Below is the Unit 1 Overview Guide (link): This covers Chapters 5 - 8 in text, focusing on western expansion of railroads and land, conflicts with Native Americans, new inventions, the time of the Robber Barons, and the start of the Industrial Age.
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We analyze the impact western expansion had on the Native Americans and the environment. In 5.1, take a look at the legislative acts passed by Congress, such as the Homestead Act of 1862 and the Pacific Railroad Act. These acts granted large tracts/plots of land to settlers and to railroad companies.
Farmers and the Populist Movement - Click below for a power point overview of 5.4
farmers_and_the_populist_movement.pdf | |
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Populist Movement, in U.S. history,
politically oriented coalition of agrarian reformers in the Middle West and
South that advocated a wide range of economic and political legislation in the
late 19th century.
Throughout the 1880s local political action groups known as Farmers’ Alliances sprang up among Middle Westerners and Southerners, who were discontented because of crop failures, falling prices, and poor marketing and credit facilities. Although it won some significant regional victories, the alliances generally proved politically ineffective on a national scale. Thus in 1892 their leaders organized the Populist, or People’s, Party, and the Farmers’ Alliances melted away. While trying to broaden their base to include labour and other groups, the Populists remained almost entirely agrarian-oriented. They demanded an increase in the circulating currency (to be achieved by the unlimited coinage of silver), a graduated income tax, government ownership of the railroads, a tariff for revenue only, the direct election of Senators and so on.
Throughout the 1880s local political action groups known as Farmers’ Alliances sprang up among Middle Westerners and Southerners, who were discontented because of crop failures, falling prices, and poor marketing and credit facilities. Although it won some significant regional victories, the alliances generally proved politically ineffective on a national scale. Thus in 1892 their leaders organized the Populist, or People’s, Party, and the Farmers’ Alliances melted away. While trying to broaden their base to include labour and other groups, the Populists remained almost entirely agrarian-oriented. They demanded an increase in the circulating currency (to be achieved by the unlimited coinage of silver), a graduated income tax, government ownership of the railroads, a tariff for revenue only, the direct election of Senators and so on.
The Robber Barons...
became a derogatory term applied to wealthy and powerful 19th-century American businessmen. By the late 1800s, the term was typically applied to businessmen who used what were considered to be exploitative practices to amass their wealth. These practices included exerting control over national resources, accruing high levels of government influence, paying extremely low wages, squashing competition by acquiring competitors in order to create monopolies and eventually raise prices, and schemes to sell stock at inflated prices to unsuspecting investors in a manner which would eventually destroy the company for which the stock was issued and impoverish investors. The
term combines the sense of criminal ("robber") and illegitimate aristocracy (a baron is an illegitimate role in a republic). (wiklipedia)
JP Morgan Andrew Carnegie John D. Rockefeller Cornelius Vanderbilt
Ch. 6 - The Rise of Big Business (see below for a power point presentation)
rise_of_big_business_history_ch._6.pdf | |
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