Origins of America's Global Power

1. Identify five important changes that transformed America in the nineteenth century. 


A. During 1800s the U.S. expanded far west into once hostile, European territory. This led America to be a recognized powerful nation that could stand up for itself, and fostered a pride to be American that had never been seen before.


B. Immigration brought people from all over the world to the promise of a better life in America. This brought in new cultural ideas and expanded the population of America greatly, which influenced some of the following changes.


C. The majority of the huge spur of population was moving to big cities around the country. Immigrants were able to find work easily, as were Americans who decided to move from agriculture to manufacturing. This led to the introduction of commuter rail lines and many new suburbs around cities.


D. Economic shift caused a lot of change in America. As more people moved to cities from the country, many left behind farming jobs that had been replaced with machines to work in factories. By the 20^th century, manufacturing had far surpassed agriculture as the main industry in America.


E. With the shift to manufacturing came a shift in how America traded with the rest of the world. Beforehand, we had imported most of our goods from Europe and other places. Now that we were such a manufacturing giant, exports surpassed imports by far, and the rest of the world began to rely on us. This was a new responsibility that America had never really had before.


2. How did the economic depression that began in 1893 deepen the divisions in American society? Which groups suffered the most during the depression? 
         During the depression of 1893, millions of Americans lost their jobs due to instability in the markets. City-dwellers had to worry about losing their jobs and farmers had to worry about being further in the hole they had already begun to sink into. The depression led many workers to be angered by the people running the industry they worked in. They believed that they were making manufacturing workers vulnerable with their policies, so they began to strike, which deepened the divisions already beginning to arise in America between workers and management.


3. What were the values many Americans attached to the frontier? Why did many Americans fear that the closing of the frontier would harm America's national character? 
          Many, mostly white, Americans attached the feeling of prosperity and resourcefulness with the western frontier. They attributed the hardiness of Americans and America’s ability to endure to the settlers moving west into wild land and taming it for America. When the boundaries of America were set, many white Americans were frightened. They had lived their whole lives with the settling of the west as proof that America could get through anything, and they feared they had nothing to subscribe to anymore. They were also scared of social tensions arising and the growing population with nowhere to go.



4. Why did some Americans suggest greater involvement overseas? 
            With the continental United States completely settled, some Americans began to worry that The U.S. didn’t have a way of asserting itself over foreign nations. They worried that America might lose its status. Hence, they suggested a more aggressive approach, one that involved essentially invading overseas markets. Many set their eyes on China, where many European countries were going to, others on Central America. These expansionists believed we needed to catch up with the other world powers, most of whom already had established empires around the world. A final reason was purely strategic, arguing that the U.S. should take over islands along trade routes for refueling easily and islands that would allow for the navy to better protect the continental United States.



5. How did the theories of social Darwinism and scientific racism lend support to the cause of American imperialism? 
           The idea of social Darwinism suggests that in society as well as ecosystems, the community best fit to their environment survives. Supporters of imperialism suggested that the only way for America to assert itself as the fittest was to conquer other weaker nations in the world. The idea of scientific racism lent itself nicely to this theory as well. This concept stated that some races were biologically superior in intelligence and strength to others, based on pseudoscience involving brain size and skull development. These two ideas based around pseudoscience helped imperialists support their views.


6. Summarize why the United States became involved in Samoa, Hawaii, and several Latin American nations.

            Although President McKinley was initially against imperialism, eventually it began to become a necessity. After agreeing to protect Samoa in exchange for free use of the islands for refueling, the need to protect it actually arose. After many conflicts with Germany and Britain, the islands were split and one part was made a U.S. territory. In Hawaii, the threat of Japan after we drove out Japanese immigrants was too high for most Americans to be comfortable, hence we forcefully annexed Hawaii. The Monroe Doctrine was the driving force for entering Latin America, as most Americans were afraid Europe would try to “carve up” South America as they had Africa. America fulfilled its duties to police the Western hemisphere from invading Europeans and attempted to drive them out. 

Teddy Roosevelt's Square Deal

1. 1902 COAL STRIKE

a. What steps did Roosevelt take to solve the problem? 
Roosevelt brought the mine workers and the mine operators to the White House to settle their differences. He then had them submit their differences to an arbitration committee, a third unbiased expert party that was made to come up with a compromise. The committee created by Roosevelt settled the dispute.

b. Which legislation helped solve the problem?
none

2. TRUSTS

a. What steps did Roosevelt take to solve the problem? 
Roosevelt, who believed that not all trusts were harmful, merely focused on filing law suits directly under the Sherman Anti-trust Act. He broke up a number of trusts and won many of the 44 cases he brought to the Supreme Court.

b. Which legislation helped solve the problem?
The Sherman Anti-trust Act, but nothing that Roosevelt passed during his term.

3. UNREGULATED BIG BUSINESS

a. What steps did Roosevelt take to solve the problem? 
The main business that Roosevelt worked on regulating was the railroad industry. He passed legislation that gave more power to the Interstate Commerce Commission and worked to halt bribery and other forms of corruption in the railroad industry.

b. Which legislation helped solve the problem?
  Elkins Act- 1903, and Hepburn Act-1906

4. DANGEROUS FOODS AND MEDICINES

 a. What steps did Roosevelt take to solve the problem? 
Roosevelt created a committee after reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair to inspect the meatpacking industry. The committee released a detailed report about the incredibly insanitary conditions and practices and industry. Roosevelt also listened to Dr. Harvey Washington’s criticism of the drug industry’s wild claims and contaminated products. He passed legislation to give cleanliness requirements to the meatpacking industry as well as establishing inspections. The biggest part of the legislation for drug safety was that it called for honest labeling, which allowed consumers to really see what they were buying.

b. Which legislation helped solve the problem?
Meat Inspection Act- 1906 and Pure Food and Drug Act- 1906


5. SHRINKING WILDERNESS AND NATURAL RESOURCES

a. What steps did Roosevelt take to solve the problem? 
As Americans expanded west, they left a trail of destruction and waste in their path, hurting the environment. Teddy Roosevelt, a conservationist, set aside millions and millions of acres for forest reserves, water-power sites, and for the USGS to search for natural resources, as well as many national parks and wildlife sanctuaries. He also appointed an expert conservationist, Gifford Pinchot, as the head of the U.S. Forest Service. As part of his solution he passed legislation that used money the government gained from the sale of lands in the west went towards irrigating the west. 

b. Which legislation helped solve the problem?
National Reclamation Act- 1902

6. RACIAL DISCRIMINATION

a. What steps did Roosevelt take to solve the problem? 
Roosevelt overall did not do much to solve racial problems. However, he did appoint some African-Americans to government jobs throughout the country, much to the chagrin of his party members. He also invited Booker T. Washington, a well-respected man in black and some white communities, to the white house as a symbolic gesture. 

b. Which legislation helped solve the problem?
none

Explain the importance of each of the following:

7. Square Deal:                 
The square deal was the Progressive idea behind many of Roosevelt’s reforms. He believed if workers and Americans were getting cheated, he would give them  a square deal, through reform.

8. The Jungle:
The Jungle  was a novel that revealed many of the horrifying practices of the meat packing industry. This book led to an uproar that eventually resulted in the Meat Inspection Act and safer foods for Americans.                            

9. Upton Sinclair:           
Upton Sinclair was the author of The Jungle and was seen as a big muckraker in the early 1900s. However, his intentions in writing about the meatpacking industry were to be reveal the exploitation of the workers, but his vivid descriptions ended up inspiring Progressives into reform.

10. NAACP: 
The NAACP’s goal was simply equality for all races. The existence of this organization showed that the Progressive Movement’s true goals were only concerning middle class white Americans.

11. Meat Inspection Act:                          
The Meat Inspection Act created specific cleanliness requirements and created the process of federal meat inspection. This act brought cleaner and higher quality meat to Americans.

12. Pure Food & Drug Act: 
The Pure Food and Drug Act called for the halting of the selling of contaminated foods and drugs and, most importantly, for truth and labeling. This allowed Americans to know what they were really buying.

13. Significance of the 1902 Coal Miners’ Strike: 
During the 1902 Coal Miners’ Strike, Teddy Roosevelt set several very important precedents. He brought the federal government into a strike that threatened the welfare of the public. This had not been previously done, but after 1902 it was expected.

The Jungle - Exposing the Meatpacking Industry

1. In your opinion, which specific details in this excerpt most convincingly highlight problems in the meatpacking industry in the early 1900s? Why? Use specific passages and quote. Analyze at least five details. 

A.    The loose regulation of the meatpacking industry is highlighted in this document. When Sinclair mentions the government inspector inspecting the meat he says that, “while he was talking with you you could hardly be so ungrateful as to notice that a dozen carcasses were passing him untouched.” This implies the loose regulation of the industry, as the inspector doesn’t care enough to stop talking and inspect the dozen pigs that have passed him.

B.    When a pig was old and their skin became droopy the meatpackers would cut it off and have it “cooked and chopped fine and labeled ‘head cheese!’”. This is an example of the meatpacking industry maximizing profits by selling unsanitary products, just one of many.

C.    When talking about the making of sausage, Sinclair notices that “they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage,” they being the workers whose hands got dirty from making the sausage. There were no other areas near their place of work where they could wash their hands, no other source of water. This shows an example of the problem of unsanitary working conditions.

D.    A ham’s gone bad in the pickling process? Not a problem for the meatpackers! They’ll just sell it at free lunch counters, or as Number Three Grade meat! Or use the “ingenious invention which will “extract the bone, about which the bad part generally lay, and insert in the hole a white-hot iron.” This, for the meatpackers, was enough to turn this Number Three Grade, spoiled meat, into Number One Grade fresh.

E.    The sausage-making process was incredibly unsanitary at the turn of the century. They would put whatever meat they had in the sausage, including “moldy white sausage” rejected from Europe, meat that had been “ tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs”. They would also use the meat of rats that had been crawling all over the meat, as well as the rat-dung covered meat.

2. What is the overall tone of the story?

The overall tone of the story is revealing and accusative. The author was clearly out to make all the problems of the meatpacking industry public. He wanted it to be known that the industry was incredibly unsafe and that they were deceiving millions of Americans into eating spoiled meat by packaging it differently. I believe he also wanted to point out the weakness of the regulation, through the lax government inspector described at Durham’s.

3. Based on your reading of this excerpt, why do you think Sinclair titled his novel The Jungle?

Sinclair probably titled this novel The Jungle for a few reasons. For one, the jungle is known as a very dirty place, and while you’re there you probably don’t want to eat anything you find lying around, and the meatpacking industry was essentially forcing the public to eat whatever was in their factory. This title could also reference the “forest of freezing hogs” that Sinclair calls the chilling room as, implying that the meatpacking industry is as loose and wild as the jungle. 

Challenges of Urbanization

The People: why were the three groups below drawn to cities in the Northeast and Midwest? 

1. Immigrants
Cities were by far the cheapest places to live in the country. They also offered steady employment at mills and factories for unskilled workers, which most immigrants were. These factories were often located in the city, so living in the city made it very convenient as well.


2. Farmers
New inventions in the late 19^th century led to farming become much more efficient. These inventions meant that farmers could get make more of their crop, but with less people. The workers that used to run these farms migrated to cities to look for work.

3. African-Americans
Many of the farmers above were African-Americans. The African-Americans not only left for labor though, many were escaping racial violence as well.  As a result of this racism there was much political oppression as well, which they were also leaving the South in order to get away from.

The Problems: What was done in response to the following five problems? 

4. Lack of safe and efficient transportation
In response to a lack of safe and efficient transportation, cities began to develop mass transit systems. These were systems of transportation designed to move a very large number of people along a fixed route. Street cars in San Francisco were one of the first examples of mass transit, along with subways in Boston. Mass transit made it easier for people to get in, out of, and around the cities.


5. Unsafe drinking water
In rapidly growing cities, there was rarely enough water for people and when there was it was full of diseases and bacteria. In the 1870s, in order to counteract this, many major cities introduced filtration to the water systems. In 1908, they added chlorine as an additional precaution.


6. Lack of sanitation
As more people moved to the cities, they began producing more and more waste, garbage and other. There were no methods of picking up or removing this waste, so the cities became dangerously unsanitary. By 1900, major cities around the U.S. had created sewers and sanitation departments so that the cities could be cleaner and therefore safer.


7. Fire Hazards
As cities grew, many of the buildings were made out of cheap and reliable wood. But soon, this choice led to fires breaking out in almost every major city in the U.S.. There were fire departments, but they were mostly volunteer. Cincinnati was the first city to have a paid fire department, and by 1900 many other cities had followed suit. In addition to salaried fire departments, many cities moved from building with wood to building with stone and brick.  


8. Crime

With more people in a smaller area, it became easier for thieves to steal from them.  Cities all over the United States created full, salaried police forces by 1900 you counteract and apprehend these crime committers. 

Immigration

1. What major areas or countries of the world were immigrants coming from?
Immigrants were mainly coming from Europe and Asia, mostly Europe. Until 1890, the majority was western and northern European, but after that many eastern and southern Europeans immigrated as well. The majority of Asian immigrants were from China, the other biggest portion being Japanese. There were also some from the West Indies and Caribbean, but not nearly as many.

2. What were the two major immigration processing stations in the United States?
The two major immigration processing stations in the United States were Ellis Island and Angel Island. Ellis Island processed most of the European immigrants and is in New York City. Angel Island processed most of the Asian immigrants and is in San Francisco Bay.

3. Define Melting Pot.
A melting pot is a mixture of people from different cultures and customs who come together by abandoning their previous culture and adopting a different, more common one. Many native-born Americans believed America to be a melting pot.

4. Define Nativism.
Nativism is a belief that native-born, Anglo-Saxon Americans are superior to all other races. It is essentially racism against all races besides Americans.

5. According to the Immigration Restriction League, list the desirable immigrants.
1. British

2. German

3. Scandinavian

6. According to the Immigration Restriction League, list the “wrong” immigrants.
1. Slavic

2. Latin

3. Asian

7. Why did nativists sometimes object to an immigrant’s religious background?
Most nativists were Protestants, and many of the immigrants were Catholic or Jewish. The nativists believed that these new religions would undermine the ideas on which the country was founded, the majority of which were based on Protestant ideals as our founders were themselves Protestant.

8. Why was the Chinese Exclusion Act passed?
Nativists in the west had created a foothold in the labor movement by protesting many Chinese workers in California. The Chinese would accept the same jobs for much less money. The nativists use this fact to gain support for the Chinese Exclusion Act, saying they took all the jobs that native-born Americans should get.