The Turn of the 19th Century

According to the Outline of American History, Chapter 9, the late 19th century time of industrialization, with workers (including children) working 12 hour days. Unions formed to force improvement of working conditions, leading to riots. The early 20th century, however, was a period of reform. Upton Sinclair’s, novel, The Jungle, revealed unsanitary conditions in the meat-packing industry in Chicago. Journalists such as Ida M. Tarbell, who crusaded against the Standard Oil Company, became known as "muckrakers” because of their exposure of fraud and corruption in America’s large corporations. America’s government, led by presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, responded with laws that improved working conditions and restricted monopolies.

Chapter 13 of The People’s History of the United States, in contrast, focuses upon the turn of the 19th century into the 20th as a time of socialist challenge of the American system of democracy, with unions gaining in popularity and power until they forced changes in the working conditions. Then, at the end of Chapter 13, the United States becomes distracted from a focus on reform by the beginning of World War I.

After you read the chapters in both books, comment briefly about your opinion of these two very different portrayals of a turbulent time in American history.

America's Expansionist Economy

Since the founding of the colonies, the American economy has been an expansionist one. For many years, the frontier provided an outlet for expansion. However, in 1890, the U.S. Bureau of the Census declared that the internal frontier was closed, meaning that there were no longer vast stretches of undeveloped landscape (page 290, A People’s History of the United States). Not long after that, the United States began to look for foreign markets in which to sell its excess manufactured and agricultural products. Some politicians began looking toward Cuba with an eye toward intervention in the Cuban revolt against Spain. In February, 1898, the U.S. Battleship Maine exploded in the harbor of Havana, Cuba, of mysterious but undetermined causes. Suspecting that Spain was responsible, the United States began moving toward war.

The Outline of U.S. History, Chapter 8, suggests that many Americans in the 1890 believe that to “safeguard its own interests” the United States needed to “stake out” spears of influence as the major European nations were doing. After the four-month long Spanish-American War, the United States became a colonial power, with Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and several other territories.

After reading A People’s History of the United States, Chapter 12, and Outline of the U.S. History, Chapter 8, comment about this period of American History. Choose a particular aspect of this period as described in one or both books and place that aspect in the context of American History.