Blog

As workers transitioned from subsistence economies and artisanal labor to industrial labor, the amount of time spent working rose tremendously. Sociologist Max Weber noted that regions with certain religious cultures (particularly non-Catholic) embraced a heartier work schedule. He wrote of this phenomenon in [BLANK-1]. Weber claimed that the United States, which embraced the high moral qualities of hard work, succeeded in industrialization far better than predominantly Catholic countries did. He noted that while most U.S. workers got Sundays off and Christmas each year (although some received fewer off days than this), it varied tremendously from pre-industrial work in Catholic countries, where workers could count on 44 feast days, 52 Sundays, and 52 “Drunk Mondays” off each year, for a total of 148 days off each year in these Catholic countries.

The federal government helped to facilitate and subsidize the settlement of the west. An 1862 law, [BLANK-1], exemplified that fact. With this law, the government gave bonds of between $16,000-48,000 for every mile of construction and provided vast land grants to companies.

[BLANK-1] was a union that achieved considerable success in the 1880s, attracting 700,000 members. It was popular due to its inclusivity (it welcomed skilled and unskilled workers, as well as women) and its fight for practice gains for workers. It led a workers’ strike in Texas after one of its union members was fired, but the strike was eventually broken up by the Texas Rangers. Membership in the union declined following the Haymarket Riot in 1886, when agitating for better rights for workers started to be linked to terrorism in the popular imagination.

[BLANK-1] Was a political cartoon that appeared in Puck in 1904, which satirized John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil monopoly. The cartoon featured Standard Oil as an anthropomorphized octopus with its tentacles around the media, the White House, Supreme Court, and Capitol Building. The message was clear – Rockefeller’s monopolistic firm was so big and so powerful that it was even controlling the government and the media.

Many of the mid-nineteenth century advances in public health and science came about thanks to the efforts of French scientist [BLANK-1]. His most notable contribution (alongside the works of Robert Koch) was the development and promotion of the Germ Theory of Medicine. The new understanding that many illnesses are the result of microorganisms led to a sizable rise in the average lifespan across the globe (but particularly in Europe and the United States, where the theory took hold quickly). This scientist also invented the vaccines for rabies and anthrax. Further, he developed an eponymous process of treating some food and beverage items (such as milk, cheese, and beer) by heating them up to kill bacteria within them, making them safer to eat.

[BLANK-1] was a U.S. senator who celebrated America’s victory in the Spanish-American War and welcomed the opportunity for imperialism. He claimed that Americans were an “elect people of God” and had a “mission to perform” and “duty to discharge” around the world. He favored American expansion in the Pacific and viewed anti-imperialism as being anti-American.

More than 100,000 profit seekers and migrants rushed to the Rocky Mountains in the mid-nineteenth century. [BLANK-1] generated an estimated $25.5 million in resources; however, outside parties invested more than double that amount in the region in their quest for a quick profit.

Conservationist Theodore Roosevelt was an environmentalist who sought to preserve nature for the enjoyment and recreation of future generations. He greatly expanded [BLANK-1] and dedicated more land for conservation than any president in history.

In the post-Reconstruction south, southern states attempted novel ways of disenfranchising African Americans. One such effort at disenfranchisement was [BLANK-1]. This policy also prevented a large number of poor whites from voting, but proved an effective measure for limiting the political participation of African Americans. By 1940, only 3% of adult black southerners were registered to vote.

[BLANK-1] was a large group of protestors who marched on Washington D.C. in 1894 to demand that the government create new jobs for the large group of unemployed. In what became a continual pattern in the 1890s, federal troops were used to disperse the protestors (as they would later be used to disperse striking workers while protecting capitalist owners). The Populist Party used the outrage engendered by the treatment of these protestors to attract more workers and common people to their cause.