History 202 A.N.
Smith
The
American People
WEEK ONE: September 6-8
A Sharecrop Contract (1882)
This is a typical contractual agreement between a landowner and sharecropper. The system ensured that the sharecropper remained poor and in debt to the owner and therefore might never become an independent farmer.
To every one applying to rent land upon shares, the following conditions must be read, and agreed to.
To every 30 and 35 acres, I agree to
furnish the team, plow, and farming implements, except cotton planters, and I
do not agree to furnish a cart to every cropper. The croppers are to have half
of the cotton, corn, and fodder (and peas and pumpkins and potatoes if any are
planted) if the following conditions are complied with, but-if not-they are to
have only two-fifths (2/5). Croppers are to have no part
or interest in the cotton seed raised from the crop planted and worked by them.
No vine crops of any description, that is, no watermelons, muskmelons, . . .
squashes or anything of that kind, except peas and pumpkins, and potatoes, are
to be planted in the cotton or corn. All must work under my direction. All
plantation work to be done by the croppers. My part of the crop to be housed by
them, and the fodder and oats to be hauled and put in the house. All the cotton
must be topped about 1st August. If any cropper fails from any cause to save
all the fodder from his crop, I am to have enough fodder to make it equal to
one-half of the whole if the whole amount of fodder had been saved.
For every mule or horse furnished by
me there must be 1000 good sized rails. . . hauled, and the fence repaired as
far as they will go, the fence to be torn down and put up from the bottom if I
so direct. All croppers to haul rails and work on fence whenever I may order.
Rails to be split when I may say. Each cropper to clean out every ditch in his
crop, and where a ditch runs between two croppers, the cleaning out of that
ditch is to be divided equally between them. Every ditch bank in the crop must
be shrubbed down and cleaned off before the crop is planted and must be cut
down every time the land is worked with his hoe and when the crop is "laid
by," the ditch banks must be left clean of bushes, weeds, and seeds. The
cleaning out of all ditches must be done by the first of October. The rails
must be split and the fence repaired before corn is planted.
Each cropper must keep in good repair
all bridges in his crop or over ditches that he has to clean out and when a
bridge needs repairing that is outside of all their crops, then any one that I
call on must repair it.
Fence jams to be done as ditch banks.
If any cotton is planted on the land outside of the plantation fence, I am to
have three-fourths of all the cotton made in those patches, that is to say, no
cotton must be planted by croppers in their home patches.
All croppers must clean out stable
and fill them with straw, and haul straw in front of stable whenever I direct.
All the cotton must be manured, and enough fertilizer must be brought to manure
each crop highly, the croppers to pay for one-half of all manure bought, the
quantity to be purchased for each crop must be left to me.
No cropper is to work off the
plantation when there is any work to be done on the land he has rented, or when
his work is needed by me or other croppers. Trees to be cut down on Orchard,
house field, & Evanson fences, leaving such as I may designate.
Road field is to be planted from the
very edge of the ditch to the fence, and all the land to be planted close up to
the ditches and fences. No stock of any kind belonging to croppers to run in
the plantation after crops are gathered.
If the fence should be blown down, or
if trees should fall on the fence outside of the land planted by any of the
croppers, any one or all that I may call upon must put it up and repair it.
Every cropper must feed or have fed, the team he works, Saturday nights,
Sundays, and every morning before going to work, beginning to feed his team
(morning, noon, and night every day in the week) on the day he rents and
feeding it to including the 31st day of December. If any cropper shall from any
cause fail to repair his fence as far as 1000 rails will go, or shall fail to
clean out any part of his ditches, or shall fail to leave his ditch banks, any
part of them, well shrubbed and clean when his crop is laid by, or shall fail
to clean out stables, fill them up and haul straw in front of them whenever he
is told, he shall have only two-fifths (2/5) of the
cotton, corn, fodder, peas, and pumpkins made on the land he cultivates.
If any cropper shall fail to feed his
team Saturday nights, all day Sunday and all the rest of the week,
morning/noon, and night, for every time he so fails he must pay me five cents.
No corn or cotton stalks must be
burned, but must be cut down, cut up and plowed in. Nothing must be burned off
the land except when it is impossible to plow it in.
Every cropper must be responsible for
all gear and farming implements placed in his hands, and if not returned must
be paid for unless it is worn out by use.
Croppers must sow & plow in oats
and haul them to the crib, but must have no part of them. Nothing to be sold
from their crops, nor fodder nor corn to be carried out of the fields until my
rent is all paid, and all amounts they owe me and for which I am responsible
are paid in full.
I am to gin & pack all the cotton
and charge every cropper an eighteenth of his part, the cropper to furnish his
part of the bagging, ties, & twine.
The sale of every cropper's part of
the cotton to be made by me when and where I choose to sell, and after
deducting all they owe me and all sums that I may be responsible for on their
accounts, to pay them their half of the net proceeds. Work of every
description, particularly the work on fences and ditches, to be done to my
satisfaction, and must be done over until I am satisfied that it is done as it
should be.
No wood to burn, nor light wood, nor
poles, nor timber for boards, nor wood for any purpose whatever must be gotten
above the house occupied by Henry Beasley-nor must any trees be cut down nor
any wood used for any purpose, except for firewood, without my permission.
Document Analysis
1. According to this contract, what are the responsibilities of the
sharecropper?
2. According to this contract, what are the responsibilities of the landowner?
3. What do you foresee will happen ten years after the sharecropper signs this
contract? If the sharecropper fails, what options does he or she have? What
options does the landowner have?
Address from the Colored Citizens of Norfolk, Virginia,
to the People of the United States" (1865)
The period immediately after the Civil War in the South was chaotic. Slavery had been abolished, but there was no standard system to take its place. Black and white southerners faced a world that had changed dramatically, and some whites fought to maintain a system that closely approximated slavery. The document below describes the conditions black southerners faced in 1865, and it includes a plea to northerners for assistance. Although the document details numerous obstacles to achieving true freedom, it asks for northern aid in attaining the one right that many former slaves felt would be of greatest benefit: the right to vote.
[We] believe our present position is by no means so well understood among the loyal masses of the country, otherwise there would be no delay in granting us the express relief which the nature of the case demands. It must not be forgotten that it is the general assumption, in the South, that the effects of the immortal Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln go no further than the emancipation of the Negroes then in slavery, and that it is only constructively even, that that Proclamation can be said, in any legal sense, to have abolished slavery, and even the late constitutional amendment, if duly ratified, can go no further; neither touch, nor can touch, the slave codes of the various southern States, and the laws respecting free people of color consequent therefrom, which, having been passed before the act of secession, are presumed to have lost none of their vitality, but exist, as a convenient engine for our oppression, until repealed by special acts of the State legislature.
By these laws, in many of the
southern States, it is still a crime for colored men to learn or be taught to
read, and their children are doomed to ignorance; there is no provision for
insuring the legality of our marriages; we have no right to hold real estate;
the public streets and the exercise of our ordinary occupations are forbidden
us unless we can produce passes from our employers, or licenses from certain
officials; in some States the whole free Negro population is legally liable to
exile from the place of its birth, for no crime but that of color; we have no
means of legally making or enforcing contracts of any description; we have no
right to testify before the courts in any case in which a white man is one of
the parties to the suit, we are taxed without representation, and, in short, so
far as legal safeguards of our rights are concerned, we are defenceless before
our enemies. While this is our position as regards our legal status, before the
State laws, we are still more unfortunately situated as regards our late
masters.
The people of the North, owing to the
greater interest excited by war, have heard little or nothing, for the past
four years, of the blasphemous and horrible theories formerly propounded for
the defence and glorification of human slavery, in the press, the pulpit and
legislatures of the southern States; but, though they may have forgotten them,
let them be assured that these doctrines have by no means faded from the minds
of the people of the South; they cling to these delusions still, and only hug
them closer for their recent defeat.
Worse than all, they have returned to
their homes, with all their old pride and contempt for the Negro transformed
into bitter hate for the new-made freeman, who aspires for the suppression of
their rebellion. That this charge is not unfounded, the manner in which it has
been recently attempted to enforce the laws above referred to proves. In
Richmond, during the three days sway of the rebel Mayor Mayo, over 800 colored
people were arrested, simply for walking the streets without a pass; in the
neighboring city of Portsmouth, a Mayor has just been elected, on the avowed
platform that this is a white man's government, and our enemies have been heard
to boast openly, that soon not a colored man shall be left in the city; in the
greater number of counties in this State, county meetings have been held, at
which resolutions have been adopted deploring, while accepting, the
abolition of slavery, but going on to pledge the planters composing the
meeting, to employ no Negroes save such as were formerly owned by themselves,
without a written recommendation from their late employers, and threatening
violence towards those who should do so, thereby keeping us in a state of
serfdom, and preventing our free selection of our employers; they have also
pledged themselves, in no event, to pay their late adult slaves more than $60
per year for their labor.
In the future, out of which, with
characteristic generosity, they have decided that we are to find clothes for
ourselves and families, and pay our taxes and doctors' bills; in many of the
more remote districts individual planters are to be found who still refuse to
recognize their Negroes as free, forcibly retaining the wives and children of
their late escaped slaves; cases have occurred, not far from Richmond itself,
in which an attempt to leave the plantation has been punished by shooting to
death; and finally, there are numbers of cases, known to ourselves, in the
immediate vicinity of this city, in which a faithful performance, by colored
men, of the duties or labor contracted for, has been met by a contemptuous and
violent refusal of the stipulated compensation.
These are facts, and yet the men
doing these things are, in many cases, loud in their professions of attachment
to the restored Union, while committing these outrages on the most faithful
friends that Union can ever have. Even well known Union men have often been
found among our oppressors; witness the action of the Tennessee legislature in
imposing unheard of disabilities upon us, taking away from us, and giving to
the County Courts, the right of disposing of our children, by apprenticing them
to such occupations as the court, not their parents, may see fit to adopt for
them, and in this very city, and under the protection of military law, some of
our white friends who have nobly distinguished themselves by their efforts in
our behalf, have been threatened with arrest by a Union Mayor of this city, for
their advocacy of the cause of freedom.
Fellow citizens, the performance of a
simple act of justice on your part will reverse all this; we ask for no
expensive aid from military forces, stationed throughout the South, overbearing
State action, and rendering our government republican only in name; give us the
suffrage, and you may rely upon us to secure justice for ourselves, and all
Union men, and to keep the State forever in the Union.
While we urge you to this act of
simple justice to ourselves, there are many reasons why you should concede us
this right in your own interest. It cannot be that you contemplate with
satisfaction a prolonged military occupation of the southern States, and yet,
without the existence of a larger loyal constituency than, at present, exists
in these States, a military occupation will be absolutely necessary, to protect
the white Union men of the South, as well as ourselves, and if not absolutely
to keep the States in the Union, it will be necessary to prevent treasonable
legislation. . . .
You have not unreasonably complained
of the operation of that clause of the Constitution which has hitherto
permitted the slaveocracy of the South to wield the political influence which
would be represented by a white population equal to three-fifths of the whole
Negro population; but slavery is now abolished, and henceforth the
representation will be in proportion to the enumeration of the whole population
of the South, including people of color, and it is worth your
consideration if it is desirable or politic that the fomenters of this
rebellion against the Union, which has been crushed at the expense of so much
blood and treasure, should find themselves, after defeat, more powerful than
ever, their political influence enhanced by the additional voting power of the
other two-fifths of the colored population, by which means four Southern votes
will balance in the Congressional and Presidential elections at least seven
Northern ones.
The honor of your country should be
dear to you, as it is, but is that honor advanced, in the eyes of the Christian
world, when America alone, of all Christian nations, sustains an unjust
distinction against four millions and a half of her most loyal people, on the
senseless ground of a difference in color? You are anxious that the attention
of every man, of every State legislature, and of Congress, should be
exclusively directed to redressing the injuries sustained by the country in the
late contest; are these objects more likely to be effected amid the political
distractions of an embarrassing Negro agitation? You are, above all, desirous
that no future intestine wars should mar the prosperity and destroy the
happiness of the country; will your perfect security from such evils be
promoted by the existence of a colored population of four millions and a half,
placed, by your enactments, outside the pale of the Constitution, discontented
by oppression, with an army of 200,000 colored soldiers, whom you have drilled,
disciplined, and armed, but whose attachment to the State you have failed to
secure by refusing them citizenship? You are further anxious that your
government should be an example to the world of true Republican institutions;
but how can you avoid the charge of inconsistency if you leave one eighth of
the population of the whole country without any political rights, while
bestowing these rights on every immigrant who comes to these shores, perhaps
from a despotism, under which he could never exercise the least political
right, and had no means of forming any conception of their proper use? . . .
It is hardly necessary here to refute
any of the slanders with which our enemies seek to prove our unfitness for the
exercise of the right of suffrage. It is true, that many of our people are
ignorant, but for that these very men are responsible, and decency
should prevent their use of such an argument. But if our people are
ignorant, no people were ever more orderly and obedient to the laws; and no
people ever displayed greater earnestness in the acquisition of knowledge.
Among no other people could such a revolution have taken place without scenes
of license and bloodshed; but in this case, and we say it advisedly, full
information of the facts will show that no single disturbance, however slight,
has occurred which has not resulted from the unprovoked aggression of white
people, and, if any one doubts how fast the ignorance, which has hitherto
cursed our people, is disappearing, 'mid the light of freedom, let him visit
the colored schools of this city and neighborhood, in which between two and
three thousand pupils are being taught, while, in the evening, in colored
schools may be seen, after the labors of the day, hundreds of our adult
population from budding manhood to hoary age, toiling, with intensest
eagerness, to acquire the invaluable arts of reading and writing, and the
rudimentary branches of knowledge.
One other objection only will we
notice; it is that our people are lazy and idle; and, in support of this
allegation, the objectors refer to the crowds of colored people subsisting on
Government rations, and flocking into the towns. To the first statement we
reply that we are poor, and that thousands of our young and able-bodied men,
having been enlisted in the army to fight the battles of their country, it is
but reasonable that that country should contribute something to the support of
those whose natural protectors that country has taken away. With reference to
the crowds collected round the military posts and in the cities, we say that
though some may have come there under misapprehensions as to the nature of the
freedom they have just received, yet this is not the case with the majority;
the colored man knows that freedom means freedom to labor, and to enjoy its
fruits, and in that respect evinces at least an equal appreciation of his new
position with his late owners; if he is not to be found laboring for these late
owners, it is because he cannot trust them, and feels safe, in his new-found
freedom, nowhere out of the immediate presence of the national forces; if the
planters want his labor (and they do) fair wages and fair treatment will not
fail to secure it.
In conclusion, we wish to advise our
colored brethren of the State and nation, that the settlement of this question
is to a great extent dependent on them, and that supineness on their part will
do as much to delay if not defeat the full recognition of their rights as the
open opposition of avowed enemies. Then be up and active, and everywhere let
associations be formed having for their object the agitation, discussion and
enforcement of your claims to equality before the law, and equal rights of
suffrage. Your opponents are active; be prepared, and organize to resist their
efforts. We would further advise that all political associations of colored
men, formed within the limits of the State of Virginia, should communicate the
fact of their existence, with the names and post office addresses of their
officers, to Joseph T. Wilson, Norfolk, Va., in order that communication and
friendly cooperation may be kept up between the different organizations, and
facilities afforded for common and united State action, should occasion require
it.
Document Analysis
1. What appeals did this document make to northerners? How did this document
describe the benefits northerners would gain from working to promote black male
suffrage?
2. How had the daily lives of black southerners changed since the war? Which
conditions had remained the same? Were any circumstances worse than during
slavery?
3. What advice did this document offer to southern black people? How did it
advise them to work to expand their freedom?
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Confederate Song, “I’m a Good Old Rebel,” by R. B.
Buckley. (1866)
From Songs of the Civil War: First Recordings from Original Editions (New York: New World Records, 1976).
Songs have been a
popular way to express political opinions throughout U.S. history. “Yankee
Doodle Dandy” spread rapidly during the Revolutionary era, and “We Shall
Overcome” is generally associated with the 1960s Civil Rights movement. In
contrast, the song lyrics below are a bit more obscure, although they express
the opinions of some southerners after the Confederate defeat in the Civil War.
Note: Many of the words are spelled phonetically to reflect one type of southern accent. You may find it helpful to read the lyrics out loud in order to decipher their meaning.
O I’m a good old Rebel,
Now that’s just what I am,
For this “Fair Land of Freedom”
I do not care AT ALL;
I’m glad I fit against it,
I only wish we’d won,
And I don’t want no pardon
For anything I done.
I hates the Constitution,
This great Republic too,
I hates the Freedman’s Buro,
In uniforms of blue;
I hates the nasty Eagle,
With all his braggs and fuss,
The lyin’, thievin’ Yankees,
I hates ’em wuss and wuss.
I hates the Yankee nation
And everything they do,
I hates the Declaration
Of Independence, too;
I hates the glorious Union—
’Tis dripping with our blood—
I hates their striped banner,
I fit it all I could.
I followed old mas’ Robert
For four year near about,
Got wounded in three places
And starved at Pint Lookout.
I cotch the roomatism
A campin’ in the snow,
But I killed a chance o’ Yankees,
I’d like to kill some mo’.
Three hundred thousand Yankees
Is still in Southern dust;
We got three hundred thousand
Before they conquered us;
They died of Southern fever
And Southern steel and shot,
I wish they was three million
Instead of what we got.
I can’t take up my musket
And fight ’em now no more,
But I ain’t going to love ’em,
Now that is sarten sure;
And I don’t want no pardon
For what I was and am,
I won’t be reconstructed
And I don’t care a dam.
Document Analysis
1. What was the “Freedmen’s Buro”? Who was “old mas’ Robert”? What was “Pint
Lookout”?
2. What is the reference in the last paragraph?
3. Even if you did not know this song was from 1866, how could you estimate
its year of origin?
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Hannah Irwin Describes a Ku Klux Klan Ride (Late 1860s)
The document that appears below is a fascinating example of the small number of existing narratives by former slaves. The narrator recounts her first-hand experience with the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama during Reconstruction. This narrative probably was transcribed during the WPA projects of the 1930s.
Ku Klux Rides When de Niggers Starts Trouble.
On a high knoll overlooking the
winding Chewalla Creek is a little one room shack. Its rusty hinges and
weather-beaten boards have seen many a glowing sunset; have stood against many
high winds and rains; they have for many years sheltered Aunt Hannah Irwin,
ex-slave. Now the old Negro woman is too old and feeble to venture very often
from her small home. She lives almost in solitude with her memories of the
past, and an occasional visit from one of her old friends who perhaps brings
her some fruit or a little money.
“Yas’m, I’ll be pleased to tell you
‘bout when I remembers aroun’ de time of de War.” Aunt Hannah sat stolidly in a
chair that virtually groaned under her weight; and gave utterance to this
sentiment through a large thick mouth, while her gold ear rings shook with
every turn of her head, and her dim eyes glowed with memory’s fires. “Dere
ain’t much I can tell you, dough,” she went on, “kaze I wuz only twelve years
old when de war ended.
“I wuz bawn on Marse Bennett’s
plantation near Louisville, Alabama. Ma Mammy’s name wuz Hester an’ my pappy
wuz named Sam.
“I remembers one night raght atter de
war when de re’struction wuz a-goin’ on. Dere wuz some niggers not far fum our
place dat said dey wuz a-goin’ to take some lan’ dat warn’t deres. Dere massa
had been kilt in de war an’ warn’t nobody ‘ceptin’ de mistis an’ some chilluns.
Well, Honey, dem niggers, mo’ dan one hundred of ‘em, commenced a riot an’
a-takin’ things dat don’t belong to ‘em. Dat night de white lady she come ober
to our place wid a wild look on her face. She tell Massa Bennet, whut dem
niggers is up to, an’ wid out sayin’ a word massa Bennett, putt his hat on and
lef’ out de do’. Twarn’t long atter dat when some hosses wuz heered down de
road, an’ I look out my cabin window which wuz raght by de road, an’ I saw
a-comin’ up through de trees a whole pack of ghosties; I thought dey wuz,
anyways. Dey wuz all dressed in white, an’ dere hosses wuz white an’ dey
galloped faster dan de win’ right past my cabin. Den I heered a nigger say: ‘De
Ku Klux is atter somebody.’
“Dem Ku Klux went ober to dat lady’s
plantation an’ told dem niggers dat iffen dey ever heered of ‘em startin’
anything mo’ dat dye wuz a-goin’ to tie ‘em all to trees in de fores’ till dey
all died f’um being hongry. Atter dat dese niggers all ‘roun’ Louisville, dey
kept mighty quiet.
“No m’am, I don’t believes in no
conjurin’. Dese conjure women say dat dey will make my hip well iffen I gives ‘em
half my rations I gits fum de gover’ment, but I knows dey ain’t nothin’ but
low-down, no-count niggers.”
“Speaking of the Ku Klux, Aunt
Hannah. Were you afraid of them?”
“Naw’m, I warn’t afeered of no Ku
Klux. At fu’st I though dat dey was ghosties and den I wuz afeered of ‘em, but
atter I found out dat Massa Bennett wuz one of dem things, I wuz always proud
of ‘em.”
“Well, what about the Yankees?” She
was asked. “Did you ever see any Yankees; and what did you think of the ones
that came through your place? Were you glad that they set you free?”
“I suppose dem Yankees wuz all right
in dere place,” she continued, “but dey neber belong in de South. Why, Miss, on
of ‘em axe me what wuz dem white flowers in de fiel? You’d think dat a gentmen
wid all dem decorations on hisself woulda knowed a fiel’ of cotton. An’ as for
dey a-settin’ me free! Miss, us niggers on de Bennett place was free as soon as
we wuz bawn. I always been free.”
Alabama
Irwin, Hannah.
Gerta Courc, John Morgan Smith.
Library of Congress, Manuscript
Division
Document Analysis
1. Did you find the narration difficult to read and understand due to the
dialect?
2. Why is it important to preserve and review these narratives? What can we
learn from them?
3. What was Hannah Irwin’s reaction to the Ku Klux Klan?
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WEEK TWO: September 11-15
Accounts of the Wounded Knee Massacre (1890s)
In late 1890 troops of the Seventh Cavalry killed more than 200 Native American men, women, and children at a reservation located along Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. A number of longstanding issues on the reservation contributed to the tension prior to the massacre. In the bad crop years of 1889 and 1890, the U.S. government failed to provide the full amount of food, agricultural implements and seeds, clothing, and supplies mandated by its treaty with the Lakota Nation. Many Lakota, including Black Elk, criticized the violent reactions of the Indian agents, many of whom were inexperienced and some of whom were remnants of Custer’s Seventh Cavalry, which had been crushed by Sitting Bull just 14 years before at the Little Big Horn. Black Elk, a veteran of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, describes the tragedy at Wounded Knee in this excerpt from his autobiography, Black Elk Speaks. The second document is an excerpt from President Benjamin Harrison’s annual message, delivered December 9, 1891. Harrison describes the conflict and the progress of the program to decrease Native American landholdings. Many years later, Flying Hawk recollected the events.
Black Elk, Account of the Wounded Knee Massacre, 1890
It was about this time that bad news
came to us from the north. We heard that some policemen from Standing Rock had gone
to arrest Sitting Bull on Grand River, and that he would not let them take him;
so there was a fight, and they killed him.
It was not near the end of the Moon
of Popping Trees, and I was twenty-seven years old [December 1890]. We heard
that Big Foot was coming down from the Badlands with nearly four hundred
people. Some of these were from Sitting Bull's band. They had run away when
Sitting Bull was killed, and joined Big Foot on Good River. There were only
about a hundred warriors in this band, and all the others were women and
children and some old men. They were all starving and freezing, and Big Foot
was so sick that they had to bring him along in a pony drag. They had all run
away to hide in the Badlands, and they were coming in now because they were
starving and freezing. Soldiers were over there looking for them. The soldiers
had everything and were not freezing and starving. Near Porcupine Butte the
soldiers came up to the Big Foots, and they surrendered and went along with the
soldiers to Wounded Knee Creek.
It was in the evening when we heard
that the Big Foots were camped over there with the soldiers, about fifteen
miles by the old road from where we were. It was the next morning [December 29,
1890] that something terrible happened.
That evening before it happened, I
went in to Pine Ridge and heard these things, and while I was there, soldiers
started for where the Big Foots were. These made about five hundred soldiers
that were there next morning. When I saw them starting I felt that something terrible
was going to happen. That night I could hardly sleep at all. I walked around
most of the night.
In the morning I went out after my
horses, and while I was out I heard shooting off toward the east, and I knew
from the sound that it must be wagon-guns [cannon] going off. The sounds went
right through my body, and I felt that something terrible would happen…. [He
donned his ghost shirt, and armed only with a bow, mounted his pony and rode in
the direction of the shooting, and was joined on the way by others.]
In a little while we had come to the
top of the ridge where, looking to the east, you can see for the first time the
monument and the burying ground on the little hill where the church is. That is
where the terrible thing started. Just south of the burying ground on the
little hill a deep dry gulch runs about east and west, very crooked, and it
rises westward to nearly the top of the ridge where we were. It had no name,
but the Wasichus [white men] sometimes called Battle Creek now. We stopped on the
ridge not far from the head of the dry gulch. Wagon guns were still going off
over there on the little hill, and they were going off again where they hit
among the gulch. There was much shooting down yonder, and there were many
cries, and we could see cavalrymen scattered over the hills ahead of us.
Cavalrymen were riding along the gulch and shooting into it, where the women
and children were running away and trying to hide in the gullies and the
stunted pines….
We followed down along the dry gulch,
and what we saw was terrible. Dead and wounded women and children and little
babies were scattered all along there where they had been trying to run away.
The soldiers had followed along the gulch, as they ran, and murdered them in
there. Sometimes they were in heaps because they had huddled together, and some
were scattering all along. Sometimes bunches of them had been killed and torn
to pieces where the wagon guns hit them. I saw a little baby trying to suck its
mother, but she was bloody and dead.
There were two little boys at one
place in this gulch. They had guns and they had been killing soldiers all by
themselves. We could see the soldiers they had killed. The boys were all alone
there, and they were not hurt. These were very brave little boys.
When we drove the soldiers back, they
dug themselves in, and we were not enough people to drive them out from there.
In the evening they marched off up Wounded Knee Creek, and then we saw all that
they had done there.
Men and women and children were
heaped and scattered all over the flat at the bottom of the little hill where
the soldiers had their wagon-guns, and westward up the dry gulch all the way to
the high ridge, the dead women and children and babies were scattered.
When I saw this I wished that I had
died too, but I was not sorry for the women and children. It was better for
them to be happy in the other world, and I wanted to be there too. But before I
went there I wanted to have revenge. I thought there might be a day, and we
should have revenge.
In the morning the soldiers began to
take all the guns away from the Big Foots, who were camped in the flat below
the little hill where the monument and burying ground are now. The people had
stacked most of their guns, and even their knives, by the teepee where Big Foot
was lying sick. Soldiers were on the little hill and all around, and there were
soldiers across the dry gulch to the south and over east along Wounded Knee
Creek too. The people were nearly surrounded, and the wagon-guns were pointed
at them.
It was a good winter day when all
this happened. The sun was shining. But after the soldiers marched away from
their dirty work, a heavy snow began to fall. The wind came up in the night.
There was a big blizzard, and it grew very cold. The snow drifted deep in the
crooked gulch, and it was one long grave of butchered women and children and
babies, who had never done any harm and were only trying to run away.
Benjamin Harrison, Report
on Wounded Knee Massacre and the Decrease in Indian Land Acreage, 1891
The outbreak among the Sioux which
occurred in December last is as to its causes and incidents fully reported upon
by the War Department and the Department of the Interior. That these Indians
had some just complaints, especially in the matter of the reduction of the
appropriation for rations and in the delays attending the enactment of laws to
enable the Department to perform the engagements entered into with them, is
probably true; but the Sioux tribes are naturally warlike and turbulent, and
their warriors were excited by their medicine men and chiefs, who preached the
coming of an Indian messiah who was to give them power to destroy their
enemies. In view of the alarm that prevailed among the white settlers near the
reservation and of the fatal consequences that would have resulted from an
Indian incursion, I placed at the disposal of General Miles, commanding the
Division of the Missouri, all such forces that we thought by him to be
required. He is entitled to the credit of having given thorough protection to the
settlers and of bringing the hostiles into subjection with the least possible
loss of life….
Since March 4, 1889, about 23,000,000
acres have been separated from Indian reservations and added to the public
domain for the use of those who desired to secure free homes under our
beneficent laws. It is difficult to estimate the increase of wealth which will
result from the conversion of these waste lands into farms, but it is more
difficult to estimate the betterment which will result to the families that have
found renewed hope and courage in the ownership of a home and the assurance of
a comfortable subsistence under free and healthful conditions. It is also
gratifying to be able to feel, as we may, that his work has proceeded upon
lines of justice toward the Indian, and that he may now, if he will, secure to
himself the good influences of a settled habitation, the fruits of industry,
and the security of citizenship.
Flying Hawk’s
Recollections of Wounded Knee (1936)
This was the last big trouble with
the Indians and soldiers and was in the winter in 1890. When the Indians would
not come in from the Bad Lands, they got a big army together with plenty of
clothing and supplies and camp-and-wagon equipment for a big campaign; they had
enough soldiers to make a round-up of all the Indians they called hostiles.
The Government army, after many
fights and loss of lives, succeeded in driving these starving Indians, with
their families of women and gaunt-faced children, into a trap, where they could
be forced to surrender their arms. This was on Wounded Knee creek, northeast of
Pine Ridge, and here the Indians were surrounded by the soldiers, who had
Hotchkiss machine guns along with them. There were about four thousand Indians
in this big camp, and the soldiers had the machine guns pointed at them from
all around the village as the soldiers formed a ring about the tepees so that
Indians could not escape.
The Indians were hungry and weak and
they suffered from lack of clothing and furs because the whites had driven away
all the game. When the soldiers had them all surrounded and they had their
tepees set up, the officers sent troopers to each of them to search for guns
and take them from the owners. If the Indians in the tepees did not at once
hand over a gun, the soldier tore open their parfleech trunks and bundles and
bags of robes or clothes,-looking for pistols and knives and ammunition. It was
an ugly business, and brutal; they treated the Indians like they would torment
a wolf with one foot in a strong trap; they could do this because the Indians
were now in the white man's trap,-and they were helpless.
Then a shot was heard from among the
Indian tepees. An Indian was blamed; the excitement began; soldiers ran to
their stations; officers gave orders to open fire with the machine guns into
the crowds of innocent men, women and children, and in a few minutes more than
two hundred and twenty of them lay in the snow dead and dying. A terrible
blizzard raged for two days covering the bodies with Nature's great white
blanket; some lay in piles of four or five; others in twos or threes or singly,
where they fell until the storm subsided. When a trench had been dug of
sufficient length and depth to contain the frozen corpses, they were collected
and piled, like cord-wood, in one vast icy tomb. While separating several
stiffened forms which had fallen in a heap, two of them proved to be women, and
hugged closely to their breasts were infant babes still alive after lying in
the storm for two days in 20 below zero weather.
I was there and saw the trouble,-but
after the shooting was over; it was all bad.
Document Analysis
1. According to Black Elk, what atrocities took place a Wounded Knee? How did
President Harrison describe these atrocities?
2. Whom did Black Elk blame for the Wounded Knee Massacre? Whom did Harrison
blame?
3. According to President Harrison, what was the future of Native Americans?
How did Black Elk’s vision of the future compare to Harrison’s vision?
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Events in Paris, Texas, from Ida B. Wells, A Red
Record (1895)
Note: Wells also made two other historic moves in her extraordinary life. The first occurred in 1894, when she sued a railroad after being forced from a train for not moving to the “Jim Crow” car. Although she lost on appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court, it is important to note that her case predated the much better known Plessy v. Ferguson case by 12 years. The second took place a year before her death, when she ran for the Illinois state legislature, making her one of the first black women to run for office in the United States.
Never in the history of civilization has any Christian people stooped to such shocking brutality and indescribable barbarism as that which characterized the people of Paris, Texas, and adjacent communities on the 1st of February, 1893. The cause of this awful outbreak of human passion was the murder of a four year old child, daughter of a man named Vance. This man, Vance, had been a police officer in Paris for years, and was known to be a man of bad temper, overbearing manner and given to harshly treating the prisoners under his care. . . .
In the same town there lived a Negro,
named Henry Smith, a well known character, a kind of roustabout, who was
generally considered a harmless, weak-minded fellow, not capable of doing any
important work, but sufficiently able to do chores and odd jobs around the
houses of the white people who cared to employ him. . . . Smith was accused of
murdering Myrtle Vance. The crime of murder was of itself bad enough, and to
prove that against Smith would have been amply sufficient in Texas to have
committed him to the gallows, but the finding of the child so exasperated the
father and his friends, that they at once shamefully exaggerated the facts and
declared that the babe had been ruthlessly assaulted and then killed. The truth
was bad enough, but the white people of the community made it a point to
exaggerate every detail of the awful affair, and to inflame the public mind so
that nothing less than immediate and violent death would satisfy the populace.
As a matter of fact, the child was not brutally assaulted as the world has been
told in excuse for the awful barbarism of that day. Persons who saw the child
after its death, have stated, under the most solemn pledge to truth, that there
was no evidence of such an assault as was published at that time, only a slight
abrasion and discoloration was noticeable and that mostly about the neck. In
spite of this fact, so eminent a man as Bishop Haygood deliberately and, it
must also appear, maliciously falsified the fact by stating that the child was
torn limb from limb, or to quote his own words, "First outraged with
demoniacal cruelty and then taken by her heels and torn asunder in the mad
wantonness of gorilla ferocity."
. . . Those who knew Smith, believe
that Vance had at some time given him cause to seek revenge and that this
fearful crime was the outgrowth of his attempt to avenge himself of some real
or fancied wrong. That the murderer was known as an imbecile, had no effect
whatever upon the people who thirsted for his blood. They determined to make an
example of him and proceeded to carry out their purpose with unspeakably
greater ferocity than that which characterized the half crazy object of their
revenge. . . .
Lest it might be charged that any
description of the deeds of that day are exaggerated, a white man's description
which was published in the white journals of this country is used. The New York
Sun of February 2d, 1893, contains an account, from which we make the following
excerpt:
PARIS, Tex., Feb. 1, 1893.--Henry
Smith, the negro ravisher of 4-year-old Myrtle Vance, has expiated in part his
awful crime by death at the stake. Ever since the perpetration of his awful
crime this city and the entire surrounding country has been in a wild frenzy of
excitement. When the news came last night that he had been captured at Hope,
Ark., . . . the city was wild with joy over the apprehension of the brute. Hundreds
of people poured into the city from the adjoining country and the word passed
from lip to lip that the punishment of the fiend should fit the crime--that
death by fire was the penalty Smith should pay for the most atrocious murder
and terrible outrage in Texas history. Curious and sympathizing alike, they
came on train and wagons, on horse, and on foot to see if the frail mind of a
man could think of a way to sufficiently punish the perpetrator of so terrible
a crime. Whisky shops were closed, unruly mobs were dispersed, schools were
dismissed by a proclamation from the mayor, and everything was done in a
business-like manner. . . .
About 2 o'clock Friday a mass meeting
was called at the courthouse and captains appointed to search for the child.
She was found mangled beyond recognition, covered with leaves and brush as
above mentioned. As soon as it was learned upon the recovery of the body that
the crime was so atrocious the whole town turned out in the chase. The
railroads put up bulletins offering free transportation to all who would join
in the search. Posses went in every direction, and not a stone was left
unturned. Smith was tracked to his old home in . . . Clow, . . . about twenty
miles north of Hope. Upon being questioned the fiend denied everything, but
upon being stripped for examination his undergarments were seen to be spattered
with blood and a part of his shirt was torn off. He was kept under heavy guard
at Hope last night, and later on confessed the crime.
This morning he was brought through
Texarkana, where 5,000 people awaited the train. Arriving here at 12 o'clock
the train was met by a surging mass of humanity 10,000 strong. The negro was
placed upon a carnival float in mockery of a king upon his throne, and,
followed by an immense crowd, was escorted through the city so that all might
see the most inhuman monster known in current history. The line of march was up
Main street to . . . the open prairies about 300 yards from the Texas &
Pacific depot. Here Smith was placed upon a scaffold, six feet square and ten
feet high, securely bound, within the view of all beholders. . . .
Words to describe the awful torture
inflicted upon Smith cannot be found. The Negro, for a long time after starting
on the journey to Paris, did not realize his plight. At last when he was told
that he must die by slow torture he begged for protection. His agony was awful.
He pleaded and writhed in bodily and mental pain. Scarcely had the train
reached Paris than this torture commenced. His clothes were torn off piecemeal
and scattered in the crowd, people catching the shreds and putting them away as
mementos. The child's father, her brother, and two uncles then gathered about
the Negro as he lay fastened to the torture platform and thrust hot irons into
his quivering flesh. It was horrible--the man dying by slow torture in the
midst of smoke from his own burning flesh. Every groan from the fiend, every
contortion of his body was cheered by the thickly packed crowd of 10,000
persons. The mass of beings 600 yards in diameter, the scaffold being the
center. After burning the feet and legs, the hot irons--plenty of fresh ones
being at hand--were rolled up and down Smith's stomach, back, and arms. Then
the eyes were burned out and irons were thrust down his throat.
The men of the Vance family having
wreaked vengeance, the crowd piled all kinds of combustible stuff around the
scaffold, poured oil on it and set it afire. The Negro rolled and tossed out of
the mass, only to be pushed back by the people nearest him. He tossed out
again, and was roped and pulled back. Hundreds of people turned away, but the
vast crowd still looked calmly on. People were here from every part of this
section. They came from Dallas, Fort Worth, Sherman, Denison, Bonham,
Texarkana, Fort Smith, Ark. . . . Every train that came in was loaded to its
utmost capacity, and there were demands at many points for special trains to
bring the people here to see the unparalleled punishment for an unparalleled
crime. . . .
Document Analysis
1. What is the meaning of the term “lynching”? What role did lynching play in
race relations in the United States?
2. Why did Wells rely on a white newspaper for this account of Henry Smith’s
murder?
3. What evidence does Wells offer about Henry Smith and the murder that was
not included in the newspaper account?
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Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the
Frontier in American History,” (1893)
During a gathering of historians at the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner presented an essay titled “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” Turner’s article, also known as the Frontier Thesis, argued that the settlement of the frontier made the American nation unique. Turner credited the frontier's settlement as the primary force in shaping the nation’s democratic institutions.
Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, continuous recession, and the advance of American settlements westward, explain American development.
Behind institutions, behind
constitutional forms and modifications lie the vital forces that call these
organs into life and shape them to meet changing conditions. The peculiarity of
American institutions is, the fact that they have been compelled to adapt
themselves to the changes of an expanding people -- to the changes involved in
crossing a continent, this winning a wilderness, and in developing at each area
of this progress out of the primitive economic and political conditions of the
frontier into the complexity of city life….
Thus American development has
exhibited not merely advance along a single line, but a return to primitive
conditions on a continually advancing frontier line, and a new development for
that area. American social development has been continually beginning over
again on the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life,
this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with
the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American
character. The true point of view in the history of this nation is not the
Atlantic coast, it is the West….
The frontier is the line of most
rapid and effective Americanization. The wilderness masters the colonist. It
finds him a European in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel, and thought.
It takes him from the railroad car and puts him in the birch canoe. It strips
off the garments of civilization and arrays him in the hunting shirt and the
moccasin. It puts him in the log cabin of the Cherokee and Iroquois and runs
and Indian palisade around him. Before long he has gone to planting Indian corn
and plowing with a sharp stick; he shouts the war cry and takes the scalp in
orthodox Indian fashion. In short, at the frontier the environment is at first
too strong for the man. He must accept the conditions which it furnishes, or
perish, and so he fits himself into the Indian clearings and follows the Indian
trails. Little by little he transforms the wilderness but the outcome is not
the old Europe, not simply the development of Germanic germs, any more than the
first phenomenon was a case of reversion to the Germanic mark. The fact is,
that here is a new product that is American. At first, the frontier was the
Atlantic coast. It was the frontier of Europe in a very real sense. Moving
westward, the frontier became more and more American. As successive terminal
moraines result from successive glaciations, so each frontier leaves its traces
behind it, and when it becomes a settled area the region still partakes of the
frontier characteristics. Thus the advance of the frontier has meant a steady movement
away from the influence of Europe, a steady growth of independence on American
lines. And to study this advance, the men who grew up under these conditions,
and the political, economic, and social results of its, is to study the really
American part of our history….
Since the days when the fleet of
Columbus sailed into the waters of the New World, America has been another name
for opportunity, and the people of the United States have taken their tone form
the incessant expansion which has not only been open but has been forced upon
them. He would be a rash prophet who should assert that the expansive character
has now entirely ceased. Movement has been its dominant fact, and unless this
training has no effect upon a people, the American energy will continually
demand a wider field for its exercise. But never again will such gifts of free
land offer themselves. For a moment, at the frontier, the bonds of custom are
broken and unrestraint is triumphant. There is not tabula rasa. The
stubborn American environment is there with its imperious summons to accept its
conditions; the inherited ways of doing things are also there; and yet, in
spite of environment, and in spite of custom, each frontier did indeed furnish
a new field of opportunity, a gate of escape from the bondage of the past; and
freshness and confidence, and scorn of older society, impatience of its
restrains and its ideas, and indifference to its lessons, have accompanied the
frontier. What the Mediterranean Sea was to the Greeks, breaking the bond of
custom, offering new experiences, calling out new institutions and activities,
that, and more, the ever retreating frontier has been to the United States
directly, and to the nations of Europe more remotely. And now, four centuries
from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the
Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first
period in American history.
Document Analysis
1. According to Turner, what effect did the frontier have on the United States
and its citizens?
2. Did Turner describe the settlement of the West as a chaotic process or an
ordered process?
3. Turner notes in his thesis that the frontier was closed. How did he believe
this would affect the United States?
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Perspectives on the American Cowboy (1884, 1886)
In the 1870s and 1880s, most Americans held a negative view of the cowboys who worked on the range. Most people’s interactions with cowboys took place when cowboys came into town at the end of a long drive to blow off steam. The two accounts reproduced below present two different perspectives on cowboys. The first account, excerpted from Theodore Roosevelt’s autobiography, details Roosevelt’s conflict with a drunken cowboy who was shooting up a saloon. The second account, published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, offers a positive description of cowboys.
Teddy Roosevelt, Cowboy, 1884
The only time I ever had serious trouble
was at an even more primitive little hotel than the one in question. It was
also on an occasion when I was out after lost horses. Below the hotel had
merely a bar-room, a dining-room, and a lean-to kitchen; above was a loft with
fifteen or twenty beds in it. It was late in the evening when I reached the
place. I heard one or two shots in the bar-room as I came up, and I disliked
going in. But there was nowhere else to go, and it was a cold night. Inside the
room were several men, who, including the bartender, were wearing the kind of
smile worn by men who are making believe to like what they don't like. A shabby
individual in a broad hat with a cocked gun in each hand was walking up and
down the floor talking with strident profanity. He had evidently been shooting
at the clock, which had two or three holes in it face.
He was not a "bad man" of
the really dangerous type, the true man-killer type, but he was an
objectionable creature, a would-be bad man, a bully who for the moment was
having things all his own way. As soon as he saw me he hailed me as "Four
eyes," in reference to my spectacles, and said, "Four eyes is going
to treat." I joined in the laugh and got behind the stove and sat down,
thinking to escape notice. He followed me, however, and though I tried to pass
it off as a jest this merely made him more offensive, and he stood leaning over
me, a gun in each hand, using very foul language. He was foolish to stand so
near, and moreover, his heels were close together, so that his position was unstable.
Accordingly, in response to his reiterated command that I should set up the
drinks, I said, "Well, if I've got to, I've got to," and rose,
looking past him.
As I rose, I struck quick and hard
with my right just to one side of the point of his jaw, hitting with my self as
I straightened out, and then again with my right. He fired the guns, but I do
not know whether this was merely a convulsive action of his hands or whether he
was trying to shoot at me. When he went down he struck the corner of the bar
with his head. It was not a case in which one could afford to take chances, and
if he had moved I was about to drop on his ribs with my knees; but he was
senseless. I took away his guns, and the other people in the room, who were now
loud in their denunciation of him, hustled him out and put him in a shed. I got
dinner as soon as possible, sitting in a corner of the dining-room away from
the windows, and then went upstairs to bed where it was dark so that there
would be no chance of any one shooting at me from the outside. However, nothing
happened. When my assailant came to, he went down to the station and left on a
freight.
The American Cowboy
Today, 1886
The cow-boy of to-day, especially on
the northern ranges, is of entirely different type from the original cow-boy of
Texas. New conditions have produced the change. The range cattle business of
Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Dakota is, as already stated,
a new business. Those engaged in it as proprietors are chiefly from the States
situated east of the Missouri River and north of the Indian Territory. Among
them are also many Englishmen, Scotchmen, Frenchmen, and Germans of large
means, embracing titled men who have embarked in the business quite
extensively. Many of these came to America originally as tourists or for the
purpose of hunting buffaloes, but the attractiveness of the cattle business
arrested them, and they have become virtually, if not through the act of
naturalization, American herds-men. Some of this class have, from the force of
romantic temperament and the exhilaration of range life, themselves
participated actively in the duties of the cow-boy.
Organization, discipline, and order
characterize the new undertakings on the northern ranges. In a word, the cattle
business of that section is now and has from the beginning been carried on upon
strictly business principles. Under such proprietorships, and guided by such
methods, a new class of cow-boys has been introduced and developed. Some have
come from Texas, and have brought with them a knowledge of the arts of their
calling, but the number from the other State and the Territories constitutes a
large majority of the whole. Some are graduates of American colleges, and
others of collegiate institutions in Europe. Many have resorted to the
occupation of cow-boy temporarily and for the purpose of learning the range
cattle business, with the view of eventually engaging in it on their own
account, or in the interest of friends desirous of investing money in the
enterprise.
Document Analysis
1. What similar characteristics of cowboys did you notice in both accounts?
2. How do the two accounts differ in their descriptions of cowboys?
3. How do these descriptions compare to the popular image of cowboys portrayed
in film and literature?
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WEEK THREE: September 18-22
Andrew Carnegie, "Wealth," North American
Review CCCXCI (June,1889)
Andrew Carnegie’s life is the classic “rags-to-riches” story. Born in Scotland, Carnegie came to the United States as a teenager. His first job was in a textile factory. By the end of the Civil War, however, he was on his way to becoming the leader of the U.S. steel industry and the richest man in the world. Despite his success, however, Carnegie did not believe in simply amassing wealth. Rather, he felt that wealth should be used to improve society, not through “hand-outs,” but through socially conscious investments. In his lifetime he gave away approximately $350 million, a large portion of which was used to establish more than 2500 libraries and several institutes of higher learning. The Carnegie Corporation, along with a number of endowments, continues to operate today and funds a huge array of grants and other endeavors. The passage below is Carnegie’s struggle to justify the different facets of his personality.
The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship. The conditions of human life have not only been changed, but revolutionized, within the past few hundred years. In former days there was little difference between the swelling, dress, food, and environment of the chief and those of his retainers. The Indians are today where civilized man then was. When visiting the Sioux, I was led to the wigwam of the chief. It was just like the others in external appearance, and even within the difference was trifling between it and those of the poorest of his braves. The contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the laborer with us today measures the change which has come with civilization.
This change, however, is not to be
deplored, but welcomed as highly beneficial. It is well, nay, essential for the
progress of the race, that the houses of some should be homes for all that is
highest and best in literature and the arts, and for all the refinements of
civilization, rather than that none should be so. Much better this great
irregularity than universal squalor. Without wealth there can be no Maecenas.
The "good old times" were not good old times. Neither master nor
servant was as well situated then as to-day. A relapse to old conditions would
be disastrous to both -- not the least so to him who serves -- and would sweep
away civilization with it. But whether the change be for good or ill, it is
upon us, beyond our power to alter, and therefore to be accepted and made the
best of. It is waste of time to criticize the inevitable.
…We assemble thousands of operatives
in the factory, in the mine, and in the counting-house, of whom the employer
can know little or nothing, and to whom the employer is little better than a
myth. All intercourse between them is at an end. Rigid Castes are formed, and,
as, usual, mutual ignorance breeds mutual distrust. Each Caste is without
sympathy for the other, and ready to credit anything disparaging in regard to
it. Under the law of competition, the employer of thousands is forced into the
strictest economies, among which the rates paid to labor figure prominently,
and often there is friction between the employer and the employed, between
capital and labor, between rich and poor. Human society loses homogeneity.
The price which society pays for the
law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries, is
also great; but the advantages of this law are also greater still, for it is to
this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved
conditions in its train.
…This, then, is held to be the duty
of the man of Wealth: First, to set an example of modest, unostentatious
living, shunning display or extravagance; to provide moderately for the
legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and after doing so to consider
all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is
called upon to administer, and strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer
in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most
beneficial results for the community -- the man of wealth thus becoming the
mere agent and trustee for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his
superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer, doing for them better
than they would or could do for themselves.
Document Analysis
1. Whom does Carnegie seem to be trying to persuade?
2. How does Carnegie portray the role of inequality in an industrial society?
3. Today, would Carnegie be more likely to identify with the Democratic Party
or the Republican Party?
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George Engel, Address by a Condemned Haymarket Anarchist
(1886)
The May 4, 1886, Haymarket Riot is infamous in U.S. history. A protest in support of an eight-hour workday deteriorated into a riot when an unknown person threw a bomb that killed 12 people. George Engel was one of the eight men tried for their participation in the protest, though there was ample evidence that none of them had thrown the bomb. Instead, they were tried as organizers of the rally, and their anarchist and socialist beliefs were used to convict them. All eight were found guilty, and seven were sentenced to death. Ultimately, four of the convicted men, including Engel, were hanged; one committed suicide; and the remaining three were pardoned in 1893.
When, in the year 1872, I left Germany because it had become impossible for me to gain there, by the labor of my hands, a livelihood such as man is worthy to enjoy-the introduction of machinery having ruined the smaller craftsmen and made the outlook for the future appear very dark to them-I concluded to fare with my family to the land of America, the land that had been praised to me by so many as the land of liberty.
On the occasion of my arrival at
Philadelphia, on the 8th of January, 1873, my heart swelled with joy in the
hope and in the belief that in the future I would live among free men and in a
free country. I made up my mind to become a good citizen of this country, and congratulated
myself on having left Germany, and landed in this glorious republic. And I
believe my past history will bear witness that I have ever striven to be a good
citizen of this country. This is the first occasion of my standing before an
American court, and on this occasion it is murder of which I am accused. And
for what reasons do I stand here? For what reasons am I accused of murder? The
same that caused me to leave Germany-the poverty-the misery of the working
classes.
And here, too, in this "free
republic," in the richest country of the world, there are numerous
proletarians for whom no table is set; who, as outcasts of society, stray
joylessly through life. I have seen human beings gather their daily food from
the garbage heaps of the streets, to quiet therewith their knawing hunger. . .
.
When in 1878, I came here from
Philadelphia, I strove to better my condition, believing it would be less
difficult to establish a means of livelihood here than in Philadelphia, where I
had tried in vain to make a living. But here, too, I found myself disappointed.
I began to understand that it made no difference to the proletarian, whether he
lived in New York, Philadelphia, or Chicago. In the factory in which I worked,
I became acquainted with a man who pointed out to me the causes that brought
about the difficult and fruitless battles of the workingmen for the means of
existence. He explained to me, by the logic of scientific Socialism, how
mistaken I was in believing that I could make an independent living by the toil
of my hands, so long as machinery, raw material, etc., were guaranteed to the
capitalists as private property by the State. . . .
I took part in politics with the
earnestness of a good citizen; but I was soon to find that the teachings of a
"free ballot box" are a myth and that I had again been duped. I came
to the opinion that as long as workingmen are economically enslaved they cannot
be politically free. It became clear to me that the working classes would never
bring about a form of society guaranteeing work, bread, and a happy life by
means of the ballot. . . .
I . . . joined the International
Working People's Association, that was just being organized. The members of
that body have the firm conviction, that the workingman can free himself from
the tyranny of capitalism only through force; just as all advances of which
history speaks, have been brought about through force alone. We see from the
history of this country that the first colonists won their liberty only through
force that through force slavery was abolished, and just as the man who
agitated against slavery in this country, had to ascend the gallows, so also
must we. He who speaks for the workingman today must hang. And why? Because
this Republic is not governed by people who have obtained their office
honestly.
Who are the leaders at Washington
that are to guard the interests of this nation? Have they been elected by the
people, or by the aid of their money? They have no right to make laws for us,
because they were not elected by the people. These are the reasons why I have
lost all respect for American laws.
The fact that through the improvement
of machinery so many men are thrown out of employment, or at best, working but
half the time, brings them to reflection. They have leisure, and they consider
how their conditions can be changed. Reading matter that has been written in
their interest gets into their hands, and, faulty though their education may
be, they can nevertheless cull the truths contained in those writings. This, of
course, is not pleasant for the capitalistic class, but they cannot prevent it.
And it is my firm conviction that in a comparatively short time the great mass
of proletarians will understand that they can be freed from their bonds only
through Socialism. One must consider what Carl Schurs said scarcely eight years
ago: That, "in this country there is no space for Socialism;" and yet
today Socialism stands before the bars of the court. For this reason it is my
firm conviction that if these few years sufficed to make Socialism one of the
burning questions of the day, it will require but a short time more to put it
in practical operation.
All that I have to say in regard to
my conviction is, that I was not at all surprised; for it has ever been that
the men who have endeavored to enlighten their fellow man have been thrown into
prison or put to death, as was the case with John Brown. I have found, long
ago, that the workingman has no more rights here than any where else in the
world. The State's Attorney has stated that we were not citizens. I have been a
citizen this long time; but it does not occur to me to appeal for my rights as
a citizen, knowing as well as I do that this does not make a particle of
difference. Citizen or not-as a workingman I am without rights, and therefore I
respect neither your rights nor your laws, which are made and directed by one
class against the other; the working class.
Of what does my crime consist?
That I have labored to bring about a
system of society by which it is impossible for one to hoard millions, through
the improvements in machinery, while the great masses sink to degradation and
misery. As water and air are free to all, so should the inventions of
scientific men be applied for the benefit of all. The statute laws we have are in
opposition to the laws of nature, in that they rob the great masses of their
rights "to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
I am too much a man of feeling not to
battle against the societary conditions of today. Every considerate person must
combat a system which makes it possible for the individual to rake and hoard
millions in a few years, while, on the other side, thousands become tramps and
beggars.
Is it to be wondered at that under
such circumstances men arise, who strive and struggle to create other
conditions, where the humane humanity shall take precedence of all other
considerations. This is the aim of Socialism, and to this I joyfully subscribe.
The States Attorney said here that
"Anarchy" was "on trial."
Anarchism and Socialism are as much
alike, in my opinion, as one egg is to another. They differ only in their
tactics. The Anarchists have abandoned the way of liberating humanity which
Socialists would take to accomplish this. I say: Believe no more in the ballot,
and use all other means at your command. Because we have done so we stand
arraigned here today-because we have pointed out to the people the proper way.
The Anarchists are being hunted and persecuted for this in every clime, but in
the face of it all Anarchism is gaining more and more adherents, and if you cut
off our opportunities of open agitation, then will the work be done secretly.
If the State's Attorney thinks he can root out Socialism by hanging seven of
our men and condemning the other to fifteen years servitude, he is laboring
under a very wrong impression. The tactics simply will be changed-that is all.
No power on earth can rob the workingman of his knowledge of how to make
bombs-and that knowledge he possesses. . . .
If Anarchism could be rooted out, it
would have been accomplished long ago in other countries. On the night on which
the first bomb in this country was thrown, I was in my apartments at home. I
knew nothing of the conspiracy which the States Attorney pretends to have
discovered.
It is true I am acquainted with
several of my fellow-defendants with most of them, however, but slightly,
through seeing them at meetings, and hearing them speak. Nor do I deny, that I
too, have spoken at meetings, saying that, if every workingman had a bomb in
his pocket, capitalistic rule would soon come to an end.
That is my opinion, and my wish; it
became my conviction, when I mentioned the wickedness of the capitalistic
conditions of the day.
When hundreds of workingmen have been
destroyed in mines in consequence of faulty preparations, for the repairing of
which the owners were too stingy, the capitalistic papers have scarcely noticed
it. As with what satisfaction and cruelty they make their report, when here and
there workingmen have been fired upon, while striking for a few cents increase
in their wages, that they might earn only a scanty subsistance.
Can any one feel any respect for a
government that accords rights only to the privileged classes, and none to the
workers? We have seen but recently how the coal barons combined to form a
conspiracy to raise the price of coal, while at the same time reducing the
already low wages of their men. Are they accused of conspiracy on that account?
But when working men dare ask an increase in their wages, the militia and the
police are sent out to shoot them down.
For such a government as this I can
feel no respect, and will combat them, despite their power, despite their
police, despite their spies.
I hate and combat, not the individual
capitalist, but the system that gives him those privileges. My greatest wish is
that workingmen may recognize who are their friends and who are their enemies.
As to my conviction, brought about as
it was, through capitalistic influence, I have not one word to say.
Document Analysis
1. How did Engel describe the differences between socialism and anarchism?
2. What were Engel’s expectations when he immigrated to the United States?
What most disappointed Engel about his new homeland?
3. Why did Engel compare himself to John Brown?
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William Graham Sumner, from What the Social Classes
Owe to Each Other (1883)
William Graham Sumner was an influential social theorist in the late 19th century. He applied many of Charles Darwin’s theories concerning evolution to society as a whole, and in so doing he opposed government intervention to try to cure social problems. Decidedly conservative, Sumner’s views are often surprising to read today, but many people agreed with them.
The amateur social doctors are like the amateur physicians-they always begin with the question of remedies, and they go at this without any diagnosis or any knowledge of the anatomy or physiology of society. They never have any doubt of the efficacy of their remedies. They never take account of any ulterior effects which may be apprehended from the remedy itself. It generally troubles them not a whit that their remedy implies a complete reconstruction of society, or even a reconstitution of human nature. Against all such social quackery the obvious injunction to the quacks is, to mind their own business.
The social doctors enjoy the
satisfaction of feeling themselves to be more moral or more enlightened than
their fellow-men. They are able to see what other men ought to do when the
other men do not see it. An examination of the work of the social doctors,
however, shows that they are only more ignorant and more presumptuous than
other people. We have a great many social difficulties and hardships to contend
with. Poverty, pain, disease, and misfortune surround our existence. We fight
against them all the time. The individual is a centre of hopes, affections,
desires, and sufferings. When he dies, life changes its form, but does not
cease. That means that the person-the centre of all the hopes, affections,
etc.-after struggling as long as he can, is sure to succumb at last. We would,
therefore, as far as the hardships of the human lot are concerned, go on
struggling to the best of our ability against them but for the social doctors,
and we would endure what we could not cure. But we have inherited a vast number
of social ills which never came from Nature. They are the complicated products
of all the tinkering, muddling, and blundering of social doctors in the past.
These products of social quackery are now buttressed by habit, fashion,
prejudice, platitudinarian thinking, and new quackery in political economy and
social science. It is a fact worth noticing, just when there seems to be a
revival of faith in legislative agencies, that our States are generally
providing against the experienced evils of over-legislation by ordering that
the Legislature shall sit only every other year. During the hard times, when
Congress had a real chance to make or mar the public welfare, the final
adjournment of that body was hailed year after year with cries of relief from a
great anxiety. The greatest reforms which could now be accomplished would
consist in undoing the work of statesmen in the past, and the greatest difficulty
in the way of reform is to find out how to undo their work without injury to
what is natural and sound. All this mischief has been done by men who sat down
to consider the problem (as I heard an apprentice of theirs once express it),
What kind of a society do we want to make? When they had settled this question a
priori to their satisfaction, they set to work to make their ideal society,
and to-day we suffer the consequences. Human society tries hard to adapt itself
to any conditions in which it finds itself, and we have been warped and
distorted until we have got used to it, as the foot adapts itself to an
ill-made boot. Next, we have come to think that that is the right way for
things to be; and it is true that a change to a sound and normal condition
would for a time hurt us, as a man whose foot has been distorted would suffer
if he tried to wear a well-shaped boot. Finally, we have produced a lot of
economists and social philosophers who have invented sophisms for fitting our
thinking to the distorted facts.
Society, therefore, does not need any
care or supervision. If we can acquire a science of society, based on
observation of phenomena and study of forces, we may hope to gain some ground
slowly toward the elimination of old errors and the re-establishment of a sound
and natural social order. Whatever we gain that way will be by growth, never in
the world by any reconstruction of society on the plan of some enthusiastic
social architect. The latter is only repeating the old error over again, and postponing
all our chances of real improvement. Society needs first of all to be freed
from these meddlers-that is, to be let alone. Here we are, then, once more back
at the old doctrine-Laissez faire. Let us translate it into blunt
English, and it will read, Mind your own business. It is nothing but the
doctrine of liberty. Let every man be happy in his own way. If his sphere of
action and interest impinges on that of any other man, there will have to be
compromise and adjustment. Wait for the occasion. Do not attempt to generalize
those interferences or to plan for them a priori. We have a body of laws
and institutions which have grown up as occasion has occurred for adjusting
rights. Let the same process go on. Practise the utmost reserve possible in
your interferences even of this kind, and by no means seize occasion for
interfering with natural adjustments. Try first long and patiently whether the
natural adjustment will not come about through the play of interests and the
voluntary concessions of the parties.
I have said that we have an empirical
political economy and social science to fit the distortions of our society. The
test of empiricism in this matter is the attitude which one takes up toward laissez
faire. It no doubt wounds the vanity of a philosopher who is just ready
with a new solution of the universe to be told to mind his own business. So he
goes on to tell us that if we think that we shall, by being let alone, attain
to perfect happiness on earth, we are mistaken. The half-way men-the professorial
socialists-join him. They solemnly shake their heads, and tell us that he is
right-that letting us alone will never secure us perfect happiness. Under all
this lies the familiar logical fallacy, never expressed, but really the point
of the whole, that we shall get perfect happiness if we put ourselves in
the hands of the world-reformer. We never supposed that laissez faire would
give us perfect happiness. We have left perfect happiness entirely out of our
account. If the social doctors will mind their own business, we shall have no
troubles but what belong to Nature. Those we will endure or combat as we can.
What we desire is that the friends of humanity should cease to add to them. Our
disposition toward the ills which our fellow-man inflicts on us through malice
or meddling is quite different from our disposition toward the ills which are
inherent in the conditions of human life.
To mind one's own business is a
purely negative and unproductive injunction, but, taking social matters as they
are just now, it is a sociological principle of the first importance. There
might be developed a grand philosophy on the basis of minding one's own
business.
Document Analysis
1. Whom did Sumner label “the amateur social doctors”? What was Sumner’s
criticism of them?
2. What did Sumner mean by “minding one’s own business”?
3. What did Sumner identify as the role of nature in life?
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WEEK FOUR: September 25-29
Mary Elizabeth Lease, from Populist Crusader
(1892)
Mary Lease, an activist for the Populist movement, expresses her views regarding the Farmers’ Alliance in the following selection. Although women could not vote, they were active in political causes beyond attaining suffrage. For example, Lease was a very popular lecturer and agitator for farmers’ rights. She is credited with telling farmers to “raise less corn and more hell,” a good example of her particularly fiery style.
Yet, after all our ears of toil and privation, dangers and hardships upon the Western frontier, monopoly is taking our homes from us by an infamous system of mortgage foreclosure, the most infamous that has ever disgraced the statures of a civilized nation. It takes from us at the rate of five hundred a month the homes that represent the best years of our life, our toil, our hopes, our happiness. How did it happen? The government, at the bid of Wall Street, repudiated its contracts with the people, the circulating medium was contracted in the interest of Shylock from $54 per capita to less than $8 per capita; or, as Senator Plumb tells us, "Our debts were increased, while the means to pay them was decreased;" or as grand Senator Steward puts it, "for twenty years the market value of the dollar has gone up and the market value of labor has gone down, till today the American laborer, in bitterness and wrath, asks which is the worst – the black slavery that has gone or the white slavery that has come?"
Do you wonder the women are joining
the Alliance? I wonder if there is a woman in this broad land who can afford to
stay out of the Alliance. Our loyal, white-ribbon women should be heart and
hand in this Farmers' Alliance movement, for the men whom we have sent to
represent us are the only men in the councils of this nation who have not been
elected on a liquor platform; and I want to say here, with exultant pride, that
the five farmer Congressmen and the United States Senator we have sent up from
Kansas – the liquor traffic, Wall Street, "nor the gates of hell shall not
prevail against them."
It would sound boastful were I to
detail to you the active, earnest part the Kansas women took in the recent
campaign. A Republican majority of 82,000 was reduced to less than 8,000, when
we elected 97 representatives, 5 out 7 Congressmen, and a United States
Senator, for to the women of Kansas belongs the credit of defeating John J.
Ingalls. He is feeling badly about it yet, too, for he said today that
"women and Indians were the only class that would scalp a dead man."
I rejoice that he realizes that he is politically dead.
I might weary you to tell you in
detail how the Alliance women found time from cares of home and children to
prepare the tempting, generous viands for the Alliance picnic dinners; where hungry
thousands and tens of thousands gathered in the forests and groves to listen to
the words of impassioned oratory, oftentimes from woman's lips, that nerved the
men of Kansas to forget their party prejudice and vote for "Mollie and the
babies." And not only did they find their way to the voters' hearts,
through their stomachs, but they sang their way as well. I hold here a book of
Alliance songs, composed and set to music by an Alliance woman, Mrs. Florence
Olmstead of Butler County, Kan., that did much toward molding public sentiment.
Alliance Glee Clubs composed of women, gave us such stirring melodies as the
nation has not heard since the Tippecanoe and Tyler campaign of 1840. And while
I am individualizing, let me call your attention to a book written also by an
Alliance woman. I wish a copy of it could be placed in the hands of every woman
in this land. "The Fate of a Fool" is written by Mrs. Emma G. Curtis
of Colorado. This book in the hands of women would teach them to be just and
generous toward women, and help them to forgive and condemn in each other the
sins so sweetly forgiven when committed by men.
Let no one for a moment believe that
this uprising and federation of the people is but a passing episode in
politics. It is a religious as well as a political movement, for we seek to put
into practical operation the teachings and precepts of Jesus of Nazareth. We
seek to enact justice and equity between man and man. We seek to bring the
nation back to the constitutional liberties guaranteed us by our forefathers.
The voice that is coming up today from the mystic chords of the American heart
is the same voice that Lincoln heard blending with the guns of Fort Sumter and
the Wilderness, and it is breaking into a clarion cry today that will be heard
around the world.
Crowns will fall, thrones will
tremble, kingdoms will disappear, the divine right of kings and the divine
right of capital will fade away like the mists of the morning, when the Angel
of Liberty shall kindle the fires of justice in the hearts of men. "Exact
justice to all, special privileges to none." No more millionaires, and no
more paupers; no more gold kings, silver kings and oil kings, and no more
little waifs of humanity starving for a crust of bread. No more gaunt-faced, hollow-eyed
girls in the factories, and no more little boys reared in poverty and crime for
the penitentiaries and the gallows. But we shall have the golden age of which
Isaiah sang and the prophets have so long foretold; when the farmers shall be
prosperous and happy, dwelling under their own vine and fig tree; when the
laborer shall gave that for which he toils; when occupancy and use shall be the
only title to land, and everyone shall obey the divine injunction, "In the
sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." When men shall be just and
generous, little less than angels; when we shall have not a government of the
people by capitalists, but a government of the people, by the people.
Document Analysis
1. What examples did Lease use to support her argument that that women could
make a difference in political struggles?
2. How did Lease view the future of the United States? What role would women
play?
3. Which particular issue does Lease highlight in the opening paragraph as
being especially oppressive for farmers?
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William Jennings Bryan, Cross of Gold Speech
(1896)
William Jennings Bryan was well known for his dramatic speeches. During the Democratic Convention of 1896, Bryan delivered his best-known speech, which attacked the gold standard. His stirring rhetoric captivated his audience and won him the Democratic presidential nomination for the election of 1896.
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention: I would be presumptuous, indeed, to present myself against the distinguished gentlemen to whom you have listened if this were a mere measuring of abilities; but this is not a contest between persons. The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. I come to speak to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty-the cause of humanity. . . .
We say to you that you have made the
definition of a business man too limited in its application. The man who is
employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer; the attorney in a
country town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great
metropolis; the merchant at the cross-roads store is as much a business man as
the merchant of New York; the farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils
all day-who begins in the spring and toils all summer-and who by the
application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country creates
wealth, is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the board of trade
and bets upon the price of grain; the miners who go down a thousand feet into
the earth, or climb two thousand feet upon the cliffs, and bring forth from
their hiding places the precious metals to be poured into the channels of trade
are as much business men as the few financial magnates who, in a back room,
corner the money of the world. We come to speak for this broader class of
business men.
Ah, my friends, we say not one word
against those who live upon the Atlantic coast, but the hardy pioneers who have
braved all the dangers of the wilderness, who have made the desert to blossom
as the rose-the pioneers away out there [pointing to the West], who rear their
children near to Nature's heart, where they can mingle their voices with the
voices of the birds-out there where they have erected schoolhouses for the
education of their young, churches where they praise their Creator, and
cemeteries where rest the ashes of their dead-these people, we say, are as deserving
of the consideration of our party as any people in this country. It is for
these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of
conquest; we are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and
posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned; we have
entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded; we have begged, and they
have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we
petition no more. We defy them. . . .
We say in our platform that we
believe that the right to coin and issue money is a function of government. We
believe it. We believe that it is a part of sovereignty, and can no more with
safety be delegated to private individuals than we could afford to delegate to
private individuals the power to make penal statutes or levy taxes. Mr.
Jefferson, who was once regarded as good Democratic authority, seems to have
differed in opinion from the gentleman who has addressed us on the part of the
minority. Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of
paper money is a function of the bank, and that the Government ought to go out
of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson rather than with them, and tell
them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of government, and that
the banks ought to go out of the governing business. . . .
We go forth confident that we shall
win. Why? Because upon the paramount issue of this campaign there is not a spot
of ground upon which the enemy will dare to challenge battle. If they tell us
that the gold standard is a good thing, we shall point to their platform and
tell them that their platform pledges the party to get rid of the gold standard
and substitute bimetalism. If the gold standard is a good thing, why try to get
rid of it? I call your attention to the fact that some of the very people who
are in this convention today and who tell us that we ought to declare in favor
of international bimetallism--thereby declaring that the gold standard is wrong
and that the principle of bimetallism is better--these very people four months
ago were open and avowed advocates of the gold standard, and were then telling
us that we could not legislate two metals together, even with the aid of all
the world. If the gold standard is a good thing, we ought to declare in favor
of its retention and not in favor of abandoning it; and if the gold standard is
a bad thing why should we wait until other nations are willing to help us to
let go? Here is the line of battle, and we care not upon which issue they force
the fight; we are prepared to meet them on either issue or on both. If they
tell us that the gold standard is the standard of civilization, we reply to
them that this, the most enlightened of all the nations of the earth, has never
declared for a gold standard and that both the great parties this year are
declaring against it. If the gold standard is the standard of civilization,
why, my friends, should we not have it? If they come to meet us on that issue
we can present the history of our nation. More than that; we can tell them that
they will search the pages of history in vain to find a single instance where
the common people of any land have ever declared themselves in favor of the
gold standard. They can find where the holders of fixed investments have
declared for a gold standard, but not where the masses have. . . .
Upon which side will the Democratic
party fight; upon the side of "the idle holders of idle capital" or
upon the side of "the struggling masses?" That is the question which
the party must answer first, and then it must be answered by each individual
hereafter. The sympathies of the Democratic Party, as shown by the platform,
are on the side of the struggling masses who have ever been the foundation of
the Democratic party. There are two ideas of government. There are those who
believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous,
their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea,
however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their
prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.
You come to us and tell us that the
great cities are in favor of the gold standard; we reply that the great cities
rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our
farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our
farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.
My friends, we declare that this
nation is able to legislate for its own people on every question, without
waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth; and upon that
issue we expect to carry every State in the Union. I shall not slander the
inhabitants of the fair State of Massachusetts nor the inhabitants of the State
of New York by saying that, when they are confronted with the proposition, they
will declare that this nation is not able to attend to its own business. It is
the issue of 1776 over again. Our ancestors, when but three millions in number,
had the courage to declare their political independence of every other nation;
shall we, their descendants, when we have grown to seventy millions, declare
that we are less independent than our forefathers? No, my friends, that will
never be the verdict of our people. Therefore, we care not upon what lines the
battle is fought. If they say bimetallism is good, but that we cannot have it
until other nations help us, we reply that, instead of having a gold standard
because England has, we will restore bimetallism, and then let England have
bimetallism because the United States has it. If they dare to come out in the
open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to
the uttermost. 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.
Document Analysis
1. Why would this speech appeal to rural Americans?
2. Why would this speech appeal to urban workers?
3. What historical parallels did Bryan use in his speech? To whom might these
references appeal?
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WEEK FIVE: October 2-6
Albert Beveridge, "The March of the Flag"
(1898)
Albert Beveridge expressed his views concerning U.S. imperialism in "The March of the Flag,” printed in the Indianapolis Journal, September 17, 1898. Beveridge, a Republican senator from Indiana, was one of the leading spokesmen for a strongly expansionist foreign policy. In this address, which was widely read during the period, Beveridge merged prevalent opinions about the nation's civilizing mission with its economic destiny.
It is a noble land that God has given us; a land that can feed and clothe the world; a land whose coastlines would enclose half the countries of Europe; a land set like a sentinel between the imperial oceans of the globe, a greater England with a nobler destiny.
It is a mighty people that He has
planted on this soil; a people sprung from the most masterful blood of history;
a people perpetually revitalized by the virile, man-producing working folk of
all the earth; a people imperial by virtue of their power, by right of their
institutions, by authority of their Heavens-directed purposes - the
propagandists and not the misers of liberty.
It is a glorious history our God has
bestowed upon His chosen people; a history heroic with faith in our mission and
our future; a history of statesmen who flung the boundaries of the Republic out
into unexplored lands and savage wilderness; a history of soldiers who carried
the flag across blazing deserts and through the ranks of hostile mountains,
even to the gates of sunset; a history of a multiplying people who overran a
continent in half a century; a history of prophets who saw the consequences of
evils inherited from the past and of martyrs who died to save us from them; a
history divinely logical, in the process of whose tremendous seasoning we find
ourselves today.
Therefore, in this campaign, the
question is larger than a party question. It is an American question. It is a
world question. Shall the American people continue their march toward the
commercial supremacy of the world? Shall free institutions broaden their
blessed reign as the children of liberty wax in strength, until the empire of
our principles is established over the hearts of all mankind?
Have we no mission to perform, no
duty to discharge to our fellowman? Has God endowed us with gifts beyond our
deserts and marked us as the people of His peculiar favor, merely to rot in our
own selfishness, as men and nations must, who take cowardice for their
companion and self for their deity - China has, as India has, as Egypt has?
Shall we be as the man who had one
talent and hid it, or as he who had ten talents and use them until they grew to
riches? And shall we reap the reward that waits on our discharge of our high
duty; shall we occupy new markets for what our farmers raise, our factories
make, our merchants sell - aye, and, please God, new markets for what our ships
shall carry?
Hawaii is ours, Puerto Rico is to be
ours; at the prayer of her people Cuba finally will be ours; in the islands of
the East, even to the gates of Asia, coaling stations are to be ours at the
very least; the flag of a liberal government is to float over the Philippines,
and may it be the banner that Taylor unfurled in Texas and Fremont carried to
the coast.
The Opposition tells us that we ought
not to govern a people without their consent. I answer, The rule of liberty
that all just government derives its authority from the consent of the
governed, applies only to those who are capable of self-government. We govern
the Indians without their consent, we govern our territories without their
consent, we govern our children without their consent. How do they know that
our government would be without their consent? Would not the people of the
Philippines prefer the just, human, civilizing government of this Republic to
the savage, bloody rule of pillage and extortion from which we have rescued
them?
And, regardless of this formula of
words made only for enlightened, self-governing people, do we owe no duty to
the world? Shall we turn these peoples back to the reeking hands from which we
have taken them? Shall we abandon them, with Germany, England, Japan, hungering
for them? Shall we save them from those nations, to give them a self-rule of
tragedy?… Then, like man and not like children, let us on to our tasks, our
mission, and our destiny.
Wonderfully has God guided us. Yonder
at Bunker Hill and Yorktown His providence was above us. At New Orleans and on
ensanguined seas His hand sustained us. Abraham Lincoln was His minister and
His was the altar of freedom the Nation's soldiers set up on a hundred
battle-fields. His power directed Dewey in the East and delivered the Spanish
fleet into our hands, as He delivered the elder Armada into the hands of our
English sires two centuries ago. The American people can not use a dishonest
medium of exchange; it is ours to set the world its example of right and honor.
We can not fly from our world duties; it is ours to execute the purpose of a
fate that has driven us to be greater than our small intentions. We can not
retreat from any soil where Providence has unfurled our banner; it is ours to
save that soil for liberty and civilization.
Document Analysis
1. According to this address, why should the United States expand overseas?
2. What benefits would expansion bring to the United States? What benefits
would the United States bring to its annexed territories?
3. What is the nature of Beveridge's interpretation of history, as expressed
in the last paragraph?
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Carl Schurz, Platform of the American Anti-Imperialist
League (1899)
In 1898 the Spanish American War ended Spanish control of the Philippines, but U.S. military forces continued to fight against Filipino rebels seeking full independence. In response, a group of famous Americans, including Carl Schurz, Mark Twain, and journalist E.L. Godkin, organized the Anti-Imperialist League to advocate an end to U.S. involvement in that country. The League’s opposition was based on its interpretation of U.S. history.
We hold that the policy known as imperialism is hostile to liberty and tends toward militarism, an evil from which it has been our glory to be free. We regret that it has become necessary in the land of Washington and Lincoln to reaffirm that all men, of whatever race or color, are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We maintain that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. We insist that the subjugation of any people is "criminal aggression" and open disloyalty to the distinctive principles of our government.
We earnestly condemn the policy of
the present national administration in the Philippines. It seeks to extinguish
the spirit of 1776 in those islands. We deplore the sacrifice of our soldiers
and sailors, whose bravery deserves admiration even in an unjust war. We
denounce the slaughter of the Filipinos as a needless horror. We protest
against the extension of American sovereignty by Spanish methods.
We demand the immediate cessation of
the war against liberty, begun by Spain and continued by us. We urge that
Congress be promptly convened to announce to the Filipinos our purpose to
concede to them the independence for which they have so long fought and which
of right is theirs.
The United States have always
protested against the doctrine of international law which permits the
subjugation of the weak by the strong. A self-governing state cannot accept
sovereignty over an unwilling people. The United States cannot act upon the
ancient heresy that might makes right.
Imperialists assume that with the
destruction of self-government in the Philippines by American hands, all
opposition here will cease. This is a grievous error. Much as we abhor the war
of "criminal aggression" in the Philippines, greatly as we regret
that the blood of the Filipinos is on American hands, we more deeply resent the
betrayal of American institutions at home. The real firing line is not in the
suburbs of Manila. The foe is of our own household. The attempt of 1861 was to
divide the country. That of 1899 is to destroy its fundamental principles and
noblest ideals.
Whether the ruthless slaughter of the
Filipinos shall end next month or next year is but an incident in a contest
that must go on until the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of
the United States are rescued from the hands of their betrayers. Those who dispute
about standards of value while the foundation of the republic is undermined
will be listened to as little as those who would wrangle about the small
economies of the household while the house is on fire. The training of a great
people for a century, the aspiration for liberty of a vast immigration are
forces that will hurl aside those who in the delirium of conquest seek to
destroy the character of our institutions.
We deny that the obligation of all
citizens to support their government in times of grave national peril applies
to the present situation. If an administration may with impunity ignore the
issues upon which it was chosen, deliberately create a condition of war
anywhere on the face of the globe, debauch the civil service for spoils to promote
the adventure, organize a truth-suppressing censorship, and demand of all
citizens a suspension of judgement (sic) and their unanimous support while it
chooses to continue the fighting, representative government itself is
imperiled.
We propose to contribute to the
defeat of any person or party that stands for the forcible subjugation of any
people. We shall oppose for re-election all who in the White House or in
Congress betray American liberty in pursuit of un-American ends. We still hope
that both of our great political parties will support and defend the
declaration of independence in the closing campaign of the century.
We hold with Abraham Lincoln, that
"no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.
When the white man governs himself, that is self-government, but when he
governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than
self-government--that is despotism." "Our reliance is in the love of
liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes
liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands. Those who deny freedom to
others deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain
it."
We cordially invite the co-operation
of all men and women who remain loyal to the declaration of independence and
the constitution of the United States.
Document Analysis
1. What historical precedents does the platform cite?
2. What is the role of racial identification in the argument?
3. In this interpretation of events, how did U.S. action in the Philippines
threaten Americans at home? What actions does the platform urge Americans to
take in order to protest U.S. actions in the Philippines?
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Poem by Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden” (1899)
From McClure’s Magazine, 21 (February 1899), p. 291.
One of the great
questions occupying the the U.S. public at the turn of the twentieth century
was the fate of the Philippines following the U.S. victory in the
Spanish-American War. In 1896 Filipino nationalists had revolted against
Spanish rule. Led by Emilio Aguinaldo, the nationalists supported the United
States when it declared war against Spain in April 1898. In June, Aguinaldo
declared Filipino independence, and in January 1899 he was elected president.
However, the United States refused to recognize the new government. Feeling
betrayed, Aguinaldo declared war on the United States in February. The ensuing
debate regarding the appropriate policy toward the Philippines throughout the
nation and the wider world was heated, pitting imperialists against
anti-imperialists. Rudyard Kipling, the famous British author and poet, had
lived for many years in India as a child while his father was in the British
service. His imperialist childhood undoubtedly influenced his opinion of U.S.
intervention in the Philippines.
Notes: Aguinaldo was captured in March 1901 and declared his allegiance to the United States, although many people doubted his sincerity. In the war between the United States and the Filipino nationalists, which lasted until 1902, more than 40,000 Filipinos and 4,000 Americans lost their lives. The United States finally granted Filipino independence on July 4, 1946.
THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN
(The United States and
the Philippine Islands)
Take up the White Man’s burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
Take up the White Man’s burden—
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain,
To seek another’s profit,
And work another’s gain.
Take up the White Man’s burden—
The savage wars of peace—
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hope to nought.
Take up the White Man’s burden—
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper—
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go make them with your living,
And mark them with your dead!
Take up the White Man’s burden—
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard—
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly) toward the light:—
‘Why brought ye us from bondage,
‘Our loved Egyptian night?’
Take up the White Man’s burden—
Ye dare not stoop to less—
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your Gods and you.
Take up the White Man’s burden—
Have done with childish days—
The lightly proffered laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom.
The judgment of your peers!
1899
Document Analysis
1. Did Kipling write this poem to encourage or discourage U.S. intervention in
the Philippines?
2. What is the “white man’s burden”? Who are the “new-caught, sullen peoples”?
3. Why did “The White Man’s Burden” become one of Kipling’s most famous poems?
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Poem by Ernest Howard Crosby, “The Real ‘White Man’s
Burden’,” (1899)
From Ernest Howard Crosby, Swords and Plowshares (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1902), pp. 33–34. Poem originally appeared in New York Times (February 15, 1899).
Poet Ernest Crosby was an
active anti-imperialist, poet, and social reformer who had experienced British
imperialism first-hand in Egypt. After reading the Russian novelist Leo
Tolstoy, he resigned from his position in Egypt as judge of the International
Tribunal and devoted his life to promoting nonviolence. Crosby served as the
president of the Anti-Imperialist League of New York and as vice president of
the national Anti-Imperialist League. In 1899 he penned the parody poem below
to answer Rudyard Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden.”
THE REAL “WHITE MAN’S BURDEN”
by Ernest Howard Crosby
Take
up the White Man’s burden.
Send
forth your sturdy kin,
And
load them down with Bibles
And
cannon-balls and gin.
Throw
in a few diseases
To
spread the tropic climes
For
there the healthy niggers
Are
quite behind the times.
And
don’t forget the factories
On
those benighted shores
They
have no cheerful iron mills
Nor
eke department stores.
They
never work twelve hours a day,
And
live in strange content
Altho’
they never have to pay
A
single sou of rent.
Take
up the White Man’s Burden,
And
teach the Phillippines
What
interest and taxes are
And
what a mortgage means.
Give
them electrocution chairs,
And
prisons, too, galore,
And
if they seem inclined to kick
Then
spill their heathen gore.
They
need our labor question, too,
And
politics and fraud—
We’ve
made a pretty mess at home,
Let’s
make a mess abroad.
And
let us ever humbly pray
The
Lord of Hosts may deign
To
stir our feeble memories
Lest
we forget—the Maine.
Document Analysis
1. What does Crosby define as the worst aspects of U.S. imperialism?
2. Although Crosby’s poem is a parody, it raised important issues of the day.
Does the disagreement between Crosby and Kipling (and imperialists and
anti-imperialists generally) sound familiar in the twenty-first century?
3. Why did Crosby mention the Maine at the end of the poem? What
message was he attempting to convey?
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WEEK SIX: October 9-13
Eugene V. Debs, from "The Outlook for Socialism in
the United States" (1900)
Eugene Debs is perhaps the most famous socialist in U.S. history. Labor leader, activist, orator, and writer, Debs tirelessly campaigned throughout his life for a change in the nation’s political leadership. In this excerpt, he explains that both the Democratic and Republican parties were simply offering the electorate a choice between two versions of capitalism. In his estimation, socialism was the obvious alternative for working people.
The sun of the passing century is setting upon scenes of extraordinary activity in almost every part of our capitalistic old planet. Wars and rumors of wars are of universal prevalence. In the Philippines our soldiers are civilizing and Christianizing the natives in the latest and most approved styles of the art, and at prices ($13 per month) which commend the blessing to the prayerful consideration of the lowly and oppressed everywhere. . . .
The picture, lurid as a chamber of
horrors, becomes complete in its gruesome ghastliness when robed ministers of
Christ solemnly declare that it is all for the glory of God and the advancement
of Christian civilization. . . .
The campaign this year will be
unusually spectacular. The Republican Party "points with pride" to
the "prosperity" of the country, the beneficent results of the
"gold standard" and the "war record" of the administration.
The Democratic Party declares that "imperialism" is the
"paramount" issue, and that the country is certain to go to the
"demnition bow-wows" if Democratic officeholders are not elected
instead of the Republicans. The Democratic slogan is "The Republic vs. the
Empire," accompanied in a very minor key by 16 to 1 and "direct
legislation where practical."
Both these capitalist parties are
fiercely opposed to trusts, though what they propose to do with them is not of
sufficient importance to require even a hint in their platforms.
Needless is it for me to say to the
thinking workingman that he has no choice between these two capitalist parties,
that they are both pledged to the same system and that whether the one or the
other succeeds, he will still remain the wage-working slave he is today.
What but meaningless phrases are
"imperialism," "expansion," "free silver,"
"gold standard," etc., to the wage worker? The large capitalists
represented by Mr. McKinley and the small capitalists represented by Mr. Bryan
are interested in these "issues," but they do not concern the working
class.
What the workingmen of the country
are profoundly interested in is the private ownership of the means of
production and distribution, the enslaving and degrading wage system in which
they toil for a pittance at the pleasure of their masters and are bludgeoned,
jailed or shot when they protest-this is the central, controlling, vital issue
of the hour, and neither of the old party platforms has a word or even a hint
about it.
As a rule, large capitalists are
Republicans and small capitalists are Democrats, but workingmen must remember
that they are all capitalists, and that the many small ones, like the fewer
large ones, are all politically supporting their class interests, and this is
always and everywhere the capitalist class.
Whether the means of production-that
is to say, the land, mines, factories, machinery, etc.-are owned by a few large
Republican capitalists, who organize a trust, or whether they be owned by a lot
of small Democratic capitalists, who are opposed to the trust, is all the same
to the working class. Let the capitalists, large and small, fight this out
among themselves.
The working class must get rid of the
whole brood of masters and exploiters, and put themselves in possession and
control of the means of production, that they may have steady employment
without consulting a capitalist employer, large or small, and that they may get
the wealth their labor produces, all of it, and enjoy with their families the
fruits of their industry in comfortable and happy homes, abundant and wholesome
food, proper clothing and all other things necessary to "life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness." It is therefore a question not of
"reform," the mask of fraud, but of revolution. The capitalist system
must be overthrown, class rule abolished and wage slavery supplanted by
cooperative industry.
We hear it frequently urged that the
Democratic Party is the "poor man's party," "the friend of
labor." There is but one way to relieve poverty and to free labor, and
that is by making common property of the tools of labor. . . .
What has the Democratic Party to say
about the "property and educational qualifications" in North Carolina
and Louisiana, and the proposed general disfranchisement of the Negro race in
the Southern states?
The differences between the
Republican and Democratic parties involve no issue, no principle in which the
working class has any interest. . . .
Between these parties socialists have
no choice, no preference. They are one in their opposition to socialism, that
is to say, the emancipation of the working class from wage slavery, and every
workingman who has intelligence enough to understand the interest of his class
and the nature of the struggle in which it is involved will once and for all
time sever his relations with them both; and recognizing the class struggle
which is being waged between producing workers and nonproducing capitalists,
cast his lot with the class-conscious, revolutionary Socialist Party, which is
pledged to abolish the capitalist system, class rule and wage slavery-a party
which does not compromise or fuse, but, preserving inviolate the principles
which quickened it into life and now give it vitality and force, moves forward
with dauntless determination to the goal of economic freedom.
The political trend is steadily
toward socialism. The old parties are held together only by the cohesive power
of spoils, and in spite of this they are steadily disintegrating. Again and
again they have been tried with the same results, and thousands upon thousands,
awake to their duplicity, are deserting them and turning toward socialism as
the only refuge and security. Republicans, Democrats, Populists,
Prohibitionists, Single Taxers are having their eyes opened to the true nature
of the struggle and they are beginning to
Come as the winds come, when Forests
are rended; Come as the waves come, when Navies are stranded. For a time the
Populist Party had a mission, but it is practically ended. The Democratic Party
has "fused" it out of existence. The "middle-of-the-road"
element will be sorely disappointed when the votes are counted, and they will
probably never figure in another national campaign. Not many of them will go
back to the old parties. Many of them have already come to socialism, and the
rest are sure to follow.
There is no longer any room for a
Populist Party, and progressive Populists realize it, and hence the
"strongholds" of Populism are becoming the "hotbeds" of
Socialism.
It is simply a question of capitalism
or socialism, of despotism or democracy, and they who are not wholly with us
are wholly against us.
Document Analysis
1. What did Debs see as the future of Populism?
2. To whom would Debs’s arguments appeal?
3. Do Debs’s criticisms of the two major parties sound familiar? Does this
debate continue in contemporary politics? If so, in what way?
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Herbert Croly, from Progressive Democracy (1914)
Herbert Croly was the first editor of the New Republic, and his ideas influenced such politicians as Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. An ardent Progressive, Croly’s book, The Promise of America Life, is generally cited as the clearest expression of the goals of Progressivism in the early 20th century. In the excerpt below, Croly describes the impact of Progressive ideas on U.S. politics.
[W]hile fully admitting that the transition may not be as abrupt as it seems, we have apparently been witnessing during the past year or two the end of one epoch and the beginning of another. A movement of public opinion, which believes itself to be and calls itself essentially progressive, has become the dominant formative influence in American political life.
The best evidence of the power of
progressivism is the effect which its advent has had upon the prestige and the
fortunes of political leaders of both parties. For the first time attractions
and repulsions born of the progressive idea, are determining lines of political
association. Until recently a man who wished actively and effectively to
participate in political life had to be either a Democrat or a Republican; but
now, although Republicanism and Democracy are still powerful political forces,
the standing of a politician is determined quite as much by his relation to the
progressive movement. The line of cleavage between progressives and
non-progressives is fully as important as that between Democrats and
Republicans. Political leaders, who have deserved well of their own party but
who have offended the progressives, are retiring or are being retired from
public life. Precisely what the outcome will be, no one can predict with any
confidence; but one result seems tolerably certain. If the classification of
the great majority of American voters into Democrats and Republicans is to
endure, the significance of both Democracy and Republicanism is bound to be
profoundly modified by the new loyalties and the new enmities created by the
aggressive progressive intruder. . . .
[T]he complexion, and to a certain
extent even the features, of the American political countenance have profoundly
altered. Political leaders still pride themselves upon their conservatism, but
candid conservatives, in case they come from any other part of the country but
the South, often pay for their candor by their early retirement. Conservatism
has come to imply reaction. Its substantial utility is almost as much
undervalued as that of radicalism formerly was. The whole group of prevailing
political values has changed. Proposals for the regulation of public utility
companies, which would then have been condemned as examples of administrative
autocracy, are now accepted without serious public controversy. Plans of social
legislation, which formerly would have been considered culpably "paternal,"
and, if passed at the solicitation of the labor unions, would have been
declared unconstitutional by the courts, are now considered to be a normal and
necessary exercise of the police power. Proposed alterations in our political
mechanism, which would then have been appraised as utterly extravagant and
extremely dangerous, are now being placed on the headlines of political
programs and are being incorporated in state constitutions. In certain
important respects the radicals of 1904 do not differ in their practical
proposals from the conservatives of 1914. . . .
Thus by almost imperceptible degrees
reform became insurgent and insurgency progressive. For the first time in four
generations American conservatism was confronted by a pervasive progressivism,
which began by being dangerously indignant and ended by being far more
dangerously inquisitive. Just resentment is useful and indispensable while it
lasts; but it cannot last long. If it is to persist, it must be transformed
into a thoroughgoing curiosity which will not rest until it has discovered what
the abuses mean, how they best can be remedied, and how intimately they are
associated with temples and doctrines of the traditional political creed. The
conservatives themselves have provoked this curiosity, and they must abide by
its results.
Just here lies the difference between
modern progressivism and the old reform. The former is coming to be
remorselessly inquisitive and unscrupulously thorough. The latter never knew
any need of being either inquisitive or thorough. The early political reformers
confined their attention to local or to special abuses. Civil service reform
furnishes a good example of their methods and their purposes. The spoils system
was a very grave evil, which was a fair object of assault; but it could not be
successfully attacked and really uprooted merely by placing subordinate public
officials under the protection of civil service laws and boards. Such laws and
boards might do something to prevent politicians from appropriating the minor
offices; but as long as the major offices were the gifts of the political
machines, and as long as no attempt was made to perfect expert administrative
organization as a necessary instrument of democracy, the agitation for civil
service reform remained fundamentally sterile. It was sterile, because it was
negative and timid, and because its supporters were content with their early
successes and did not grow with the growing needs of their own agitation. In an
analogous way the movement towards municipal reform attained a sufficient
following in certain places to be embarrassing to local political bosses; but
as long as it was a non-partisan movement for "good government" its
successes were fugitive and sterile. It did not become really effective until
it became frankly partisan, and associated good municipal government with all
sorts of changes in economic and political organization which might well be
obnoxious to many excellent citizens. In these and other cases the early
political reformers were not sufficiently thorough. They failed to carry their
analysis of the prevailing evils far or deep enough, and in their choice of
remedies they never got beyond the illusions that moral exhortation, legal
prohibitions and independent voting constituted a sufficient cure for American
political abuses. . . .
All this disconnected political and
economic agitation had, however, a value of which the agitators themselves were
not wholly conscious. Not only was the attitude of national self-satisfaction
being broken down in spots, but the ineffectiveness of these local, spasmodic
and restricted agitations had its effect on public opinion and prepared the way
for a synthesis of the various phases of reform. When the wave of political
"muck-raking" broke over the country, it provided a common bond,
which tied reformers together. This bond consisted at first of the indignation
which was aroused by the process of exposure; but it did not remain for long
merely a feeling. As soon as public opinion began to realize that business
exploitation had been allied with political corruption, and that the reformers
were confronted, not by disconnected abuses, but by a perverted system, the
inevitable and salutary inference began to be drawn. Just as business
exploitation was allied with political corruption, so business reorganization
must be allied with political reorganization. The old system must be confronted
and superseded by a new system-the result of an alert social intelligence as
well as an aroused individual conscience.
Louis Brandeis, from Other People's Money and How
Bankers Use It, 1913
Louis Brandeis achieved prominence as a lawyer, progressive reformer, and the first Jewish person appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Brandeis was greatly concerned over the rise of monopolies in the United States. In his book, Other People's Money and How Bankers Use It, Brandeis questions the role of investment bankers and the consolidation of banks.
The dominant element in our financial oligarchy is the investment banker. Associated banks, trust companies and life insurance companies are his tools. Controlled railroads, public service and industrial corporations are his subjects. Though properly but middlemen, these bankers bestride as masters of America's business world, so that practically no large enterprise can be undertaken successfully without their participation or approval. These bankers are, of course, able men possessed of large fortunes; but the most potent factor in their control of business is not the possession of extraordinary ability or huge wealth. The key to their power is Combination-concentration intensive and comprehensive-advancing on three distinct lines:
First: There is the obvious consolidation of banks and trust companies; the less
obvious affiliations-through stockholdings, voting trusts and interlocking
directorates-of banking institutions which are not legally connected; and the
joint transactions, gentlemen's agreements, and "banking ethics"
which eliminate competition among the investment bankers.
Second: There is the consolidation of railroads into huge systems, the large
combinations of public service corporations and the formation of industrial
trusts, which, by making businesses so "big" that local, independent
banking concerns cannot alone supply the necessary funds, has created
dependence upon the associated New York bankers.
But combination, however intensive,
along these lines only, could not have produced the Money Trust--another and
more potent factor of combination was added.
Third: Investment bankers, like J. P. Morgan & Co., dealers in bonds, stocks
and notes, encroached upon the functions of the three other classes of
corporations with which their business brought them into contact. They became
the directing power in railroads, public service and industrial companies
through which our great business operations are conducted-the makers of bonds
and stocks. They became the directing power in the life insurance companies,
and other corporate reservoirs of the people's savings-the buyers of bonds and
stocks. They became the directing power also in banks and trust companies-the
depositaries of the quick capital of the country-the life blood of business,
with which they and others carried on their operations. Thus four distinct
functions, each essential to business, and each exercised, originally, by a
distinct set of men, became united in the investment banker. It is to this
union of business functions that the existence of the Money Trust is mainly
due.
The development of our financial
oligarchy followed, in this respect, lines with which the history of political
despotism has familiarized us: usurpation, proceeding by gradual encroachment
rather than by violent acts; subtle and often long-concealed concentration of
distinct functions, which are beneficent when separately administered, and
dangerous only when combined in the same persons. It was by processes such as
these that Cæsar Augustus became master of Rome. The makers of our own
Constitution had in mind like dangers to our political liberty when they provided
so carefully for the separation of governmental powers. . . .
The goose that lays golden eggs has
been considered a most valuable possession. But even more profitable is the
privilege of taking the golden eggs laid by somebody else's goose. The investment
bankers and their associates now enjoy that privilege. They control the people
through the people's own money. If the bankers' power were commensurate only
with their wealth, they would have relatively little influence on American
business. Vast fortunes like those of the Astors are no doubt regrettable. They
are inconsistent with democracy. They are unsocial. And they seem peculiarly
unjust when they represent largely unearned increment. But the wealth of the
Astors does not endanger political or industrial liberty. It is insignificant
in amount as compared with the aggregate wealth of America, or even of New York
City. It lacks significance largely because its owners have only the income
from their own wealth. The Astor wealth is static. The wealth of the Morgan
associates is dynamic. The power and the growth of power of our financial
oligarchs comes from wielding the savings and quick capital of others. In two
of the three great life insurance companies the influence of J. P. Morgan &
Co. and their associates is exerted without any individual investment by them
whatsoever. Even in the Equitable, where Mr. Morgan bought an actual majority
of all the outstanding stock, his investment amounts to little more than
one-half of one per cent of the assets of the company. The fetters which bind
the people are forged from the people's own gold. . . .
The fact that industrial monopolies
arrest development is more serious even than the direct burden imposed through
extortionate prices. But the most harm-bearing incident of the trusts is their
promotion of financial concentration. Industrial trusts feed the money trust.
Practically every trust created has destroyed the financial independence of
some communities and of many properties; for it has centered the financing of a
large part of whole lines of business in New York, and this usually with one of
a few banking houses. This is well illustrated by the Steel Trust, which is a
trust of trusts; that is, the Steel Trust combines in one huge holding company
the trusts previously formed in the different branches of the steel business.
Thus the Tube Trust combined 17 tube mills, located in 16 different cities,
scattered over 5 states and owned by 13 different companies. The wire trust
combined 19 mills; the sheet steel trust 26; the bridge and structural trust
27; and the tin plate trust 36; all scattered similarly over many states.
Finally these and other companies were formed into the United States Steel
Corporation, combining 228 companies in all, located in 127 cities and towns,
scattered over 18 states. Before the combinations were effected, nearly every
one of these companies was owned largely by those who managed it, and had been
financed, to a large extent, in the place, or in the state, in which it was
located.
Document Analysis
1. How did Brandeis portray people like J. P. Morgan and the Astor family?
2. What did Brandeis identify as the negative affect of the financial trusts
on the U.S. economy?
3. What did Brandeis mean by the “Money Trust”?
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WEEK SEVEN: October 16-20
Adolf K.G.E. von Spiegel, U-boat 202 (1919)
Adolf K.G.E. von Spiegel commanded a German U-boat during World War I. He published his memoirs in 1919. Here he describes the attack on a cargo vessel in April 1916.
The steamer appeared to be close to us and looked colossal. I saw the captain walking on his bridge, a small whistle in his mouth. I saw the crew cleaning the deck forward, and I saw, with surprise and a slight shudder, long rows of wooden partitions right along all decks, from which gleamed the shining black and brown backs of horses.
“Oh heavens, horses! What a pity,
those lovely beasts!”
“But it cannot be helped,” I went on
thinking. “War is war, and every horse the fewer on the Western front is a
reduction of fighting power.” I must acknowledge, however, that the thought of
what must come was a most unpleasant one, and I will describe what happened as
briefly as possible.
“Stand by for firing a torpedo!” I
called down to the control room.”
“FIRE!”
A slight tremor went through the boat
- the torpedo had gone.
The death-bringing shot was a true
one, and the torpedo ran towards the doomed ship at high speed. I could follow
its course exactly by the light streak of bubbles which was left in its wake.
I saw that the bubble-track of the
torpedo had been discovered on the bridge of the steamer, as frightened arms
pointed towards the water and the captain put his hands in front of his eyes
and waited resignedly. Then a frightful explosion followed, and we were all
thrown against one another by the concussion, and then, like Vulcan, huge and
majestic, a column of water two hundred metres high and fifty metres broad,
terrible in its beauty and power, shot up to the heavens.
“Hit abaft the second funnel,” I
shouted down to the control room.
All her decks were visible to me.
From all the hatchways a storming, despairing mass of men were fighting their
way on deck, grimy stokers, officers, soldiers, groom, cooks. They all rushed,
ran, screamed for boats, tore and thrust one another from the ladders leading
down to them, fought for the lifebelts and jostled one another on the sloping
deck. All amongst them, rearing, slipping horses are wedged. The starboard
boats could not be lowered on account of the list; everyone therefore ran
across to the port boats, which in the hurry and panic, had been lowered with
great stupidity either half full or overcrowded. The men left behind were wringing
their hands in despair and running to and fro along the decks; finally they
threw themselves into the water so as to swim to the boats.
Then - a second explosion, followed
by the escape of white hissing steam from all hatchways and scuttles. The white
steam drove the horses mad. I saw a beautiful long-tailed dapple-grey horse
take a mighty leap over the berthing rails and land into a fully laden boat. At
that point I could not bear the sight any longer, and I lowered the periscope
and dived deep.
Document Analysis
1. What cargo was the steamer carrying? Why was it important cargo in World
War I?
2. From the text, what would you think the mission orders of the submarine
commander were?
3. Keeping in mind that the text is an excerpt from the commander’s memoirs,
do you think he fairly reports the events, or does he portray himself in a
unjustly favorable light?
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Newton D. Baker, "The Treatment of
German-Americans" (1918)
During World War I, the pro-American, anti-German spirit reached beyond propaganda posters and films into everyday life. Many schools banned the teaching of the German language, and just as French fries became “freedom fries” for a brief period during the latest war in Iraq, during World War I sauerkraut was renamed “liberty cabbage,” and German measles became “liberty measles.” However, there were more disturbing episodes as well. As one example, in 1918 near East St. Louis, Robert Prager, a young German-American man, was taken from police custody and lynched by a mob. Prager’s “crime” had been to speak at a meeting of socialists. The mob leaders were acquitted. The selection below describes an event that had a less violent outcome.
The spirit of the country seems unusually good, but there is a growing frenzy of suspicion and hostility toward disloyalty. I am afraid we are going to have a good many instances of people roughly treated on very slight evidence of disloyalty. Already a number of men and some women have been "tarred and feathered," and a portion of the press is urging with great vehemence more strenuous efforts at detection and punishment. This usually takes the form of advocating "drum-head courts-martial" and "being stood up against a wall and shot," which are perhaps none too bad for real traitors, but are very suggestive of summary discipline to arouse mob spirit, which unhappily does not take time to weigh evidence.
In Cleveland a few days ago a
foreign-looking man got into a street car and, taking a seat, noticed pasted in
the window next to him a Liberty Loan poster, which he immediately tore down,
tore into small bits, and stamped under his feet. The people in the car surged
around him with the demand that he be lynched, when a Secret Service man showed
his badge and placed him under arrest, taking him in a car to the police
station, where he was searched and found to have two Liberty Bonds in his
pocket and to be a non-English Pole. When an interpreter was procured, it was
discovered that the circular which he had destroyed had had on it a picture of
the German Emperor, which had so infuriated the fellow that he destroyed the
circular to show his vehement hatred of the common enemy. As he was unable to
speak a single word of English, he would undoubtedly have been hanged but for
the intervention and entirely accidental presence of the Secret Service agent.
I am afraid the grave danger in this
sort of thing, apart from its injustice, is that the German Government will
adopt retaliatory measures. While the Government of the United States is not
only responsible for these things, but very zealously trying to prevent them,
the German Government draws no fine distinctions.
Document Analysis
1. What was Baker’s reason for relating this story?
2. Is there still a danger that such misunderstandings could take place in the
United States?
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Statement to French Authorities Concerning Black American
Troops (1918)
Note: Among those African American troops who served in France, the 369th Infantry became famous for its valor on the field. A total of 171 of the Harlem Hellfighters, as they were known, received French medals honoring their service.
French Military Mission
Stationed with the American Army
August 7, 1918
Secret Information Concerning Black
American Troops
1. It is important for French
officers who have been called upon to exercise command over black American
troops, or to live in close contact with them, to have an exact idea of the
position occupied by Negroes in the United States. The information set forth in
the following communication ought to be given to these officers and it is to
their interest to have these matters known and widely disseminated. It will
devolve likewise on the French Military Authorities, through the medium of the
Civil Authorities, to give information on this subject to the French population
residing in the cantonments occupied by American colored troops.
2. The American attitude upon the
Negro question may seem a matter for discussion to many French minds. But we
French are not in our province if we undertake to discuss what some call
"prejudice." American opinion is unanimous on the "color question"
and does not admit of any discussion.
The increasing number of Negroes in
the United States (about 15,000,000) would create for the white race in the
Republic a menace of degeneracy were it not that an impassable gulf has been
made between them.
As this danger does not exist for the
French race, the French public has become accustomed to treating the Negro with
familiarity and indulgence.
This indulgence and this familiarity
are matters of grievous concern to the Americans. They consider them an affront
to their national policy. They are afraid that contact with the French will
inspire in black Americans aspirations which to them [the whites] appear
intolerable. It is of the utmost importance that every effort be made to avoid
profoundly estranging American opinion.
Although a citizen of the United
States, the black man is regarded by the white American as an inferior being
with whom relations of business or service only are possible. The black is
constantly being censured for his want of intelligence and discretion, his lack
of civic and professional conscience and for his tendency toward undue
familiarity.
The vices of the Negro are a constant
menace to the American who has to repress them sternly. For instance, the black
American troops in France have, by themselves, given rise to as many complaints
for attempted rape as all the rest of the army. And yet the [black American]
soldiers sent us have been the choicest with respect to physique and morals,
for the number disqualified at the time of mobilization was enormous.
Conclusion
1. We must prevent the rise of any
pronounced degree of intimacy between French officers and black officers. We
may be courteous and amiable with these last, but we cannot deal with them on
the same plane as with the white American officers without deeply wounding the
latter. We must not eat with them, must not shake hands or seek to talk or meet
with them outside of the requirements of military service.
2. We must not commend too highly the
black American troops, particularly in the presence of [white] Americans. It is
all right to recognize their good qualities and their services, but only in
moderate terms, strictly in keeping with the truth.
3. Make a point of keeping the native
cantonment population from "spoiling" the Negroes. [White] Americans
become greatly incensed at any public expression of intimacy between white
women with black men. They have recently uttered violent protests against a
picture in the "Vie Parisienne" entitled "The Child of the Desert"
which shows a [white] woman in a "cabinet particulier" with a Negro.
Familiarity on the part of white women with black men is furthermore a source
of profound regret to our experienced colonials who see in it an over-weening
menace to the prestige of the white race.
Military authority cannot intervene
directly in this question, but it can through the civil authorities exercise
some influence on the population.
Document Analysis
1. What reason does the memo give for the fundamental difference between
racial attitudes in France and those in the United States?
2. In the “Conclusion” section, item 3 references “our experienced colonials.”
Who were these people, and why were they equally unhappy about the photo of a
white woman and a black man?
3. Does the author of this memo seem to support white American attitudes
toward black soldiers? In other words, does the author seem sincere, or is this
policy being adopted to appease white American leaders?
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Executive Orders and Senate Resolutions on the Teapot
Dome Scandal (1920)
During the administration of William H. Taft, the U.S. government had set aside tracts of oil-rich land to be held in reserve for the U.S. Navy, to be used in case of national emergency. The land was under the control and discretion of the secretary of the Navy. These reserves included Naval Reserve Number One, in Elk Hills, California; Naval Reserve Number Two, in Buena Vista, California; and Naval Reserve Number Three, in Salt Creek, Wyoming, which became known as Teapot Dome due to the shape of the land formation.
When Warren G. Harding's
administration came into power in 1921, the potential wealth to be reaped from
this land proved too tempting to some members of the administration. Secretary
of the Interior Albert B. Fall sought to have jurisdiction over the naval
reserve lands transferred to the Department of the Interior. President Harding
supported this effort by signing Executive Order 3474 in May 1921.
The following year, Fall
began to lease these lands to private oil companies, Pan-American Petroleum and
Transport Company and Mammoth Oil Company, without competitive bids. For
providing use of government reserves worth at least $100 million, Fall personally
received almost $400,000 in cash and bonds, while neither the U.S. government
nor the Navy received a cent. Rumors and suspicions of the deal that Fall
struck with the oil companies led the U.S. Senate to begin an investigation
(Senate Resolution 282).
Executive Order 3474
Under the provisions of the act of
Congress approved February 25, 1920 (41 Stat., 437), authorizing the Secretary
of the Interior to lease producing oil wells within any Naval Petroleum
Reserve; authorizing the President to permit the drilling of additional wells
or to lease the remainder or any part of a chain upon which such wells have
been drilled, and under authority of the act of Congress approved June 4, 1920
(41 Sta., 912), directing the Secretary of the Navy to conserve, develop, use
and operate, directly or by contract, lease, or otherwise, unappropriated lands
in Naval Reserves, the administration, and conservation, of all oil and gas
bearing lands in Naval Petroleum Reserves Nos. 1 and 2, California, and Naval
petroleum Reserve No. 3 in Wyoming, and Naval Shale Reserves in Colorado and
Utah, are hereby committed to the Secretary of the Interior subject to the
supervision of the President, but no general policy as to drilling or reserving
lands located in a Naval Reserve shall be changed or adopted except upon
consultation and cooperation with the Secretary or Acting Secretary of the
Navy. The Secretary of the Interior is authorized and directed to perform any
and all acts necessary for the protection, conservation and administration of
the said Reserves subject to the conditions and limitations contained in this
order and of the existing laws or such laws as may hereafter be enacted by
Congress pertaining thereto.
Warren G. Harding
The White House
May 31, 1921
Senate Resolution
67th Congress,
9th Session—S. RES. 282
RESOLUTION
Directing the
Secretary of the Interior to send to the Senate certain detailed information s
to oil leases made by the department within naval oil reserves numbered one and
two in California and numbered three in Wyoming.
By Mr. La Follette
April 20 (calendar day, April 21),
1922
Amendment
S.
Res. 282
In
the Senate of the United States
April
20 (calendar day, April 28), 1922
Ordered
to lie on the table and to be printed
AMENDMENT
(In
the Nature of a Substitute)
Intended to be proposed by Mr. La
Follette to the resolution (S. Res. 282) directing the Secretary of the
Interior to send the Senate certain detailed information as to oil leases made
by the department within the naval oil reserves numbered one and two in
California and numbered three in Wyoming, via On page 1, line 1, strike out all
after the word “Resolved,” and insert the following:
That the Secretary of the Interior is
directed to send to the Senate:
(a) Copies of all oil leases made by
the Department of the Interior within naval oil reserve numbered one, and
separately, naval oil reserve numbered two, both in the amount of the rent,
royalty, bonus, and all other compensation paid and to be paid to the United
States.
(b) All Executive orders and other
papers in the files of the Department of the Interior and its bureaus, or
copies thereof if the originals are not in the files, authorizing or regulating
such leases, including correspondence or memoranda embodying or concerning all
agreements, instructions, and requests by the President or the Navy Department
as to the making of such leases and the terms thereof.
(c) All correspondence, papers, and
files showing and concerning the applications for such leases and the action of
the Department of the Interior and its bureaus thereon and upon all the several
claims upon which such leases were based or issued, all in said naval reserves.
Resolved further, That the Committee on public Lands and Surveys be authorized to
investigate this entire subject of leases upon naval oil reserves, with
particular reference to the protection of the rights and equities of the
Government of the United States, and the preservation of its natural resources,
and to report its findings and recommendations to the Senate.
Document Analysis
1. Based on Executive Order 3474, how is the president implicated in this
scheme?
2. Who sponsored Senate Resolution 282? What does the resolution require Fall
to do?
3. Who did the resolution place in charge of the investigation?
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The “Creed of Klanswomen,” 1924. The Kluxer, March 8,
1924, p. 20.
The Ku Klux Klan consisted of women as well as men. Women were first initiated into the Klan in 1923. Nationwide, as many as half a million women eventually joined the Klan. Their role. was similar to that of men. They supported militant patriotism, racial segregation, national quotas for immigration, and anti-miscegenation laws. They also established rules and beliefs that were to be followed by the members of the Women of the Ku Klux Klan. These beliefs were recorded in the document “Creed of Klanswomen,” which appears below. In this document the women focused on heritage, the great and glorious United States, eligibility, and what they believed to be best for their country.
Creed of the Klanswomen
We believe in the fatherhood of God,
the brotherhood of Jesus Christ and the eternal tenets of the Christian
religion, as practiced by enlightend Protestant churches.
We believe that church and state
should continue separate in administration and organization, although united in
their mission and purpose to serve mankind unselfishly.
We believe in the American home as
the foundation upon which rests the American republic, the future of its
institutions and the liberties of its citizens.
We believe in the mission of
emancipated womanhood, freed from the shackles of old world traditions, and
standing unafraid in the full effulgence of equality and enlightment.
We believe in the equality of men and
women in political religious, fraternal civic and social affairs wherein there
should be no distinction of sex.
We believe in the free public
schools, where our children are trained in the principles and ideals that
America the greatest of all nations.
We believe the Stars and Stripes the
most beautiful flag on earth, symbolizing the purity of race, the blood of
martyrs and the fidelity of patriot.
We believe that the current of pure
American blood must United States and the several states, and consecrate
ourselves to its preservation against all enemies at home and abroad.
We believe that the freedom of
speech, of press and of worship is an inalienable right of all citizens whose
allegiance and loyalty to our country is unquestioned.
We believe that principle comes
before party; that justice should be firm, but impartial, and that partisanship
must yield to intelligent co-operation.
We believe that the current of pure
American bood must be kept uncontaminated by mongrel strains and protected from
racial pollutions.
We believe that the government of the
United States must be kept inviolate from the control or domination of alien
races and the baleful influence of inferior peoples.
We believe that the people are greater
than any foreign power or potentate, prince or prelate and that no other
allegiance in America should be tolerated.
We believe that the perpetuity of our
nation rests upon the solidarity and purity of our native-born, white, Gentile,
Protestant men and women.
We believe that under God the Women
of the Ku Klux Klan is a militant body of American freewomen by whom these
principles shall be maintained, our racial purity preserved, our homes and
children protected, our happiness insured and the prosperity of our community,
our state and our nation guaranteed against usurpation, disloyalty and selfish
exploitation.
Document Analysis
1. What does the document mean by “enlightened Protestant churches”?
2. Does the Ku Klux Klan seem to discriminate on the basis of gender? Explain
your answer.
3. Who are the “alien races” and “inferior peoples” that the document refers
to?
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WEEK EIGHT: October 23-27
Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address (1932)
Franklin Roosevelt took office during the worst economic depression the nation had ever experienced. Unemployment was skyrocketing, almost half of the country’s 24,000 banks had failed, inflation was climbing, and the nation’s farmers were desperate to sell their goods. Roosevelt’s first inaugural address is in many ways typical of his public approach to the problem. He used strong yet optimistic language and spoke of “attacking” the problem head-on. This speech is famous for his statement that Americans had “nothing to fear but fear itself.” However, it also began to give shape to a program that would require powers no previous U.S. president had ever wielded.
I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our Nation impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.
In such a spirit on my part and on
yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material
things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability
to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of
income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered
leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for
their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.
More important, a host of unemployed
citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil
with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark reality of the
movement.
Yet our distress comes from no
failure or substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with
the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not
afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty
and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous
use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because
rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed through their own
stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and have
abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the
court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
True they have tried, but their
efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure
of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the
lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their leadership, they
have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They
have known only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision,
and when there is no vision the people perish.
The money changers have fled from
their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that
temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent
to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
Happiness lies not in the mere
possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of
creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be
forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth
all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered
unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.
Recognition of the falsity of
material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the
abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position
are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit;
and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too
often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish
wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on
honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on
unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.
Restoration calls, however not for
changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.
Our greatest primary task is to put
people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and
courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the
Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war,
but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed
projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.
Hand in hand with this we must
frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and,
by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a
better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. The task can be
helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and
with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by
preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of
our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal,
State, and local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be
drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities
which today are often scattered, uneconomical, and unequal. It can be helped by
national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of
communications and other utilities which have a definitely public character.
There are many ways in which it can be helped but it can never be helped merely
by talking about it. We must act and act quickly.
Finally, in our progress toward a
resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of
the old order: there must be a strict supervision of all banking an credits and
investments, so that there will be an end to speculation with other people's
money; and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.
These are the lines of attack. I
shall presently urge upon a new Congress, in special session, detailed measures
for their fulfillment, and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the several
States.
Through this program of action we
address ourselves to putting our own national house in order and making income
balance outgo. Our international trade relations, though vastly important, are
in point of time and necessity secondary to the establishment of a sound
national economy. I favor as a practical policy the putting of first things
first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international economic
readjustment, but the emergency at home cannot wait on that accomplishment.
The basic thought that guides these
specific means of national recovery is not narrowly nationalistic. It is the
insistence as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various
elements in and parts of the United States-a recognition of the old and
permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer. It
is the way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the strongest assurance
that the recovery will endure.
In the field of world policy I would
dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor-the neighbor who
respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and
with a world of neighbors.
If I read the temper of our people
correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence
on each other; that we cannot merely take but we must give as well; that if we
are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to
sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline
no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and
willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes
possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. This I propose to offer,
pledging that the larger purpose will bind upon us all as a sacred obligation
with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.
With this pledge taken, I assume
unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a
disciplined attack upon our common problems.
Action in this image and to this end
is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our
ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible
always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement
without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has
proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world
has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign
wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations.
It is to be hoped that the normal
balance of Executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet
the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand
and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal
balance of public procedure.
I am prepared under my constitutional
duty to recommend the measures that a stricken Nation in the midst of a
stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the
Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my
constitutional authority to bring to speedy adoption.
But in the event that the Congress
shall fail to take one of these two courses and in the event that the national
emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that
will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining
instrument to meet the crisis-broad Executive power to wage a war against the
emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact
invaded by a foreign foe.
For the trust reposed in me I will
return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.
We face the arduous days that lie
before us in the warm courage of national unity; with the clear consciousness
of seeking old and precious moral values; with the clear satisfaction that
comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the
assurance of a rounded and permanent national life.
We do not distrust the future of
essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their
need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action.
They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made
me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.
In this dedication of a Nation we
humbly ask the blessing of God. May He protect each and every one of us. May He
guide me in the days to come.
Document Analysis
1. What is the general tone of Roosevelt’s speech? How did he describe the
existing situation?
2. What, specifically, did Roosevelt indicate he was going to do?
3. What makes this a particularly memorable political speech?
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WEEK NINE: October 30-November 3
Charles Lindbergh, Radio Address (1941)
Isolationism had been the general attitude not only of the government but also the American people throughout the 1920s. Tariffs had risen, war debts were defaulted on, and international loans were banned. The American public had been disillusioned by the disparity between the idealistic goals of World War I and the reality of the peace settlement, which had been less than President Wilson had promised. The world was not any safer for democracy, and it became more and more evident in the 1930s that the Great War would not be the "war to end all wars.” As the government began to react to the threats from Japan and Germany, the American people began to react to the government, clearly opposed to another war and wishing to return to the security of isolationism.
Several organizations emerged that endorsed isolationism and opposed the Roosevelt administration's ever-increasing involvement in European affairs. One of the most popular and vocal groups was the America First Committee, formed in 1940. Its visibility and popularity were bolstered by movie stars like Lillian Gish and the American hero Charles Lindbergh.
In its first public statement, the
America First Committee laid out its four basic principles:
1. The United States must build an
impregnable defense.
2. No foreign powers, nor group of
powers, can successfully attack a prepared United States.
3. Democracy in the United States can
be preserved only by keeping out of the European war.
4. "Aid short of war"
weakens national defense at home and threatens to involve the nation in war
abroad.
In 1941, Charles Lindbergh reiterated
these principles and expressed his personal opinions regarding the war that
raged in Europe and possible U.S. intervention in that war.
There are many viewpoints from which
the issues of this war can be argued. Some are primarily idealistic. Some are
primarily practical. One should, I believe, strive for a balance of both. But,
since the subjects that can be covered in a single address are limited, tonight
I shall discuss the war from a viewpoint which is primarily practical. It is
not that I believe ideals are unimportant, even among the realities of war; but
if a nation is to survive in a hostile world, its ideals must be backed by the
hard logic of military practicability. If the outcome of war depended upon
ideals alone, this would be a different world than it is today.
I know I will be severely criticized
by the interventionists in America when I say we should not enter a war unless
we have a reasonable chance of winning. That, they will claim, is far too
materialistic a viewpoint. They will advance again the same arguments that were
used to persuade France to declare war against Germany in 1939. But I do not
believe that our American ideals, and our way of life, will gain through an
unsuccessful war. And I know that the United States is not prepared to wage war
in Europe successfully at this time. We are no better prepared today than
France was when the interventionists in Europe persuaded her to attack the
Siegfried line.
I have said before, and I will say
again, that I believe it will be a tragedy to the entire world if the British
Empire collapses. That is one of the main reasons why I opposed this war before
it was declared and why I have constantly advocated a negotiated peace. I did
not feel that England and France had a reasonable chance of winning. France has
now been defeated; and, despite the propaganda and confusion of recent months,
it is now obvious that England is losing the war. I believe this is realized
even by the British Government. But they have one last desperate plan
remaining. They hope that they may be able to persuade us to send another
American Expeditionary Force to Europe, and to share with England militarily,
as well as financially, the fiasco of this war.
I do not blame England for this hope,
or for asking for our assistance. But we now know that she declared a war under
circumstances which led to the defeat of every nation that sided with her from
Poland to Greece. We know that in the desperation of war England promised to
all those nations armed assistance that she could not send. We know that she misinformed
them, as she has misinformed us, concerning her state of preparation, her
military strength, and the progress of the war.
In time of war, truth is always
replaced by propaganda. I do not believe we should be too quick to criticize
the actions of a belligerent nation. There is always the question whether we,
ourselves, would do better under similar circumstances. But we in this country
have a right to think of the welfare of America first, just as the people in
England thought first of their own country when they encouraged the smaller
nations of Europe to fight against hopeless odds. When England asks us to enter
this war, she is considering her own future and that of her Empire. In making
our reply, I believe we should consider the future of the United States and
that of the Western Hemisphere…
I ask you to look at the map of
Europe today and see if you can suggest any way in which we could win this war
if we entered it. Suppose we had a large army in America, trained and equipped.
Where would we send it to fight? The campaigns of the war show only too clearly
how difficult it is to force a landing, or to maintain an army, on a hostile
coast.
Suppose we took our Navy from the
Pacific and used it to convoy British shipping. That would not win the war for
England. It would, at best, permit her to exist under the constant bombing of
the German air fleet. Suppose we had an air force that we could send to Europe.
Where could it operate? Some of our squadrons might be based in the British
Isles, but it is physically impossible to base enough aircraft in the British
Isles alone to equal in strength the aircraft that can be based on the
continent of Europe…
I say it is the interventionists in
America as it was in England and in France, who give comfort to the enemy. I
say it is they who are undermining the principles of democracy when they demand
that we take a course to which more than 80 percent of our citizens are
opposed. I charge them with being the real defeatists, for their policy has led
to the defeat of every country that followed their advice since this war began.
There is no better way to give comfort to an enemy than to divide the people of
a nation over the issue of foreign war. There is no shorter road to defeat than
by entering a war with inadequate preparation. Every nation that has adopted
the interventionist policy of depending on someone else for its own defense has
met with nothing but defeat and failure. . . .
There is a policy open to this Nation
that will lead to success--a policy that leaves us free to follow our own way
of life and to develop our own civilization. It is not a new and untried idea.
It was advocated by Washington. It was incorporated in the Monroe Doctrine.
Under its guidance the United States became the greatest Nation in the world.
It is based upon the belief that the
security of a nation lies in the strength and character of its own people. It
recommends the maintenance of armed forces sufficient to defend this hemisphere
from attack by any combination of foreign powers. It demands faith in an
independent American destiny. This is the policy of the America First Committee
today. It is a policy not of isolation, but of independence; not of defeat, but
of courage. It is a policy that led this Nation to success during the most
trying years of our history, and it is a policy that will lead us to success
again. . . .
The United States is better situated
from a military standpoint than any other nation in the world. Even in our
present condition of unpreparedness no foreign power is in a position to invade
us today. If we concentrate on our own defenses and build the strength that
this Nation should maintain, no foreign army will ever attempt to land on
American shores.
War is not inevitable for this
country. Such a claim is defeatism in the true sense. No one can make us fight
abroad unless we ourselves are willing to do so. No one will attempt to fight
us here if we arm ourselves as a great nation should be armed. Over a hundred
million people in this Nation are opposed to entering the war. If the
principles of democracy mean anything at all, that is reason enough for us to
stay out. If we are forced into a war against the wishes of an overwhelming
majority of our people, we will have proved democracy such a failure at home
that there will be little use fighting for it abroad.
The time has come when those of us
who believe in an independent American destiny must band together and organize
for strength. We have been led toward war by a minority of our people. This
minority has power. It has influence. It has a loud voice. But it does not
represent the American people. During the last several years I have traveled
over this country from one end to the other. I have talked to many hundreds of
men and women, and I have letters from tens of thousands more, who feel the
same way as you and I…
Such a time has come. Such a crisis
is here. That is why the America First Committee has been formed--to give voice
to the people who have no newspaper, or newsreel, or radio station at their
command; to the people who must do the paying, and the fighting, and the dying
if this country enters the war.
Document Analysis
1. Was Lindbergh a pragmatist or an idealist? Give examples to demonstrate
your position.
2. In your opinion, was Lindbergh qualified to comment on the preparedness of
the U.S. military or military strategy?
3. What historical precedents did Lindbergh cite to support his position?
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Franklin D. Roosevelt, "The Four Freedoms"
(1941)
In January 1941 the United States had not yet entered the war. Hitler had ravaged Western Europe, conducted a devastating bombing campaign against the United Kingdom, and seemed unstoppable. It was questionable how much longer Great Britain could hold out. Meanwhile the United States had begun to boldly assist the Allies, thereby increasing the chances of direct intervention. President Roosevelt's State of the Union message of January 6th was designed to remind Americans of the values we hold most dear and what our responsibility might be to preserve those ideals. The Four Freedoms gained even more popularity when famed artist Norman Rockwell used them as the basis of a series of paintings that graced the covers of issues of the Saturday Evening Post.
Armed defense of democratic existence is now being gallantly waged in four continents. If that defense fails, all the population and all the resources of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia will be dominated by the conquerors. The total of those populations and their resources . . . greatly exceeds the sum total of the population and the resources of the whole of the Western Hemisphere-many times over.
In times like these it is
immature-and incidentally untrue-for anybody to brag that an unprepared
America, single-handed, and with one hand tied behind its back, can hold off
the whole world.
No realistic American can expect from
a dictator's peace international generosity, or return of true independence, or
world disarmament, or freedom of expression, or freedom of religion-or even
good business. . . .
The need of the moment is that our
actions and our policy should be devoted primarily-almost exclusively-to
meeting this foreign peril. For all our domestic problems are now a part of the
great emergency.
Just as our national policy in
internal affairs has been based upon a decent respect for the rights and the
dignity of all our fellow men within our gates, so our national policy in
foreign affairs has been based on a decent respect for the rights and dignity
of all nations, large and small. And the justice of morality must and will win
in the end.
Our national policy is this:
First, by an impressive expression of
the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to
all-inclusive national defense.
Second, by an impressive expression
of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to full
support of all those resolute peoples, everywhere, who are resisting aggression
and are thereby keeping war away from our hemisphere. By this support, we
express our determination that the democratic cause shall prevail, and we
strengthen the defense and security of our own nation.
Third, by an impressive expression of
the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to the
proposition that principles of morality and considerations for our own security
will never permit us to acquiesce in a peace dictated by aggressors and
sponsored by appeasers. We know that enduring peace cannot be bought at the
cost of other people's freedom. . . .
I also ask this Congress for
authority and for funds sufficient to manufacture additional munitions and war
supplies of many kinds, to be turned over to those nations which are now in
actual war with aggressor nations.
Our most useful and immediate role is
to act as an arsenal for them as well as for ourselves. They do not need man
power. They do need billions of dollars' worth of the weapons of defense. . . .
Let us say to the democracies, "We
Americans are vitally concerned in your defense of freedom. We are putting
forth our energies, our resources, and our organizing powers to give you the
strength to regain and maintain a free world. We shall send you, in
ever-increasing numbers, ships, planes, tanks, guns. This is our purpose and
our pledge." . . .
There is nothing mysterious about the
foundations of a healthy and strong democracy. The basic things expected by our
people of their political and economic systems are simple.
They are:
Equality of opportunity for youth and
for others.
Jobs for those who can work.
Security for those who need it.
The ending of special privilege for
the few.
The preservation of civil liberties
for all.
The enjoyment of the fruits of
scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.
These are the simple and basic things
that must never be lost sight of in the turmoil and unbelievable complexity of
our modern world. The inner and abiding strength of our economic and political
systems is dependent upon the degree to which they fulfill these expectations.
. . .
In the future days, which we seek to
make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human
freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and
expression everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person
to worship God in his own way everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want,
which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will
secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants everywhere
in the world.
The fourth is freedom from
fear--which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of
armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be
in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any
neighbor--anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant
millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own
time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called
new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a
bomb.
To that new order we oppose the
greater conception--the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of
world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.
Since the beginning of our American
history we have been engaged in change-in a perpetual peaceful revolution--a
revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing
conditions--without the concentration camp or the quicklime in the ditch. The
world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working
together in a friendly, civilized society.
Document Analysis
1. Roosevelt listed four essential human freedoms upon which a secure world
should be founded. What are those four freedoms?
2. Early in the speech, Roosevelt maintained that "our national
policy" is "an impressive expression of the public will and without
regard to partisanship." Considering that Roosevelt delivered this speech
early in 1941, what do you think he was trying to accomplish by making this
assertion? How successful was he?
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A. Philip Randolph, "Why Should We March?"
(1942)
Asa Philip Randolph (1889-1979) was born and raised in the segregated South, but his father, a minister, had instilled in him a deep sense of self-esteem and pride that led him to join the northern migration to Harlem. Randolph became a strong political voice of the Harlem Renaissance as editor of The Messenger, a powerful African American magazine through which he voiced his opposition to World War I. After the war, Randolph helped organize and unionize African American workers, a role that embroiled him in a 12-year struggle with the Pullman Company on behalf of railroad-car porters.
When the United States began to mobilize for the possibility of entering World War II, Randolph turned his attention to the growing number of unemployed African Americans, who he thought should be participating in the economic buildup. He began to plan a large-scale march down Pennsylvania Avenue at a time when Roosevelt was trying to elicit the support of the American people to fight to save democracy. In a compromise move, on June 25, 1941, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, which banned discrimination in the federal government and the defense industries. In return, Randolph agreed to call off the march.
After World War II Randolph led a
fight for racial equality in the military. His efforts helped to persuade
President Harry S. Truman to issue Executive Order 9981 in 1948, which banned
racial segregation in the armed forces. Randolph later became vice president of
the AFL-CIO and president of the Negro American Labor Council (1960-66). In
1963 he helped organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which
attracted 250,000 people and was highlighted by Martin Luther King's famous
"I Have a Dream" speech.
Though I have found no Negroes who
want to see the United Nations lose this war, I have found many who, before the
war ends, want to see the stuffing knocked out of white supremacy and of empire
over subject peoples. American Negroes, involved as we are in the general
issues of the conflict, are confronted not with a choice but with the challenge
both to win democracy for ourselves at home and to help win the war for
democracy the world over.
There is no escape from the horns of
this dilemma. There ought not to be escape. For if the war for democracy is not
won abroad, the fight for democracy cannot be won at home. If this war cannot
be won for the white peoples, it will not be won for the darker races.
Conversely, if freedom and equality
are not vouchsafed the peoples of color, the war for democracy will not be won.
Unless this double-barreled thesis is accepted and applied, the darker races
will never wholeheartedly fight for the victory of the United Nations. That is
why those familiar with the thinking of the American Negro have sensed his lack
of enthusiasm, whether among the educated or uneducated, rich or poor,
professional or nonprofessional, religious or secular, rural or urban, north,
south, east or west.
That is why questions are being
raised by Negroes in church, labor union and fraternal society; in poolroom,
barbershop, schoolroom, hospital, hair-dressing parlor; on college campus,
railroad, and bus. One can hear such questions asked as these: What have
Negroes to fight for? What's the difference between Hitler and that
"cracker" Talmadge of Georgia? Why has a man got to be Jim Crowed to
die for democracy? If you haven't got democracy yourself, how can you carry it
to somebody else?
What are the reasons for this state
of mind? The answer is: discrimination, segregation, Jim Crow. Witness the
navy, the army, the air corps; and also government services at Washington. In
many parts of the South, Negroes in Uncle Sam's uniform are being put upon,
mobbed, sometimes even shot down by civilian and military police, and on
occasion lynched. Vested political interests in race prejudice are so deeply
entrenched that to them winning the war against Hitler is secondary to
preventing Negroes from winning democracy for themselves. This is worth many
divisions to Hitler and Hirohito. While labor, business, and farm are subjected
to ceilings and doors and not allowed to carry on as usual, these interests
trade in the dangerous business of race hate as usual.
When the defense program began and
billions of the taxpayers' money were appropriated for guns, ships, tanks and
bombs, Negroes presented themselves for work only to be given the cold
shoulder. North as well as South, and despite their qualifications, Negroes
were denied skilled employment. Not until their wrath and indignation took the
form of a proposed protest march on Washington, scheduled for July 1, 1941, did
things begin to move in the form of defense jobs for Negroes. The march was
postponed by the timely issuance (June 25, 1941) of the famous Executive Order
No. 8802 by President Roosevelt. But this order and the President's Committee
on Fair Employment Practice, established thereunder, have as yet only scratched
the surface by way of eliminating discriminations on account of race or color
in war industry. Both management and labor unions in too many places and in too
many ways are still drawing the color line.
It is to meet this situation squarely
with direct action that the March on Washington Movement launched its present
program of protest mass meetings. Twenty thousand were in attendance at Madison
Square Garden, June 16; sixteen thousand in the Coliseum in Chicago, June 26;
nine thousand in the City Auditorium of St. Louis, August 14. Meetings of such
magnitude were unprecedented among Negroes. The vast throngs were drawn from
all walks and levels of Negro life-businessmen, teachers, laundry workers,
Pullman porters, waiters, and red caps; preachers, crapshooters, and social
workers; jitterbugs and Ph.D.'s. They came and sat in silence, thinking,
applauding only when they considered the truth was told, when they felt
strongly that something was going to be done about it.
The March on Washington Movement is
essentially a movement of the people. It is all Negro and pro-Negro, but not
for that reason anti-white or anti-Semitic, or anti-Catholic, or anti-foreign,
or anti-labor. Its major weapon is the non-violent demonstration of Negro mass
power. Negro leadership has united back of its drive for jobs and justice.
"Whether Negroes should march on Washington, and if so, when?" will
be the focus of a forthcoming national conference. For the plan of a protest
march has not been abandoned. Its purpose would be to demonstrate that American
Negroes are in deadly earnest, and all out for their full rights. No power on
earth can cause them today to abandon their fight to wipe out every vestige of
second class citizenship and the dual standards that plague them.
A community is democratic only when
the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and
social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess. To trample on these
rights of both Negroes and poor whites is such a commonplace in the South that
it takes readily to anti-social, anti-labor, anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic
propaganda. It was because of laxness in enforcing the Weimar constitution in
republican Germany that Nazism made headway. Oppression of the Negroes in the
United States, like suppression of the Jews in Germany, may open the way for a
fascist dictatorship.
By fighting for their rights now,
American Negroes are helping to make America a moral and spiritual arsenal of
democracy. Their fight against the poll tax, against lynch law, segregation,
and Jim Crow, their fight for economic, political, and social equality, thus
becomes part of the global war for freedom.
Document Analysis
1. What did Randolph identify as the major challenges and dilemmas that
confronted black Americans at that time?
2. In Randolph's estimation, what had Executive Order No 8802 accomplished,
and what had it not accomplished?
3. How can protest improve democracy, according to Randolph?
WEEK TEN: November 6-10
Ronald Reagan, Testimony before the House Un-American
Activities Committee (1947)
When the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began to investigate charges of communist influence in Hollywood, Ronald Reagan was president of the Screen Actors Guild. He was not yet a politician, but HUAC considered him a “friendly” witness because of his anticommunist stance. Significantly, Reagan was not the only future president present for that day’s testimony. Richard Nixon was a member of the committee.
The Committee met at 10:30 A.M. [October 23, 1947], the Honorable J. Parnell Thomas (Chairman) presiding.
THE CHAIRMAN: The record will show
that Mr. McDowell, Mr. Vail, Mr. Nixon, and Mr. Thomas are present. A
Subcommittee is sitting.
Staff members present: Mr. Robert E. Stripling, Chief Investigator; Messrs. Louis J. Russell, H.
A. Smith, and Robert B. Gatson, Investigators; and Mr. Benjamin Mandel,
Director of Research.
MR. STRIPLING: When and where were
you born, Mr. Reagan?
MR. REAGAN: Tampico, Illinois,
February 6, 1911.
MR. STRIPLING: What is your present
occupation?
MR. REAGAN: Motion-picture actor.
MR. STRIPLING: How long have you been
engaged in that profession?
MR. REAGAN: Since June 1937, with a
brief interlude of three and a half years-that at the time didn't seem very
brief.
MR. STRIPLING: What period was that?
MR. REAGAN: That was during the late
war.
MR. STRIPLING: What branch of the
service were you in?
MR. REAGAN: Well, sir, I had been for
several years in the Reserve as an officer in the United States Calvary, but I
was assigned to the Air Corp.
MR. STRIPLING: Are you the president
of the guild at the present time?
MR. REAGAN: Yes, sir. . . .
MR. STRIPLING: As a member of the
board of directors, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, and as an active
member, have you at any time observed or noted within the organization a clique
of either Communists or Fascists who were attempting to exert influence or
pressure on the guild?
MR. REAGAN: Well, sir, my testimony
must be very similar to that of Mr. [George] Murphy and Mr. [Robert]
Montgomery. There has been a small group within the Screen Actors Guild which
has consistently opposed the policy of the guild board and officers of the
guild, as evidenced by the vote on various issues. That small clique referred
to has been suspected of more or less following the tactics that we associated
with the Communist Party.
MR. STRIPLING: Would you refer to
them as a disruptive influence within the guild?
MR. REAGAN: I would say that at times
they have attempted to be a disruptive influence.
MR. STRIPLING: You have no knowledge
yourself as to whether or not any of them are members of the Communist Party?
MR. REAGAN: No, sir, I have no
investigative force, or anything, and I do not know.
MR. STRIPLING: Has it ever been
reported to you that certain members of the guild were Communists?
MR. REAGAN: Yes, sir, I have heard
different discussions and some of them tagged as Communists.
MR. STRIPLING: Would you say that
this clique has attempted to dominate the guild?
MR. REAGAN: Well, sir, by attempting
to put over their own particular views on various issues. . . .
MR. STRIPLING: Mr. Reagan, there has
been testimony to the effect here that numerous Communist-front organizations
have been set up in Hollywood. Have you ever been solicited to join any of
those organizations or any organization which you consider to be a
Communist-front organization?
MR. REAGAN: Well, sir, I have
received literature from an organization called the Committee for a Far-Eastern
Democratic Policy. I don't know whether it is Communist or not. I only know
that I didn't like their views and as a result I didn't want to have anything
to do with them. . . .
MR. STRIPLING: Would you say from
your observation that this is typical of the tactics or strategy of the
Communists, to solicit and use the names of prominent people to either raise
money or gain support.
MR. REAGAN: I think it is in keeping
with their tactics, yes, sir.
MR. STRIPLING: Do you think there is
anything democratic about those tactics?
MR. REAGAN: I do not, sir.
MR. STRIPLING: Mr. Reagan, what is
your feeling about what steps should be taken to rid the motion-picture
industry of any Communist influences?
MR. REAGAN: Well, sir, ninety-nine
percent of us are pretty well aware of what is going on, and I think, within
the bounds of our democratic rights and never once stepping over the rights
given us by democracy, we have done a pretty good job in our business of
keeping those people's activities curtailed. After all, we must recognize them
at present as a political party. On that basis we have exposed their lies when
we came across them, we have opposed their propaganda, and I can certainly
testify that in the case of the Screen Actors Guild we have been eminently
successful in preventing them from, with their usual tactics, trying to run a
majority of an organization with a well-organized minority. In opposing those
people, the best thing to do is make democracy work. . . .
Sir, I detest, I abhor their
philosophy, but I detest more than that their tactics, which are those of the
fifth column, and are dishonest, but at the same time I never as a citizen want
to see our country become urged, by either fear or resentment of this group
that we ever compromise with any of our democratic principles through that fear
or resentment. I still think that democracy can do it.
Document Analysis
1. Which aspects of Reagan’s testimony would make the committee consider him a
friendly witness?
2. What did Reagan have to say about communists in Hollywood? Did he seem to
fear their influence?
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Ladies' Home Journal, "Young Mother" (1956)
After the end of World War II, women who had entered the work force during the war were expected to return to the home; "Rosie the Riveter" was to have been a wartime aberration. As these women married returning servicemen, the greatest increase in the native-born population in U.S. history, known as the baby boom, began.
In 1946, to help these new mothers, Dr. Benjamin Spock, a noted pediatrician, published Baby and Child Care, which immediately became a bestseller. It contributed to the renewed cult of domesticity and the child-centered image of the middle-class (largely white) woman. Throughout the 1950s, U.S. women strove to be perfect housewives and mothers, their task supposedly made easier by the many new appliances available. In reality, the ideal suburban middle-class life created its own problems, which in turn contributed to the rise of the women's movement of the 1960s. This article from the Ladies' Home Journal illustrates how lonely and unattractive middle-class motherhood could be.
Mrs. Gould: As editors and parents we are extremely interested in this whole problem.
The welfare of our society depends upon the type of children you young mothers
and others like you are able to bring up. Anything that affects the welfare of
young families is most crucial, and I do feel that the young mother, any young
mother in our day, should get far more general recognition and attention than
she does -- not so much for her own sake as for society as a whole, or just out
of sheer common sense.
Miss Hickey: And understanding. I think there is a lack of understanding, too. Since it
would take all day to tell what a busy woman does all day . . . how about your
high points?
Mrs. Petry: I would say in the morning -- breakfast and wash time. I put the breakfast
out, leave the children to eat it and run into the bathroom -- that is where
the washer is -- and fill it up. I come back into the kitchen and shove a
little in the baby's mouth and try to keep the others eating. Then I go back in
the bathroom and put the clothes in the wringer and start the rinse water. That
is about the end of the half-hour there. I continue then to finish the wash,
and either put them out or let them see one program they like on television,
and then I go out and hang the wash up.
Miss Hickey: You put that outside?
Mrs. Petry: Yes. Then I eat.
Mrs. Gould: Can you sit down and eat in peace? Are the children outdoors at that time
or watching television?
Mrs. Petry: They are supposed to be outside, but they are usually running in and out.
Somebody forgot something he should have eaten, or wants more milk, or a toy or
something. Finally I lock the screen door. I always read something while I'm
eating -- two meals a day I read. When my husband isn't there, and if I am
alone, or maybe just one child at the table, I read something quick. But I time
it. I take no more than half an hour for eating and reading.
Miss Hickey: You work on schedule quite a bit. Why do you do that?
Mrs. Petry: Because I am very forgetful. I have an orange crayon and I write
"defrost" on the refrigerator every now and then, or I forget to
defrost it. If I think of something while I am washing, I write it on the
mirror with an eyebrow pencil. It must sound silly, but that is the only way I
can remember everything I have to do. . . .
Miss Hickey: Mrs. Ehrhardt, your quietest half-hour?
Mrs. Ehrhardt: I would say . . . that when I go out to take the wash in. There is
something about getting outdoors -- and I don't get out too often, except to
hang out the wash and to bring it in. I really enjoy doing it. If it is a nice
day, I stand outside and fold it outdoors. I think that is my quietest hour.
Miss Hickey: How often do you and your husband go out together in the evening?
Mrs. Ehrhardt: Not often. An occasional movie, which might be every couple of months or so,
on an anniversary. This year is the first year we celebrated on the day we were
married. We were married in June. We always celebrated it, but it might be in
July or August.
It depends on our babysitter. If you
cannot get anyone, you just cannot go out. I am not living near my family, and
I won't leave the children with teenagers. I would be afraid it might be a
little hectic, and a young girl might not know what to do. So we don't get out
very often. . . .
Miss Hickey: Let us hear about Mrs. Petry's recreation.
Mrs. Petry: Oh, I went to work in a department store that opened in Levittown. I begged
and begged my husband to let me work, and finally he said I could go once or
twice a week. I lasted for three weeks, or should I say he lasted for three
weeks.
Mrs. Gould: You mean you worked in the daytime?
Mrs. Petry: Three evenings, from six until nine, and on Saturday.
Mrs. Gould: And your husband took care of the children during that time?
Mrs. Petry: Yes, but the third week, he couldn't stand it anymore, Saturday and all. In
fact, I think he had to work that Saturday, so I asked if I could just come in
to the store during the week. My husband was hoping they would fire me, but
they didn't. But I could see that it wasn't really fair to him, because I was going
out for my own pleasure.
Mrs. Gould: In other words, your working was your recreation.
Mrs. Petry: Yes, and I enjoyed it very much.
Miss Hickey: Why did you feel you wanted to do this?
Mrs. Petry: To see some people and talk to people, just to see what is going on in the
world. . . .
Miss Hickey: How about your shopping experiences?
Mrs. McKenzie: Well, I don't go in the evening, because I cannot depend on Ed being home;
and when he is there, he likes to have me there too. I don't know. Usually all
three of the children go shopping with me. At one time I carried two and
dragged the other one along behind me in the cart with the groceries. It is fun
to take them all. Once a man stopped me and said, "Lady, did you know your
son is eating hamburger?" He had eaten a half-pound of raw hamburger. When
corn on the cob was so expensive, my oldest one begged me to buy corn on the
cob, so I splurged and bought three ears for thirty-nine cents. When I got to
the check-out counter, I discovered he had eaten all three, so he had to pay
for the cobs.
Miss Hickey: You go once a week?
Mrs. McKenzie: Once a week or every ten days now, depending on how often I have the use of
the car. That day we usually go to the park, too. . . .
Miss Hickey: Tell us about your most recent crisis.
Mrs. McKenzie: I had given a birthday party for fifteen children in my little living room,
which is seven by eleven. The next morning my son, whose birthday it had been,
broke out with the measles, so I had exposed fifteen children to measles, and I
was the most unpopular mother in the neighborhood. He was quite sick, and it
snowed that day. Ed took Lucy sleigh riding. Both of them fell off the sled and
she broke both the bones in her arm.
Mrs. Gould: Did she then get the measles?
Mrs. McKenzie: She did, and so did the baby. . . . My main problem was being in quarantine
for a month. During this time that all three had measles and Lucy had broken
her arm, we got a notice from the school that her tuberculin test was positive
-- and that meant that one of the adults living in our home had active
tuberculosis. It horrified me. I kept thinking, "Here I sit killing my
three children with tuberculosis." But we had to wait until they were over
their contagion period before we could all go in and get x-rayed.
Miss Hickey: And the test was not correct?
Mrs. McKenzie: She had had childhood tuberculosis, but it was well healed and she was all
right. About eight of ten have had childhood tuberculosis and no one knows it.
Mrs. Gould: It is quite common, but it is frightening when it occurs to you. Were your
children quite sick with measles?
Mrs. McKenzie: Terribly ill.
Mrs. Gould: They had high temperatures?
Mrs. McKenzie: My children are a great deal like my father. Anything they do, they do to
extreme. They are violently ill, or they are as robust as can be. There is no
in-between...
Dr. Montagu: There is one very large question I would like to ask. What in your lives,
as they are at present, would you most like to see changed or modified?
Mrs. Ehrhardt: Well, I would like to be sure my husband's position would not require him
to be transferred so often. I would like to stay in place long enough to take a
few roots in the community. It would also be nice to have someone help with the
housework, but I don't think I would like to have anyone live in. The houses
nowadays are too small. I think you would bump into each other. Of course, I
have never had any one in, so I cannot honestly give an opinion.
Mrs. Townsend: At the present time, I don't think there is anything that I would like to
change in the household. We happen to be very close, and we are all very happy.
I will admit that there are times when I am a little overtired, and I might be
a little more than annoyed with the children, but actually it doesn't last too
long. We do have a problem where we live now. There aren't any younger children
for my children to play with. Therefore, they are underneath my heels just
constantly, and I am not able to take the older children out the way I would
like to, because of the two babies.
Miss Hickey: You have been in how many communities?
Mrs. Townsend: I have lived in Louisiana, California, New York, and for a short period in
Columbia, South Carolina. . . .
Miss Hickey: Mrs. Petry, what would you change?
Mrs. Petry: I would like more time to enjoy my children. I do take time, but if I do
take as much time as I like, the work piles up. When I go back to work I feel
crabby, and I don't know whether I'm mad at the children, or mad at the work or
just mad at everybody sometimes.
I would also like to have a little
more rest and a little more time to spend in relaxation with my husband. We
never get to go out together, and the only time we have much of a conversation
is just before we go to bed. And I would like to have a girl come and do my
ironing.
I am happy there where we live
because this is the first time we have stayed anywhere for any length of time.
It will be two years in August, and it is the first home we have really had.
That is why my husband left the Navy. I nearly had a nervous collapse, because
it seemed I couldn't stand another minute not having him home and helping, or
not helping, but just being there.
Document Analysis
1. Why did Mrs. Petry consider working evenings and Saturdays "for her
own pleasure"? What does this tell you about her socioeconomic status and
about attitudes regarding women's work?
2. How would you compare the lives of these women to the lives of housewives
and mothers in earlier periods of U.S. history?
3. What conclusions can you draw from the women's closing remarks? What do you
think of the lives these women led? How do they compare the lives of most women
in the United States today?
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