HIST 104 - Spring, 1998 - Test 1 - - Review Sheet (part 1)

Reading: Bailey & Kennedy: chs. 24 (512-531), 25, 26 (ex.580-581), 27, 28

coursepack: #s3-6

Sources: Primary & secondary sources: definitions, applications, relevance for historians

- Corruption at national and local levels: Credit Mobilier, corruption of railroad land deals - urban party "organizations" - Boss Tweed and all he represented

- politics of race, nativism & slander: 1884 election & significance

Industrialization & Labor Organization

- context: background of Civil War, labor flow

- Use of new technologies: Bessemer process, electricity harnessing, light, telephone

- use of resources; coal, steel - growth of large monopolies: RR's, oil, steel, banking

philosophy: laissez-faire, Social Darwinism

- how did growing industrialization feed an emergent consumer society?

- Growth of unions, Knights of labor, American Federation of Labor: translate/connect political goals with methods, ideology & strategy of worker consciousness

- "new" vs. "old" immigration: experience of passage, landing, emergence as new citizens & backlash: nativism: key groups: Chinese, Italians, Jews, Eastern Europeans

- A growing urban society: dynamic administrative middle class as part of industrial process

Western Expansion; motives, spurs to expansion - Homestead Act (significance), RR's "safety valve" theory, opening up of Plains, "long drives" - effects on Indians: great cultural clash: war: 1860-1890-meaning, outcomes-Dawes Act

Populists - roots in Granges, Greenbackers - agrarian political organization- Who were they, why did they become prominent? contextual understanding - how did they tap into larger, more significant understanding and feelings about the nation in 1890's?

Possible Essay Questions: (1 of these will be on the test)

1. Describe the significant economic changes & social effects of those changes that took place in the late 19th century. Who did these changes benefit? Who did it hurt? How did popular culture, intellectual and political trends reflect these changes?

2. Choose 3 significant individuals from the period & create an argument that each of these individuals represented important aspects of the American society in the late 19th century. Also, explain the degree to which each of these three persons is relevant for the modern United States?