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9 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Crises on the Farm
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price of farm products set by world economy (very low); deflated currency made things tough; farm machinery increased amount produced, lowered the price of grain, increased farmers' debt; string of natural disasters (droughts, pests); high taxes on overvalued land
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the Panic of 1893
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led to an economic depression; massive strikes and protests
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Coxey's Army
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commonweal group that marched in 1894 on D.C. with General Coxey; wanted the U.S. gov't to ease unemployment through an inflationary public works program, supported by 500 million dollar notes from the Treasury; Coxey was arrested for walking on the grass near capitol
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the Pullman Strike
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crippling protest movement; Eugene V. Debbs, a labor organizer, organized strike to protest Pullman Company's 30% cut in worker wages; AFL (American Federation of Labor) thought the cause was unjust and didn't back the strike; helped forge respectability for AFL; military eventually broke the strike and strikers imprisoned without trial; this threatened the unions' right to strike safely
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the Election of 1896
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conservatives afraid of liberal uprising; workers trying to gain rights; Republican: Wiliam McKinley--Civil War hero, pro-business and big industry, "trickle-down" theory of economics, advocate of the gold standard; Democrats: Cleveland in office--unpopular, ultra-conservative (like a Republican); Democratic candidate: William Jennings Bryan (see other notecard); democrats, like the populists, were pro-sliver standard; Bryan won most of the South and West; McKinley won the Northeast, and hence the majority of the population; signaled a new era in U.S.: the working agrarian class couldn't pull together politically, and political movements would stop building campaigns around their interests; Republican dominance, diminishing voter turn-out
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William Jennings Bryan
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lawyer in Scopes Monkey Trial; ran as democrat in 1896 against McKinley at age 36; powerful speaker; advocate of shifting to silver standard; made New England investors nervous, afraid of economic bust; these investors advocated against Bryan, intimidating their workers into voting for McKinley
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Silver controversy
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question of whether to maintain the gold standard or inflate the currency by monetizing silver; key issue in election of 1896; investors worried the economy would collapse if Bryan won and U.S. adoped silver standard
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Populists
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radical political party; pro-labor; didn't allow blacks; big in Kansas; ~1892
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the Period of the Fourth Party System
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end of precarious balance between Republicans and Democrats; the Fourth Party System was dominated by big business interests
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