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#504 Organizing Labor

1/30/2017

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Preparation:

See assignments for unit 5.

Current events:

Read news article: Siobhan Fenton, “New York taxi drivers strike in protest at Donald Trump's Muslim travel ban,” The Independent (29 January 2017).
Consider:
- Why did this group commit to a strike action?
- What impact do you think this action had on those striking? Those who depended on the services of New York’s taxi drivers?
- Based on the information you have available, do you see this as a just action? Why or why not?

Background:

Growing size and profit of large corporations was not translating into higher wages or better working conditions for most workers.
- Instead of Lincoln’s dream of a dynamic free-labor economy, growing concentration of wealth made social mobility more difficult than ever
- Reinforced through “terraced” hierarchy of labor according to race, sex, national origin, and social class
Popular view by the 1884 when Cleveland was elected president was that the Democrats would advocate for better treatment for workers and challenge power of the trusts. But words and actions tell different story:
- Supported misleading legislation that bolstered strength of railroad companies; vetoed bill supporting farmers during drought because it “encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character.”
- After defeat and subsequent comeback in 1892, Andrew Carnegie said of Cleveland: “I am very sorry for President Harrison, but I cannot see that our interests are going to affected one way or the other by the change in administration.”
Best alternative was not to rely on the state but for workers to organize themselves
- Idea that organized labor was only leverage against organized capital. (Graphic illustrating the logic here).
- But how to organize? By skill set? By trade? Should non-whites be allowed to participate? What linkages – if any – should unions have with political ideologies/parties (anarchists, socialists, or the major political parties).

Early U.S. labor activism:

Task 1: Read:
- Read the following brief descriptions of early labor organizations in the United States.

Task 2: Chart:
- In your own words, draw on information from the passages to complete the three-way Venn Diagram handout. As you do so, consider:
Task 3: Discuss:
- Who belonged to these organizations?
- What strategies did each organization employ to advance their aims?
- If you had been a working-class American at this time (1870-1910s), which of these organizations would have most appealed to you? Why?

Homework: #505

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#503 Poverty and inequality

1/30/2017

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Preparation:

See unit 5 assignments.

Introductory activity: inequality in the United States

First, students put away any electronic devices and instead reference this handout (Google Doc – to be printed and distributed).
Next, students imagine that all wealth in the United States is represented by one dollar. This dollar is to be shared among five groups, representing: the top 20%, next-to-top 20%, middle 20%, next-to-bottom 20%, and the bottom 20%. In pairs, students write down two scenarios for how this wealth is shared:
- Scenario 1: How this wealth is actually shared?
- Scenario 2: How this wealth should be shared?
Ask one student to calculate the average for the class as students report their responses.
Share this chart (external link) from Mother Jones magazine based on data produced by researchers at Harvard Business School and Duke University. Ask:
- How do our class estimates match against the data sample (of 5,000 people) used by the researchers?
- Is there a discrepancy between what we view as ideal, what we thought was actual, and official data? If so, where are those discrepancies and what might be the cause of them?
- What might be the implications of these discrepancies for public policy discussions?

Brief background

Consider this chart (external link – posted above) from researchers at the London School of Economics showing the “share of total U.S. wealth owned by the top 0.1 percent of families, 1913-2012.” Note: we only have data going back to 1913 because of legal changes ushered in by the sixteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but the chart helps show the fall and rise of wealth concentration personified by the captains of industry/robber barons discussed last class.
Latter part of the nineteenth century (1870s to about 1900) known as the “Gilded Age,” based on the title of a novel co-written by Mark Twain early in his career in 1873.
- Meaning: characterized by the sharp contrasts in society, in which America’s surface gleamed with gold while camouflaging the cheap base metal underneath.
During this period Democrats and Republicans largely avoided interfering with the business cycle, leading to wide swings from boom to bust (this might have been mentioned when discussing the 1873 “panic”). Bust cycles hit common laborers the hardest.
Even when economic times weren’t dire, consolidation of large trusts put downward pressure on wages and urbanization added new strains to quality of life (examples: smog, sanitation, and overcrowded housing)

Discussion on Henry George, "The Crime of Poverty"

In your own words, describe what Henry George means when he says “poverty is a crime.”
Explain George’s central contention, that “the great majority of those who suffer from poverty are poor not from their own particular faults, but because of conditions imposed by society at large.” If the poor are not to blame for poverty, what, in George’s view, causes poverty?
George argues that poverty “runs through all classes.” Why does he make this argument? Can you think of a concrete way in which middle- or high-income people also might suffer from the existence of poverty? (One way to reframe this is to think about the link between poverty and inequality).
George suggests that “nine tenths of human misery… [is] due to poverty.” In what ways does poverty lead to a decline in quality of life in the individuals that experience it as well as their neighbors and fellow community members?
If “man’s ability to produce wealth seems almost infinite," is it possible to direct some of that energy to the eradication of poverty? Is this a goal worth pursuing?

View “We know how to end poverty. So why don’t we?” Vox (video, 2:17, posted above)
- Consider the solution of the negative income tax as a possible solution. What are the possible arguments for and against such a proposal? How can public policy impact inequality? Are there trade-offs to consider? (Opportunity to explore frameworks like laissez-faire, “equality of opportunity,” “equality of outcome,” etc.)
- The proposition of this video – as well as of Henry George – is that poverty is a problem that is solvable. Do you agree with this argument in the context of a free-market system? Why or why not?

Homework: #504

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#502 The Industrialists: “Robber Barons” or “Captains of Industry”?

1/25/2017

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Preparation:

See unit 5 assignments.

Growth of industry:

Consider statistics and respond to discussion questions (PDF) on increasing size of industrial establishments, rising industrial output, and value added per worker.
Together, we will view this slideshow.

"Gospel of Wealth"

Discuss questions on page 79 of the Course Reader:
- In this article, how does Carnegie depict the wealthy and the responsibility of being wealthy?
- How does he depict the poor, and charity for the poor? Why?

Research and evaluate an industrialist

Each group will research the background of one of the major figures (Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Leland Stanford, or Cornelius Vanderbilt).
Begin by learning some background on your industrialist:
- How did this figure rise to prominence?
- Which companies and industries were they most closely connected to?
- How did they explain their individual success and that of the companies with which they were associated?
Then, prepare a report to the full class on:
- Which label best describes this individual: “Robber Baron” or “Captain of Industry”? Provide concrete evidence to support your view.
- Which present-day figure do you think is most like this figure? Why?

Homework: #503

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#501 Industrialization, Railroads, and Chinese in America

1/23/2017

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Preparation:

See unit 5 assignments page.

Image analysis:

What is happening in the image to the right? What significance might this event have had in the context of nineteenth-century America?
What kind of people do you see in this image?

Promontory Point, Utah. May 10, 1869. Wikimedia.

Background

During Civil War, the North passed laws that helped industry.
- Supporting industry was a key part of Lincoln’s program to support continued development of a free-labor economy
Congress passed the Pacific Railway Act of 1863:
- Federal government would give rail companies free land and loan them money to build the transcontinental railroad
- Afterwards, the rail companies were supposed to sell the land on both sides of the track and pay back the government, though that did not happen
Two companies competed to get the most land and money: Union Pacific (built tracks from East to West) and Central Pacific (built tracks from West to East).
On May 10, 1869, the Central Pacific Railway met the Union Pacific Railway in Promontory Point, Utah, marking the completion of the transcontinental railroad.
Building the railroad depended on the labor of hundreds of thousands of workers, many of whom were Chinese.

Clip from Ken Burns

View video clip: from Ken Burns’ The West, "The Grandest Enterprise under God: 1868-1874." Start at episode 5, minute 19:15. (7:25)

Document-based discussion

Together, view: timeline of Chinese Immigration and Exclusion (PDF)
Next, in pairs, class will divide between Document A and Document B (PDF):
- Document A: “The Chinese Must Go,” an anti-Chinese play, 1879
- Document B: “Hands off Gentlemen!” a political cartoon, 1891
In pairs, discuss the prompt: “If this document were your only piece of evidence, how would you answer the question: ‘Why did Americans pass the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act?’”

Homework: #502

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#411/#500 End of Reconstruction

1/18/2017

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Debrief on Reconstruction and simulation.

What did you gain from this exercise?
Were you surprised by anything that you learned, did, or observed during this exercise?
Do you have any advice for how this exercise might be further improved?

Discuss:

Why did Foner suggest that the two images to the right from Harper’s Weekly by the cartoonist Thomas Nash “mirrored the evolution of sentiment in the North”?
What national issues and attitudes combined to bring an end to Reconstruction in 1877?
How did the failure of Reconstruction policies impact black Americans?

Thomas Nash, "And Not This Man?" in Harper's Weekly, 5 August 1865.

Thomas Nash, "Colored Rule in a Reconstructed(?) State" in Harper's Weekly, 14 March 1874.

Birth of a Nation

Read the first four paragraphs from Steven Mintz, “Birth of a Nation” prepared for the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (external link):

In 1915, 50 years after the end of the Civil War, D.W. Griffith, released his epic film Birth of a Nation. The greatest blockbuster of the silent era, Birth of a Nation was seen by an estimated 200 million Americans by 1946.

Based on a novel by a Baptist preacher named Thomas Dixon, the film painted Reconstruction, the period following the Civil War, as a time when vengeful former slaves, opportunistic white scalawags, and corrupt Yankee carpetbaggers plundered and oppressed the former Confederacy until respectable white Southerner rose up and restored order. A "scalawag" was a southern white who supported the Republican party; a "carpetbagger" was a northern-born Republican who had migrated to the South.

The film depicted a vindictive northern Congressman, modeled on a Pennsylvania Republican member of Congress, Thaddeus Stevens, and a power-hungry mulatto eager to marry the Congressman's daughter. The film's hero is an aristocratic Confederate veteran who joins the Ku Klux Klan and at the film's climax rescues the woman from armed freedmen. President Woodrow Wilson reportedly described the film as "history written with lightning."

During the twentieth century, far more Americans probably learned about Reconstruction from Hollywood rather than from history books or lectures. Films like Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind depicted Reconstruction as a misguided attempt to overturn the South's "natural" order by giving political power to former slaves.

Next view, the following clip and consider the following questions, first with a partner, and then together as a class:

How are the different groups of people in these clips depicted? What adjectives do you think the author of this text (D.W. Griffith, as filmmaker) might use to describe the characters in the film?
To what extent do these scenes represent “real” events in the South? To what extent do they represent a heavily biased – or even demonstrably false – set of views?
Steven Mintz suggests, “During the twentieth century, far more Americans probably learned about Reconstruction from Hollywood rather than from history books or lectures.” What lessons do you think Americans might have learned from the scenes in this film? Why might that be significant?

Homework: #501

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#410 Reconstruction Simulation

1/17/2017

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Preparation:

Revise your draft statement from class. You will be asked to submit your completed document at the beginning of next class before we begin our mock convention.
Please use the following upload link (Canvas) to submit your work before we begin our simulation.

Review the scenario:

1865 marked the end of America’s most terrible war and a year in which decisions involving government and race still echo today. The simulation our class will play focuses on the early choices that began Reconstruction. In this fictitious convention held in Washington D.C. on New Year’s Eve 1865, you and your classmates will try to reach agreement on a set of issues that the United States faced at that time.

"The First Vote," Harper's Weekly, November 1867.

Procedure:

This Convention is to consider four questions that you have carefully researched using primary sources from Harper’s Weekly and our secondary source selection from Eric Foner.

We will break up our time into three 12-14 minute sessions that will examine questions #1, #2&3, and #4. Students will have an option of choosing from one of the pre-prepared positions or propose their own resolution if none of the items seem acceptable. During discussion, you should present arguments consistent with your bio and supported by the evidence you have collected.

Question #1: Under what conditions should the South be allowed back into the Union? Who in the former Confederate States of America should be pardoned?

The South should expect a long period of military occupation with Southern states readmitted only after agreeing to renounce the right to secession, end slavery, and try all Confederate political and military leaders for treason. Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and other rebel leaders should be executed. All collaborators in the Confederate cause should be stripped of political rights.
The South should be temporarily divided into military districts with Southern states readmitted after agreeing to renounce the right to secession, end slavery, and strip former Confederate leaders of the right to vote or stand for office. An oath of allegiance will be required for all former Confederate soldiers.
As soon as the President is prepared to initiate the process, Southern states should be reestablished by state-wide conventions, but required to renounce the right to secession, end slavery, and agree to cooperate with the federal government before they are offered readmission to the Union. An oath of allegiance will be required for all former Confederate officeholders and soldiers as a prerequisite for citizenship.
State-wide conventions should be held immediately in the South. Congress should be prepared to readmit states on whatever basis these popular conventions agree upon. Confederate officeholders and soldiers should be granted a blanket pardon to promote national reconciliation.

Questions #2&3: What political rights should Free Blacks and Freedmen acquire? What social and economic rights should Free Blacks and Freedmen acquire?

Free Blacks and Freedmen should be guaranteed fully equal rights of citizenship and freely sell their labor. In addition, they should be entitled to a high quality education and assistance with housing as needed. To secure these rights, all large- and medium-sized plantations should be divided up into plots of land for former slaves.
Free Blacks and Freedmen should be guaranteed full political and economic rights. Schools, housing, and other benefits should be extended based on funds available from Confederate property already seized during the Civil War.
Free Blacks and Freedmen should be guaranteed full economic rights and restricted political rights. While the right to freely sell their labor should be respected, literacy tests and “poll” (voting) taxes should limit them from exercising their full rights as citizens. No property should be redistributed and only basic schooling should be provided.
Free Blacks and Freedmen should be guaranteed only limited economic rights. While they will no longer be slaves, in most other respects life should go on as normal and we should respect the “Southern way of life.”

Question #4: Should Reconstruction be implemented on a national or state level? Why does this distinction matter?

The federal government should make all decisions concerning Reconstruction.
The federal government should make most decisions concerning Reconstruction.
The state governments should make most decisions concerning Reconstruction.
The state governments should make nearly all decisions concerning Reconstruction.

Homework: #411

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#409 Reconstruction Simulation: Outlining & Writing

1/17/2017

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Thomas Nast's depiction of emancipation at the end of the Civil War envisions the future of free blacks in the U.S. and contrasts it with various cruelties of the institution of slavery. 1865. Library of Congress.

Lesson #409 will consist of two days for outlining and writing.

Together (on day one) we will discuss strategies for "reading against the grain" and (on day two) review the rubric for the writing portion of the simulation (Google Doc).

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#408: Reconstruction Simulation: Preparation

1/12/2017

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In class today we will continue working with the documents to answer the questions we posed initially about Foner. If you would like, you may use the following chart (Google Doc) to help you organize your evidence.

Beginning by the end of class today and continuing tonight for homework, you should prepare an outline for tomorrow’s in-class writing assignment. That assignment will ask you to provide a position statement for each of the following questions utilizing evidence from Foner and Harper’s Weekly:

Under what conditions should the South be allowed back into the Union? Who in the former Confederate States of America should be pardoned?
What political rights should Free Blacks and Freedmen acquire?
What social and economic rights should Free Blacks and Freedmen acquire?
Should Reconstruction be implemented on a national or state level? Why does this distinction matter?

As you prepare your outline remember that an outstanding position statement will:

Make a clear argument that accurately represents your character’s viewpoint.
Incorporate biographical details from your individual “Cast of Characters” bio (for the list of bios, click here).
Utilize and cite(!) evidence presented in both Foner and Harper’s Weekly.
Address and defuse counterarguments.

Note on citations:

Citations should be clear and consistent. For our class, this is always the most important measure of a good citation.
In history class you should generally practice using Chicago/Turabian footnotes for your citations. Style guides change over time and vary from publisher to publisher. However, this is what the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style suggests (this Perdue University Online Writing Center guide is always helpful):
- Author Name, "Article Title," Publication, Date, page #.
- Emily Macel, “Beijing’s Modern Movement,” Dance Magazine, February 2009, 35.

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#407 Rebuilding the Nation

1/11/2017

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Preparation:

Read Foner 454-66.

Consider:

In 1865, former Confederate general Robert Richardson remarked that “the emancipated slaves own nothing, because nothing but freedom has been given to them.” Would this still be an accurate assessment of Reconstruction twelve years later in 1876?
What steps did the newly-reformed Southern state governments take to limit right for black Americans? How did the federal government respond?
How did the women’s movement respond to the Reconstruction era Constitutional amendments (note, particularly, the reaction to the Fifteenth Amendment).

The challenge in 1865

Frederick Douglass remarked “the work does not end with abolition of slavery, but only begins.” In your journal, reflect on this statement. What did he mean by this? What do you think was the most important work to do in 1865?

Charting Reconstruction

Complete the “Rebuilding the Nation” activity together with a partner.

Introduce Reconstruction simulation

Introduce the Reconstruction simulation:
- 1865 marked the end of America’s most terrible war and a year in which decisions involving government and race still echo today. The simulation our class will play focuses on the early choices that began Reconstruction. In this totally fictitious convention held in Washington D.C. on New Year’s Eve 1865, you and your classmates will try to reach agreement on a set of issues that the United States faced at that time. These questions are:
  - Under what conditions should the South be allowed back into the Union? Who in the former Confederate States of America should be pardoned?
  - What political, economic and social rights should Free Blacks and Freedmen acquire?
  - (Please note that we will not debate “Who should control the process of Reconstruction—Congress or the President?”)
  - Should Reconstruction be implemented on a national or state level?
- While the event and characters in this simulation are imagined, the issues were real as are the documents. The texts attached to your character are based on opinions published in Harper’s Weekly.
Assign roles for the simulation. Once you have received your role, visit the “Cast of Characters” page for the Reconstruction Simulation. Click on the name of your character to read that person’s story.
Read the documents. Tonight for homework you will spend up to 30 minutes examining the documents linked from your character page. Tomorrow in class you will have time to continue to continue reading the documents. Outside sources may be consulted but will not count as evidence.
More information will be provided on next steps in class tomorrow.

Homework: #408

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#406 Reconstruction and the Thirteenth Amendment

1/9/2017

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Share Civil War memorial projects

Meet in groups of 3-4 to share the proposal you created for homework. Nominate one participant from your group to share their project in front of the class.

Read the Thirteenth Amendment

The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution was passed by Congress 31 January 1865 and ratified by the states 6 December 1865. The full text of the amendment is below. It is short, so we will read it together aloud:

Section 1:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2:

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Listen to historian Eric Foner discuss Reconstruction and the Thirteenth Amendment

While you are listening, practice note-taking strategies by:

Identify and record important ideas and evidence.
Record key phrases without feeling tied to record every word spoken.
Include your own questions and observations.

Watch Eric Foner discuss Reconstruction and the Thirteenth Amendment at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Penn. We will watch as much as class time allows and you are welcome to continue watching at home.

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