A School History of the United States Part 54

%526. Wheat Farms and Cattle Ranches.%--Such a rush of people completely transformed the country. The "Great American Desert" was made productive. The buffaloes were almost exterminated, and one now is as great a curiosity in the West as in the East. More than 7,000,000 were slaughtered in 1871-1872. In lieu of them countless herds of cattle and sheep, and fields of wheat and corn, cover the plains and hills of the Northwest. In 1896 Montana contained 3,000,000 sheep, and Wyoming and Idaho each over 1,000,000. In the two Dakotas 60,000,000 bushels of wheat and 30,000,000 of corn were harvested. Many of the farms are of enormous size. Ten, twenty, thirty thousand acre farms are not unknown.

One contains 75,000 acres.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A typical prairie sod house]

Over this region, the Dakotas, Montana, Kansas, and Nebraska, wander herds of cattle, the slaughtering and packing of which have founded new branches of industry. The stockyards at Chicago make a city.[1]

[Footnote 1: Read "Dakota Wheat-Fields," _Harper's Magazine,_ March, 1880. Also a series of papers in _Harper's Magazine _for 1888.]

%527. Oklahoma.%--The eagerness of the "cattle kings" to get more land for these herds to graze over had much to do with the opening of Oklahoma for settlement. Originally it was part of Indian Territory, and was sold by the Seminole Indians with the express condition that none but Indians and freedmen should settle there. But the cattle kings, in defiance of the government, went in and inclosed immense tracts. Many were driven out, only to come in again. Their expulsion, with that of small proprietors called "boomers," caused much agitation. Congress bought a release from the condition, and in 1889 opened Oklahoma to settlement.

%528. The Boom Towns.%--A proclamation that a part of Oklahoma would be opened April 22, caused a wild rush from every part of the West, till five times as many settlers as could possibly obtain land were lined up on the borders waiting for the signal to cross. Precisely at noon on April 22, a bugle sounded, a wild yell answered, a cloud of dust filled the air, and an army of men on foot, on horseback, in wagons, rushed into the promised land. That morning Guthrie was a piece of prairie land. That night it was a city of 10,000 souls. Before the end of the year 60,000 people were in Oklahoma, building towns and cities of no mean character.

Within fifteen years Oklahoma had a population of over half a million; and Congress provided (1906) for the admission, in 1907, of a new forty-sixth state, including both Oklahoma and what was left of the old Indian Territory.

SUMMARY

1. One important result of the Civil War was a great industrial revolution.

2. Mining for precious metals, the Northern Pacific Railroad, and other causes led to the admission into the Union of Colorado (1876), North and South Dakota, Montana, Washington (1889), Idaho, Wyoming (1890), Utah (1896), and Oklahoma (1907).

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

MECHANICAL AND INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS

%529. Mechanical Progress.%--The mechanical progress made by our countrymen since the war surpa.s.ses that of any previous period. In 1866 another cable was laid across the bed of the Atlantic Ocean, and worked successfully. Before 1876 the Gatling gun, dynamite, and the barbed-wire fence were introduced; the compressed-air rock drill, the typewriter, the Westinghouse air brake, the Janney car coupler, the cable-car system, the self-binding reaper and harvester, the cash carrier for stores, water gas, and the tin-can-making machine were invented, and Brush gave the world the first successful electric light.

%530. Uses of Electricity.%--Till Brush invented his arc light and dynamo, the sole practical use made of electricity was in the field of telegraphy. But now in rapid succession came the many forms of electric lights and electric motors; the electric railway, the search light; photography by electric light; the welding of metals by electricity; the phonograph and the telephone. In the decade between 1876 and 1886 came also the hydraulic dredger, the gas engine, the enameling of sheet-iron ware for kitchen use, the bicycle, and the pa.s.senger elevator, which has transformed city life and dotted our great cities with buildings fifteen and twenty stories high.

The decade 1886-1896 gave us the graphophone, the kinetoscope, the horseless carriage, the vestibuled train, the cash register, the perfected typewriter; the modern bicycle, which has deeply affected the life of the people; and a great development in photography.

%531. Rise of Great Corporations.%--That mechanical progress so astonishing should powerfully affect the business and industrial world was inevitable. Trades, occupations, industries of all sorts, began to concentrate and combine, and corporations took the place of individuals and small companies. In place of the forty little telegraph companies of 1856, there was the great Western Union Company. In place of many petty railroads, there were a few trunk lines. In place of a hundred producers and refiners of petroleum, there was the one Standard Oil Company. These are but a few of many; for the rapid growth of corporations was a characteristic of the period.

%532. Millionaires and "Captains of Industry."%--As old lines of industry were expanded and new ones were created, the opportunities for money-getting were vastly increased. Men now began to ama.s.s immense fortunes in gold and silver mining; by dealing in coal, in grain, in cattle, in oil; by speculation in stocks; in iron and steel making; in railroading,--millionaires and multi-millionaires became numerous, and were often called "captains of industry," as an indication of the power they held in the industrial world.

%533. Condition of Labor.%--Meanwhile, the conditions of the workingman were also changing rapidly: 1. The chief employers of labor were corporations and great capitalists. 2. The short voyage and low fare from Europe, the efforts made by steamship companies to secure pa.s.sengers, the immense business activity in the country from 1867 to 1872, and the opportunities afforded by the rapidly growing West, brought over each year hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Europe to swell the ranks of labor. Between 1867 and 1873 the number was 2,500,000. 3. Bad management on the part of some corporations; "watering" or unnecessarily increasing their stock on the part of others, combined with sharp compet.i.tion, began, especially after the panic of 1873, to cut down dividends. This was followed by reduction of wages, or by an increase in the duties of employees, and sometimes by both.

%534. Labor Organizations; the Knights of Labor.%--Trades unions existed in our country before the Const.i.tution; but it was at the time of the great industrial development during and after the war, that the era of unions opened. At first that of each trade had no connection with that of any other. But in 1869 an effort was made to unite all workingmen on the broad basis of labor, and "The n.o.ble Order of Knights of Labor" was founded. For a while it was a secret order; but in 1878 a declaration of principles was made, which began with the statement that the alarming development and aggressiveness of great capitalists and corporations, unless checked, "would degrade the toiling ma.s.ses," and announced that the only way to check this evil was to unite "all laborers into one great body." The knights were in favor of

1. The creation of bureaus of labor for the collection and spread of information.

2. Arbitration between employers and employed.

3. Government ownership of telegraphs, telephones, railroads.

4. The reduction of the working day to eight hours.

They were opposed

1. To the hiring out of convict labor.

2. To the importation of foreign labor under contract.

3. To interest-bearing government bonds, and in favor of a national currency issued directly to the people without the intervention of banks.

%535. The Workingman in Politics%.--As these ends could be secured only by legislation, they very quickly became political issues and brought up a new set of economic questions for settlement. From 1865 to 1870 the matters of public concern were the reconstruction measures and the public debt. From 1870 to 1878 they were currency questions, civil service reform, and land grants to railroads. From 1878 to 1888 almost every one of them was in some way directly connected with labor.

SUMMARY

1. Great inventions founded and developed new industries.

2. These in turn expanded the ranks of labor, and led to the rise of corporations and labor organizations, and a demand for a long series of reforms.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

POLITICS SINCE 1880

%536. Candidates in 1880.%--The campaign of 1880 was opened by the meeting of the Republican national convention at Chicago, where a long and desperate effort was made to nominate General Grant for a third term. But James Abram Garfield and Chester A. Arthur were finally chosen. The platform called for national aid to state education, for protection to American labor, for the suppression of polygamy in Utah, for "a thorough, radical, and complete" reform of the civil service, and for no more land grants to railroads or corporations.

The Greenback-Labor party nominated James B. Weaver and B.J. Chambers, and declared

1. That all money should be issued by the government and not by banking corporations.

2. That the public domain must be kept for actual settlers and not given to railroads.

3. That Congress must regulate commerce between the states, and secure fair, moderate, and uniform rates for pa.s.sengers and freight.

Next came the Prohibition party convention, and the nomination of Neal Dow and Henry Adams Thompson.

Last of all was the Democratic convention, which nominated General Winfield S. Hanc.o.c.k and William H. English. The platform called for

1. Honest money, consisting of gold and silver and paper convertible into coin on demand.

2. A tariff for revenue only.

3. Public lands for actual settlers.

%537. Election and Death of Garfield.%--The campaign was remarkable for several reasons: