Posted by 6dasarkel on December 16, 2008 at 9:00pm
Pssh. Everyone is doing it” said my father to my mother “We might as well do it to.” This was a lot of settler’s ideas during the late 1800’s. The Union Pacific had started to build railroad tracks that crossed from the east to the west. The railroad companies sold there land to a select few of the railroad workers and there families. This had led to people living on the Great Plains. The attraction to wanting to own land in the West was the rich and plentiful land. Congress had decided to pass the Homestead Act, This gave 160 acres of land free that’s right FREE…. F-R-E-E free to any head of the house holds that was willing to live there for a certain amount of time and farm the land. This worked out well in some parts like Iowa and Minnesota but some land farther west had dry land. People requested more land for these specific land plots. Oklahoma was hit hard by the Homestead Act. Over two million acres of land was given to settlers. The farmers slash settlers had to over come a lot of challenges in the West. Some challenges on the Plains were a serious lack of lumber. It was called the PLAINS for a reason. The Great Plains are plain, meaning nothing but a whole lot of nothing. Farmers had no lumber to build houses. They overcame his by making dugouts and soddies. Dugouts were simply houses that had been dug into the side of a hill. Soddies were houses made out of mud and grass. They would cut blocks of sod out of the ground and stack them almost like an igloo but not circle shaped. There were also issues with the railroads. The railroads had increased the amount it cost to transport goods. This made it hard for farmers to buy and sell there crops. The farmers formed the farmer’s alliance. These farmers including Oliver Hudson Kelly educated farmers on how to find loop holes through the railroads pricing and transporting ways. These were simple things compared to the things settlers had to over come in the beginning. Things like Indians, Indians had always lived on the Great Plains and now the “white man” was taking over the land they love. The United States had decided to give the Indians on the plains there own land. This didn’t seem fair to the Indians because land is not supposed to be owned. It lead to Indians dying and American Settlers dying. In the end though it all worked out, settlers got there land and the Indians got there’s.“I am tired of all this old school inventions” said a random dude. “Yeah me to we need to make different inventions that will improve our country” said another random dude. Okay so this isn’t really how the industrial revolution got started, but is anything really that simple. Well in reality after the United States had gone through the civil war people wanted change. Alexander Graham Bell, Christopher Soles, and Thomas Alva Edison helped with awesome inventions. Like a telephone and ummm…the typewriter yeah pretty sweet I know. It happened to. It started with “Black Gold” which was really oil. Oil was used to light lamps, and as fuel. Edwin L. Drake made a steam engine that successfully dug into the earth and retrieved the oil. Henry Bessemer a few years later wanted to figure out a new way to make steel. This method called the Bessemer Steel Process was a process that involved injecting air into molten iron to remove the carbon and other impurities. This made stronger and more wildly used steel. This opened up the doors for skyscrapers and larger longer bridges. It also was used on the railroads that you still see to this day. The railroads influenced the industries and businesses which most working American men worked. Iron, coal, steel, lumber, and glass industries grew rapidly. This helped establish new markets, and offered opportunities for both visionaries and profiteers. Andrew Carnegie came to the United States in 1848, at twelve years of age. Carnegie, by himself, relayed messages and unsnarled a freight and passenger train. His boss was impressed so gave him a chance to buy a stock. He was quickly earning cash through his dividends. By 1999, the Carnegie Steel Company manufactured more steel than all the factories in Great Britain. He developed the horizontal and vertical Integration. Shown in this picture below.
Well yeah this is pretty much the industrial revolution. It was a whole lot of improvement and inventions.“Yeah America rocks they have awesome job opportunities and land for us to live on lets go there!” said a random Chinese person. “Yeah they promise a better life” said a European. “Yeah because our country is suffering from famine and land shortages” says a Hispanic person. This really is how immigration was. Immigrants wanted a better life and to escape the one they were living. America promised this better life. Immigrants, depending on where they were from, would take a ship to either Ellis Island or Angel Island. It was a tough long journey but it was worth it. To some coming to The United States was more than a job opportunity it was necessary for survival. Immigrants would work for low wages and so they were hired easily, especially the Chinese. In 1882, Chinese Immigrants were not aloud in to immigrate into the country. There were challenges to Urbanization, or growth of cities, mostly in the regions of the Northeast and Midwest. Immigrants settled into cities causing the cities to quickly become over crowded. People lived in tenements which were small unsanitary multifamily urban dwellings. People would dump there trash and waste into the street, there was a lack of safe drinking water, and sanitation was almost impossible. The crime rate was horrible by 1844 and fire was common. A fire would start in one house and would t down the neighborhood due to the closeness of the homes and businesses. Cities found ways around it though. They came up with the idea of having garbage cans at the corner of every street. The trash cans toke care of most of the issues.
<African Americans faced issues in the country during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Africans were taking advantage of there social Reconstruction but whites still didn’t want anything to do with them. Africans continued to vote and hold political office, but by the 20th century southerners came up with a way to get weaken African’s rights. They now had voting restrictions. Some states now had a law to were you could only vote if you can read. You had to take a test to prove you could read. Whites were given easier tests than the African Americans were. Africans had now basically lost there new voting rights and Jim Crow Laws were put into place. Jim Crow Laws were simply that Africans and Whites had to use different public facilities, such places as restaurants, bathrooms, and water fountains. African Americans faced not only formal discrimination but also informal and customs, called racial etiquette, that regulated relationships between whites and blacks. These rules embarrassed Africans and over all were not fair.
Progressives brought numerous laws and, amendments and other positive changes to our country. There were four goals to progressivism 1. Protecting social welfare 2. Promoting moral improvement 3. Creating economic reform 4. Fostering efficiency The progressives wanted change and they wanted it now Mhmm snap in a z formation. :o There were several things that they fought for like prohibition. Prohibition was the banning of alcohol. Wives mostly were who fought for this. There husbands would come home drunk and abuse them and their children. Alcohol caused men to lose jobs and wasn’t Christian. Then there was cleaning up local government. Cities had this idea of putting an individual in charge of the city. They were named mayors. Children were put to work at young ages so that they could help to take care of there families. They were injured often and were barley paid. Finally a law was passed to where they could only work for a certain amount of time. Later on this was passed for men and women to. They also were given a minimum wage.Later on progressives managed to get us a secret ballot. I know crazy right. Suddenly we weren’t pressured to vote for who everyone else was voting for. No one would know but you. Progressive were awesome and made this country what it is today.
<The last point I am going to educate you on is the New Diplomacy and why we became more imperialistic. Now the New Diplomacy was in a nut shell becoming more imperialistic. We in the United States were becoming very powerful and we wanted to show it off. We gained Hawaii and Alaska. Believe or not we were getting bigger. We stepped out of the dark and came into the center of the spot light. It became a global competition with a desire for military strength, thirst for new markets, and of course believing in cultural superiority. All of this leads to Dadada the Spanish American War….. oooo ahhhh eeeee. You see these pooh faces that wrote yellow journalism were over exaggerating everything. Basically they were lying to sell there silly stories. Well we had always been interested in Cuba. I mean who wouldn’t be. The Spanish would rather see Cuba disappear than be an American country. Then the U.S.S Maine explodes on February 15, 1898 206 men died in the Harbor of Havana. Now America was mad at Spain beyond belief even though the Spanish didn’t blow up the ship. Well a REALLY long story short America won, we never bought Cuba (there independent) and Spain well they lost a bunch of power and learned not to mess with The United States of America.
Comments
Well done!