperity is sure to be more seeming than real.
It has been our profound good fortune as a nation that hitherto, disregarding exceptional periods of depression and the normal and inevitable fluctuations, there has been on the whole from the beginning of our government to the present day a progressive betterment alike in the condition of the tiller of the soil and in the condition of the man who, by his manual skill and labor, supports himself and his family, and endeavors to bring up his children so that they may be at least as well off as, and, if possible, better off than, he himself has been. There are, of course, exceptions, but as a whole the standard of living among the farmers of our country has risen from generation to generation, and the wealth represented on the farms has steadily increased, while the wages of labor have likewise risen, both as regards the actual money paid and as regards the purchasing power which that money represents.
Side by side with this increase in the prosperity of the wage-worker and the tiller of the soil has gone on a great increase in prosperity among the business men and among certain classes of professional men; and the prosperity of these men has been partly the cause and partly the consequence of the prosperity of farmer and wage-worker. It cannot be too often repeated that in this country, in the long run, we all of us tend to go up or go down together. If the average of well-being is high, it means that the average wage-worker, the average farmer, and the average business man are all alike well-off. If the average shrinks, there is not one of these classes which will not feel the shrinkage. Of course, there are always some men who are not affected by good times, just as there are some men who are not affected by bad times. But speaking broadly, it is true that if prosperity comes, all of us tend to share more or less therein, and that if adversity comes each of us, to a greater or less extent, feels the tension.
Unfortunately, in this world the innocent frequently find themselves obliged to pay some of the penalty for the misdeeds of the guilty; and so if hard times come, whether they be due to our own fault or to our misfortune, whether they be due to some burst of speculative frenzy that has caused a portion of the business world to lose its head–a loss which no legislation can possibly supply–or whether they be due to any lack of wisdom in a portion of the world of labor–in each case, the trouble once started is felt more or less in every walk of life.
It is all-essential to the continuance of our healthy national life that we should recognize this community of interest among our people. The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us, and therefore in public life that man is the best representative of each of us who seeks to do good to each by doing good to all; in other words, whose endeavor it is not to represent any special class and promote merely that class’s selfish interests, but to represent all true and honest men of all sections and all classes and to work for their interests by working for our common country.
We can keep our government on a sane and healthy basis, we can make and keep our social system what it should be, only on condition of judging each man, not as a member of a class, but on his worth as a man. It is an infamous thing in our American life, and fundamentally treacherous to our institutions, to apply to any man any test save that of his personal worth, or to draw between two sets of men any distinction save the distinction of conduct, the distinction that marks off those who do well and wisely from those who do ill and foolishly. There are good citizens and bad citizens in every class as in every locality, and the attitude of decent people toward great public and social questions should be determined, not by the accidental questions of employment or locality, but by those deep-set principles which represent the innermost souls of men.
The failure in public and in private life thus to treat each man on his own merits, the recognition of this government as being either for the poor as such or for the rich as such, would prove fatal to our Republic, as such failure and such recognition have always proved fatal in the past to other republics. A healthy republican government must rest upon individuals, not upon classes or sections. As soon as it becomes government by a class or by a section, it departs from the old American ideal.
Many qualities are needed by a people which would preserve the power of self- government in fact as well as in name. Among these qualities are forethought, shrewdness, self-restraint, the courage which refuses to abandon one’s own rights, and the disinterested and kindly good sense which enables one to do justice to the rights of others. Lack of strength and lack of courage and unfit men for self-government on the one hand; and on the other, brutal arrogance, envy — in short, any manifestation of the spirit of selfish disregard, whether of one’s own duties or of the rights of others, are equally fatal.
In the history of mankind many republics have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen because their citizens lost the power of governing themselves and thereby of governing their state; and in no way has this loss of power been so often and so clearly shown as in the tendency to turn the government into a government primarily for the benefit of one class instead of a government for the benefit of the people as a whole. Again and again in the republics of ancient Greece, in those of medieval Italy and medieval Flanders, this tendency was shown, and wherever the tendency became a habit it invariably and inevitably proved fatal to the state. In the final result, it mattered not one whit whether the movement was in favor of one class or of another.
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http://historyscoop.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/the-square-deal-in-trs-own-words/
Primary Source Documents:
THE CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES
From Theodore Roosevelt's Seventh Annual Message to Congress
Dec. 3, 1907
To the Senate and House of Representatives:
. . .The conservation of our natural resources and their proper use constitute the fundamental problem which underlies almost every other problem of our national life. . ..As a nation we not only enjoy a wonderful measure of present prosperity but if this prosperity is used aright it is an earnest of future success such as no other nation will have. The reward of foresight for this nation is great and easily foretold. But there must be the look ahead, there must be a realization of the fact that to waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed. For the last few years, through several agencies, the government has been endeavoring to get our people to look ahead and to substitute a planned and orderly development of our resources in place of a haphazard striving for immediate profit. Our great river systems should be developed as national water highways, the Mississippi, with its tributaries, standing first in importance, and the Columbia second, although there are many others of importance on the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Gulf slopes. The National Government should undertake this work, and I hope a beginning will be made in the present Congress; and the greatest of all our rivers, the Mississippi, should receive special attention. From the Great Lakes to the mouth of the Mississippi there should be a deep waterway, with deep waterways leading from it to the East and the West. Such a waterway would practically mean the extension of our coastline into the very heart of our country. It would be of incalculable benefit to our people. If begun at once it can be carried through in time appreciably to relieve the congestion of our great freight-carrying lines of railroads. The work should be systematically and continuously carried forward in accordance with some well-conceived plan. The main streams should be improved to the highest point of efficiency before the improvement of the branches is attempted; and the work should be kept free from every taint of recklessness or jobbery. The inland waterways which lie just back of the whole Eastern and Southern coasts should likewise be developed. Moreover, the development of our waterways involves many other important water problems, all of which should be considered as part of the same general scheme. The government dams should be used to produce hundreds of thousands of horse-power as an incident to improving navigation; for the annual value of the unused water-powered of the Untied States perhaps exceeds the annual value of the products of all our mines. As an incident to creating the deep waterways down the Mississippi, the government should build along its whole lower length levees which, taken together with the control of the headwaters, will at once and forever put a complete stop to all threat of floods in the immensely fertile delta region. The territory lying adjacent to the Mississippi along its lower course will thereby become one of the most prosperous and populous, as it already is one of the most fertile, farming regions in all the world. I have appointed an inland waterways commission to study and outline a comprehensive scheme of development along all the lines indicated. Later I shall lay its report before the Congress.
Irrigation should be far more extensively developed than at present, not only in the States of the great plains and the Rocky Mountains, but in many others, as, for instance, in large portions of the South Atlantic and Gulf States, where it should go hand in hand with the reclamation of swampland. The Federal Government should seriously devote itself to this task, realizing that utilization of waterways and water-power, forestry, irrigation, and the reclamation of lands threatened with overflow, are all interdependent parts of the same problem. The work of the Reclamation Service in developing the larger opportunities of the Western half of our country for irrigation is more important than almost any other movement. The constant purpose of the government in connection with the Reclamation Service has been to use the water resources of the public lands for the ultimate greatest good of the greatest number; in other words, to put upon the land permanent home-makers, to use and develop it for themselves and for their children and children's children. . . .
The effort of the government to deal with the public land has been based upon the same principle as that of the Reclamation Service. The land law system which was designed to meet the needs of the fertile and well-watered regions of the Middle West has largely broken down when applied to the drier regions of the great plains, the mountains, and much of the Pacific slope, where a farm of 160 acres is inadequate for self-support. . . .Three years ago a public-lands commission was appointed to scrutinize the law, and defects, and recommend a remedy. Their examination specifically showed the existence of great fraud upon the public domain, and their recommendations for changes in the law were made with the design of conserving the natural resources of every part of the public lands by putting it to its best use. Especial attention was called to the prevention of settlement by the passage of great areas of public land into the hands of a few men, and to the enormous waste caused by unrestricted grazing upon the open range. The recommendations of the Public-Lands Commission are sound, for they are especially in the interest of the actual home-maker; and where the small home-maker cannot at present utilize the land they provide that the government shall keep control of it so that it may not be monopolized by a few men. The Congress has not yet acted upon these recommendations, but they are so just and proper, so essential to our national welfare, that I feel confident, if the Congress will take time to consider them, that they will ultimately be adopted.
Some such legislation as that proposed is essential in order to preserve the great stretches of public grazing-land which are unfit for cultivation under present methods and are valuable only for the forage which they supply. These stretches amount in all to some 300,000,000 acres, and are open to the free grazing of cattle, sheep, horses, and goats, without restriction. Such a system, or lack of system, means that the range is not so much used as wasted by abuse. As the West settles, the range becomes more and more overgrazed. Much of it cannot be used to advantage unless it is fenced, for fencing is the only way by which to keep in check the owners of nomad flocks which roam hither and thither, utterly destroying the pastures and leaving a waste behind so that their presence is incompatible with the presence of home-makers. The existing fences are all illegal. . . . All these fences, those that are hurtful and those that are beneficial, are alike illegal and must come down. But it is an outrage that the law should necessitate such action on the part of the Administration. The unlawful fencing of public lands for private grazing must be stopped, but the necessity which occasioned it must be provided for. The Federal Government should have control of the range, whether by permit or lease, as local necessities may determine. Such control could secure the great benefit of legitimate fencing, while at the same time securing and promoting the settlement of the country. . . . The government should part with its title only to the actual home-maker, not to the profit-maker who does not care to make a home. Our prime object is to secure the rights and guard the interests of the small ranchman, the man who ploughs and pitches hay for himself. It is this small ranchman, this actual settler and home-maker, who in the long run is most hurt by permitting thefts of the public land in whatever form.
Optimism is a good characteristic, but if carried to an excess it becomes foolishness. We are prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so. The mineral wealth of the country, the coal, iron, oil, gas, and the like, does not reproduce itself, and therefore is certain to be exhausted ultimately; and wastefulness in dealing with it today means that our descendants will feel the exhaustion a generation or two before they otherwise would. But there are certain other forms of waste which could be entirely stopped-the waste of soil by washing, for instance, which is among the most dangerous of all wastes now in progress in the United States, is easily preventible, so that this present enormous loss of fertility is entirely unnecessary. The preservation or replacement of the forests is one of the most important means of preventing this loss. We have made a beginning in forest preservation, but . . . so rapid has been the rate of exhaustion of timber in the United States in the past, and so rapidly is the remainder being exhausted, that the country is unquestionably on the verge of a timber famine which will be felt in every household in the land. . . . The present annual consumption of lumber is certainly three times as great as the annual growth; and if the consumption and growth continue unchanged, practically all our lumber will be exhausted in another generation, while long before the limit to complete exhaustion is reached the growing scarcity will make itself felt in many blighting ways upon our national welfare. About twenty per cent of our forested territory is now reserved in national forests, but these do not include the most valuable timberlands, and in any event the proportion is too small to expect that the reserves can accomplish more than a mitigation of the trouble which is ahead for the nation. . . . We should acquire in the Appalachian and White Mountain regions all the forest-lands that it is possible to acquire for the use of the nation. These lands, because they form a national asset, are as emphatically national as the rivers which they feed, and which flow through so many States before they reach the ocean. .
Primary Source Documents:
U.S. Statutes at Large, Vol. 34, Part 1, Chap. 3060, p. 225. "An Act For the preservation of American antiquities." S. 4698, Public Act No. 209
U.S. Congress. 59th. 1st Session.
CREATED/PUBLISHED
United States : District of Columbia : Washington Government Printing Office 1906 06 08
SUMMARY
Authorizes the President "to declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States to be national monuments, and may reserve as a part thereof parcels of land;" forbids unauthorized injury of objects of antiquity on Government lands; and authorizes the granting of Federal permits for the study of objects of antiquity on such lands.
NOTES
Known as the American Antiquities Act. Demonstrates the fundamental connection between cultural conservation and the conservation of natural resources; provided the basis for preservation of places of scientific value on Presidential initiative alone.
Published 1907.
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/consrvbib:@field(NUMBER+@band(amrvl+vl016))
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will identify two major players in the conservation movement. 2. Students will analyze and discuss specific differences and similarities between and among those who advocated conservation. 3. Students will examine and discuss the different ways "conservation" can be defined.
Conclusion: The closure for this lesson is [that is, the learner will demonstrate comprehension by doing…]: Final clarification, asking the students if there are any other questions. Have students respond to the following questions, in writing, five minutes before the period ends: 1) Students will: Write down three questions you have about today’s lesson.
Reasons Why the Federal Reserve is bad....
Primary/Contemporary source document
Millions of Americans are waking up to the fact that the Federal Reserve is bad, but very few of them can coherently explain why this is true. For decades, an unelected, privately-owned central bank has controlled America's currency, run our economy and has driven the U.S. government to the brink of bankruptcy. It operates in great secrecy, it has never been subjected to a comprehensive audit and yet the actions it takes have an impact on every single American. It is an institution designed to drain wealth from the U.S. government (and ultimately from the American people) and transfer it to the ultra-wealthy. Have you ever wondered why a sovereign nation such as the United States has to borrow United States dollars from anyone? Have you ever wondered why a sovereign nation such as the United States does not even issue its own currency? Have you ever wondered why we allow a group of unelected private bankers to run our economy?
Those are some very important questions. Hopefully what you are about to read will open the eyes of many. The truth is that our financial system is centrally-controlled and centrally-managed by a group of banking oligarchs who have constructed an ever-expanding debt spiral which has been efficiently designed to slowly transfer all wealth into their hands.
The following are 11 reasons why the Federal Reserve is not good for the United States....
1 - The Federal Reserve was created as a way to enslave the U.S. government with debt. The truth is that the U.S. government only goes into debt if it chooses to. Theoretically, one day that U.S. government could simply decide to print as many U.S. dollars as it wants and pay off all government debts. But under the current system that is not allowed. You see, today the U.S. government does not issue any money. The Federal Reserve issues all money. That is why they are called "Federal Reserve notes".
Under the current regime, whenever the U.S. government wants more currency to be created it has to go into more debt.
In a previous article entitled "It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt" I explained how this insidious system works....
If you will pull a dollar bill out and take a look at it, you will notice that it says "Federal Reserve Note" at the top.
It belongs to the Federal Reserve.
The U.S. government cannot simply go out and create new money whenever it wants under our current system.
Instead, it must get it from the Federal Reserve.
So, when the U.S. government needs to borrow more money (which happens a lot these days) it goes over to the Federal Reserve and asks them for some more green pieces of paper called Federal Reserve Notes.
The Federal Reserve swaps these green pieces of paper for pink pieces of paper called U.S. Treasury bonds. The Federal Reserve either sells these U.S. Treasury bonds or they keep the bonds for themselves (which happens a lot these days).
So that is how the U.S. government gets more green pieces of paper called "U.S. dollars" to put into circulation. But by doing so, they get themselves into even more debt which they will owe even more interest on.
So every time the U.S. government does this, the national debt gets even bigger and the interest on that debt gets even bigger.
Now, apologists for the Federal Reserve system are quick to point out that the Federal Reserve does not make much of a profit. Once a "statutory dividend" of 6% is paid to member banks and a capital account surplus is "maintained", the rest of the profits of the Federal Reserve go back to the U.S. Treasury.
Problem solved, right?
Wrong.
The point is not how much of a profit the Federal Reserve makes or does not make.
The point is that the Federal Reserve is a tool for creating U.S. government debt which slowly drains our national wealth and which ends up greatly enriching the global elite.
As of July 1st, the U.S. government had spent $355 billion so far in 2010 on interest payments to the holders of the national debt.
Have you ever wondered who gets all that money?
The truth is that the wealthiest individuals around the globe have been getting very rich for a very long time off of government debt.
2 - The Federal Reserve creates money out of thin air. In a previous article, I noted how this fact comes out in congressional hearings and yet the American people just don't seem to get too upset about it....
During a recent Joint Economic Committee hearing on Capital Hill, U.S. Representative Ron Paul directly confronted Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke about this 1.3 trillion dollars. As Ron Paul described how this 1.3 trillion was just created out of thin air, all Bernanke could do was nod his head. Why? Because it was the truth.
3- The huge predator megabanks that now dominate the U.S. banking system use the Federal Reserve as a tool to make money. One of the ways they do this is called the U.S. Treasury carry trade. What happens is that the Federal Reserve lends huge amounts of money to the megabanks for next to nothing, and then these megabanks use all that cash to buy U.S. government debt. This little "trick" helped enable four of the biggest U.S. banks (Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup) to have a "perfect quarter" with zero days of trading losses during the first quarter of 2010. Wouldn't you like to have a perfect batting average?
4 - The Federal Reserve devalues our currency. Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the U.S. dollar has lost 96 percent of its purchasing power. The truth is that just a two percent inflation rate will wipe out half of your purchasing power within a single generation. In the chart below, you can clearly see that the beginning of the rapid rise of inflation in the United States coincided with the creation of the Federal Reserve....
5 - The Federal Reserve manipulates the U.S. economy by setting national interest rates. By keeping rates high or low, the Federal Reserve has the power to create economic growth or to destroy it. They have the power to inflate massive bubbles and to pop them. Most Americans give way too much credit and blame to presidents like Bush or Obama for how the economy is doing. The truth is that they really don't have that much control over the economy compared to the Federal Reserve.
6 - The Federal Reserve also controls the national money supply. They can pump trillions into the economy or pull trillions out without being accountable to anyone. This can have disastrous consequences. For example, after the U.S. stock market crash of 1929, the Federal Reserve continued to contract the money supply. Many analysts believe that this was one of the key things that precipitated the Great Depression.
7- The Federal Reserve is not part of the U.S. government. The truth is that the Federal Reserve is about as "federal" as Federal Express is. In defending itself against a Bloomberg request for information under the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Reserve objected by declaring that it was "not an agency" of the U.S. government and therefore it was not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. It is kind of funny how Fed officials are always talking about how important their "independence" is, but whenever anyone starts criticizing them for being private they start stressing their ties with the government.
8 - The Federal Reserve has become far, far too powerful. The reality is that those running the Federal Reserve are not elected and yet have an enormous amount of control. In fact, Ron Paul recently told MSNBC that he believes that the Federal Reserve is more powerful than Congress.....
"The regulations should be on the Federal Reserve. We should have transparency of the Federal Reserve. They can create trillions of dollars to bail out their friends, and we don’t even have any transparency of this. They’re more powerful than the Congress."
9- The Federal Reserve is dominated by Wall Street and the New York banks. The New York representative is the only permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee, while other regional banks rotate in 2 and 3 year intervals. The former head of the New York Fed, Timothy Geithner, is now U.S. Treasury Secretary. The truth is that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has always been the most important of the regional Fed banks by far, and in turn the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has always been dominated by Wall Street and the major New York banks.
10- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke wants to completely eliminate minimum reserve requirements for banks. Fractional reserve banking has always been a way that the bankers have conned the public, but now Bernanke wants to get rid of the pretense of "reserves" altogether.
It is almost too bizarre to believe, but it is right there in black and white on the Federal Reserve's own website....
The Federal Reserve believes it is possible that, ultimately, its operating framework will allow the elimination of minimum reserve requirements, which impose costs and distortions on the banking system.
11 - The Federal Reserve is not accountable to anyone. The Federal Reserve has never undergone a true comprehensive audit since it was created back in 1913. Ron Paul’s proposal to audit the Federal Reserve, which had previously been co-sponsored by 320 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, ultimately failed by a vote of 229-198.
But shouldn't the American people be able to see what is going on inside the Federal Reserve?
Shouldn't we have some way to keep them accountable?
After all, they have an incredible amount of power over us, shouldn't we have at least a little bit of power over them?
Unfortunately, the truth is that they desperately do not want light to be shined on the elaborate "shell game" that they are running.
Have you ever wondered if it was just a coincidence that the personal income tax was implemented just about the same time that the Federal Reserve was created?
Why does the U.S. government have to tax us?
Why can't the U.S. government just print up all the money that it needs?
Well, the way that our Congress spends money that would probably create horrific hyperinflation, but that is the subject for another article.
The point is that the U.S. government should not have to get U.S. dollars from someone else.
If you take a few minutes to stop and think about it, an America where there is no Federal Reserve, no personal income tax and no IRS is not that hard to imagine.
If the U.S. government functioned just fine without all of them at one time, then why couldn't the U.S. government function just fine without all of them now?
The system we have now clearly is not working. The Federal Reserve was supposed to guarantee that our financial system would be perfectly stable, but in reality our financial system has become much more unstable.
It is time for different thinking. It is time for the U.S. government to take back control of our currency and of our economy. It is time to start electing some people with common sense to represent us in Washington.
So what do you think of the Federal Reserve? Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion....
Pivotal Questions: Students will answer the following questions: (1) What was Hamilton's motivation for starting a central bank? (2) Why were some officials opposed to a central bank? Next, read this history of central banking in the United States provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and answer the following questions: (3) Why do you think it took the United States so long to finally commit to a central bank? (4) In what ways is today's Federal Reserve similar to, and different from, the First and Second Banks of the United States?
Conclusion: The closure for this lesson is [that is, the learner will demonstrate comprehension by doing…]: Final clarification, asking the students if there are any other questions. Have students respond to the following questions, in writing, five minutes before the period ends: 1) Students will: Write down three questions you have about today’s lesson. 2) Students will: Why does a private institution, with little or no oversight set and control monetary policy in the United States, often with little or no thought to the consequences for the average citizen?
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will define and discuss three reasons why the Federal Reserve was created. 2. Students will discuss three reasons why the Federal Reserve may or may not act in the best interest of American citizens.
Extension Activity: http://thefedexperience.org/#/?overlay This is an internet-based interactive timeline game!
Jane Adams Primary Source Documents
PBS.ORG
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/eleanor-progressive/
For Eleanor Roosevelt and others of her generation, early 20th century America was the training ground for a transformation of the relationship between a democratic government and its people. Perhaps the best known results of this era are the 18th and 19th Amendments, Prohibition and woman suffrage respectively. But this legislation really came at the tail end of the period which has come to be known as the "Age of Reform." The amendments were actually the byproducts of an immense social and political upheaval which changed forever the expectations of the role government would play in American society.
It was during this brief interlude, 1900-1918, that America was completing its rapid shift from an agrarian to an urban society. This caused major anxiety among the country's predominantly Yankee, Protestant middle-class because it introduced "disturbing" changes in their society. Large corporations and "trusts," representing materialism and greed, were controlling more and more of the country's finances. Immigrants from southeastern Europe -- "dark-skinned" Italians and peasant Jews from Russia -- were flocking to major industrial centers, competing for low wages and settling in the ethnic enclaves of tenement slums. Party bosses manipulated the political ignorance and desperation of the newcomers to advance their own party machines. To the native middle-class, these ills of society seemed to be escalating out of control. In the name of democratic ideals and social justice, progressives made themselves the arbiters of a "new" America in which the ideals of the founding fathers could find a place within the nation's changing landscape.
The progressives came from a long tradition of middle-class elites possessing a strong sense of social duty to the poor. The social hierarchy wherein blue-blooded, native stock was at the top and the poor along with the "darker-skinned" were at the bottom, was accepted by the elite. But inherent in their role as privileged members of society was a certain degree of responsibility for the less fortunate. Growing up in this social class, Eleanor Roosevelt remarked, "In that society you were kind to the poor, you did not neglect your philanthropic duties, you assisted the hospitals and did something for the needy." The Progressive Era is unique in that this impulse spread to foster an all-encompassing mood and effort for reform. From farmers to politicians, the need for change and for direct responsibility for the country's ills became paramount and spread from social service to journalism. During his presidency, Theodore Roosevelt commented on the need: "No hard-and-fast rule can be laid down as to the way in which such work [reform] must be done; but most certainly every man, whatever his position, should strive to do it in some way and to some degree."
Applying this sense of duty to all ills of society, middle-class reformers attempted to restore democracy by limiting big business, "Americanizing" the immigrants, and curbing the political machines. Theodore Roosevelt, wanting to ensure free competition, was particularly instrumental in curtailing monopolistic business practices during his time in the White House. He extended the powers of the executive branch and the powers of the government within the economy, departing from the laissez-faire attitude of previous administrations. By supporting labor in the settlement of the Anthracite Coal Strike in 1902, Roosevelt became the first president to assign the government such a direct role and duty to the people.
The immigrant "problem" was handled for the most part by white, middle-class young women. Many of these female reformers had been educated in the new women's colleges which had sprung up in the late nineteenth century. Possessing an education yet barred from most professional careers, these women took to "association building" as a means to be active in public life. Among these associations were the Women's Trade Union League, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the National Consumers' League, and a vast system of "Americanizing" centers known as settlement houses. These organizations were meant to "purify" the public sphere of men in which vice and corruption were bred. The WTUL and the NCL sought to cleanse the largely male-owned garment factories in which female workers were harshly exploited. The Temperance Union sought to eliminate the dominantly male immigrant worker's drinking habits and with them, saloons and prostitution. With settlement houses, women such as Jane Addams and Lillian Wald set out to uplift the immigrant masses and to teach them "proper" ways of life and moral values. These houses, of which there were 400 in America by 1910, instructed immigrants on everything from proper dancing forms (intentionally steering them away from more popular and sexually suggestive dances like the "cakewalk") to proper housekeeping and civic reforms. Settlement house work influenced woman and child labor laws, welfare benefits, and factory inspection legislation.
By helping the immigrants, female reformers hoped to curb the influence of the political bosses in the urban slums. Ironically, however, their efforts only added to the bosses' popularity. Many immigrants saw the reformers as meddlesome outsiders with little regard or respect for their ways of life. Such nuances as temperance and woman suffrage meant far less to them than issues of subsistence: securing a vendor's license for their pushcart or obtaining false birth certificates so that their children could contribute to the family income. The political boss could provide these services while the reformer only hampered them.
Also working to expunge the ills of society were progressive, "muckraking" journalists. Jacob Riis exposed the poor living conditions of the tenement slums in How the Other Half Lives (1890) and inspired significant tenement reforms. In The Shame of the Cities (1904), Lincoln Steffens revealed the political corruption in the party machines of Chicago and New York. Most shocking to contemporary readers was Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906) in which he traced an immigrant family's exploitation and downward spiral in Chicago's meat packing industry. The novel resulted in the Pure Food and Drug and the Meat Inspection Acts in 1906, the first legislation of its kind.
At the outset of the First World War, the progressive spirit turned from domestic issues to international concerns. Extending their democratic sensibilities and sense of moral duty to the situation in Europe, the pro-war progressives approached the conflict with the same moralizing impulse. Under Woodrow Wilson's leadership, America entered WWI in order to extend democracy and spread its ideals beyond its own borders. When this could not be achieved -- the death of the League of Nations and Wilson's failing health being significant setbacks -- the reforming spirit significantly lessened. The nation was tired of war and it lacked the widespread desire for change to carry on the moralizing crusade.
The window of time that the Progressive Era inhabits is a brief one, but not at all insignificant. Its reforms introduced a new role for government. In dealing with the problems of urbanization and industrialization, the country's democratic institutions had to address problems on a very local level. This precedent would provide the backbone for the New Deal and would inspire the reforming spirit of the nation's leaders during the Great Depression.
Progressive Era Primary source Document
HENRY GEORGE, “PROGRESS AND POVERTY” (1879)
Questions:
1. Why does George write that Americans have not "fully trusted" Liberty?
2. What does George see as the major threats to American freedom?
Dissatisfaction with social conditions in the Gilded Age extended well beyond aggrieved workers.
Alarmed by fear of class warfare and the growing power of concentrated wealth, social thinkers offered
numerous plans for change. Among the most influential was Henry George, whose Progress and Poverty became one of the era's great best-sellers. Its extraordinary success testified to what George called "a wide-spread consciousness…that there is something radically wrong in the present social organization." George had worked as a newspaper editor in California in the 1850s and 1860s, where he
witnessed firsthand the rapid monopolization of land. His book began with a famous statement of "the
problem" suggested by its title-the expansion of poverty alongside material progress. His solution was the
"single tax," which would replace other taxes with a levy on increases in the value of real estate. The
single tax would be so high that it would prevent speculation in both urban and rural land. This, George
argued, would make land readily available to aspiring businessmen and to urban workingmen seeking to
become farmers. Whether or not they believed in George's solution, millions of readers responded to his clear explanation of economic relationships and his stirring account of how the "unjust and unequal
distribution of wealth" long thought to be confined to the Old World had made its appearance in the New.
George's book drew on the long tradition that identified freedom with economic independence and saw
economic inequality as a threat to America's democratic institutions.
The evils arising from the unjust and unequal distribution of wealth, which are becoming more
and more apparent as modern civilization goes on, are not incidents of progress, but tendencies which
must bring progress to a halt; that they will not cure themselves, but, on the contrary, must, unless their
cause is removed, grow greater and greater, until they sweep us back into barbarism by the road every
previous civilization has trod. But it also shows that these evils are not imposed by natural laws; that they
spring solely from social mal-adjustments which ignore natural laws, and that in removing their cause we shall be giving an enormous impetus to progress.
The poverty which in the midst of abundance, pinches and embrutes men, and all the manifold
evils which flow from it, spring from a denial of justice. In permitting the monopolization of the natural
opportunities which nature freely offers to all, we have ignored the fundamental law of justice-for so far
as we can see, when we view things upon a large scale, justice seems to be the supreme law of the
universe. But by sweeping away this injustice and asserting the rights of all men to natural opportunities,
we shall conform ourselves to the law-we shall remove the great cause of unnatural inequality in the
distribution of wealth and power; we shall abolish poverty; tame the ruthless passions of greed; dry up the springs of vice and misery; light in dark places the lamp of knowledge; give new vigor to invention and a
fresh impulse to discovery; substitute political strength for political weakness; and make tyranny and
anarchy impossible.
The reform I have proposed accords with all that is politically, socially, or morally desirable. It has
the qualities of a true reform, for it will make all other reforms easier. What is it but the carrying out in
letter and spirit of the truth enunciated in the Declaration of Independence-the "self-evident" truth that is the heart and soul of the Declaration - "That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!"
These rights are denied when the equal right to land-on which and by which men alone can live-is
denied. Equality of political rights will not compensate for the denial of the equal right to the bounty of Political liberty, when the equal right to land is denied, becomes, as population increases and
invention goes on, merely the liberty to compete for employment at starvation wages. This is the truth that
we have ignored. And so there come beggars in our streets and tramps on our roads; and poverty enslaves
men whom we boast are political sovereigns; and want breeds ignorance that our schools cannot
enlighten; and citizens vote as their masters dictate; and the demagogue usurps the part of the statesman;
and gold weighs in the scales of justice; and in high places sit those who do not pay to civic virtue even
the compliment of hypocrisy; and the pillars of the republic that we thought so strong already bend under
an increasing strain.
We honor Liberty in name and in form. We set up her statues and sound her praises. But we have
not fully trusted her. And with our growth so grow her demands. She will have no half service!
Liberty! it is a word to conjure with, not to vex the ear in empty boastings. For Liberty means
Justice, and Justice is the natural law the law of health and symmetry and strength, of fraternity and cooperation.
They who look upon Liberty as having accomplished her mission when she has abolished
hereditary privileges and given men the ballot, who think of her as having no further relations to the
everyday affairs of life, have not seen her real grandeur-to them the poets who have sung of her must
seem rhapsodists, and her martyrs fools! As the sun is the lord of life, as well as of light; as his beams not
merely pierce the clouds, but support all growth, supply all motion, and call forth from what would
otherwise be a cold and inert mass, all the infinite diversities of being and beauty, so is liberty to
mankind. It is not for an abstraction that men have toiled and died; that in every age the witnesses of
Liberty have stood forth, and the martyrs of Liberty have suffered.
We speak of Liberty as one thing, and virtue, wealth, knowledge, invention, national strength and
national independence as other things. But, of all these, Liberty is the source, the mother, the necessary
condition. She is to virtue what light is to color; to wealth what sunshine is to grain; to knowledge what
eyes are to sight. She is the genius of invention, the brawn of national strength, the spirit of national
independence. Where Liberty rises, there virtue grows, wealth increases, knowledge expands, invention
multiplies human powers, and in strength and spirit the freer nation rises among her neighbors as Saul
amid his brethren-taller and fairer. Where Liberty sinks, there virtue fades, wealth diminishes, knowledge
is forgotten, invention ceases, and empires once mighty in arms and arts become a helpless prey to freer
barbarians!
* * *
The fiat has gone forth! With steam and electricity, and the new powers born of progress, forces
have entered the world that will either compel us to a higher plane or overwhelm us, as nation after
nation, as civilization after civilization, have been overwhelmed before. It is the delusion which precedes
destruction that sees in the popular unrest with which the civilized world is feverishly pulsing, only the
passing effect of ephemeral causes. Between democratic ideas and the aristocratic adjustments of society
there is an irreconcilable conflict. Here in the United States, as there in Europe, it may be seen arising. We
cannot go on permitting men to vote and forcing them to tramp. We cannot go on educating boys and girls
in our public schools and then refusing them the right to earn an honest living. We cannot go on prating of
the inalienable rights of man and then denying the inalienable right to the bounty of the Creator.
____________________________
Henry George, Progress and Poverty [1879] (New York, 1884), pp. 489–96
Performance Indicators: 1. Students will identify three causes of poverty during the Progressive Era. 2. Students will discuss the impact that Riis and Adams had on poverty. 3. Students will identify which tactics Riis and Adams used to affect change.
Jane Adams Primary Source Documents
(citation at bottom of Page)
Questions:
1) How does Addams describe conditions in her neighborhood?
2) What tactics do Addams and her assistants use to help the poor? How do people respond to
these efforts?
3) Do institutions like Hull House still exist? If so, give a few examples.
By the late 1880s, a new generation of reformers was using innovative ways to combat poverty. Jane
Addams (1860-1935) won international acclaim for her efforts to help the poor. A visit to a British settlement house
motivated Addams and Ellen Gates Starr to build a similar facility in Chicago. Moving into a workingclass
immigrant neighborhood, the pair bought a vacant residence formerly owned by Charles G. Hull. Eventually, Hull
House encompassed 13 buildings as well as a playground. Facilities included a day care center, a kindergarten, a
laundry, a boarding house, and a soup kitchen. Courses in English, civics, cooking, music, art, and crafts were
offered. By 1895, at least fifty settlement houses were operating across the country. Young reformers from all over
the world flocked to Hull House to receive training and inspiration. Addams and her associates were also heavily
involved in campaigns for the prohibition of child labor, sanitation, and workers' rights. In this selection from
Twenty Years at Hull House (1910), Addams recounts her fight for public sanitation.
It is easy for even the most conscientious citizen of Chicago to forget the foul smells of the stockyards and
the garbage dumps, when he is living so far from them that he is only occasionally made conscious of their
existence but the residents of a Settlement are perforce constantly surrounded by them. During our first three years
on Halsted Street, we had established a small incinerator at Hull-House and we had many times reported the
untoward conditions of the ward to the city hall. We had also arranged many talks for the immigrants, pointing out
that although a woman may sweep her own doorway in her native village and allow the refuse to innocently decay
in the open air and sunshine, in a crowded city quarter, if the garbage is not properly collected and destroyed, a
tenement house mother may see her children sicken and die, and that the immigrants must therefore not only keep
their own houses clean, but must also help the authorities to keep the city clean.
Possibly our efforts slightly modified the worst conditions, but they still remained intolerable, and the
fourth summer the situation became for me absolutely desperate when I realized in a moment of panic that my
delicate little nephew for whom I was guardian, could not be with me at Hull-House at all unless the sickening
odors were reduced. I may well be ashamed that other delicate children who were tom from their families, not into
boarding school but into eternity, had not long before driven me to effective action. Under the direction of the first
man who came as a resident to Hull-House we began a systematic investigation of the city system of garbage
collection, both as to its efficiency in other wards and its possible connection with the death rate in the various
wards of the city….
During August and September the substantiated reports of violations of the law sent in from Hull-House to
the health department were one thousand and thirty-seven….Still the death rate remained high and the condition
seemed little improved throughout the next winter. In sheer desperation, the following spring when the city
contracts were awarded for the removal of garbage, with the backing of two well-known business men, I put in a
bid for the garbage removal of the nineteenth ward. My paper was thrown out on a technicality but the incident
induced the mayor to appoint me the garbage inspector of the ward. The salary was a thousand dollars a year, and
the loss of that political "plum" made a great stir among the politicians. The position was no sinecure whether
regarded from the point of view of getting up at six in the morning to see that the men were early at work; or of
following the loaded wagons, uneasily dropping their contents at intervals, to their dreary destination at the dump....
With the two or three residents who nobly stood by, we set up six of those doleful incinerators which are
supposed to bum garbage with the fuel collected in the alley itself. The one factory in town which could utilize old
tin cans was a window weight factory, and we deluged that with ten times as many tin cans as it could use-much
less would pay for. We made desperate attempts to have the dead animals removed by the contractor who was paid
Name: ______________________________________ Period: _______ Date: ____________________
Advanced Placement United States History Mr. Gallucci
most liberally by the city for that purpose but who, we slowly discovered, always made the police ambulances do
the work….
Nevertheless many evils constantly arise in Chicago from congested housing which wiser cities forestall
and prevent; the inevitable boarders crowded into a dark tenement already too small for the use of the immigrant
family occupying it; the surprisingly large number of delinquent girls who have become criminally involved with
their own fathers and uncles; the school children who cannot find a quiet spot in which to read or study and who
perforce go into the streets each evening; the tuberculosis superinduced and fostered by the inadequate rooms and
breathing spaces….
It is these subtle evils of wretched and inadequate housing which are often the most disastrous. In the
summer of 1902 during an epidemic of typhoid fever in which our ward, although containing but one thirty-sixth of
the population of the city, registered one sixth of the total number of deaths, two of the Hull-House residents made
an investigation of the methods of plumbing in the houses adjacent to conspicuous groups of fever cases….The
careful information collected concerning the juxtaposition of the typhoid cases to the various systems of plumbing
and nonplumbing was made the basis of a bacteriological study by another resident, Dr. Alice Hamilton, as to the
possibility of the infection having been carried by flies. Her researches were so convincing that they have been
incorporated into the body of scientific data supporting that theory, but there were also practical results from the
investigation. It was discovered that the wretched sanitary appliances through which alone the infection could have
become so widely spread, would not have been permitted to remain, unless the city inspector had either been
criminally careless or open to the arguments of favored landlords.
The agitation finally resulted in a long and stirring trial before the civil service board of half of the
employees in the Sanitary Bureau, with the final discharge of eleven out of the entire force of twenty-four….We
were amazed at the commercial ramifications which graft in the city hall involved and at the indignation which
interference with it produced. Hull-House lost some large subscriptions as the result of this investigation, a loss
which, if not easy to bear, was at least comprehensible. We also uncovered unexpected graft in connection with the
plumbers' unions, and but for the fearless testimony of one of their members, could never have brought the trial to a
successful issue.
Inevitable misunderstanding also developed in connection with the attempt on the part of Hull-House
residents to prohibit the sale of cocaine to minors, which brought us into sharp conflict with many druggists....
For many years we have administered a branch station of the federal post office at Hull-House, which we
applied for in the first instance because our neighbors lost such a large percentage of the money they sent to
Europe, through the commissions to middle men….
We find increasingly, however, that the best results are to be obtained in investigations as in other
undertakings, by combining our researches with those of other public bodies or with the State itself….
The investigations of Hull-House thus tend to be merged with those of larger organizations, from the
investigation of the social value of saloons made for the Committee of Fifty in 1896, to the one on infant mortality
in relation to nationality, made for the American Academy of Science in 1909….
I have always objected to the phrase "sociological laboratory" applied to us, because Settlements should be
something much more human and spontaneous than such a phrase connotes, and yet it is inevitable that the
residents should know their own neighborhoods more thoroughly than any other, and that their experiences there
should affect their convictions.
_________________________________
Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House with Autobiographical Notes. (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1910), pp.
281-309.
Conclusion: The closure for this lesson is [that is, the learner will demonstrate comprehension by doing…]: Final clarification, asking the students if there are any other questions. Have students respond to the following questions, in writing, five minutes before the period ends: 1) Students will: Write down three questions you have about today’s lesson. 2) Students will: If you observed poor living conditions as a witness or as a personal experience, would you organize and protest against those unsafe and unsanitaryconditions?
New Freedom Primary Source Documents:
Rob Martin
LP#2 The New Freedom
Woodrow Wilson - The "New Freedom" reforms
A. Underwood Tariff of 1913
-First lowering of tariffs since the Civil War
-Went against the protectionist lobby
B. Federal Trade Act (1914)
-Set up FTC or Federal Trade Commission to investigate and halt unfair and illegal business practices. The FTC could put a halt to these illegal business practices by issuing what is known as a "cease and desist order."
C. Clayton Antitrust Act (1914)
-Declared certain businesses illegal (interlocking directorates, trusts, horizontal mergers)
-Unions and the Grange were not subject to antitrust laws. This made unions legal!
-Strikes, boycotts, picketing and the collection of strike benefit funds ruled legal
C. Creation of Federal Reserve System (1914)
- Federal Reserve Banks in 12 districts would print and coin money as well as set interest rates. In this way the "Fed," as it was called, could control the money supply and effect the value of currency. The more money in circulation the lower the value and inflation went up. The less money in circulation the greater the value and this would lower inflation.
Woodrow Wilson:
THERE is one great basic fact which underlies all the questions that are discussed on the political platform at the present moment. That singular fact is that nothing is done in this country as it was done twenty years ago. We are in the presence of a new organization of society. Our life has broken away from the past. The life of America is not the life that it was twenty years ago; it is not the life that it was ten years ago. We have changed our economic conditions, absolutely, from top to bottom; and, with our economic society, the organization of our life. The old political formulas do not fit the present problems; they read now like documents taken out of a forgotten age. The older cries sound as if they belonged to a past age which men have almost forgotten. Things which used to be put into the party platforms of ten years ago would sound antiquated if put into a platform now. We are facing the necessity of fitting a new social organization, as we did once fit the old organization, to the happiness and prosperity of the great body of citizens; for we are conscious that the new order of society has not been made to fit and provide the convenience or prosperity of the average man. The life of the nation has grown infinitely varied. It does not centre now upon questions of governmental structure or of the distribution of governmental powers. It centres upon questions of the very structure and operation of society itself, of which government is only the instrument. Our development has run so fast and so far along the lines sketched in the earlier day of constitutional definition, has so crossed and interlaced those lines, has piled upon them such novel structures of trust and combination, has elaborated within them a life so manifold, so full of forces which transcend the boundaries of the country itself and fill the eyes of the world, that a new nation seems to have been created which the old formulas do not fit or afford a vital interpretation of. We have come upon a very different age from any that preceded us. We have come upon an age when we do not do business in the way in which we used to do business,-when we do not carry on any of the operations of manufacture, sale, transportation, or communication as men used to carry them on. There is a sense in which in our day the individual has been submerged. In most parts of our country men work, not for themselves, not as partners in the old way in which they used to work, but generally as employees,-in a higher or lower grade,-of great corporations. There was a time when corporations played a very minor part in our business affairs, but now they play the chief part, and most men are the servants of corporations.
You know what happens when you are the servant of a corporation. You have in no instance access to the men who are really determining the policy of the corporation. If the corporation is doing the things that it ought not to do, you really have no voice in the matter and must obey the orders, and you have oftentimes with deep mortification to co-operate in the doing of things which you know are against the public interest. Your individuality is swallowed up in the individuality and purpose of a great organization.
It is true that, while most men are thus submerged in the corporation, a few, a very few, are exalted to a power which as individuals they could never have wielded. Through the great organizations of which they are the heads, a few are enabled to play a part unprecedented by anything in history in the control of the business operations of the country and in the determination of the happiness of great numbers of people.
Yesterday, and ever since history began, men were related to one another as individuals. To be sure there were the family, the Church, and the State, institutions which associated men in certain wide circles of relationship. But in the ordinary concerns of life, in the ordinary work, in the daily round, men dealt freely and directly with one another. To-day, the everyday relationships of men are largely with great impersonal concerns, with organizations, not with other individual men.
Now this is nothing short of a new social age, a new era of human relationships, a new stage-setting for the drama of life.
Performance Indicators: Performance indicator(s) for objective # 1: Ask students if they can enumerate at least one of the points and discuss in detail its importance. Performance indicator(s) for objective # 2: Students will identify the reasons why Wilson wanted fair and just reforms (regulation)of the current economic system. Summarize argument for/against laissez-faire economy.
Pivotal Questions: 1. Describe which event(s) prompted the creation of the New Freedom? 2. Specify the most important concept(s) contained in the New Freedom? 3. Was the New Freedom fair and just to all parties involved? Or did the New Freedom punish and deflate Corporate America?
Conclusion: The closure for this lesson is [that is, the learner will demonstrate comprehension by doing…]: Final clarification, asking the students if there are any other questions. Have students respond to the following questions, in writing, five minutes before the period ends: 1) Students will: Write down three questions you have about today’s lesson. 2) Students will: If you observed unsafe working conditions as a witness or as a worker, would you organize and protest against those unsafe conditions?
Extension Activity: Extension activities will include: To take the lesson a step further, students who have Internet access can compare and contrast the New Freedom to the current economic crisis. Summarize and discuss 3 paragraphs. Students will identify the commonalities between the past grievances against banks, big trusts and high tariffs and the current Wall St demonstrations.
Primary Source Documents:
Robert Martin, Progressive Era Lesson Plan
Reading and Final Discussion
The death toll of 146 in the Triangle fire did not match tragedies such as the 354 coal miners killed at Monongah, W. Va., in 1908, but the fire sent out shock waves that jolted the conscience of the city of New York. On April 5, 1911, over 100,000 people joined in a procession up Fifth Avenue to express their grief, as another 400,000 watched. Socialite and reformer Martha Bruere watched the procession go by her window for six hours and wrote "Never have seen a military pageant or triumphant ovation so impressive.... it is dawning on these thousands on thousands that such things do not have to be!" The sorrow and anger of the community were too great, however, to be dissipated in a demonstration. A few days before the funeral procession, civic and religious leaders, reformers, teachers and others addressed a mass meeting held at the Metropolitan Opera. Out of that assembly emerged a Committee on Safety, which served as a clearinghouse of information on fire safety, and more importantly, became an effective political force. . .
. . .This commission was "to investigate the conditions under which manufacturing is carried on.” The legislature gave it unusual powers and scope. The commission had the power to summon witnesses to testify under oath and had a mandate to look into fire hazards, unsanitary conditions, occupational diseases, and effectiveness of factory inspection, tenement manufacturing and many other matters. At first the investigation was limited to the nine largest cities in the state, but that restriction was later lifted. Based on its findings, the commission was to recommend protective programs. Originally created for only one year, the commission was extended three years beyond that, but its last two years were devoted to matters other than safety and health . . .
. . . The Factory Commission's investigations, all done in 1911 and 1912, dwarfed any previous public efforts. It held 59 public hearings around the state and took testimony from 472 witnesses, including employers, workers, union officials and technical experts. Their testimony filled over 7,000 pages. Commission staff investigated 3,385 workplaces in industries ranging from meat packing plants, bakeries and clothing manufacturers to the chemical industry and the lead trades. The commissioners personally visited 50 plants. While the bulk of the voluminous reports of the commission were filled with individual testimony, there were also special reports by experts covering fire safety, building construction, machine guarding, heating, lighting, ventilation and other topics. There were also studies on specific industries, such as chemicals, lead trades, metal trades, printing shops, sweatshops and mercantile establishments. . .
Documents retrieved from Department of Labor, on October 9, 2011.
http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/mono-regsafepart07.htm
Robert Martin, Progressive Era Lesson Plan
Reading and Final Discussion
The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911 would change the regulation by government of business. Before the fire government had mostly stayed away from business feeling it had no power to legislate it. After the fire government could not avoid instituting laws to protect the workers. Once the New York legislature enacted safety laws, other states in the US followed suit. Workers also began to look toward unions to voice their concerns over safety and pay. Samuel Gompers of the AFL had won a lot of trust and admiration by sitting in on The Factory Commission of 1911. The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union also won support and led a march of 100,000 to tell the New York legislature to move into action. Unfortunately not everyone had learned their history. March 25, 1990, on the 79th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, the Happy Land Social Club fire in the Bronx, New York killed 87 people. Most of the people killed were not workers but customers. There was no sprinkler system, fire alarms, nor exits. The windows had iron bars on them leaving only one door to escape the inferno. On September 3, 1991 in Hamlet North Carolina 25 workers died at a poultry factory. The exits were ill marked, blocked or padlocked. The doors were padlocked to prevent theft. The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire remains as a turning point in US history. Countless state and federal laws were enacted because of this incident. Unions gained numerous new workers who wanted someone to fight for their safety. Now employers in the US have a clear set of guidelines that they need to follow to ensure the safety of their employees.
Documents retrieved from, California State University Northridge, on October 9, 2011.
http://www.csun.edu/~ghy7463/mw2.html
Pivotal Questions: (Aim) 1. Students will: Describe which event(s) prompted the outcry for workplace Health and Safety Standards? 2. Students will: Identify the event that led the leading figures of the workplace Health and Safety Standards movement? 3. Students will: Assess the accomplishments that the movement fought for. Was it worth it? Why?
Conclusion: The closure for this lesson is [that is, the learner will demonstrate comprehension by doing…]: Final clarification, asking the students if there are any other questions. Have students respond to the following questions, in writing, five minutes before the period ends: 1) Students will: Write down three questions you have about today’s lesson. 2) Students will: If you observed unsafe working conditions as a witness or as a worker, would you organize and protest against those unsafe conditions? The assessment of learning at the conclusion of this lesson will be: Students will: Using what they have learned today, analyze and explain how ‘The Progressives’, in their struggle for workplace Health and Safety Standards have influenced our lives today?
Extension activities will include: To take the lesson a step further, students who have Internet access can investigate one (1) Coal Mining Disaster during the Progressive Era: Students will summarize: explaining the causes and effects using an information organizer. Or, students will identify the tactics activists used and the demands they made, using an information organizer. [Teacher notes: Key Questions to examine: 1. Where and when disaster took place? 2. How many people died? 3. Describe the public reaction to the disaster and the government's response.]
