Historical Events, Unions, and Economic Issues in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries -, Study notes of World History

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Wounded Knee – The name of a famous indian massacre by US armed forces. Took place on indian reservation near wounded knee creek in south dakota. Considered the last battle between US forces and Indians. Prime cause was attempting to stop the Indians from ghost dancing. Freedman’s Bureau – a US federal government agency. Created during the Reconstruction Era following the Civil war. Meant to help freed slaves integrate into the US by providing services. Was to help freed blacks get food, housing, and jobs. Gave out land and mules to some blacks. Didn’t last long because it was considered too radical. Achieved creating education system in the south. Industrial Workers of the World – A labor union. Also known as the wobblies. Formed by and made up of socialist, anarchists, and radicals in opposition to the American Federation of Labor. Goal was to promote the working class in the struggle to over throw the employing class. Dawes Act – Allowed the US government to take up Indian land and split it as it saw fit between each indian. The stated objective/ reasoning was to help assimilate Indians into society. US was now able to give away some of the indian land after moving them around, many times into small reservations. Open Door – A concept of foreign affairs promoted by the US due to its lack of military power. Concept was that all countries were able to freely trade with any given country and no other country be in country of that country. Such a policy would allow the US to control other countries through the economy. This would also allow the US to trade with countries that were being taken over that the US couldn’t take over. Dollar diplomacy – effort from US to expand economically to Latin America and East Asian by guaranteeing loans made to foreign countries. Goal was to create stability abroad while promoting American commercial interests. Haymarket – A event of industrial workers on strike turned into a massacre. There was conflict between the police and the people and strike and a bomb was thrown in by an unknown individual and upon explosion set off a gun fight between police and the workers. Anarchist were blamed for the bombing and were convicted in court. Emilio Aguinaldo – A Philipino Leader. Became the first president. He was a very important character in Philiepines independace. He helped a vital role in the revolution against Spain. Also lead the resistance against American occupation of the Philipines. Espionage Act – act passed by US gov after entering WWI. Aim was to prevent interference with the gov’s military actions such as recruiting. Basically went against the first amendment by prohibiting free speech. The grange – a organization for American farmers. Founded after civil war due to agricultural problems in competing with the industrial revolution. Originally was a social org. started seller and buyer coorperatives in addition to its own banks and insurance companies. Aim was to provide farmers with better loans and insurance. Upkeep cost was high due to economy.

The great uprising - also known as the great railroad strike was a roit on railroads. Bosses cut workers cost so workers decide to stop working. Bosses hire scabs to replace workers but rioters prevent. National movement. Created knights of labor. It was put down by state militia and fed troops. Lead to creation of 8 hour workday and better wages. Pullman – A a town operated by a company of the same name that made train cars. People in the town worked for the company were paid by pullman, and bought all their necessities from Pullman. Pullman decides to cut wages and workers take Part of American Railroad union and go on strike. When company couldn’t get state to break strike, they got the fed gov to bring in troops to break. Pure drug and food act – US fed law that required inspection of meat. also prohibited sale of adulterated meat or poisonous meds. Act came from foul company practices being revealed by muckrakers such as upton Sinclair. Lead to smaller companies going out of business. Vladmir lenin – A Russian promoter of Marxism and communism. He as leader of Bolsheviks he became head of soviet state. He worked towards controling Russia in a socialist economic society and spreading socialism. League of nations – International org/alliance of nations. Created after WWI at the paris peace conference in versailies. Woodrow Wilson strongly advocated for the creation of such an organization but was flawed because it had no power. Mark Twain – an American author. Many of his writing depict his views of American society. One of the most well known term coined from his writing is the guilded age. The guilded age as twain called was a time when things in American society looked good from the outside, but on the inside things were not going so well. WEB DuBois – An Afrian American author and civil rights activist. Graduated with a doctorate from Harvard and established national association for the advancement of colored people. Fought for equal rights for blacks and against racism. Eugene Victor Debs – An American union leader. Also a socialist Helped found the international labor union and industrial workers of the world. Nominated as presidential candidate for socialist party several times. Overproduction – referring to the excess of producer’s supply over consumer demand, something prevalent in American agriculture in 1890s. prices for agriculture products go down so farmers produce more to make the same amount of money leading to overproduction. After market demands are met prices drop even more leading to a market deflation and making money hard to get. Bimetallism – One of the populists party’s most advocated reform. Meant that the economy should use both gold and silver for currency at a ratio of 1 to 16. Would help with the econmy’s problem of deflation and scarcity of money by making more money avalible.

Social Darwinism – idea of natural selection applied to social and economic issues. That the rich and wealth will survive and deserve to survive while the poor suffers. Surplus capital – one of the causes of the great depression. It is the money not being invested back into a business. Occurs when all consumers have products and no more products can be sold. Economy gets stuck. Upton Sinclair – a muckraker and huge advocated of socialism. Wrote money books including the jungle which revealed the horrors of the meat industry to the rest of America and lead to the creation of the pure food and drug act. Came up with EPIC (end poverty in cali). Wanted the gov to buy up closed factories and farms and then give to people to run them. Franscis Townsend – An American best known for his old age pension proposal and clubs which would provide a source of income once someone became too old to work. He greatly influenced FDR’s social security system. The Lusitania – a british ocean liner. It was sunk by german u-boats. Had both European and American passangers on board. In addition Arms were found on board. It sinking was used as a symbol in recruiting soilders to fight in WWI. Dawes plan – A plan intended to help the world economy recover. The US gave Germany some money to invest and rebuild its economy but it used it instead to pay of reparations to france and britian. France and britian then used that money to pay off loans to the US instead of investing and reparing their economy. This cycle lead to the money ending up back where it began and was a failure. Wagner act – US legislation intended to help organized labor. It limited what employers could do to workers within unions. Gave all rights to form unions and created a process for it. Allowed workers to be in unions not part of the company. Buck vs bell – a supreme court ruling that was in favor of instituting compulsory sterilization of unfit. This included the mentally retarded for the health of the state. Seen as a way to improve the human race by getting rid of defective genes. Fredrick Taylor – a mechanical engineer who researched to improve industrial efficiency. Father of scientific management and management consultant. Employers would have him come in see how workers work and come up with the most effective way to work to produce the most output. Huey Long – senator from Louisiana. The kingfish. socialist Created a share our wealth program which would redistribute wealth. Gathered many people in his movement that was similar to communism. Open Door - Farmers face a lot of problems, while Rockefeller and Carnegie made huge wealth and made America powerful. Which force many workers and farmers intro different kind of work with lost of independence, surge to immigration and created poor working class against the new order. This started the uprising like the Great Uprising, Haymarket or Pullman, unemployed workers marched to Washington to seek for a relief, and population rose up to millions of Americans to attack the gilded

economy. The ruling class wanted to stop this movement and find a solution to the economic problems. As a result, U.S. would move abroad and acquire foreign land. In 1890, the first period America looked abroad, where they are seeking for foreign markets for its raw material and manufactured goods. This idea was called free trade system, instead of trading with the colonies. American wanted a system where all countries traded with other another, without barrier and tariffs. It became know The Open Door, meaning the trade place freely, as through open door, instead of obstacles that certain countries over others. This made U.S. most powerful economic country of world because of the industrial output and trade. Wounded Knee- Indian genocide massacre (December 29, 1890) South Dakota; It was a massacre of Indians caused by Poor Leadership of the army; Poor training of the Army and a failure to communicate with a special needs Indian. In the attempts to persuade the Souix Indians into signing away more of their Reservation, because of the harassment Indians tried to avoid the army. The U.S. army or the Calvary surrounded the Indians at Wounded Knee Creek on the Lakota Souix Pine Ridge Reservation. While trying to disarm the Indians, an accidental shot was fired by a deaf Indian, Black Coyote. Hearing the shot, the army immediately reacted and opened fire to all surrounded Indians. Killing over 300 natives and many United States soldiers “friendly fire” victims. Industrial Workers of the World – Founded in the 1930’s; The Wobblies, members of The Industrial Workers of the World, also known as I.W.W, was a revolutionary industrial organization who represented all workers, skilled or unskilled, black or white male or female. Through methods including boycott, strike, and propaganda, the Wobblies mission was to overthrow capitalism and rebuild society on a more socialistic foundation. Strictly through direct action, the Wobblies hoped to increase wages, shorten work hours, and provide safer working conditions for all people. The leaders advocated the use of violence in order to see change in society. Faced with conflict, The Wobblies were overpowered by the federal government. All member leaders were arrested and the organization was dissolved. Eugene Victor Debs- In 1894, the economy was a mess and the railroad stayed terribly unsafe. Eugene Debs, who was the head of the American Railway Union, called for a strike for industrial workers in

1877. But the head of the largest American Union Samuel Gompers of the AFL, refused the strike because he view that workers should worry about getting Better wage than the issues and railway strike was broken. Mark Twain- The American Famous novelist, who created the term, gilded age to describe the era after the Civil War. Twain meant about gilded age is, gild is a thing covering, usually made by gold, to trick the viewer that its something valuable but its not. The gild, describe it as a rotting structure. Along with capitalism creating great production and wealth, Twain is more into how is this impacting to the workers’ lives and attacked it. Many workers lost their cultures and habits, and had to move to the cities and living in poor conditions. For Twain this is a rotting economic structure.