U.S. History II
Lecture 4, Chapter 19: Unrest in the 1890’s; McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt
Cleveland took office again on 4 March 1893; the economy fell into depression in May, 1893. The Panic of 1893 took 600 banks and 119 railroads down into bankruptcy. By January 1894, over 2.5 million people were unemployed.
The question again became one of monetary supply. Cleveland believed firmly in the gold standard and called a special session of Congress in August 1893 to repeal the Sherman Act that had required the government to buy silver. The Democrats split over this issue, because the gold standard was very unpopular in the South and West. The Republicans in Congress helped Cleveland repeal the Act in November 1893. Unfortunately, it turned out that the monetary issue alone would not aid the economy. Instead, the depression worsened.
Blame also centered on the McKinley Tariff Act. Congress passed the Wilson-Gorman Act in 1894 that reduced tariffs on some goods and raised tariffs on other goods. The Act made up for lost revenue by imposing a personal income tax. Cleveland let the bill become law without his signature.
In the rest of the nation, the unemployed tried to get Washington’s attention through marches and petitions. The most famous was “Coxey’s Army,” led by Ohio businessman Jacob Coxey. Coxey went to Washington to ask for a road-building program to provide jobs, paid for with paper money rather than gold-backed money. When Coxey arrived in Washington and tried to present his demands to Congress, he was attacked by the police and charged with trespassing and — wait for this one — walking on the grass. Needless to say, others on their way to Washington took the hint.
The worst event was the strike at the Pullman Railroad Car plant in Chicago. George Pullman had not only built a factory; he also built a town in which the workers could live. The problem was that living in the Pullman town was extremely expensive. Pullman laid off some employees during the depression and reduced wages, but he didn’t reduce the rents in his town. The workers went out on strike in May 1894. The strike spread when other railroad union members refused to service trains pulling Pullman cars. By the end of the strike, over 125,000 workers on 20 railroads were involved. The nation’s rail service almost ground to a halt. The railroad’s General Managers’ Association went directly to the president and Richard Olney, the attorney general and former railroad lawyer. Federal troops went to Chicago to break the strike.
In a greater blow to organized labor, Eugene Debs, head of the American Railway Union, was jailed and his sentence upheld by a federal judge. Companies realized they could head off strikes with court injunctions and by jailing union leaders. This tactic led to the stagnation and weakening of the labor movement for the rest of the century.
While Cleveland was popular in the Northeast and Midwest for breaking the strike, his popularity plummeted in the South and West. Cleveland’s unpopularity contributed to the Democratic disaster in the elections of 1894. The Democrats lost 113 seats in the House of Representatives. The Democrats also lost heavily in state elections. Although the Democratic Party held onto the Senate, they lost popular power for the next 3 decades. The Populist Party, it turned out, had seen its greatest strength in the 1892 elections and was not a factor in the 1894 elections.
During the Panic, financier J.P. Morgan began buying railroads by refinancing their loans and consolidating them. Morgan’s railroads controlled nearly 80% of the nation’s rail mileage. Railroads began re-introducing rebates. Finance capitalists began buying and consolidating other businesses as well. When people complained and asked for enforcement of the Sherman Anti-trust Act, the Supreme Court ruled in U.S. v. E.C. Knight in 1895 that the Act applied only to monopolies of interstate commerce, not to monopolies of manufacturing.
Social Reform, 1890’s Style
Whenever the nation hits a difficult time, people begin wondering whether the system works. If not, reform is essential to fix what’s wrong.
The 1890’s saw the continuation of the Prohibition movement in the nation. Protestant churches across the nation formed the core of the movement, working in their local towns to regulate saloons. Brewers formed their own associations to fight Prohibition in political arenas.
Other reform movements aimed at destroying political machines across the nation. Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin, a Republican, began pushing for primary elections to choose candidates. To this point, candidates had been chosen by the party leaders in each state. Governors and others in states tried to regulate the railroads and public utilities to aid hard-pressed farmers and others.
William James of Harvard University developed the concept of pragmatism, which was the principle in which truth must demonstrate its value in the real world. James thought that reformers should seek practical solutions to the problems of the nation.
John Dewey of the University of Chicago began pushing for educational reform. Dewey believed that schools should teach more than facts; they should also teach real-life skills through practical lessons.
Overall, many of the reform movements of the 1890’s formed the groundwork for events of the next century.
Judicial Events of the 1890’s
There was only one problem with these movements: The court system began ruling against them. State and federal judges, using the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, continually ruled for businesses when states began trying to regulate them. Courts used the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Judges began ruling that businesses were denied due process when states tried to regulate them. The Supreme Court ruled against the Sherman Anti-trust Act in 1895. The Court also ruled in Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Co. that the income tax provisions from the Wilson-Gorman Tariff were unconstitutional based on due process. The thought that consumers needed protecting from big businesses did not occur to the justices.
The justices also refused to work on behalf of black Americans. Segregation was reaching its ultimate fulfillment in the South. Louisiana passed a law prohibiting blacks from sitting in railroad cars designated for whites. Homer Plessy, a Louisiana resident who only 1/8 black, challenged the law with his arrest. (Plessy’s skin was white enough to buy the ticket for the whites only carriage.) In the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson, the Court ruled 8-1 for the Louisiana law that called for “separate but equal” facilities for blacks. Only Justice John Harlan dissented, writing that “Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.”
Segregation became the de facto law with the Plessy decision. Booker T. Washington, president of Tuskegee University, stated this reality in a speech in Atlanta in 1895 where he said, “In all the things that are purely social, we can separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.” Washington continued by advocating economic progress, saying, “The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera house.”
Unfortunately, most of Washington’s audience heard only what they wanted to hear, and they wanted to hear a leader in of American blacks accept segregation. W.E.B. DuBois, who later would help founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), passionately disagreed with Washington’s approach.
Foreign Policy
President Cleveland was uncertain about the Hawaiian crisis after the Hawaiian Republic was founded. Cleveland was almost certain the native Hawaiians were not in favor of joining America; he therefore refused to send the treaty of annexation to the Senate for ratification. Instead, the Hawaiian Republic was granted diplomatic recognition in 1894.
1894 also saw a crisis with Venezuela and Great Britain. Venezuela and the British colony of Guiana shared a disputed border. Cleveland’s administration saw British threats against Venezuela as a test of the Monroe Doctrine. While the U.S. may have lacked the ability to enforce the Doctrine in 1823, this was no longer the case. The U.S. intervened on behalf of Venezuela. The British agreed to arbitration, primarily because they were too involved in South Africa to risk a fight in South America as well.
Cuba would prove to be the American problem of the end of the century. Cuba had been a Spanish possession since Columbus landed on the island in 1492. In 1895, Cuban rebels launched a revolution seeking independence from Spain. American businesses held approximately $50 million in assets and investments in Cuba. American religious leaders were shocked at the Spanish actions in quelling the revolt.
The media in America didn’t help much. William Randolph Hearst, publisher of the New York Journal, and Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World kept the story in the public eye, complete with gruesome details designed to inflame public opinion. The public came to call these papers the yellow press.
President Cleveland tried to limit arms shipments to Cuba. Cleveland also offered to negotiate between the parties.
The 1896 Election
Cleveland was hindered from doing much by the presidential election of 1896. Although Cleveland had accomplished a great deal, the disasters of 1894 continued to resonate through the voting public. The nation’s gold reserves were depleted by the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1893. When Cleveland’s administration attempted to build the reserves by selling bonds, he was accused of enriching banker J.P. Morgan, whose financial company handled the bond sale. Democrats pushing for more silver purchases refused to back Cleveland, seeing him as a traitor to their cause.
The Republicans felt they could build on the successes of 1894. Their candidate, William McKinley of Ohio, pushed for protective tariffs that the Republicans said would boost the economy. When it came to the gold standard, the Republicans agreed to seek more use of silver in the international economy.
The Democrats were in disarray until their convention. A young Nebraskan named William Jennings Bryan, running on the elimination of the gold standard, electrified the delegates with a speech titled “Cross of Gold.” Bryan eloquently and forcefully declared, “Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” (Source: “Cross of Gold — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia”, available online: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_of_Gold).
The Democrats had little in the campaign fund, so Bryan hit the country on the run, traveling over 18,000 miles during the campaign. McKinley stayed home and made speeches in his front yard while the Republicans, flush with cash from their business backers, passed out leaflets by the millions. McKinley spoke to more than 750,000 voters who came to his home to hear him speak against free silver. Newspapers later carried his speeches. Industrial workers, who were on fixed incomes and feared inflation, voted Republican. Farmers in the South and West, seeking inflation to decrease the crushing loan debts they accumulated, voted for Bryan.
When the votes were tallied, the election wasn’t even close. McKinley won by more than 600,000 popular votes. McKinley carried the Electoral College, 271 to 176. McKinley won in the urban areas and the heavily-populated Northeast. The Republicans also dominated both Houses of Congress. The question of the gold standard was over.
Foreign Affairs: Cuba
McKinley inherited the Cuban problem from Cleveland. McKinley really wanted the Spanish to withdraw gracefully and peacefully from Cuba, but the Spanish refused to leave without a fight.
In 1897, the Spanish agreed to give Cuba a great deal of autonomy, with Madrid responsible only for foreign affairs. However, pro-Spanish Cubans rioted against this plan. In January 1898, McKinley sent the battleship Maine to monitor the situation in Havana.
In February 1898, American newspapers carried a letter supposedly intercepted from the Spanish minister to the United States describing McKinley as a weak crowd-pleaser. McKinley was not amused; the minister was fired, but not before other remarks he made suggested that Spain was merely waiting for the Americans to tire of the situation before reasserting its power over Cuba.
Then, on 15 February, the Maine exploded, carrying 260 officers and sailors to the bottom of Havana Harbor. Americans were incensed and accused Spain of sinking the battleship. (Modern research shows the Maine exploded because of a spark in a coal bin.) While he waited for a military board of inquiry to issue its findings regarding the explosion, McKinley tried to buy Cuba from Spain. The Spanish refused.
In March 1898, a Senator who visited Cuba returned with reports of atrocities committed by the Spanish against the Cubans. Meanwhile, the naval board concluded that an external explosion sank the Maine. Spain was immediately suspected. When the Spanish refused American arbitration again, McKinley sent a message to Congress requesting the authority to end the fighting, by force if necessary.. Senator Henry Teller, a Colorado Democrat, attached an amendment to the authorization stating that the United States did not intend either to control or annex Cuba. With this amendment, Congress passed a resolution authorizing McKinley to act in Cuba. Spain broke diplomatic relations and declared war on 24 April. The Spanish-American War was on.
The Spanish-American War
The first shots of the war were fired, not in Cuba, but in the Philippines. Commodore George Dewey led the American Asia naval squadron into Manila Bay on 1 May 1898 to engage the Spanish. Dewey gave the famous order, “You may fire when ready, Gridley” to the captain of his flagship. Within 6 hours, the Americans had knocked the Spanish fleet out of the war. The U.S. now controlled the Philippine Islands.
Dewey’s victory increased the value of Hawaii in American policy. In July 1898, Congress passed an annexation treaty adding Hawaii to the nation as a territory.
The situation in the Philippines deteriorated when it became clear that the Filipinos did not want to become an American colony; instead, the Filipino leadership wanted independence. The Americans began building an administration in Manila to control the Philippines as America’s foremost Asian colony. Americans also took the island of Guam.
The battles in Cuba were short and swift. The Americans landed troops at Santiago to capture the Spanish fleet. During the battle to capture Santiago, Theodore Roosevelt led his famous “Rough Riders” in a charge up San Juan Hill on 1 July. Americans took Guantanamo Bay early in the war. Most of the American casualties were caused not by Spanish bullets, but by Cuban mosquitos.
The American naval fleet destroyed the Spanish fleet when it tried to escape from Santiago’s harbor on 3 July. The Spanish fleet was hampered by technical difficulties, including defective guns (1 ship still had wooden “dummy” guns in one of its turrets when it sailed from Spain) and shells that had been stuffed with sawdust rather than gunpowder to save money. Every Spanish ship was destroyed, with hundreds killed. The American fleet lost no ships and suffered 2 deaths and 100 wounded.
The loss of the fleet signaled the end of Spanish rule over Cuba or anything else in the Caribbean. Spain accepted a peace treaty on 12 August 1898, mere weeks after the war began. The U.S. lost only 281 officers and men in battle, but the nation lost more than 2,500 troops to yellow fever and malaria. Spain lost Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, not to mention 2 fleets it was hard pressed to replace. Soon-to-be Secretary of State John Hay called the Spanish-American War “a splendid little war.”
American Imperialism: The Fate of the Philippines
McKinley had a problem on his hands. Public sentiment did not support keeping the Philippines as a colony. After all, America had won her independence from an empire; why should our nation become an empire at this stage of history? However, McKinley knew that both Japan and Germany were hungrily eyeing the islands for bases of their own should the U.S. withdraw.
McKinley took his decision to keep the Philippines straight to the American people during the elections of 1898. McKinley toured the Midwest stating his case. Opponents of his policy tried to block the peace treaty in the Senate. McKinley pulled every political favor he could to win ratification. On 6 February 1899, the Senate ratified the Treaty of Paris that ended the war. America kept the territory it gained and paid Spain $20 million for what it lost.
The Filipinos were not happy. When the Senate was voting on the treaty, a guerilla war had already begun. McKinley had argued that the U.S. needed to keep the islands “to Christianize and civilize” the Filipinos. (The fact that the Filipinos had been Christian for centuries was lost on McKinley.) Instead, McKinley found himself with a full-scale war on his hands. The U.S. Army won conventional battles, but the Filipinos kept the guerilla war going. The Army responded with harsh measures that lessened Americans’ desire to keep the islands. Back home, the battle raged over whether the United States — a nation founded on republican ideals — could successfully become an empire.
Cuban affairs were far more settled. The McKinley administration did not want Cuba to win independence from Spain, only to lose it to another European power (mainly Germany). Therefore, the Platt Amendment of 1901 barred Cuba from allying itself with any other foreign power. The U.S. gained permanent rights to a naval base at Guantanamo Bay and the right to intervene in Cuban affairs if it deemed it necessary.
China: The Open Door Policy
China had been carved into several “spheres of influence” by the Europeans during the 19th century. The Europeans had stopped just short of outright colonization of the nation. The U.S. found itself wanting to trade with China, but without any of the bases the Europeans had gained from the Qing dynasty.
Secretary of State John Hay issued America’s “Open Door Policy” in a series of notes in September 1899. These notes declared the U.S. was averse to any colonization in China. Hay also asked European powers to allow trading privileges to American companies. Although most European nations did not respond with great enthusiasm, Hay took their lackluster responses as affirmatives.
The Open Door Policy was sorely tested in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion. The Americans sent 2,500 soldiers with other European armies to relieve the diplomatic compound in Beijing from a siege by the Qing army and the Boxers. It seemed for a while as if the Europeans would finally depose the Qing dowager empress and impose European control over the entire nation. Hay, however, stated the U.S. would have nothing to do with any action threatening China’s sovereignty, and McKinley withdrew American troops once the diplomatic compound was saved.
The Central American Canal
The U.S. took another step toward becoming a world power when McKinley pursued a canal across Central America. Britain and the U.S. had negotiated a treaty in 1850 prohibiting either nation from colonizing any nation in Central America. This treaty prevented either nation from building a canal across the isthmus and then prohibiting the other power from using the canal. McKinley renegotiated the treaty in 1901, giving the U.S. a clear path to build a canal.
The 1900 Elections
Given McKinley’s foreign successes, and the fact that the economy was finally rebounding, his reelection was virtually assured. McKinley’s vice-president had died, so McKinley chose the popular Theodore Roosevelt as his running mate. Roosevelt made the speeches, McKinley stayed in Washington, and Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan (again) made little sense to anyone. McKinley won the electoral vote 292 to 155.
The Army captured the Filipino leader in 1901, bringing the war there to an end. The Supreme Court ruled in 1901 that the Philippines and Puerto Rico were possessions of the U.S. but that their inhabitants were not citizens of the U.S.
On the domestic front, McKinley began working to enforce the Sherman Anti-trust Act for the first time. McKinley had also come to believe that the U.S. needed another mechanism for foreign trade than a protective tariff.
McKinley was poised to take the nation into the 20th century. His presidency came to a crashing end on 6 September 1901 with his assassination. “Teddy” Roosevelt would become the president who presided over America’s entry into the American Century.