19th C. Post-War American Industrialization Thesis Statement

19th c. Post-War American Industrialization

THESIS STATEMENT AND OUTLINE FOR A PAPER ON AMERICAN INDUSTRIALIZATION AFTER THE U.S. CIVIL WAR (1865-1920)

It is a truism that large-scale warfare tends to increase industrial production and innovation, and that societies benefit from this industrialization after the war is over. In America, the Civil War was followed by the economic prosperity of the Gilded Age -- I would like to argue that the chief effect of this prosperity was to cause new conflicts in American society, which had to be settled by reform rather than Civil War.

This paper will focus on three separate aspects of industrialization: (A) Child labor and other exploitative economic practices / (B) Economic instability / (C) Economic inequality. Aspect (A) will include discussions of child labor in the time period covered, and also discussions of the role played by economics in post-war racial issues (Jim Crow), the radicalization of various populations oppressed by the new economic climate, and the calls for reform. Aspect (B) will cover the financial panics of the Gilded Age, and how they caused such things as the Populist and Free Silver movements. And Aspect (C) will look at the politics of the Gilded Age.

The paper discusses five specific groups affected by industrialization:

(1) Child laborers: This portion of the paper will begin with a discussion Sarah Cleghorn's poem "The Golf Links" (about child labor in a context of unprecedented prosperity) and will examine the reform of child labor laws in the time period covered.

(2) Midwestern Agrarian populations: This portion of the paper will discuss the reaction of agrarian populations to financial panics in the later 19th century that were caused by increased stock market speculation. Include the discussion of the Populist movement, the free coinage of silver and William Jennings Bryan and Coin's Financial School, and White's "What's the Matter with Kansas?"

(3) Oligarchs and Politicians: Discuss the emergence in the later 19th century of the U.S. Senate as "Millionaires' Club," and the effect that industrialization had on promoting U.S. Imperialism. This will focus on George Hearst (plutocrat and U.S. Senator from California) and his son William Randolph Hearst (and his role in promoting McKinley's war with Spain, over the broad objections of many). A chief reference for this portion of the paper will be the book The American Political Tradition by Richard Hofstadter, with a focus on his chapter "The Spoilsmen: An Age of Cynicism," with its examination of the negative effects had by economic inequality on the political process.

(4) Freed slaves: describe the new industrial climate of the later 19th century as being radically destabilizing for poor white populations in the South, and thus being an encouragement to increased nativism and racial segregation, with the rise of Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan. The chief reference for this portion of the paper will be the book Worse Than Slavery, which describes the new system of penal labor devised in the South, as a way to imprison a large portion of the African-American workforce and use them to provide free labor within the new economic climate.

(5) Political reformers and radicals: Focus on the emergence of the Progressive movement with Robert LaFollette as an example, the embrace of reform (and trustbusting) by Theodore Roosevelt, and the radicalization of certain sectors of the working class, with reference to the Haymarket Riot and to the assassination of President McKinley by Leon Czolgosz.

This paper will focus on the following 5 ways in which post-war industrialization affected the lives of average working Americans:

(1) Economic inequality -- looking at the rise of the oligarchical overclass in the Gilded Age

(2) Economic instability -- looking at the Panic of 1873 and the six-year economic depression that followed it, and how economic instability resulted in the Free Silver movement and other reactions on the part of economically vulnerable workers like farmers