Thinking Through the Past: History Questions 2

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Thinking Through the Past

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Volume II: Since 1865 fifth edition

John Hollitz College of Southern Nevada

Thinking Through the Past A Critical Thinking Approach to U.S. History

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Contents

Preface xiii Introduction 1

1 Historians and Textbooks: The “Story” of Reconstruction 7 Setting 8 Investigation 9 Sources 10

Reconstruction (1906) 10 The Negro in Reconstruction (1922) 12 The Ordeal of Reconstruction (1966) 14 Reconstruction: An Unfinished Revolution (2001) 16

Conclusion 20 Further Reading 21 Notes 21

2 Using Primary Sources: Industrialization and the Condition of Labor 22 Setting 23 Investigation 24 Sources 25

Testimony of Workingmen (1879) 25 “Earnings, Expenses and Conditions of Workingmen and Their Families”

(1884) 28 “Human Power. . . Is What We Are Losing” (1910) 35

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Why We Struck at Pullman (1895) 36 Colored Workmen and a Strike (1887) 37 “I Struck Because I Had to” (1902) 38 Women Make Demands (1869) 41 Summary of Conditions Among Women Workers Found by the

Massachusetts Bureau of Labor (1887) 41 A Union Official Discusses the Impact of

Women Workers (1897) 42 Work in a Garment Factory (1902) 43 Gainful Workers by Age, 1870–1920 44 Breaker Boys (1906) 45

Conclusion 46 Further Reading 47 Notes 47

3 Evaluating Primary Sources: “Saving” the Indians in the Late Nineteenth Century 49 Setting 51 Investigation 52 Sources 53

“Land and Law as Agents in Educating Indians” (1885) 54 The Dawes Act (1887) 56 A Cheyenne Tells His Son About the Land (ca. 1876) 58 Cheyennes Try Farming (ca. 1877) 59 A Sioux Recalls Severalty (ca. 1900) 60 Supervised Indian Land Holdings by State, 1881–1933 62 A Proposal for Indian Education (1888) 63 Instructions to Indian Agents and Superintendents

of Indian Schools (1889) 65 The Education of Indian Students at Carlisle (1891) 67 Luther Standing Bear Recalls Carlisle (1933) 69 Wohaw’s Self-Portrait (1877) 72 Taking an Indian Child to School (1891) 73 A Crow Medicine Woman on Teaching the Young (1932) 73 Percentage of Population Over Ten Illiterate, 1900–1930 75

Conclusion 75 Further Reading 76 Notes 76

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4 Evaluating a Historical Argument: American Manhood and Philippine Annexation 77 Setting 79 Investigation 81 Secondary Source 82

Male Degeneracy and the Allure of the Philippines (1998) 83 Primary Sources 89

“Recommended by Hoar” (1899) 90 “The Anti-Expansion Ticket for 1900” (1899) 91 “The White Man’s Burden” (1899) 92 “The Filipino’s First Bath” (1899) 93 “The Strenuous Life” (1899) 94 William McKinley on Annexation (1899) 96 “In Support of an American Empire” (1900) 97 Selections from the Treaty Debate (1899) 100 Value of Manufactured Exports, 1880–1900 104 Value of U.S. Exports by Country of Destination, 1880–1900 105

Conclusion 106 Further Reading 106 Notes 107

5 The Problem of Historical Motivation: The Bungalow as the “Progressive” House 108 Setting 109 Investigation 111 Secondary Source 112

The Progressive Housewife and the Bungalow (1981) 112 Primary Sources 117

A Victorian House (1875) 119 A Craftsman Cottage (1909) 120 The Craftsman Contrasts Complexity and Confusion

with Cohesion and Harmony (1907) 121 Craftsman Home Interiors (1909) 122 Gustav Stickley on the Craftsman Home (1909) 123 Edward Bok on Simplicity (1900) 125 Cover from The Bungalow Magazine (1909) 126

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“Standards of Living in the Home” (1912) 127 The Efficient and Inefficient Homemaker (1920) 129 Domestic Economy (1904) 130 Double Bungalow Plan, Bowen Court 131 Female Servants by Regions, per 1,000 Families,

1880–1920 132 Clerical Workers in the United States, by Sex, 1870–1920 133

Conclusion 134 Further Reading 134 Notes 134

6 Ideology and History: Advertising in the 1920s 136 Setting 137 Investigation 139 Secondary Source 140

Advertising the American Dream (1985) 140 Primary Sources 149

“The Poor Little Bride of 1860” (1920) 150 Listerine Advertisement (1923) 151 Ford Motors Advertisement (1924) 152 Kotex Advertisement (1927) 153 Calvin Coolidge on the Economic Aspects

of Advertising (1926) 154 Earnest Elmo Calkins, Business the Civilizer (1926) 155 Walter Dill Scott on Effective Advertisements (1928) 157 Advertising to Women (1928) 159

Conclusion 161 Further Reading 162 Notes 162

7 History “From the Top Down”: Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady 163 Setting 165 Investigation 166

ixContents

Secondary Source 167 Eleanor Roosevelt as First Lady (1996) 167

Primary Sources 176 Transcripts of Eleanor Roosevelt’s Press Conferences (1933–1938) 176 “The Negro and Social Change” (1936) 179 Letter to Her Daughter (1937) 181 This I Remember (1949) 182 My Parents: A Differing View (1976) 185 Letter from Barry Bingham to Marvin McIntyre (1934) 186 Excerpts from Letters to Franklin Roosevelt (1935) 186 It’s Up to the Women (1933) 187 Eleanor Roosevelt on the Equal Rights Amendment (1933) 188

Conclusion 189 Further Reading 189 Notes 189

8 History “From the Bottom Up”: The Detroit Race Riot and Los Angeles Zoot Suit Riots of 1943 191 Setting 193 Investigation 196 Secondary Source 197

The Detroit Rioters of 1943 (1991) 197 Primary Sources 208

A Handbill for White Resistance (1942) 209 Black Employment in Selected Detroit Companies, 1941 210 Black Workers Protest Against Chrysler (1943) 210 A Complaint About the Police (1939) 211 Changes in White and Black Death Rates, 1910–1940 212 An Explanation for Mexican Crime (1942) 213 “Zoot Suiters Learn Lesson in Fights with Servicemen” (1943) 213 Testimony of Zoot Suiters (1943, 2000) 215 Views of the News, by Manchester Boddy (June 11, 1943) 216 A Governor’s Citizen’s Committee Report

on Los Angeles Riots (1943) 217 Conclusion 219 Further Reading 219 Notes 220

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9 Popular Culture as History: The Cold War Comes Home 221 Setting 223 Investigation 224 Secondary Source 225

The Culture of the Cold War (1991) 225 Primary Sources 232

Advertisement for I Married a Communist (1949) 233 Promotional Material for Walk East on Beacon (1952) 234 A Game Show Producer Remembers the Red Scare (1995) 234 A Playwright Recalls the Red Scare (1995) 237 “This Land Is Your Land” (1956) 239 A Folk Singer Remembers the Early Fifties (1995) 240 Pogo (1952) 242 On the Road (1957) 243

Conclusion 245 Further Reading 245 Notes 246

10 History and Popular Memory: The Civil Rights Movement 247 Setting 248 Investigation 251 Secondary Source 252

I’ve Got the Light of Freedom (1995) 252 Primary Sources 258

A SNCC Founder Discusses Its Goals (1966) 259 Amzie Moore: Farewell to the N-Double-A (ca. 1975) 261 Chronology of Violence, 1961 (1963) 264 A Sharecropper’s Daughter Responds to the Voter

Registration Campaign (ca. 1975) 266 A Black Activist Endorses White Participation (ca. 1975) 270 A SNCC Organizer Recalls Federal Intervention (ca. 1975) 271 “A Letter from a Freedom Summer Volunteer” (1964) 272 Examples of Freedom School Student Work (1964) 273 An “Insider” Recalls the Divisions in SNCC (1966) 276

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Fannie Lou Hamer on the Lessons of 1964 (1967) 277 “What We Want” (1966) 277

Conclusion 279 Further Reading 280 Notes 280

11 Causation and the Lessons of History: Explaining America’s Longest War 281 Setting 283 Investigation 284 Secondary Sources 285

Fighting in “Cold Blood”: LBJ’s Conduct of Limited War in Vietnam (1994) 285

God’s Country and American Know-How (1986) 290 Primary Sources 295

LBJ Expresses Doubts About Vietnam (1965) 296 LBJ Recalls His Decision to Escalate (1971) 296 The Central Intelligence Agency Reports on the War (1967) 298 McNamara Recalls the Decision to Escalate (1995) 298 Fighting a Technological War of Attrition (1977) 300 A Medical Corpsman Recalls the Vietnamese People (1981) 301 A Marine Remembers His Shock (1987) 302 A Foreign Service Officer Acknowledges American

Ignorance (1987) 304 Conclusion 305 Further Reading 305 Notes 306

12 Gender, Ideology, and Historical Change: Explaining the Women’s Movement 307 Setting 308 Investigation 310 Secondary Sources 311

Cold War Ideology and the Rise of Feminism (1988) 311 Women’s Liberation and Sixties Radicalism (2002) 316

xii Contents

Primary Sources 322 The Problem That Has No Name (1963) 323 Civil Rights and the Rise of Feminism (1987) 324 NOW’s Statement of Purpose (1966) 326 Redstockings Manifesto (1969) 327 “What’s Wrong with ‘Equal Rights’ for Women?” (1972) 328 The Combahee River Collective Statement (1986) 332 On Women and Sex (1972) 334 Our Bodies, Ourselves (1973) 335 The Politics of Housework (ca. 1970) 337 Sex Ratios of High School and College Graduates in the

United States, 1940–1990 339 Women’s Labor Force Participation, by Marital Status, 1940–1990 340

Conclusion 340 Further Reading 341 Notes 342

13 Why Historical Interpretation Matters: The Battle over Immigration 343 Setting 344 Investigation 346 Secondary Sources 347

Unguarded Gates (2004) 347 Immigrant America (2006) 355

Primary Sources 361 “Illegal Immigrants: The U.S. May Gain More Than It

Loses” (1984) 361 Immigration as a Threat to Social Cohesion (1985) 364 Undocumented Workers as International Workers (1997) 365 “The Secret of Success” (2002) 368 “Low Immigration and Economic Growth” (2007) 369 Two Illegal Immigrants Tell Their Story (1988) 372 A Cambodian Immigrant’s American Dream (1988) 375 A Chinese Immigrant Battles Jessica McClintock (1993) 377 An Illegal Immigrant Contemplates Citizenship (2004) 379

Conclusion 381 Further Reading 382

Preface

The encouraging response to the fourth edition from students and instructors has prompted me to create a fifth edition of Thinking Through the Past. As before, this book is inspired by the idea that interpretation is at the heart of history. That is why learning about the past involves more than mastering facts and dates, and why historians often disagree. As teachers, we know the limita- tions of the deadly dates-and-facts approach to the past. We also know that encouraging students to think critically about historical sources and historians’ arguments is a good way to create excitement about history and to impart understanding of what historians do. The purpose of Thinking Through the Past, therefore, is to introduce students to the examination and analysis of historical sources.

F O R M A T

To encourage students to think critically about American history, Thinking Through the Past brings together primary and secondary sources. It gives stu- dents the opportunity to analyze primary sources and historians’ arguments, and to use one to understand and evaluate the other. By evaluating and drawing conclusions from the sources, students will use the methods and develop some of the skills of critical thinking as they apply to history. Students will also learn about a variety of historical topics that parallel those in U.S. history courses. Unlike most anthologies or collections of primary sources, this book advances not only chronologically, but also pedagogically through different skill levels. It provides students the opportunity to work with primary sources in the early chapters before they evaluate secondary sources in later chapters or compare historians’ arguments in the final chapters. Students are also able to build on the skills acquired in previous chapters by considering such questions as moti- vation, causation, and the role of ideas and economic interests in history.

At the same time, this book introduces a variety of approaches to the past. Topics in Thinking Through the Past include social, political, cultural, intel-

xiii

xiv Preface

lectual, economic, diplomatic, and military history. The chapters look at history “from the top down” and “from the bottom up.” Thus students have the opportunity to evaluate history drawn from slave quarters as well as from state houses. In the process, they are exposed to the enormous range of sources that historians use to construct arguments. The primary sources in these vol- umes include portraits, photographs, maps, letters, fiction, music lyrics, laws, oral histories, speeches, movie posters, magazine and newspaper articles, car- toons, and architectural plans.

The chapters present the primary and secondary sources so students can pursue their own investigations of the material. Each chapter is divided into five parts: a brief introduction, which sets forth the problem in the chapter; the Setting, which provides background information pertaining to the topic; the Investigation, which asks students to answer a short set of questions revolv- ing around the problem discussed in the introduction; the Sources, which in most chapters provide a secondary source and a set of primary sources related to the chapter’s main problem; and, finally, a brief Conclusion, which offers a reminder of the chapter’s main pedagogical goal and looks forward to the next chapter’s problem.

C H A N G E S T O T H E F I F T H E D I T I O N

In the fifth edition, there are significantly revised chapters in both volumes on provocative topics that have been on the cutting edge of recent historical scholarship. These topics are intended to stimulate student interest in American history. In Volume I, chapters on the Constitution, the American West, and Andrew Jackson have been revised with the addition of new source material. As before, changes reflect more recent historical scholarship and have been designed with accessibility in mind. New primary source material in Chapter 8 reflects contemporary historical scholarship on the nineteenth- century American frontier, while Chapter 9 presents a new biographical assessment of young Andrew Jackson that introduces students to a “gambler” and “carouser” who matures into a “formidable leader of men.” In Volume II, a significantly re- vised chapter on racial and ethnic unrest on the home front during World War II is intended to provide students with a broader historical context and to excite a broader mix of contemporary students. Overall, the volumes have been revised with an eye toward making the book a more engaging learning tool. To this end, many other chapters contain new sources that provide additional insights for students as they conduct their historical investigations.

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

Many people contributed to this book, starting with my own students. Without them, of course, it never would have been created.

xvPreface

I owe many thanks to the people who assisted in various ways with the revisions for this edition. At the College of Southern Nevada, Inter-Library Loan librarian Marion Martin, as always, provided cheerful and invaluable assistance. Numerous colleagues around the country,including many instruc- tors who have used the text over several editions, offered useful suggestions regarding revisions and chapter drafts. I am honored by their commitment to Thinking Through the Past and thank them for helping to make it a better book.

In particular, I’d like to thank the following individuals who reviewed the fifth edition: Guy Aronoff, Humboldt State University; Terrell Goddard, Northwest Vista College; Li Hongshan, Kent State University at Tuscarawas; Abigail Markwyn, Carroll University; Linda Mollno, Cal Poly Pomona; Craig Perrier, Fairfax County Public Schools; Emily Rader, El Camino College; Alicia Rodriquez, California State University, Bakersfield; Megan Seaholm, University of Texas at Austin; Rebecca Shrum, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis; Garth Swanson, Genesee Community College; and Wendy Wall, Binghamton University. The reviewers of the fourth edition were: Andy Ginette, University of Southern Indiana; Terrell Goddard, Northwest Vista College; Charlotte Haller, Worcester State College; Jeffrey Johnson, Augustana College; Jennifer Mata, University of Texas Pan American; Sean O’Neill, Grand Valley State University; Phillip Payne, St. Bonaventure University; and Timothy Thurber, Virginia Commonwealth University. The reviewers of the third edition were Michael D. Wilson, Vanguard University; David A. Canton, Georgia Southern University; Paivi Hoikkala, California State Polytechnic University at Pomona; Kathleen Kennedy, Western Washington University; Monroe H. Little, Jr., Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis; Cathleen Schultz, University of St. Francis; Paul C. Rosier, Villanova University; Marsha L. Weisiger, New Mexico State University; and Katherine A. S. Sibley, St. Joseph’s University.

I owe thanks to many others as well for their contribution to the previous editions. Alan Balboni, DeAnna Beachley, Michael Green, Charles Okeke, the late Gary Elliott, colleagues at the Community College of Southern Nevada, of- fered sources, reviewed portions of the manuscript, shared insights, or simply offered encouragement. Richard Cooper and Brad Nystrom at Cal i fornia State University, Sacramento, listened patiently and offered helpful suggestions at the initial stages of this project. As usual, however, my biggest debt is to Patty. For her enduring support and abiding love, this book is once again dedicated to her.

J. H.

Thinking Through the Past

Introduction

“History,” said Henry Ford, “is more or less bunk.” That view is still shared by many people. Protests about the subject are familiar. Studying history won’t help you land a job. And, besides, what matters is not the past but the present.

Such protests are not necessarily wrong. Learning about ancient Greece, the French Revolution, or the Vietnam War will hardly guarantee employment, even though many employers evaluate job candidates on critical thinking skills that the study of history requires. Likewise, who can deny the importance of the present compared to the past? In many ways, the present and future are more important than the past. Pericles, Robespierre, and Lyndon Johnson are dead; presumably, anyone reading this is not.

Still, the logic behind the history-as-bunk view is flawed because all of us rely upon the past to understand the present, as did even Henry Ford. Besides building the Model T, he also built Greenfield Village outside Detroit because he wanted to re-create a nineteenth-century town. It was the kind of place the automotive genius grew up in and the kind of place he believed represented the ideal American society: small-town, white, native-born, and Protestant. Greenfield Village was Ford’s answer to changes in the early twentieth century that were profoundly disturbing to him and to many other Americans of his generation: growing cities, the influx of non-Protestant immigrants, changing sexual morality, new roles and new fashions for women, and greater freedom for young people.

Ford’s interest in the past, symbolized by Greenfield Village, reflects a dou- ble irony. It was the automobile that helped to make possible many of the changes, like those in sexual morality, that Ford detested. The other irony is that Ford used history—what he himself called “bunk”—to try to better the world. Without realizing it, he became a historian by turning to the past to explain to himself and others what he disliked about the present. Never mind that Ford blamed immigrants, especially Jews, for the changes he decried in crude, hate-filled tirades. The point is that Ford’s view of America was rooted in a vision of the past, and his explanation for America’s ills was based on his- torical analysis, however unprofessional and unsophisticated.

All of us use historical analysis all the time, even if, like Ford, we think we don’t. In fact, we all share a fundamental assumption about learning from the past: One of the best ways to learn about something, to learn how it came to be, is to study its past. That assumption is so much a part of us that we are rarely conscious of it.

Think about the most recent time you met someone for the first time. As a way to get to know this new acquaintance you began to ask questions about his or her past. When you asked, “Where did you grow up?” or “How long have you lived in Chicago?” you were relying on information about the past to learn about the present. You were, in other words, thinking as a historian. You assumed that a cause-and-effect relationship existed between this person’s past and his or her present personality, interests, and beliefs. Like a historian, you began to frame questions and to look for answers that would help to establish causal links.

Because we all use history to make sense of our world, it follows that we should become more skilled in the art of making sense of the past. Ford did it crudely, and ended up promoting the very things he despised. But how exactly do you begin to think more like a historian? For too many students, this chal- lenge summons up images of studying for history exams: cramming names, dates, and facts, and hoping to retain some portion of this information long enough to get a passing grade. History seems like a confusing grab bag of facts and events. The historian’s job, in this view, is to memorize as much “stuff” as possible. In this “flash-card” approach, history is reduced to an exercise in the pursuit of trivia, and thinking like a historian is nothing but an exercise in mnemonics—a system of improving the memory.

There is no question that the dates, events, and facts of history are important. Without basic factual knowledge historians could no more practice their craft than biologists, chemists, or astrophysicists could practice theirs. But history is not a static recollection of facts. Events in the past happened only once, but the historians who study those events are always changing their minds about them. Like all humans, historians have prejudices, biases, and beliefs. They are also influenced by events in their own times. In other words, they look at the past through lenses that filter and even distort. Events in the past may have happened only once, but what historians think about them, the meaning they give to those events, is constantly changing. Moreover, because their lenses per- ceive events differently, historians often disagree about the past. The supposedly “static” discipline of history is actually dynamic and charged with tension.

That brings us to the question of what historians really do. Briefly, historians ask questions about past events or developments and try to explain them. Just as much as biology, chemistry, or astrophysics, therefore, history is a problem-solving discipline. Historians, like scientists, sift evidence to answer questions. Like scientists, whose explanations for things often conflict, historians can ask the same questions, look at the same facts, and come up with different explanations because they look at the past in different ways. Or they may have entirely different questions in mind and so come away with very different “pasts.” Thus history is a process of constant revision. As historians like to put it, every generation writes its own history.

But why bother to study and interpret the past in our own way if someone else will only revise it again in the future? The answer is sobering: If we don’t

2 Introduction

write our own history, someone else will write it for us. Who today would ac- cept as historical truth the notion that the Indians were cruel savages whose extermination was necessary to fulfill an Anglo-Saxon destiny to conquer the continent for democracy and civilization? Who today would accept the “truth” that slaves were racially inferior and happy with their lot on Southern planta- tions? If we accept these views of Indians and black slaves, we are allowing nineteenth-century historians to determine our view of the past.

Instead, by reconstructing the past as best we can, we can better understand our own times. Like the amnesia victim, without memory we face a bewil- dering world. As we recapture our collective past, the present becomes more intelligible. Subject to new experiences, a later generation will view the past differently. Realizing that future generations will revise history does not give us a license to play fast and loose with the facts of history. Rather each generation faces the choice of giving meaning to those facts or experiencing the confusion of historical amnesia.

Finding meaning in the facts of the past, then, is the central challenge of his- tory. It requires us to ask questions and construct explanations—mental activi- ties far different and far more exciting than merely memorizing names, dates, and facts. More important, it enables us to approach history as critical think- ers. The more skilled we become at historical reasoning, the better we will understand our world and ourselves. Helping you to develop skill in historical analysis is the purpose of this volume.

The method of this book reflects its purpose. The first chapter discusses text- books. History texts have a very practical purpose. By bringing order to the past, they give many students a useful and reassuring “handle” on history. But they are not the Ten Commandments, because, like all works of history, they also contain interpretations. To most readers these interpretations are hard to spot. Chapter 1 examines what a number of college textbooks in American his- tory say and don’t say about the role of African Americans during Reconstruc- tion, the period immediately after the Civil War. By examining selections from several texts and asking how and why they differ, we can see that texts are not as objective as readers often believe.

If textbooks are not carved in stone, how can historians know anything? To answer this question, we turn next to the raw material of history. Chapter 2, on the living and working conditions of wage earners in industrializing America, examines the primary sources historians use to reconstruct and interpret the past. What are these sources? What do historians do with them? What can his- torians determine from them?

With a basic understanding of the nature and usefulness of primary sources, we proceed to Chapter 3 for a closer evaluation. This chapter on late-nineteenth-century efforts to reform the Indians shows how careful his- torians must be in using primary sources. Does a source speak with one voice or with many? How can historians disagree about the meaning of the same historical facts? By carefully evaluating primary sources in this chapter,

3Introduction

you can draw your own conclusions about the nature of these Indian reform efforts. You can also better understand how historians often derive different conclusions from the same body of material.

Chapter 3 is good preparation for the evaluation in Chapter 4 of one historian’s argument about the decision to annex the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. In this chapter you can begin to use primary sources to reach a conclusion about a historian’s argument. In as much as historians still disagree about the American decision to establish an overseas empire, the essay and the primary sources in this chapter provide another opportunity to see how subjective historical interpretation can be.

One of the most important sources of disagreement among historians is the question of motivation. What drove people to do what they did in the past? The good historian, like the detective in a murder mystery, eventually asks that question. Chapter 5 illustrates the importance of motivation by examining what was behind the promotion of a new housing style in the early twentieth century known as the bungalow. That topic also demonstrates that historians often look in some unlikely places to understand the past.

Motives in history are, of course, related to ideas, the subject of Chapter 6. What power do ideas exert in history? What is their relationship, for example, to the motives examined in the previous chapter? In Chapter 6 we try to answer these questions by examining the role of ideology in advertising during the 1920s.

Chapter 7 turns from the influence of ideas in the past to the influence of a single individual. In this chapter we examine the activities of Eleanor Roosevelt as First Lady. Few First Ladies were more admired, or hated. What can histori- ans learn about an era by focusing on one prominent individual like Eleanor Roosevelt? In the past, many historians believed that history was nothing more than the biography of great people. How much can students of history learn about the past by looking at it this way, that is, “from the top down”? How much do they miss by doing so? Such questions are, of course, related to the topics of previous chapters: historical evidence, motivation, and the influence of ideas.

The next chapter examines history from the opposite perspective—“from the bottom up.” What can historians learn by looking at the people at the bottom of a society? What challenges face historians who try? During World War II, a good place for looking at history this way is in the slums of Detroit and barrios of Los Angeles, two of America’s greatest war-production centers. Chapter 8 examines the race riots that occurred there in 1943. We will see who the rioters were and why their lives are important to historians.

Having considered the questions of motivation and ideas in history and examined the past from different perspectives, in Chapter 9 we look at the impact of anticommunist hysteria on postwar popular culture. Aside from the question of causation, this chapter considers the problems historians face when they try to trace the influence of one large force in history. As we shall

4 Introduction

see, this often requires historians to synthesize, that is, to combine small pieces into a large picture.

Chapter 9 examines the influences shaping popular culture. The next chap- ter, on the civil rights movement, looks at the way popular culture can influ- ence our views of the past. As with many episodes from the recent American past, popular memories of this movement have been shaped by images con- veyed by the media. Those images, however, may distort our view of the past. Often, historians attempt to make more accurate assessments of an event by relying on the accounts of those involved in them. Doing so usually requires that researchers synthesize many individual memories into an accurate and coherent collective memory. And, as we shall see, using the accounts of many people who participated in such a broad movement again illustrates that the past looks different depending on whether it is presented from the “bottom up” or the “top down.”

Many of the preceding chapters have used a single historical essay and an accompanying set of primary sources to examine problems of evidence, motivation, ideology, causation, grand forces, and writing of history from both the “top down” and the “bottom up.” The next chapter offers an opportunity to pull together the lessons of previous chapters. Chapter 11 compares what two historians have written about a single topic, the war in Vietnam. We will consider the way the United States fought this war, historians’ explanations for the way it turned out, and the lessons they draw from the experience. This requires that we examine the actions of a small but influential set of indi- viduals as well as the attitudes of many ordinary Americans. Thus, explaining America’s biggest military loss enables us to consider, in a single topic, such questions as motivation, the role of grand historical forces, and the role of the individual in history.

The goal of Chapter 12 is similar to that of Chapter 11: a synthesis, or pull- ing together, of lessons learned in preceding chapters. Here, however, the em- phasis is on the problems of historical evidence, causation, and the role of ideology. Chapter 12 contains two essays on the rise of the women’s move- ment in the 1960s and 1970s and a small collection of primary sources. It asks you to compare and analyze conflicting arguments, using not only primary sources but also insights drawn from previous chapters.

All of the chapters in this volume have a common purpose: to encourage you to think more like a historian and to sharpen your critical thinking skills. Chapter 13 returns to a point emphasized throughout this volume: The pursuit of the past cannot occur apart from a consideration of historical interpretation, and differences in historical interpretation matter not just to historians but to everyone. This final chapter examines differing interpretations about the im- pact of contemporary immigration. It contains two explanations of large-scale immigration today and primary documents that illuminate both interpretations. In addition, it underscores the way our view of the past can be used to justify policies and practices in a later time.

5Introduction

By the end of this volume, you will have sharpened your ability to think about the past. You will think more critically about the use of historical evi- dence and about such historical problems as motivation, causation, and in- terpretation. Moreover, by exploring several styles of historical writing and various avenues to the past—from approaches that emphasize politics or eco- nomics to those that highlight social developments or military strategy—you will come to understand better not only the historian’s craft, but also the im- portance of the past. In short, you will think more like a historian.

6 Introduction

The textbook selections in this chapter illustrate different assumptions about the meaning of post–Civil War Reconstruction history.

Sources 1. Reconstruction (1906), thomas w. wilson 2. The Negro in Reconstruction (1922), carter woodson 3. The Ordeal of Reconstruction (1966), thomas a. bailey 4. Reconstruction: An Unfinished Revolution (2001),

mary beth norton et al.

Chapter

1 Historians and Textbooks:

The “Story” of Reconstruction

Chapter 1 Historians and Textbooks: The “Story” of Reconstruction8

n one of the most memorable scenes in movie history, Rhett Butler tells Scarlett O’Hara that he’s leaving her. When Scarlett asks what she will do, Rhett answers, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” It was the climax of Gone with the Wind, starring Clark Gable as Rhett and Vivian Leigh as Scarlett. The David O. Selznick film, based on a best-selling novel set in the South during the Civil War and Reconstruction, was the biggest picture of 1939.

The film’s success should have surprised no one. It had all the right ele- ments: strong-willed characters, tempestuous romance, a deathbed scene that left audiences in tears, and courageous people struggling to rebuild lives and fortunes destroyed by war. Yet Gone with the Wind also offered an enduring image of life in the Old South and of Reconstruction’s “dark days.” On the O’Hara plantation, “chivalrous” whites and their loyal ex-slaves confronted “cruel and vicious” Yankee carpetbaggers in cahoots with “traitorous” scala- wags. It was a theme that made sense to mostly white movie audiences in 1939. As early as 1915, D. W. Griffith’s silent film The Birth of a Nation had told the story of the Ku Klux Klan’s violent but “valiant” efforts to throw off “carpetbag” rule. Like Griffith’s tale, Gone with the Wind found a sympathetic audience because it reflected their racial prejudices. As historical drama, it also fit comfortably with what they had learned in school, specifically, with interpretations imparted from history textbooks.

As we shall see in this chapter, however, those interpretations would change over time. In this chapter, you can consider what some twentieth-century his- torians have taught Americans about Reconstruction. In the process, you will have the opportunity to see that these books do not always necessarily con- tain the same past and that they, like such powerful movies as The Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind, reflect the biases of their producers. When done, you can judge how well Gone with the Wind’s picture of Reconstruction corresponds with those presented in textbooks today.

S E T T I N G

Moviegoers in 1939 may have remembered producer David O. Selznick’s name splashed across the screen. Far fewer recalled the author of their American his- tory textbook. More likely than not it was David S. Muzzey, whose American History (1911) and History of the American People (1927) were bestsellers by the 1930s. Among the most enduring American history textbooks, these books probably taught several generations of Americans more about their nation’s past than any other book. If audiences had learned anything about Reconstruction before Gone with the Wind’s opening credits, it was probably Muzzey who had taught them.

Muzzey had plenty to say about Reconstruction, and in no uncertain terms. The Republican governments established under congressional Reconstruction

Investigation 9

he judged to be “sorry affairs.” The government “of the negro [sic] and his unscrupulous carpetbagger and scalawag patrons was an orgy of extravagance, fraud, and disgusting incompetence.” Muzzey, a New Englander, was sympa- thetic to the efforts of Southerners to “redeem” their states from “negro [sic] and carpetbagger rule.” Although he called white Southerners’ use of vio- lence against black voters “exasperating,” their response was understandable. “Congress,” he asserted, “did [Southern states] an unpardonable injury by hastening to reconstruct them on the basis of negro [sic] suffrage.”1 In short, his view of Reconstruction was that of the white Redeemers themselves.

Muzzey, of course, did not invent this “Redeemer” view of Reconstruction. How, then, had he come to these conclusions? It is impossible to be certain about the intellectual influences on this Columbia University professor. Yet we do know that two other Columbia historians had already written sympathetically about the white South’s plight under congressional Reconstruction. Ex-confederate John W. Burgess was an advocate of “Nordic” racial supremacy and the “white man’s burden.” In Reconstruction and the Constitution (1902), he declared that blacks failed to subject “passion to reason.” Reconstruction thus put “barbarism in power over civilization.”2 William A. Dunning, a Northerner, agreed. His Reconstruction history was peopled with corrupt carpetbaggers and blacks pursuing “vicious” policies. White Southerners had little choice but to fight back. “All the forces [in the South] that made for civilization,” Dunning asserted, “were dominated by a mass of barbarous freedmen.”3

Burgess and Dunning played a crucial role in transmitting a Southern view of Reconstruction into classrooms nationwide. At Columbia they trained sev- eral generations of historians, who wrote more books and trained still other historians. By the time Gone with the Wind captivated many moviegoers, the struggle for the hearts and minds of high school and college students was already over. Although a few black historians dissented, most notably W. E. B. Du Bois, the South had triumphed in the historical battle over the the- ory of Reconstruction. Rather than a new view of the past, Gone with the Wind offered white audiences a reassuring version of the past that had been embed- ded in the popular mind for several decades. In 1939, Hollywood ensured that it would endure for several more. Only in the second half of the last century would historians seriously challenge the established view of this era with new interpretations that turned Dunning’s view on its head.

I N V E S T I G A T I O N

This chapter contains four selections from American history textbooks published in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The first was published in 1906 and the last in 2001. Your primary assignment is to determine how these accounts of Reconstruction differ from one another and which one is most accurate. As you read them, keep in mind the questions that the authors attempt to answer about Reconstruction. These questions, mostly unstated, are

Chapter 1 Historians and Textbooks: The “Story” of Reconstruction10

not necessarily the same. Also, be careful to note the most important facts of Reconstruction that each presents and the meaning each assigns to them. To see more clearly how these textbook selections differ from one another, it would be helpful to write down brief answers to the following questions as you read each account:

1. Does the author present the Republican governments in the Southern states as effective or ineffective? How are they described? Is the view of the “carpetbaggers” and “scalawags” positive, negative, or neutral?

2. What is the author’s view of blacks? Is the author’s analysis of Reconstruction based on racial assumptions about the character of the freedmen? Are blacks passive or active participants in shaping Reconstruction and their own lives?

3. What is the author’s view of the overturning of Reconstruction? Is the sei- zure of power by white Southerners a welcome or regrettable development? What is the author’s view of such terrorist organizations as the Ku Klux Klan?

Before you begin, read your own textbook’s discussion of Reconstruction. When you are finished, you should be able to explain how these selections differ, which one is closest to the interpretation in your own text, and which one is most plausible.

S O U R C E S

1 Reconstruction (1906)THOMAS W. WILSON Adventurers swarmed out of the North to cozen, beguile, and use . . . them [negroes]. These men, mere “carpet baggers” for the most part, who brought nothing with them, and had nothing to bring, but a change of clothing and their wits, became the new masters of the blacks. They gained the confidence of the negroes, obtained for themselves the more lucrative offices, and lived upon the public treasury, public contracts, and their easy control of affairs. For the negroes there was nothing but occasional allot- ments of abandoned or forfeited land, the pay of petty offices, a per diem allowance as members of the conventions and the state legislatures which their new masters made business for, or the wages of servants in the vari- ous offices of administration. Their ignorance and credulity made them easy dupes. . . .

Source: Woodrow Wilson, A History of the American People (New York: Harper and Bros., 1906), V: pp. 46, 47, 49, 58, 59, 60, 62, 98, 99.

Sources 11

. . . In Mississippi, before the work of the carpet baggers was done, six hundred and forty thousand acres of land had been forfeited for taxes, twenty per cent, of the total acreage of the State. The state tax levy for 1871 was four times as great as the levy for 1869 had been; that for 1873 eight times as great; that for 1874 fourteen times. The impoverished planters could not carry the intolerable burden of taxes, and gave their lands up to be sold by the sheriff. There were few who could buy. The lands lay waste and ne- glected or were parcelled out at nominal rates among the negroes. . . .

Taxes, of course, did not suffice. Enormous debts were piled up to satisfy the adventurers. . . . Treasuries were swept clean. . . .

. . . The white men of the South were aroused by the mere instinct of self-preservation to rid themselves, by fair means or foul, of the intolerable burden of governments sustained by the votes of ignorant negroes and con- ducted in the interest of adventurers: governments whose incredible debts were incurred that thieves might be enriched, whose increasing loans and taxes went to no public use but into the pockets of party managers and cor- rupt contractors. . . .

They took the law into their own hands, and began to attempt by intimi- dation what they were not allowed to attempt by the ballot or by any ordered course of public action. They began to do by secret concert and association what they could not do in avowed parties. Almost by accident a way was found to succeed which led insensibly farther and farther afield into the ways of violence and outlawry. In May, 1866, a little group of young men in the Tennessee village of Pulaski, finding time hang heavy on their hands after the excitements of the field, so lately abandoned, formed a secret club for the mere pleasure of association, for private amusement—for anything that might promise to break the monotony of the too quiet place. . . .

. . . Year by year the organization spread, from county to county, from State to State. Every country-side wished to have its own Ku Klux, founded in secrecy and mystery like the mother “Den” at Pulaski, until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, an “Invisible Empire of the South,” bound together in loose organization to protect the southern coun- try from some of the ugliest hazards of a time of revolution. . . .

It was impossible to keep such a power in hand. Sober men governed the counsels and moderated the plans of those roving knights errant; but it was lawless work at best. They had set themselves, after the first year or two of mere mischievous frolic had passed, to right a disordered society through the power of fear. Men of hot passions who could not always be restrained carried their plans into effect. . . .

The reconstruction of the southern States had been the undoing of the Republican party. The course of carpet bag rule did not run smooth. Every election fixed the attention of the country upon some serious question of fraud or violence in the States where northern adventurers and negro major- ities were in control. . . . Before [Ulysses S. Grant’s] term was out the white

Chapter 1 Historians and Textbooks: The “Story” of Reconstruction12

voters of the South had rallied strong enough in every State except South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana to take their governments out of the hands of the men who were preying upon them.

2 The Negro in Reconstruction (1922)CARTER WOODSON Reconstruction began in the schoolhouses not in the State houses, as unin- formed persons often say. . . . As the Union armies gradually invaded that area the soldiers opened schools for Negroes. Regular teachers came from relief societies and the Freedmen’s Bureau. These enlightened a fair percent- age of the Negroes by 1870. The illiteracy of the Negroes was reduced to 79.9 by that time. When about the same time these freedmen had a chance to participate in the rehabilitation of State governments in the South, they gave that section the first free public school system, the first democratic education it ever had. . . .

The [majority of] other States in the South, from 1868 to about 1872, became subjected to what is commonly known as “Negro carpet-bag rule.”

To call this Negro rule, however, is very much of a mistake. As a mat- ter of fact, most of the local offices in these commonwealths were held by the white men, and those Negroes who did attain some of the higher offices were usually about as competent as the average whites thereto elected. Only twenty-three Negroes served in Congress from 1868 to 1895. The Negroes had political equality in the Southern States only a few years, and with some exceptions their tenure in Congress was very short. . . .

The charge that all Negro officers were illiterate, ignorant of the science of government, cannot be sustained. In the first place, the education of the Negro by Union soldiers in the South began in spots as early as 1861. Many of the Negro leaders who had been educated in the North or abroad returned to the South after the war. Negro illiteracy had been reduced to 79.9 by 1870, just about the time the freedmen were actually participating in the reconstruction. The masses of Negroes did not take a part in the govern- ment in the beginning of the reconstruction.

It is true that many of them were not prepared to vote, and decidedly dis- qualified for the positions which they held. In some of the legislatures, as in Louisiana and South Carolina, more than half of the Negro members could scarcely read or write. They, therefore, had to vote according to emotions or the dictates of the demagogues. This, of course, has been true of legislatures composed entirely of whites. In the local and State administrative offices,

Source: Carter G. Woodson and Charles H. Wesley, The Negro in Our History, (Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers Inc., 1962; originally published in 1922), pp. 382, 388, 401–410, 431–414.

Sources 13

however, where there were frequent chances for corruption, very few igno- rant Negroes ever served. . . .

Most of the local, State and Federal offices, however, were held not by Negroes but by southern white men, and by others who came from the North and profited by the prostration of the South. They were in many respects selfish men, but not always utterly lacking in principle. The north- ern whites, of course, had little sympathy for the South. They depended for their constituency upon the Negroes, who could not be expected to placate the ex-slaveholders. Being adventurers and interested in their own affairs, the carpet-baggers became unusually corrupt in certain States. They admin- istered affairs selfishly. Most Negro officers who served in the South came out of office with an honorable record. . . .

Reconstruction history, however, was distorted by J. W. Burgess, a slave- holder of Giles County, Tennessee, who was educated in the North and finally attained distinction as a teacher and writer at Columbia University; and by W. A. Dunning, the son of an industrialist of Plainfield, New Jer- sey, who became the disciple of Burgess. The two trained or influenced in the same biased way the sons and sympathizers of former slaveholders who prostituted modern historiography to perpetuate the same distortion. These pseudo-historians refused to use the evidence of those who opposed slavery, discredited the testimony of those who favored Congressional Reconstruc- tion, and ignored the observations of travellers from the North and from Europe. These makers of history to order were more partial than required by the law of slavery, for they rejected the evidence from Negro sources and thus denied the Negro not only the opportunity to testify against the white man but even to testify in favor of himself. . . .

Wherever they could, the native whites instituted government by investi- gation to expose all shortcomings of Negro officials. The general charge was that they were corrupt. The very persons who complained of the corruption in the Negro carpet-bag governments and who effected the reorganization of the State governments in the South when the Negroes were overthrown, however, became just as corrupt as the governing class under the preced- ing régime. In almost every restored State government in the South, and especially in Mississippi, the white officers in control of the funds defaulted. These persons who had been so long out of office came back so eager to get the most out of it that they filled their own pockets from the coffers of the public. No exposure followed. . . .

The attack on the policies of the carpet-bag governments, moreover, had the desired effect among the poor and ignorant whites. Reared under the degrading influences of slavery, they could not tolerate the blacks as citizens. The Negroes thereafter were harassed and harried by disturbing elements of anarchy, out of which soon emerged an oath-bound order called the Ku Klux Klan, established to terrorize the Negroes with lawlessness and violence.

Chapter 1 Historians and Textbooks: The “Story” of Reconstruction14

3 The Ordeal of Reconstruction (1966)THOMAS A. BAILEY Enfranchised Freedmen

The sudden thrusting of the ballot unto the hands of the ex-slaves, between 1867 and 1870, set the stage for stark tragedy. As might have been foreseen, it was a blunder hardly less serious than thrusting overnight freedom upon them. Wholesale liberation was probably unavoidable, given the feverish conditions created by war. But wholesale suffrage was avoidable, except insofar as the Radicals found it necessary for their own ends, both selfish and idealistic.

The bewildered Negroes were poorly prepared for their new responsi- bilities as citizens and voters. Democracy is a delicate mechanism, which requires education and information. Yet about nine-tenths of the 700,000 adult Negro males were illiterate. When registering, many did not know their ages; and boys of sixteen signed the rolls. Some of these voters could not even give their last name, if indeed they had any. Bob, Quash, Christmas, Scipio, Nebuchadnezzar would take any surname that popped into their heads, often that of “massa.” Sometimes they chose more wisely than they knew. On the voting lists of Charleston, South Carolina, there were forty-six George Washingtons and sixty-three Abraham Lincolns.

The tale would be amusing were it not so pathetic and tragic. After the Negroes were told to come in for registration, many appeared with boxes or baskets, thinking that registration was some new kind of food or drink. Others would mark their ballots and then carefully deposit them in mail boxes.

While these pitiable practices were going on, thousands of the ablest Southern whites were being denied the vote, either by act of Congress or by the new state constitutions. . . .

Enthroned Ignorance

Some of the new Southern legislatures created in 1867–1870, not unlike some Northern legislatures, presented bizarre scenes. They were domi- nated by newly arrived carpetbaggers, despised scalawags, and pliant Negroes. Some of the ex-bondsmen were remarkably well educated, but many others were illiterate. In a few of the states the colored legislators con- stituted a strong minority. In once-haughty South Carolina, the tally stood at 88 Negroes to 67 whites; and ex-slaves held offices ranging from speaker to doorkeeper. Negroes who had been raising cotton under the lash of the

Sources 15

overseer were now raising points of order under the gavel of the speaker. As a Negro song ran:

De bottom rail’s on de top And we’s gwine to keep it dar.

Greatly to their credit, these Negro-white legislatures passed much desirable legislation and introduced many overdue reforms. In some states a better tax system was created, state charities were established, public works were launched, property rights were guaranteed to women, and free pub- lic schools were encouraged—for Negroes as well as whites. Some of these reforms were so welcome that they were retained, along with the more en- lightened state constitutions, when the Southern whites finally strong-armed their way back into control.

But the good legislation, unhappily, was often obscured by a carnival of corruption and misrule. Graft and theft ran wild, especially in states like South Carolina and Louisiana, where designing whites used naive Negroes as cats-paws. The worst black-and-tan legislatures purchased, under “legisla- tive supplies,” such items as hams, perfumes, suspenders, bonnets, corsets, champagne, and a coffin. One “thrifty” carpetbag governor in a single year “saved” $100,000 from a salary of $8000.

The public debt of the Southern states doubled and trebled, as irrespon- sible carpetbag legislatures voted appropriations and bond issues with lighthearted abandon. Burdensome taxes were passed in Mississippi, where some 6,000,000 acres were sold for delinquent taxes. The disfranchised and propertied whites had to stagger along under a tax burden that sometimes rose ten or fifteenfold. . . .

One should also note that during this hectic era corruption was also ram- pant in the North, among Republicans as well as Democrats. The notorious Tweed Ring of New York City probably stole more millions, though with greater sophistication, than the worst of the carpetbag legislatures com- bined. And when the Southern whites regained the whip hand, graft by no means disappeared under Democratic auspices.

The Rule of Night Riders

Goaded to desperation, once-decent Southern whites resorted to savage mea- sures against Negro-carpetbag control. A number of secret organizations blos- somed forth, the most notorious of which was the Ku Klux Klan, founded in Tennessee in 1866. Besheeted night riders, their horses’ hoofs muffled, would hammer on the cabin door of a politically ambitious Negro. In ghoulish tones one thirsty horseman would demand a bucket of water, pour it into a rubber attachment under pretense of drinking, smack his lips, and declare that this was the first water he had tasted since he was killed at the battle of Shiloh. If fright did not produce the desired effect, force was employed.

Chapter 1 Historians and Textbooks: The “Story” of Reconstruction16

Such tomfoolery and terror proved partially effective. Many Negroes and carpetbaggers, quick to take a hint, were scared away from the polls. But those stubborn souls who persisted in their forward ways were flogged, mu- tilated, or even murdered. In one Louisiana parish in 1868, the whites in two days killed or wounded two hundred victims; a pile of twenty-five bodies was found half-buried in the woods. By such atrocious practices was the Negro “kept in his place.”

4 Reconstruction: An Unfinished Revolution (2001)MARY BETH NORTON et al. Reconstruction Politics in the South

From the start, Reconstruction encountered the resistance of white south- erners. In the black codes and in private attitudes, many whites stubbornly opposed emancipation, and the former planter class proved especially unbending. In 1866 a Georgia newspaper frankly observed that “most of the white citizens believe that the institution of slavery was right, and . . . they will believe that the condition, which comes nearest to slavery, that can now be established will be the best.”

White Resistance Fearing loss of control over their slaves, some planters attempted to postpone freedom by denying or misrepresenting events. For- mer slaves reported that their owners “didn’t tell them it was freedom” or “wouldn’t let [them] go.” Agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau reported that “the old system of slavery [is] working with even more rigor than formerly at a few miles distant from any point where U.S. troops are stationed.” To hold onto their workers, some landowners claimed control over black children and used guardianship and apprentice laws to bind black families to the plantation.

Whites also blocked blacks from acquiring land. A few planters divided up plots among their slaves, but most condemned the idea of making blacks landowners. A Georgia woman whose family was known for its support of religious education for slaves was outraged that two property owners planned to “rent their lands to the Negroes!” Such action was, she declared, “injurious to the best interest of the community.”

Adamant resistance by propertied whites soon manifested itself in other ways, including violence. In one North Carolina town a local magistrate clubbed a black man on a public street, and bands of “Regulators” terrorized blacks in parts of that state and in Kentucky. Such incidents were predictable in a defeated society in which many planters believed, as a South Carolinian put it, that blacks “can’t be governed except with the whip.”

Sources 17

After President Johnson encouraged the South to resist congressional Reconstruction, white conservatives worked hard to capture the new state governments. Many whites also boycotted the polls in an attempt to defeat Congress’s plans; by sitting out the elections, whites might block the new constitutions, which had to be approved by a majority of registered voters. This tactic was tried in North Carolina and succeeded in Alabama, forc- ing Congress to base ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment and of new state constitutions on a majority of “votes cast” (the provision of the Fourth Reconstruction Act).

Black Voters and Emergence of a Southern Republican Party Very few black men stayed away from the polls. Enthusiastically and hopefully, they voted Republican. Most agreed with one man who felt he should “stick to the end with the party that freed me.” Illiteracy did not prohibit blacks (or unedu- cated whites) from making intelligent choices. Although Mississippi’s William Henry could read only “a little,” he testified that he and his friends had no difficulty selecting the Republican ballot. “We stood around and watched,” he explained. “We saw D. Sledge vote; he owned half the county. We knowed he voted Democratic so we voted the other ticket so it would be Republi- can.” Women, who could not vote, encouraged their husbands and sons, and preachers exhorted their congregations to use the franchise. With such group spirit, zeal for voting spread through the entire black community.

Thanks to a large black turnout and the restrictions on prominent Con- federates, a new southern Republican Party came to power in the constitu- tional conventions of 1868–1870. Republican delegates consisted of a sizable contingent of blacks (265 out of the total of just over 1,000 delegates through- out the South), some northerners who had moved to the South, and native southern whites who favored change. Together these Republicans brought the South into line with progressive reforms adopted earlier in the rest of the nation. The new constitutions were more democratic. They eliminated property qualifications for voting and holding office, and they turned many appointed offices into elective posts. They provided for public schools and institutions to care for the mentally ill, the blind, the deaf, the destitute, and the orphaned. . . .

The Myth of “Negro Rule” Within a few years, as centrists in both parties met with failure, white hostility to congressional Reconstruction began to dominate. Some conservatives had always desired to fight Reconstruction through pressure and racist propaganda. They put economic and social pres- sure on blacks: one black Republican reported that “my neighbors will not employ me, nor sell me a farthing’s worth of anything.” Charging that the South had been turned over to ignorant blacks, conservatives deplored “black domination,” which became a rallying cry for a return to white supremacy.

Such attacks were inflammatory propaganda, and part of the growing myth of “Negro rule,” which would serve as a central theme in battles over

Chapter 1 Historians and Textbooks: The “Story” of Reconstruction18

the memory of Reconstruction. African Americans participated in politics but hardly dominated or controlled events. They were a majority in only two out of ten state constitutional writing conventions (transplanted northerners were a majority in one). In the state legislatures, only in the lower house in South Carolina did blacks ever constitute a majority; among officeholders, their numbers generally were far fewer than their proportion in the popula- tion. Sixteen blacks won seats in Congress before Reconstruction was over, but none was ever elected governor. Only eighteen served in a high state office such as lieutenant governor, treasurer, superintendent of education, or secretary of state. In all, some four hundred blacks served in political office during the Reconstruction era. Although they never dominated the process, they established a rich tradition of government service and civic activism. Elected officials, such as Robert Smalls in South Carolina, labored tirelessly for cheaper land prices, better healthcare, access to schools, and the enforce- ment of civil rights for their people. The black politicians of Reconstruction are lost in the mists, the forgotten heroes of this seedtime of America’s long civil rights movement.

Carpetbaggers and Scalawags Conservatives also assailed the allies of black Republicans. Their propaganda denounced whites from the North as “carpet- baggers,” greedy crooks planning to pour stolen tax revenues into their sturdy luggage made of carpet material. Immigrants from the North, who held the largest share of Republican offices, were all tarred with this brush.

In fact, most northerners who settled in the South had come seeking busi- ness opportunities or a warmer climate and never entered politics. Those who did enter politics generally wanted to democratize the South and to introduce northern ways, such as industry, public education, and the spirit of enterprise. Carpetbaggers’ ideals were tested by hard times and ostracism by white southerners.

In addition to tagging northern interlopers as carpetbaggers, Conserva- tives invented the term “scalawag” to discredit any native white south- erner who cooperated with the Republicans. A substantial number of southerners did so, including some wealthy and prominent men. Most scalawags, however, were yeoman farmers, men from mountain areas and nonslaveholding districts who had been restive under the Confederacy. They saw that they could benefit from the education and opportunities promoted by Republicans. Banding together with freedmen, they pursued common class interests and hoped to make headway against the power of long-dominant planters. Cooperation even convinced a few scalawags that “there is but little if any difference in the talents of the two races,” as one observed, and that all should have “an equal start.” Yet this black-white coalition was vulnerable to the race issue, and most scalawags did not support racial equality. Republican tax policies also cut into upcountry yeoman support because reliance on the property tax hit many small landholders hard.

Sources 19

Tax Policy and Corruption as Political Wedges Taxation was a major prob- lem for the Reconstruction governments. Republicans wanted to maintain prewar services, repair the war’s destruction, stimulate industry, and support important new ventures such as public schools. But the Civil War had destroyed much of the South’s tax base. One category of valuable property—slaves—had disappeared entirely. And hundreds of thousands of citizens had lost much of the rest of their property—money, livestock, fences, and buildings—to the war. Thus an increase in taxes was necessary even to maintain traditional services, and new ventures required still higher taxes. Inevitably, Republican tax poli- cies aroused strong opposition, especially among the yeomen.

Corruption was another serious charge levied against the Republicans. Unfortunately, it often was true. Many carpetbaggers and black politicians engaged in fraudulent schemes, sold their votes, or padded expenses, tak- ing part in what scholars recognize was a nationwide surge of corruption in an age ruled by “spoilsmen.” Corruption carried no party label, but the Democrats successfully pinned the blame on unqualified blacks and greedy carpetbaggers among southern Republicans.

Ku Klux Klan All these problems hurt the Republicans, whose leaders also allowed factionalism along racial and class lines to undermine party unity. But in many southern states the deathblow came through violence. The Ku Klux Klan, a secret veterans’ club that began in Tennessee in 1866, spread through the South and rapidly evolved into a terrorist organization. Violence against African Americans occurred from the first days of Reconstruction but became far more organized and purposeful after 1867. Klansmen rode to frustrate Reconstruction and keep the freedmen in subjection. Nighttime harassment, whippings, beatings, and murder became common, and terrorism dominated some counties and regions. . . .

Klan violence injured Republicans across the South. No fewer than one-tenth of the black leaders who had been delegates to the 1867–1868 state constitutional conventions were attacked, seven fatally. In one judicial district of North Carolina the Ku Klux Klan was responsible for twelve murders, over seven hundred beatings, and other acts of violence, including rape and arson. A single attack on Alabama Republicans in the town of Eutaw left four blacks dead and fifty-four wounded. In South Carolina five hundred masked Klans- men lynched eight black prisoners at the Union County jail, and in nearby York County the Klan committed at least eleven murders and hundreds of whippings. According to historian Eric Foner, the Klan “made it virtually im- possible for Republicans to campaign or vote in large parts of Georgia.”

Failure of Reconstruction Thus a combination of difficult fiscal problems, Republican mistakes, racial hostility, and terror brought down the Republi- can regimes. In most southern states, “Radical Reconstruction” lasted only a few years. The most enduring failure of Reconstruction, however, was not political; it was social and economic. Reconstruction failed to alter the

Chapter 1 Historians and Textbooks: The “Story” of Reconstruction20

South’s social structure or its distribution of wealth and power. Without land of their own, freed men and women were dependent on white landowners who could and did use their economic power to compromise blacks’ political freedom. Armed only with the ballot, freed men in the South had little chance to effect major changes.

C O N C L U S I O N

These discussions of Reconstruction should make it clear that history textbooks contain interpretations. They are no different from other historical writing in that regard. Modern texts are also written by people with biases and opinions, although their interpretations may be as difficult to spot today as Muzzey’s were for his students. In part that’s because historians often do not reveal their most important assumptions, as the selection from The American Pageant, another best-selling American history textbook, demonstrates. The original author, Stanford University historian Thomas A. Bailey, approached his task in much the same spirit as Muzzey; he wrote history as a lively story, with the accom- plishments of prominent people giving direction to the narrative. Behind this approach was the unspoken assumption that the lives of people at the bottom of the society mattered less than the bold actions of diplomats, generals, and politicians. Moreover, Bailey wrote and revised earlier editions of The American Pageant before civil rights protests had overthrown legal racial segregation. The 1966 edition excerpted in this chapter appeared after historians began to mount a successful assault on the Dunning view of Reconstruction, but before text- books fully reflected the outcome of this battle. On the other hand, Mary Beth Norton and the other authors of A People and a Nation are of the generation of scholars who came of age in the 1960s. Not only do many of these histori- ans incorporate ordinary people into their accounts, but their racial assump- tions also differ markedly from those of most historians earlier in the twentieth century.

It is usually easier to spot interpretations in older textbooks because their authors do not share our premises. The first textbook selection, written with an unquestioned assumption of black inferiority, is a good example. Its author, Thomas W. Wilson, was probably as unfamiliar to you as were William Dunning and David Muzzey. He is better known today as Woodrow Wilson, the Princeton historian and Southerner who later became the twenty-eighth president of the United States and, as president, introduced racial segregation to the federal government. If Wilson’s text reflects the racist assumptions at the heart of the triumphant Southern view of Reconstruction, the second selection reveals that not all historians accepted this dominant view, even in the early twentieth century. Its author, Carter Woodson, was a Virginia-born African American who earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912. Like the

work of fellow Harvard-trained black historian W. E. B. Du Bois, Woodson’s The Negro in Our History and his other Negro history textbooks were largely ignored by white historians and students. In its own way, of course, Woodson’s text also demonstrates the importance of racial assumptions in shaping inter- pretations about Reconstruction. It also illustrates that historians are more than mouthpieces for the dominant views of their day.

Together, all of these texts remind us that Americans’ social views have not remained frozen since the early twentieth century. And although the questions historians ask are not entirely dependent on whatever social views happen to be popular, historians are surely influenced by their times. However, these selections also make clear that historians do not simply mirror what happened in the past but instead give meaning to the “facts” of history. To do that, they study primary sources—the materials left to us by people in the past. We turn to them next.

F U R T H E R R E A D I N G

W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction (New York: Russell and Russell, 1935). Frances FitzGerald, America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century

(New York: Random House, 1979). Michael W. Fitzgerald, Splendid Failure: Postwar Reconstruction in the American South

(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2007). Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863–1977 (New York: Harper and Row,

1990). Nicolas Lemann, Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War (New York: Farrar, Straus,

and Giroux, 2006). James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History

Textbook Got Wrong (New York: The New Press, 1995).

N O T E S

1. David Saville Muzzey, History of the American People (New York: Ginn and Com- pany, 1935), pp. 408, 410.

2. John W. Burgess, Reconstruction and the Constitution, 1866–1876 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1970; reprint of 1902 edition), p. viii.

3. William A. Dunning, Reconstruction, Political and Economic (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1907), p. 212.

Notes

This chapter introduces primary sources. The documents presented give infor- mation on nineteenth-century working conditions.

Sources 1. Testimony of Workingmen (1879) 2. “Earnings, Expenses and Conditions of Workingmen and Their

Families” (1884) 3. “Human Power . . . Is What We Are Losing” (1910), crystal eastman 4. Why We Struck at Pullman (1895) 5. Colored Workmen and a Strike (1887) 6. “I Struck Because I Had to” (1902) 7. Women Make Demands (1869) 8. Summary of Conditions Among Women Workers Found by the

Massachusetts Bureau of Labor (1887) 9. A Union Official Discusses the Impact of Women Workers (1897) 10. Work in a Garment Factory (1902) 11. Gainful Workers by Age, 1870–1920 12. Breaker Boys (1906), john spargo

Chapter

2 Using Primary Sources: Industrialization

and the Condition of Labor

Setting 23

n 1873 a financial panic sparked a severe depression. Four years later, busi- ness was still stagnant, and, with unemployment at perhaps one million, work- ing people grew restless. In Pennsylvania’s coal mining regions, the militia was called on repeatedly to keep order. Then, in 1877, wage cuts and layoffs on the railroads exploded into a paralyzing railroad strike. After the violent confronta- tion was over, many people lay dead, millions of dollars of property had been destroyed, and dazed Americans stared at the specter of class warfare.

In 1878 Congress appointed a committee to investigate the causes of the “General Depression in Labor and Business.” One of the witnesses called to testify was the Yale University professor William Graham Sumner. Sumner was a proponent of what would be known as Social Darwinism, a theory that applied Darwin’s theories of evolution to society in an attempt to justify un- controlled economic competition. Sumner later shared his views about the “survival of the fittest” through books and a stream of popular magazine ar- ticles. Now, he responded to Congress with answers that many middle-class Americans found reassuring. When asked by one congressman what effect the spread of machinery had on workers, Sumner admitted that they suffered a loss of income and “a loss of comfort.” Asked if there was any way to help, Sumner responded, “not at all.” And when pressed to admit that there was “distress among the laboring classes,” Sumner shot back, “I do not admit any such thing. I cannot see any evidence of it.”1

If anything, Sumner was a man of the Gilded Age. His father was frugal and hardworking, though unsuccessful. Sumner, in the words of one student of the era, had imbibed a “deep-grained prejudice in favor of the business- like virtues.”2 He was not alone. Many of Sumner’s contemporaries accepted unquestioningly the assumption that individuals were solely responsible for their financial success or failure. Many of them also could not see, or were un- troubled by, any suffering that industrialization may have caused. Yet it would be foolish for us to reason this way. Instead, we can rely on a wide variety of primary sources—the historical evidence and artifacts that survive from the past—to understand the ways industrialization influenced the lives of workers. Without them, historians are at the mercy of other people’s interpretations of the past. With them, they can make direct contact with the past. In this chap- ter, therefore, we turn to these sources to examine the same question about the “laboring classes” posed to William Graham Sumner in 1878.

S E T T I N G

Historians who study workers in the late nineteenth century have a wealth of primary sources. They include “literary” or written sources, statistical sources relating to such information as wages and the cost of living, and such nonwritten sources as sketches and photographs. Many of these sources are available

Chapter 2 Using Primary Sources: Industrialization and the Condition of Labor24

because a variety of bureaus, commissions, and committees in the late nine- teenth century began to investigate the effects of industrial growth on labor. By the 1880s, for instance, a number of states had set up bureaus of labor statistics to assess the living and working conditions of wage earners. In 1884, Congress established the Bureau of Labor, which two years later began to issue annual reports related to the conditions of workers. At about the same time, the U.S. Senate issued a five-volume Report upon the Relations Between Capi- tal and Labor. In addition, in 1901 and 1902, its Industrial Commission pro- duced a massive report on the effects of industrial growth. Meanwhile, other investigators also began to produce valuable sources. Often armed with only pens and cameras, such reformers as Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, John Spargo, and Upton Sinclair recorded the conditions in the industrial workplace at the turn of the century. The Atlantic Monthly, Independent, Outlook, and other pop- ular magazines also published articles on the living and working conditions of laborers. Added to these sources are newspaper accounts, diaries, songs, and documents from such organizations as charities, labor unions, corpora- tions, and business associations. In short, the sources reflecting the condition of labor in industrial America are as varied as they are numerous.

I N V E S T I G A T I O N

The main problem we investigate in this chapter is the question posed to William Graham Sumner in the congressional investigation in 1878: Was there “distress” among the “laboring classes” as the United States industrial- ized in the late nineteenth century? That question is a very broad one, and, given the abundance of primary sources, it might seem easy to answer. Yet it is not. First, by 1900, there were more than 13 million nonagricultural wage earners in the United States, and their working conditions varied greatly. Second, we must define distress and determine whether our definition is the same as that of industrial wage earners themselves. We need to know the “objective” conditions as defined by wages, hours of labor, and cost of living, as well as what people at the time thought about them. That might depend, in turn, on workers’ expectations. The question Sumner answered with such certainty is thus more complicated than it first appears. A good answer must be based on a careful consideration of the evidence. It should also address the following questions:

1. Overall, do conditions appear to be improving or getting worse? What im- portant qualifications must be made to any generalizations about the condi- tions of workers? Does the race, class, or gender of the workers affect their conditions?

2. What do workers think about their conditions? Which sources are espe- cially valuable in understanding what it was like to be a wage earner in the late nineteenth century? Are some of the sources more biased than others?

Sources 25

3. Many late nineteenth-century commentators like William Graham Sum- ner argued that “in the cold light of reason” employers could not be ac- cused of treating workers as a mere commodity. They also asserted that it was not the role of government to improve the condition of the working classes. Based on the evidence in this chapter, do you agree? What does the “cold light” of your reason applied to this evidence suggest to you about the validity of Sumner’s assertions?

Before you begin, read the sections in your textbook on the condition of labor in the late nineteenth century and its response to industrial growth. See if you can detect a point of view regarding the living and working conditions of in- dustrial workers.

S O U R C E S

1 In 1878, the Massachusetts Bureau of the Statistics of Labor sent a questionnaire to working men and women throughout the state to so- licit their opinions about their own work. According to the report,

many of the respondents “expressed themselves at length upon some phase of the labor question.”3 Does this report show that workers were content or un- happy with their jobs? What were their primary complaints?

Testimony of Workingmen (1879)

Hours of Labor

From a Carpet-Mill Operative I am satisfied with sixty hours a week: it is plenty time for any man, although there are some employed in the same place over that time, and get nothing extra for it. I know of one young man under age who was absent two Saturday afternoons, and his overseer gave him his bill on Monday morning when he went in. If there is any inspector of the ten-hour law, he would do well to call round, and see for himself.

From a Shoemaker I think there ought to be an eight-hour law all over the country. There is not enough work to last the year round, and work over eight hours a day, or forty-eight hours a week. There can be only about so much work to do any way: and, when that is done, business has got to stop, or keep dragging the year round, so that a man has to work for almost any price offered; when, if there was an eight-hour law, things would be more

Source: John A. Garraty, The Transformation of American Society, 1870–1890 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1968). Reprinted by permission of the University of South Carolina Press.

Chapter 2 Using Primary Sources: Industrialization and the Condition of Labor26

even, and a man could get what his labor was worth, according to the price of living, and there would be plenty of work for all, and business would be good the year round. . . .

Overwork

From a Harness-Maker In answer to the question, “Do you consider your- self overworked?” I answered, “Yes”; and it is my honest and firm conviction that I am, by at least two hours a day. With the great increase in machinery within the last fifteen or twenty years, I think, in justice, there ought to be some reduction in the hours of labor. Unless the hours of labor are shortened in proportion to the increase of machinery, I consider machinery an injury rather than a benefit to humanity. I tell you that ten hours a day, hard, steady work, is more than any man can stand for any length of time without injuring his health, and therefore shortening his life. For my own part, although my work is not very laborious, when I stop work in the evening, I feel completely played out. I would like to study some; but I am too fatigued. In fact it is as much as I can do to look over the evening paper; and I am almost certain that this is the condition of a majority of workingmen. . . .

From a Quarryman In filling this blank, there are a good many questions which I did not answer relative to men with families; but, however, I would say, on behalf of married men in this locality, that they are poorly situated, working hard eleven and a half hours a day for $1.25 in summer, and 80 cents a day in winter, and obliged to purchase merchandise in company stores, and pay enormous rents for tenements. Merchandise being thirty per cent above market price, and being paid monthly, they are obliged to purchase at sup- ply store; if not, they will be discharged, and starvation is the result. It is ridiculous in a free country that the laws are not more stringent, whereby the capitalist cannot rule and ruin his white slaves. I would draw your at- tention carefully to this matter, and I lay before you all truth, not hearsay, but from experience, I am a single man, and I would not be so if times were better than they are now. . . .

From a Machinist In reply to your question concerning overwork, I wish to say, that, in employment requiring close application of mind or body, to be successful, the diligent and conscientious workman often, I might say al- ways, finds his energy exhausted long before his ten hours are up. Then he is obliged to keep up an appearance to get the pay for his day’s work, which he might do in eight hours as well as ten. If we are to have our pay by the hour, I should not advocate the eight-hour system. I think the employer would be the gainer, and the employé the loser. In the shop I work a little less than ten hours. To do that I have to leave home at 5:30 a.m., and arrive home again at 7 p.m.; so you see it makes a pretty long day. I travel not less than thirty-four miles daily, and pay $28.50 per quarter for car-fare. If I want to have a gar- den, I must do the work nights, or hire it done. I do not think I should be

Sources 27

able to follow up work in this way until the age of sixty-five. Hope to find some way to avoid some of the long hours and some of the heavy work be- fore then. I do not mean to complain; but it does seem as if the burdens and the pleasures of this world were very unequally divided. It is a hard matter to say what is right in every case. If my answers and statements should be of any service in improving the condition, prospects, or possibilities of the toil- ing thousands in our State, I shall be well paid for the same. . . .

The Use of Machinery

From a Boot and Shoe Cutter Tax machinery. Bring it in common with hand labor, so a man can have twelve months’ work in a year, instead of six or eight months. Protect hand labor, same as we protect trade from Europe, by tax or tariff. . . .

From a Machinist Machinery and the swarms of cheap foreign labor are fast rendering trades useless, and compelling the better class of mechanics to change their occupation, or go to farming. . . .

Habits of Industry

From a Shoe-Cutter There is no way I think I could be paid more fairly than I now am. I do not consider that my employers profit unfairly by my labor. My labor is in the market for sale. My employers buy it just as they buy a side of leather, and expect, and I think are willing to pay, a fair mar- ket price for it. The miller who makes a grade of flour up to the very high- est point in excellence will command the highest price for it in the market. The workingman who makes his labor of the most value will generally com- mand the highest market price for it, and sharp business men are quick to discover its value. I consider all legislation in regard to any thing connected with labor as injurious. All trades-unions and combinations I also consider as injurious to the mass of working-people. A few profit by these associa- tions, and the many pay the bills. If working-people would drop the use of beer, tobacco, and every thing else that is not of real benefit, and let such men as and a host of others earn their own living, they would have far more money for the general expenses of a family than they now have. I live in a village of about two thousand inhabitants; and I do not know of a family in destitute circumstances which has let alone vicious expenditures, and been industrious. It is the idle, unthrifty, beer-drinking, don’t-care sort of people, who are out at the elbows, and waiting for some sort of legislation to help them. The sooner working-people get rid of the idea that somebody or something is going to help them, the better it will be for them. In this country, as a general thing, every man has an equal chance to rise. In our village there are a number of successful business men, and all began in the world without any thing but their hands and a will to succeed. The best way for working-people to get help is to help themselves. . . .

Chapter 2 Using Primary Sources: Industrialization and the Condition of Labor28

2 In 1884, the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics conducted an inves-tigation of the standard of living of Illinois workers and their fami- lies. One result was a tabulation of the amount of money that

2,139 families in a number of communities actually earned and spent. As the bureau’s report put it, “this minute catalogue of the details governing the life of each family portrays more vividly than any mere array of figures the common current of daily life among the people.”4 As you study these summaries, pay attention to the standard of living of families in this sam- ple. Note the characteristics of the families who earned the most money or had the highest standard of living and of those who earned the least or had the lowest standard of living.

“Earnings, Expenses and Conditions of Workingmen and Their Families” (1884) No. 35 LABORER Italian

Earnings—Of father $270

Condition—Family numbers 5—parents and three children, all boys, aged one, three and five. Live in one room, for which they pay $4 per month rent. A very dirty and unhealthy place, everything perfectly filthy. There are about fifteen other families living in the same house. They buy the cheapest kind of meat from the neighboring slaughter houses and the children pick up fuel on the streets and rotten eatables from the commission houses. Children do not attend school. They are all ignorant in the full sense of the word. Father could not write his name.

Food—Breakfast—Coffee and bread. Dinner—Soups. Supper—Coffee and bread.

Cost of Living— Rent $ 48 Fuel 5 Meat and groceries 100 Clothing, boots and shoes and dry goods 15 Sickness 5

Total $173

Source: Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Earnings, Expenses and Conditions of Workingmen and Their Families,” Third Biennial Report (Springfield, III., 1884), pp. 164, 267–271, 357–362, 365, 369–370, 373, 375, 383–385, 390–393, 395, 401–402, 404, 406–407, 410.

Sources 29

No. 46 LABORER American

Earnings—Of father $360 Of wife 100 Total $460

Condition—Family numbers 7—parents and five children, aged from six months to eight years. They live in a house which they rent, and pay rental of $10 per month. Two of the children attend school. House is situ- ated in good, respectable neighborhood. The furniture and carpets are poor in quality, but substantial. The father is not a member of a labor or- ganization, but subscribes for the labor papers. Their living expenses ex- ceed their income.

Food—Breakfast—Salt meat, bread, butter and coffee. Dinner—Bread, meat and vegetables. Supper—Bread, coffee, etc.

Cost of Living— Rent $120 Fuel, meat and groceries 225 Clothing, boots, and shoes and dry goods 85 Books, papers, etc. 2 Sundries 75

Total $507

No. 47 LABORER Irish

Earnings—Of father $343

Condition—Family numbers 5—parents and three children, two girls, aged seven and five, and boy, aged eight. They occupy a rented house of 4 rooms, and pay a rental, monthly of $7. Two of the children at- tend school. Father complains of the wages he receives, being but $1.10 per day, and says it is extremely difficult for him to support his family upon that amount. His work consists in cleaning yards, base- ments, out-buildings, etc., and is, in fact, a regular scavenger. He also complains of the work as being very unhealthy, but it seems he can procure no other work.

Food—Breakfast—Black coffee, bread and potatoes. Dinner—Corned beef, cabbage and potatoes. Supper—Bread, coffee and potatoes.

Chapter 2 Using Primary Sources: Industrialization and the Condition of Labor30

Cost of Living Rent $84 Fuel 15 Meat and groceries 180 Clothing, boots and shoes and dry goods 40 Sundries 20

Total $339

No. 51 MACHINIST American

Earnings—Of father $540 Of mother 255 Of son, aged sixteen 255 Total $1,050

Condition—Family numbers 10—parents and eight children, five girls and three boys, aged from two to sixteen. Four of the children attend school. Father works only 30 weeks in the year, receives $3 per day for his services. They live in a comfortably furnished house, of 7 rooms, have a piano, take an interest in society and domestic affairs, are intelligent, but do not dress very well. Their expenditures are equal, but do not exceed their income. Father belongs to trades union, and is interested and benefited by and in it.

Food—Breakfast—Bread, meat and coffee. Dinner—Bread, meat, vegetables and tea. Supper—Bread, meat, vegetables and coffee.

Cost of Living— Rent $300 Fuel 50 Meat 100 Groceries 200 Clothing 160 Boots and shoes 50 Dry goods 25 Books, papers, etc. 15 Trades unions 10 Sickness 50 Sundries 90

Total $1,050

Sources 31

No. 105 BRAKEMAN Irish

Earnings—Of father $360

Condition—Family numbers 10—parents and eight children, six girls and two boys, aged one year to fifteen. Four of them attend public school. Family occupy a house of 3 rooms, for which they pay $5 per month rental. The house presents a most wretched appearance. Clothes ragged, children half dressed and dirty. They all sleep in one room regardless of sex. The house is devoid of furniture, and the entire concern is as wretched as could well be imagined. Father is shiftless and does not keep any one place for any length of time. Wife is without ambition or industry.

Food—Breakfast—Bread, coffee and syrup. Dinner—Potatoes, soup and bread, occasionally meat. Supper—Bread, syrup and coffee.

Cost of Living— Rent $ 60 Fuel 25 Meat 20 Groceries 360 Clothing 50 Boots and shoes 15 Dry goods 30 Books, papers, etc. 20 Sickness 5

Total $585

No. 112 COAL MINER American

Earnings—Of father $250

Condition—Family numbers 7—husband, wife, and five children, three girls and two boys, aged from three to nineteen years. Three of them go to the public school. Family live in 2 rooms tenement, in healthy locality, for which they pay $6 per month rent. The house is scantily furnished, without carpets, but is kept neat and clean. They are compelled to live very economically, and every cent they earn is used to the best advantage. Father had only thirty weeks work during the past year. He belongs to trades union. The figures for cost of living are actual and there is no doubt the family lived on the amount specified.

Food—Breakfast—Bread, coffee and salt meat. Dinner—Meat, bread, coffee and butter. Supper—Sausage, bread and coffee.

Chapter 2 Using Primary Sources: Industrialization and the Condition of Labor32

Cost of Living— Rent $72 Fuel 20 Meat 20 Groceries 60 Clothing 28 Boots and shoes 15 Dry goods 20 Trades union 3 Sickness 10 Sundries 5

Total $252

No. 130 COAL MINER Irish

Earnings—Of father $420 Of son, twenty-one years of age 420 Of son, eighteen years of age 420 Of son, sixteen years of age 150 Total $1,410

Condition—Family numbers 6—parents and four children, three boys and one girl. The girl attends school, and the three boys are working in the mine. Father owns a house of six rooms, which is clean and very comfort- ably furnished. Family temperate, and members of a church, which they attend with regularity. They have an acre of ground, which they work in summer, and raise vegetables for their consumption. They have their house about paid for, payments being made in installments of $240 per year. Father belongs to mutual assessment association and to trades union.

Food—Breakfast—Steak, bread, butter, potatoes, bacon and coffee. Dinner—Bread, butter, meat, cheese, pie and tea. Supper—Meat, potatoes, bread, butter, puddings, pie and coffee.

Cost of Living— Rent $240 Fuel 10 Meat 200 Groceries 700 Clothing 80 Boots, shoes and dry goods 70 Books, papers, etc. 15 Life insurance 18 Trades unions 3 Sickness 4 Sundries 75

Total $1,415

Sources 33

No. 131 COAL MINER German

Earnings—Of father $200

Condition—Family numbers 6—parents and four children, two boys and two girls, aged two, four, nine and eleven years. Two of them attend school. Family occupy a house containing 3 rooms, for which they pay $60 per annum. Father works all he can, and only receives $1 per day for his labor. He has only been in this country two and one half years and is anxious to get back to Germany. The house is miserably furnished, and is a wretched affair in itself. They have a few broken chairs and benches and a bedstead. Father is a shoemaker by trade, and does some cobbling which helps a little toward supporting his family. He receives the lowest wages in the shaft.

Food—Breakfast—Bread and coffee. Dinner—Bread, meat and coffee. Supper—Bread, meat, potatoes and coffee.

Cost of Living— Rent $60 Meat 36 Groceries 84 Clothing 12 Boots and shoes and dry goods 15 Sickness 1 Sundries 20

Total $228

No. 137 IRON AND STEEL WORKER English

Earnings—Of father $1,420 Of son, aged fourteen 300 Total $1,720

Condition—Family numbers 6—parents and four children; two boys and two girls, aged from seven to sixteen years. Three of them attend school, and the other works in the shop with his father. Family occupy their own house, containing 9 well-furnished rooms, in a pleasant and healthy locality. They have a good vegetable and flower garden. They live well, but not extravagantly, and are saving about a thousand dol- lars per year. Father receives an average of $7 per day of twelve hours, for his labor, and works about thirty-four weeks of the year. Belongs to trades union, but carries no life insurance. Had but little sickness during the year.

Food—Breakfast—Bread, butter, meat, eggs, and sometimes oysters. Dinner—Potatoes, bread, butter, meat, pie, cake or pudding. Supper—Bread, butter, meat, rice or sauce, and tea or coffee.

Chapter 2 Using Primary Sources: Industrialization and the Condition of Labor34

Cost of Living— Fuel $ 55 Meat 100 Groceries 300 Clothing 75 Boots and shoes 50 Dry goods 50 Books, papers, etc. 10 Trades unions 6 Sickness 12 Sundries 50

Total $708

No. 159 ROLLER BAR MILL American

Earnings—Of father $2,200

Condition—Family numbers 5—parents and three children, two boys and one girl, aged four, six and eight years. Do not attend school. Family oc- cupy house containing 3 rooms, well furnished in healthy locality, but the surroundings are not of the best. Family ordinarily intelligent. Father works eleven hours per day for 37 weeks in the year, and receives $10 per day for his labor; he saves about $1,400 per year, which he deposits in the bank. Family live well, but not extravagantly.

Food—Breakfast—Bread, meat, eggs, and coffee. Dinner—Bread, meat, vegetables, fruits and coffee. Supper—Bread, fruits, coffee and meat.

Cost of Living— Rent $120 Fuel 40 Groceries 200 Clothing 55 Boots and shoes 35 Dry goods 60 Books, papers, etc. 8 Sickness 50 Sundries 75

Total $768

Sources 35

3 In the first years of the twentieth century, a philanthropic foundation funded a sweeping study of conditions in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the center of the nation’s iron and steel industry. The result was one of the early twentieth

century’s best documented descriptions of life in industrial America. Lawyer and so- cialist Crystal Eastman wrote the survey’s volume on industrial accidents.

“Human Power. . . Is What We Are Losing” (1910) CRYSTAL EASTMAN

In a year when industrial activity was at its height—that is, from July 1, 1906, to June 30, 1907—526 men were killed by work-accidents in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. During three months, April, May and June, of the same year, the hospitals of the county received over 509 men injured in such accidents. It is impossible to state the total number of injuries during that quarter, be- cause there is no available record except of cases received at the hospitals. But even were an accurate estimate of the number of injuries in a year possible, it would be of little value. A scratched finger and a lost leg can not be added together if you look for a useful truth in the sum. It is better, therefore, not to try to estimate the total number of injuries in a year, but to concentrate our attention on the permanent loss of health and power involved in the injuries we are sure of. In 294 of the 509 non-fatal accident cases of which we have record (those received at the hospitals during the three selected months), it was possible to learn the nature and extent of the injury. One hundred and twenty-seven of the men escaped without permanent injury. Ninety-one sus- tained what is here called a slight permanent injury; for instance, a lame leg, arm, foot hand, or back, not serious enough to disable a man, the loss of a finger, slight impairment of sight or hearing, and the like. Seventy-six men (25.5 per cent) suffered a serious permanent injury. Lest there should be doubt as to what is meant here by “serious,” it will be better to state exactly what these injuries were. Seven men lost a leg, sixteen men were hopelessly crip- pled in one or both legs, one lost a foot, two lost half a foot, five lost an arm, three lost a hand, ten lost two or more fingers, two were left with crippled left arms, three with crippled right arms, and two with two useless arms. Eleven lost an eye, and three others had the sight of both eyes damaged. Two men have crippled backs, two received internal injuries, one is partially paralyzed, one feebleminded, and two are stricken with the weakness of old age while still in their prime. Finally three men suffer from a combination of permanent injuries. One of these has a rupture and a crippled foot; another a crippled left leg, and the right foot gone; the third has lost an arm and leg.

Source: Crystal Eastman, The Pittsburgh Survey: Work-Accidents and the Law (New York: Charities Publication Committee, 1910), pp. 11–14.

Chapter 2 Using Primary Sources: Industrialization and the Condition of Labor36

Estimating the hospital cases for a year on the same basis we have the Pittsburgh District annually sending out from its mills, railroad yards, fac- tories, and mines, 45 one-legged men; 100 hopeless cripples walking with crutch or cane for the rest of their lives; 45 men with a twisted, useless arm; 30 men with an empty sleeve; 20 men with but one hand; 60 with half a hand gone; 70 one-eyed men—500 such wrecks in all. Such is the trail of lasting miseries work-accidents leave behind. . . .

There is no bright side to this situation. By industrial accidents, Allegheny County loses more than 500 workmen every year, of whom nearly half are American born, 70 per cent are workmen of skill and training, and 60 per cent have not reached the prime of their working life. Youth, skill, strength—in a word, human power—is what we are losing.

Workers Respond

Workers did not react passively to the conditions they confronted in the late nineteenth century. What do the following sources reveal about the conditions workers faced and what they thought about those conditions? What challenges did workers confront in attempting to improve their conditions?

4 In 1894, workers at George Pullman’s “model” company town went on strike after a series of wage cuts. The strike would spread from Pullman, where workers manufactured the Pullman railroad sleeper

cars, to the nation’s rail system, leaving much of it shut down. This is a state- ment of a Pullman striker at the Chicago Convention of the American Railway Union, which represented unskilled railroad workers involved in the strike.

Why We Struck at Pullman (1895)

We struck at Pullman because we were without hope. We joined the Ameri- can Railway Union because it gave us a glimmer of hope. Twenty thousand souls, men, women, and little ones, have their eyes turned toward the con- vention today, straining eagerly through dark despondency for a glimmer of the heaven-sent message you alone can give us on this earth.

In stating to this body our grievances it is hard to tell where to begin. . . . Five reductions in wages, work, and in conditions of employment swept through the shops at Pullman between May and December 1893. The last was the most severe, amounting to nearly 30 percent and our rents had not fallen. . . .

Source: Joshua Freeman et al., Who Built America? Working People and the Nation’s Economy, Politics, Culture, and Society (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), 11: p. 140; originally from U.S. Strike Commission, Report on the Chicago Strike of June–July 1894 (1895).

Sources 37

No man or woman of us all can ever hope to own one inch of George Pull- man’s land. Why even the streets are his. . . .

Pullman, both the man and the town, is an ulcer on the body politic. He owns the houses, the schoolhouses, the churches of God. . . . The revenue he derives from these, the wages he pays out with one hand—the Pullman Palace Car Com- pany, he takes back with the other—the Pullman Land Association. He is able by this to bid under any contract car shop in the country. His competitors in business, to meet this, must reduce the wages of their men. . . . And thus the merry war— the dance of skeletons bathed in human tears—goes on, and it will go on, broth- ers, forever, unless you, the American Railway Union, stop it; end it; crush it out.

5 This letter was written by an African American iron worker at the Black Diamond Steel Works. Colored Workmen and a Strike (1887)

To the Editor:

As a strike is now in progress at the Black Diamond Steel Works, where many of our race are employed, the colored people hereabouts feel a deep interest in its final outcome. As yet few colored men have taken part in it, it having been thus far thought unwise to do so. It is true our white brothers, who joined the Knights of Labor and organized the strike without confer- ring with, or in any way consulting us, now invite us to join with them and help them to obtain the desired increase in wages and control by the Knights of Labor of the works. But as we were not taken into their schemes at its inception, and as it was thought by them that no trouble would be experi- enced in obtaining what they wanted without our assistance, we question very much the sincerity and honesty of this invitation. Our experience as a race with these organizations has, on the whole, not been such as to give us either great satisfaction or confidence in white men’s fidelity. For so often after we have joined them, and the desired object has been attained, we have discovered that sinister and selfish motives were the whole and only cause that led them to seek us as members.

A few years ago a number of colored men working at this mill were in- duced to join the Amalgamated Association, thereby relinquishing the posi- tions which they held at these works. They were sent to Beaver Falls, Pa., to work in a mill there controlled by said Association, and the men there, brothers too, mark you, refused to work with them because they were black. It is true Mr. Jaret, then chairman of that Association, sat down upon those skunks, but when that mill closed down, and those men went out from there

Source: Philip S. Foner and Ronald L. Lewis, eds., Black Workers: A Documentary History from Colonial Times to the Present (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), pp. 220–221; originally from New York Freeman, August 13, 1887.

Chapter 2 Using Primary Sources: Industrialization and the Condition of Labor38

to seek employment in other mills governed by the Amalgamated, while the men did not openly refuse to work with them, they managed always to find some pretext or excuse to keep from employing them.

Now, Mr. Editor, I am not opposed to organized labor. God forbid that I should be when its members are honest, just and true! But when I join any society, I want to have pretty strong assurance that I will be treated fairly. I do not want to join any organization the members of which will refuse to work by my side because the color of my skin happens to be of a darker hue than their own. Now what the white men in these organizations should and must do, if they want colored men to join with and confide in them, is to give them a square deal—give them a genuine white man’s chance—and my word for it they will flock into them like bees into a hive. If they will take Mr. B. F. Stewart’s advice! “take the colored man by the hand and convince him by actual fact that you will be true to him and not a traitor to your pledge,” he will be found with them ever and always; for there are not under heaven men in whose breasts beat truer hearts than in the breast of the Negro.

John Lucus Dennis Colored Puddler at Black Diamond

Steel Works, Pittsburgh, Pa., Aug. 8.

6 In 1902, the United Mine Workers union went out on strike against Pennsylvania coal mine operators. The strike ended after President Theo- dore Roosevelt threatened to intervene with federal troops and in a later

settlement the miners won higher wages and a shorter day. In this source, one coal miner discusses his life and offers it as an example to explain the strike.

“I Struck Because I Had to” (1902)

I am thirty-five years old, married, the father of four children, and have lived in the coal region all my life. Twenty-three of these years have been spent working in and around the mines. . . .

Three of my brothers are miners; none of us had any opportunities to ac- quire an education. We were sent to school (such a school as there was in those days) until we were about twelve years of age, and then we were put into the screen room of a breaker to pick slate. From there we went inside the mines as driver boys. As we grew stronger we were taken on as laborers, where we served until able to call ourselves miners. We were given work in the breasts and gangways. There were five of us boys. One lies in the cemetery—fifty tons of top rock dropped on him. He was killed three weeks after he got his job as a miner—a month before he was to be married.

Source: Independent 54 (June 12, 1902), pp. 1407–1410.

Sources 39

In the fifteen years I have worked as a miner I have earned the average rate of wages any of us coal heavers get. To-day I am little better off than when I started to do for myself. I have $100 on hand; I am not in debt; I hope to be able to weather the strike without going hungry.

I am only one of the hundreds you see on the street every day. The mus- cles on my arms are no harder, the callous on my palms no deeper than my neighbors’ whose entire life has been spent in the coal region. By years I am only thirty-five. But look at the marks on my body; look at the lines of worriment on my forehead; see the gray hairs on my head and in my mus- tache; take my general appearance, and you’ll think I’m ten years older.

You need not wonder why. Day in and day out, from Monday morning to Saturday evening, between the rising and the setting of the sun, I am in the underground workings of the coal mines. From the seams water trickles into the ditches along the gangways; if not water, it is the gas which hurls us to eternity and the props and timbers to a chaos.

Our daily life is not a pleasant one. When we put on our oil soaked suit in the morning we can’t guess all the dangers which threaten our lives. We walk sometimes miles to the place—to the man way or traveling way, or to the mouth of the shaft on top of the slope. And then we enter the darkened chambers of the mines. On our right and on our left we see the logs that keep up the top and support the sides which may crush us into shapeless masses, as they have done to many of our comrades.

We get old quickly. Powder, smoke, after-damp, bad air—all combine to bring furrows to our faces and asthma to our lungs.

I did not strike because I wanted to; I struck because I had to. A miner— the same as any other workman—must earn fair living wages, or he can’t live. And it is not how much you get that counts. It is how much what you get will buy. I have gone through it all, and I think my case is a good sample.

I was married in 1890, when I was 23 years old. . . . The woman I married is like myself. She was born beneath the shadow of a dirt bank; her chances for school weren’t any better than mine; but she did have to learn how to keep house on a certain amount of money. After we paid the preacher for tying the knot we had just $185 in cash, good health and the good wishes of many friends to start us off.

Our cash was exhausted in buying furniture for housekeeping. In 1890 work was not so plentiful, and by the time our first baby came there was room for much doubt as to how we would pull out. Low wages, and not much over half time in those years, made us hustle. In 1890–91, from June to May, I earned $368.72. That represented eleven months’ work, or an av- erage of $33.52 per month. Our rent was $10 per month; store not less than $20. And then I had my oil suits and gum boots to pay for. The result was that after the first year and a half of our married life we were in debt. Not much, of course, and not as much as many of my neighbors, men of larger families, and some who made less money, or in whose case there had been sickness or accident or death. These are all things which a miner must pro- vide for.

Chapter 2 Using Primary Sources: Industrialization and the Condition of Labor40

I have had fairly good work since I was married. I made the average of what we contract miners are paid; but, as I said before, I am not much better off than when I started.

In 1896 my wife was sick eleven weeks. The doctor came to my house almost every day. He charged me $20 for his services. There was medicine to buy. I paid the drug store $18 in that time. Her mother nursed her, and we kept a girl in the kitchen at $1.50 a week, which cost me $15 for ten weeks, besides the additional living expenses.

In 1897, just a year afterward, I had a severer trial. And mind, in those years, we were only working about half time. But in the fall of that year one of my brothers struck a gas feeder. There was a terrible explosion. He was hurled downward in the breast and covered with the rush of coal and rock. I was working only three breasts away from him and for a moment was unable to realize what had occurred. Myself and a hundred others were soon at work, however, and in a short while we found him, horribly burned over his whole body, his laborer dead alongside of him.

He was my brother. He was single and had been boarding. He had no home of his own. I didn’t want him taken to the hospital, so I directed the driver of the ambulance to take him to my house. Besides being burned, his right arm and left leg were broken, and he was hurt internally. The doctors— there were two at the house when we got there—said he would die. But he didn’t. He is living and a miner today. But he lay in bed just fourteen weeks, and was unable to work for seven weeks after he got out of bed. He had no money when he was hurt except the amount represented by his pay. All of the expenses for doctors, medicine, extra help and his living were borne by me, except $25, which another brother gave me. The last one had none to give. Poor work, low wages and a sickly woman for a wife had kept him scratching for his own family.

Women at Work

By 1900, five million of the twenty-five million Americans in the work force were women, most of whom worked at wages far below those of male workers. Note what the following sources reveal about the conditions confronting many female wage earners. How do they compare to conditions confronting male workers?

7 In 1869, a group of women petitioned the Massachusetts legislature to have the state help finance homes for them. Their demands were dis- cussed in a meeting held in Boston. This account is from the Working-

man’s Advocate, an influential labor paper.

Sources 41

Women Make Demands (1869) A convention of Boston work women was held in that city on the 21st ult. at which some extraordinary developments were made. We append some of the discussions:

Opening Address by Miss Phelps

Miss Phelps said: the subject of this meeting is to bring out the purpose of the peti- tion just read, and the facts whereon it is based. We do not think the men of Mas- sachusetts know how the women live. We do not think if they did they would allow such a state of things to exist. Some of us who signed the petition have had to work for less than twenty-five cents a day, and we know that many others have had to do the same. True, many get good wages comparatively for women. There are girls that get from $1 to $1.50 per day, either because they are superior laborers or have had unusual opportunities. But many of these poor girls among whom it has been my fortune to live and work, are not skilled laborers. They are incapable of going into business for themselves, or carrying on for themselves, and inca- pable of combination; they are uneducated, and have no resource but the system that employs them. There are before me now women who I know to be working at the present time for less than twenty-five cents a day. Some of the work they do at these rates from the charitable institutions of the city. These institutions give out work to the women with the professed object of helping them, at which they can scarcely earn enough to keep them from starving; work at which two persons, with their utmost exertions cannot earn more than forty-five cents a day. These things, I repeat, should be known to the public. . . .

Source: Barbara M. Wertheimer, We Were There: The Story of Working Women in America (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), pp. 212–213.

Source: Rosalyn Baxandall et al., America’s Working Women: A Documentary History–1600 to the Present (New York: Vintage Books, 1976), pp. 105–106; originally from Workingman’s Advocate 5, No. 41 (May 8, 1869), p. 3.

8 Summary of Conditions Among Women Workers Found by the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor (1887) Feather-sorters, fur-workers, cotton-sorters, all workers on any material that gives off dust are subject to lung and bronchial troubles. In soap-factories the girls’ hands are eaten by the caustic soda, and by the end of the day the fingers are often raw and bleeding. In making buttons, pins, and other manufactures . . . there is always liability of getting the fingers jammed or caught. For the first three times the wounds are dressed without charge. After that the person injured must pay expenses. . . .

In food preparation girls who clean and pack fish get blistered hands and fingers from the saltpetre. . . . Others in “working stalls” stand in cold water all day. . . .

In match-factories . . . necrosis often attacks the worker, and the jaw is eaten away. . . .

Chapter 2 Using Primary Sources: Industrialization and the Condition of Labor42

9 By the turn of the twentieth century, the American Federation of Labor was the dominant labor union in the country. Its aim was to win gains for skilled workers, who were overwhelmingly white, native-born

males. In this source, one AF of L official discusses the union’s policy toward women workers.

A Union Official Discusses the Impact of Women Workers (1897)

The invasion of the crafts by women has been developing for years amid irritation and injury to the workman. The right of the woman to win hon- est bread is accorded on all sides, but with craftsmen it is an open question whether this manifestation is of a healthy social growth or not.

The rapid displacement of men by women in the factory and workshop has to be met sooner or later, and the question is forcing itself upon the lead- ers and thinkers among the labor organizations of the land.

Is it a pleasing indication of progress to see the father, the brother and the son displaced as the bread winner by the mother, sister and daughter?

Is not this evolutionary backslide, which certainly modernizes the present wage system in vogue, a menace to prosperity—a foe to our civilized preten- sions? . . .

The growing demand for female labor is not founded upon philanthropy, as those who encourage it would have sentimentalists believe; it does not spring from the milk of human kindness. It is an insidious assault upon the home; it is the knife of the assassin, aimed at the family circle—the divine injunction. It debars the man through financial embarrassment from fam- ily responsibility, and physically, mentally and socially excludes the woman equally from nature’s dearest impulse. Is this the demand of civilized prog- ress; is it the desire of Christian dogma? . . .

Capital thrives not upon the peaceful, united, contented family circle; rather are its palaces, pleasures and vices fostered and increased upon the disruption, ruin or abolition of the home, because with its decay and ever glaring privation, manhood loses its dignity, its backbone, its aspirations. . . .

To combat these impertinent inclinations, dangerous to the few, the old and well-tried policy of divide and conquer is invoked, and to our own shame, it must be said, one too often renders blind aid to capital in its war- fare upon us. The employer in the magnanimity of his generosity will give

Source: Edward O’Donnell, “Women as Bread Winners—the Error of the Wage,” American Fed- erationist 4, No. 8 (October 1897). As edited in Eileen Boris and Nelson Lichtenstein, eds., Major Problems in the History of American Worker: Documents and Essays (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1991), pp. 232–234.

Sources 43

employment to the daughter, while her two brothers are weary because of their daily tramp in quest of work. The father, who has a fair, steady job, sees not the infamous policy back of the flattering propositions. Somebody else’s daughter is called in in the same manner, by and by, and very soon the shop or factory are full of women, while their fathers have the option of work- ing for the same wages or a few cents more, or take their places in the large army of unemployed. . . .

College professors and graduates tell us that this is the natural sequence of industrial development, an integral part of economic claim.

Never was a greater fallacy uttered of more poisonous import. It is false and wholly illogical. The great demand for women and their preference over men does not spring from a desire to elevate humanity; at any rate that is not its trend.

The wholesale employment of women in the various handicrafts must gradually unsex them, as it most assuredly is demoralizing them, or strip- ping them of that modest demeanor that lends a charm to their kind, while it numerically strengthens the multitudinous army of loafers, paupers, tramps and policemen, for no man who desires honest employment, and can secure it, cares to throw his life away upon such a wretched occupation as the latter.

The employment of women in the mechanical departments is encouraged because of its cheapness and easy manipulation, regardless of the conse- quent perils; and for no other reason. The generous sentiment enveloping this inducement is of criminal design, since it comes from a thirst to build riches upon the dismemberment of the family or the hearthstone cruelly dis- honored. . . .

But somebody will say, would you have women pursue lives of shame rather than work? Certainly not; it is to the alarming introduction of women into the mechanical industries, hitherto enjoyed by the sterner sex, at a wage uncommandable by them, that leads so many into that deplorable pursuit.

10 A garment worker wrote this description for The Independent magazine.

Work in a Garment Factory (1902)

At seven o’clock we all sit down to our machines and the boss brings each one the pile of work that he or she is to finish during the day. . . . This pile

Source: Joshua Freeman et al., Who Built America? Working People and the Nation’s Economy, Politics, Culture, and Society (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), 11: p. 173; originally from The Independent (1902).

Chapter 2 Using Primary Sources: Industrialization and the Condition of Labor44

is put down beside the machine and as soon as a skirt is done it is laid on the other side of the machine. Sometimes the work is not all finished by six o’clock and then the one who is behind must work overtime. . . . The machines go like mad all day, because the faster you work the more money you get. Sometimes in my haste I get my finger caught and the needle goes right through it. . . . The machines are all run by foot power, and at the end of the day one feels so weak that there is a great temptation to lie right down and sleep. But you must go out and get air, and have some pleasure. . . .

Children at Work

Industrial growth in the late nineteenth century had an impact on working children. Note what these sources reveal about the numbers of children work- ing full time and about the conditions under which they labored.

11 Gainful Workers by Age, 1870–1920 (In thousands of persons 10 years old and over)

Age (in years)

Total 65 and Year Workers 10 to 15 16 to 44 45 to 64 over Unknown

1930 48,830 667 33,492 12,422 2,205 44 1920 42,434 1,417 29,339 9,914 1,691 73 1910 37,371 1,622 26,620 7,606 1,440 83 1900 29,073 1,750 20,223 5,804 1,202 94 1890 23,318 1,504 16,162 4,547 1,009 97 1880 17,392 1,118 16,274 1870 12,925 765 12,160

Source: Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of the Census, 1960), p. 72.

Sources 45

12 Spargo was the author of The Bitter Cry of the Children, a major exposé of child labor.

Breaker Boys (1906) JOHN SPARGO

According to the census of 1900, there were 25,000 boys under sixteen years of age employed in and around the mines and quarries of the United States. In the state of Pennsylvania alone,—the state which enslaves more children than any other,—there are thousands of little “breaker boys” employed, many of them not more than nine or ten years old. The law forbids the em- ployment of children under fourteen, and the records of the mines gener- ally show that the law is “obeyed.” Yet in May, 1905, an investigation by the National Child Labor Committee showed that in one small borough of 7000 population, among the boys employed in breakers 35 were nine years old, 40 were ten, 45 were eleven, and 45 were twelve—over 150 boys illegally employed in one section of boy labor in one small town! During the anthra- cite coal strike of 1902, I attended the Labor Day demonstration at Pittston and witnessed the parade of another at Wilkesbarre. In each case there were hundreds of boys marching, all of them wearing their “working buttons,” testifying to the fact that they were bona fide workers. Scores of them were less than ten years of age, others were eleven or twelve.

Work in the coal breakers is exceedingly hard and dangerous. Crouched over the chutes, the boys sit hour after hour, picking out the pieces of slate and other refuse from the coal as it rushes past to the washers. From the cramped position they have to assume, most of them become more or less deformed and bent-backed like old men. When a boy has been working for some time and begins to get round-shouldered, his fellows say that “He’s got his boy to carry round wherever he goes.” The coal is hard, and accidents to the hands, such as cut, broken, or crushed fingers, are common among the boys. Sometimes there is a worse accident: a terrified shriek is heard, and a boy is mangled and torn in the machinery, or disappears in the chute to be picked out later smothered and dead. Clouds of dust fill the breakers and are inhaled by the boys, laying the foundations for asthma and miners’ consumption. I once stood in a breaker for half an hour and tried to do the work a twelve-year-old boy was doing day after day, for ten hours at a stretch, for sixty cents a day. The gloom of the breaker appalled me. Outside the sun shone brightly, the air was pellucid, and the birds sang in chorus with the trees and the rivers. Within the breaker there was

Source: John Spargo, The Bitter Cry of the Children (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1906).

Chapter 2 Using Primary Sources: Industrialization and the Condition of Labor46

blackness, clouds of deadly dust enfolded everything, the harsh, grinding roar of the machinery and the ceaseless rushing of coal through the chutes filled the ears. I tried to pick out the pieces of slate from the hurrying stream of coal, often missing them; my hands were bruised and cut in a few min- utes; I was covered from head to foot with coal dust, and for many hours afterwards I was expectorating some of the small particles of anthracite I had swallowed.

I could not do that work and live, but there were boys of ten and twelve years of age doing it for fifty and sixty cents a day. Some of them had never been inside of a school; few of them could read a child’s primer. True, some of them attended the night schools, but after working ten hours in the breaker the educational results from attending school were practically nil. “We goes fer a good time, an’ we keeps de guys wots dere hoppin’ all de time,” said little Owen Jones, whose work I had been trying to do. How strange that barbaric patois sounded to me as I remembered the rich, musical language I had so often heard other little Owen Joneses speak in faraway Wales. As I stood in that breaker I thought of the reply of the small boy to Robert Owen. Visiting an English coal-mine one day, Owen asked a twelve-year-old lad if he knew God. The boy stared vacantly at his questioner: “God?” he said, “God? No, I don’t. He must work in some other mine.” It was hard to realize amid the danger and din and blackness of that Pennsylvania breaker that such a thing as belief in a great All-good God existed.

C O N C L U S I O N

When he was a graduate student, the future historian and president Woodrow Wilson protested that he had to learn “one or two hundred dates and one or two thousand minute particulars” about “nobody knows who.” He took comfort in knowing that he would easily forget this “mass of information.”5 The sources in this chapter represent another set of “minute particulars.” From them we can learn any number of forgettable facts, from the annual wages of laborers to the number of children working full-time in 1880. By themselves these facts are not useful; contrary to the cliché, they do not “speak for them- selves.” Rather, they have meaning and interest only when historians select order, and arrange them. Some historians, for instance, might be guided by a desire to understand or explain the growth of unions in the late nineteenth century. Others might work with these and other sources to explain how in- dustrial growth influenced family or gender relations.

Historians’ concerns, and therefore what the “thousand minute particu- lars” tell us, are also influenced by contemporary concerns. Americans still

47Notes

debate the proper role of the government in their society, the regulation of business, the value of labor unions, the usefulness of “schemes” for helping people, and the desirability of letting people rise or fall on their own. Just as such debates help to frame the questions historians ask about the past, answers to these questions lend historical perspective to the de- bates. The questions in this chapter are thus part of the ongoing dialogue between the past and present. And if you compare your answers to this chapter ’s questions to those of your classmates, you will see that all of you did not come to the same conclusions. Historians do not always agree about the answers to their inquiries either. In fact, debate is at the heart of their discipline.

These sources further demonstrate that historians must do more than just select certain facts; they must also know what people in the past perceived and believed. In this case, we need to understand workers’ circumstances as well as what they thought about those circumstances. In fact, as we shall see in Chapter 3, primary sources are often more valuable to historians for the opin- ions and biases they reflect than for the facts that they contain.

F U R T H E R R E A D I N G

Margaret F. Byington, Homestead: The Households of a Mill Town (1910; repr., Pittsburgh, Pa.: University Center for International Studies, 1974).

Lizabeth A. Cohen, “Embellishing a Life of Labor: An Interpretation of the Material Culture of American Working-Class Homes, 1885–1915,” in Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Culture, ed. Dell Upton and John Michael Vlach (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986).

Melvyn Dubofsky, Industrialism and the American Worker, 1865–1920 (Arlington Heights, Ill.: AHM Publishing Corp., 1975).

Joshua Freeman et al., Who Built America? Working People and the Nation’s Economy, Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. II (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992).

Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (New York: Modern Library 2002; originally published in 1906).

John Spargo, The Bitter Cry of the Children (London: Macmillan and Co., 1906).

N O T E S

1. Investigation by a Select Committee of the House of Representatives Relative to the Causes of the General Depression in Labor and Business, 45th Cong., 3rd sess., Misc. House Doc. No. 29 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1879), pp. 310–321.

Chapter 2 Using Primary Sources: Industrialization and the Condition of Labor48

2. Robert Green McCloskey, American Conservatism in the Age of Enterprise (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951), p. 32.

3. Massachusetts Bureau of the Statistics of Labor Reports (1878, 1881), in The Trans- formation of American Society, 1870–1890, ed. John A. Garraty (Columbia: Univer- sity of South Carolina Press, 1968), p. 88.

4. Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics Report (1884), in The Transformation of American Society, 1870–1890, ed. John A. Garraty (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1968), p. 120.

5. Quoted in James A. Henretta, The Origins of American Capitalism (Boston: North- eastern University Press, 1991), pp. xv, xvi.

The primary sources in this chapter were produced by late nineteenth- century Indian reformers and by Native Americans. They illustrate the biases often found in primary source material.

Sources 1. “Land and Law as Agents in Educating Indians” (1885) 2. The Dawes Act (1887) 3. A Cheyenne Tells His Son About the Land (ca. 1876) 4. Cheyennes Try Farming (ca. 1877) 5. A Sioux Recalls Severalty (ca. 1900) 6. Supervised Indian Land Holdings by State, 1881–1933 7. A Proposal for Indian Education (1888) 8. Instructions to Indian Agents and Superintendents of Indian Schools

(1889) 9. The Education of Indian Students at Carlisle (1891) 10. Luther Standing Bear Recalls Carlisle (1933) 11. Wohaw’s Self-Portrait (1877) 12. Taking an Indian Child to School (1891) 13. A Crow Medicine Woman on Teaching the Young (1932) 14. Percentage of Population Over Ten Illiterate, 1900–1930

Chapter

3 Evaluating Primary Sources: “Saving” the Indians in the Late Nineteenth Century

Chapter 3 Evaluating Primary Sources50

he guests of the rambling hotel had chosen a perfect spot to gather in October 1883. While strolling along Lake Mohonk, less than a hundred miles north of New York City, they could take in autumn’s splendor in a landscape punctuated by cliffs, boulders, and caverns. The main attraction, though, was the hotel itself. Built of wood and rock, the multistoried Mohonk House arose at the end of the lake in a forest of chimneys, turrets, and gables. In proper Victorian style, gingerbread frills adorned the exterior, while inside an air of quiet gentility prevailed. The hotel’s Quaker proprietors prohibited strong drink, card playing, and dancing, but these guests did not seem to mind. They could relax in a large parlor tastefully filled with wicker chairs, writing desks, books, and flowers freshly cut from the hotel’s gardens. Besides, they had come to Lake Mohonk for work, not play. And their work, they knew, was of utmost importance.

Here on the fringe of New York’s peaceful Catskills a hundred or so peo- ple gathered for four days to discuss and—they hoped—influence the fate of the Native Americans. The Lake Mohonk Conference of the Friends of the Indian, the first of many such meetings held each October at the resort, attracted delegates from the country’s leading Indian reform organizations as well as members of Congress and federal officials. Mostly Easterners, the conferees had been stirred into action by distressing reports out of the West. From the Great Plains to the Pacific, Indians and their reservation lands were under a massive assault. After years of white–Indian warfare that raged from the Dakotas to California, reformers grew more determined by the 1880s to save America’s 250,000 or so indigenous inhabitants from total destruction. This gathering at Lake Mohonk marked a growing unity among them.

The objects of the reformers’ concern, of course, were far removed from this tranquil setting. And although some of these “friends” of the Indians could claim firsthand knowledge of the Western tribes, Native American represen- tatives were not present at Lake Mohonk. Their absence, however, did not seem to trouble the conferees, who were imbued with a sense of high moral purpose and a conviction that they knew what was best for the Indians. Nor were these reformers disturbed that their campaign to “save” the Indian—and Native Americans’ responses to it—reflected conflicting cultural assumptions. In ways that neither group could clearly perceive, competing values lay at the heart of late nineteenth-century Indian reform. What people in the past missed, however, modern students of history can see. The historical sources left by reformers and Native Americans alike may give us a better understand- ing of America’s solution to the “Indian problem” than possessed even by people at the time.

Setting 51

S E T T I N G

Like the organized efforts to save the Indians of the West, the assault on them began at the Civil War’s end. After 1865, the spread of the iron rail opened up large portions of the country to white settlers. At the same time, the government and the military could again turn their attention to the Indians. In the years after Appomattox, the federal government renewed a campaign, begun as early as the late eighteenth century, to confine Indians to separate land. The result, after 1865, was a concerted effort by the military to place Indians in the West on reservations. The nomadic tribes of the Great Plains became the military’s primary target. By the 1870s, scores of battles had bloodied the prairie from Texas to Montana. After the war, soldiers and hunters also launched a relentless campaign of slaughter against millions of buffalo, pushing the animal to the brink of extinction by the early 1880s. Bloodshed, however, was not confined to the plains. From the verdant Northwest to the sun-bleached southwestern deserts, tribes were assaulted and gradually stripped of their lands as prior treaties were renegotiated in favor of encroaching settlers. Wherever they lived, Indians discovered the same thing: resistance to military force only inflamed whites. Even events in remote northern California could stoke anti-Indian sentiment in the rest of the nation. There, in 1873, the Modoc Indians fled their reservation and fought off the Army for seven months before surrendering. Three years later, hatred of the Indian reached a fever pitch when Americans in the midst of their nation’s centennial celebration received news of the Sioux Indians’ shocking annihilation of Colonel George Custer and his Seventh Cavalry detachment at Little Big Horn in Montana.

In the years following Custer’s “Last Stand,” however, intense white animosity toward the Indians began to wane as their resistance was gradually broken. In addition, several events covered widely in the Eastern press con- tributed to a more favorable view of Native Americans by the late 1870s. In 1877, Chief Joseph led the Nez Perces on a dramatic 1,500-mile trek through Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana while heroically fighting off Army troops. By the time Chief Joseph and his harried band surrendered, their determined effort to secure the return of the Nez Perces’ northwest homeland had won the sym- pathy of many Americans. So too did the struggle of Nebraska’s Ponca Indians about the same time to get back their land, which had been inadvertently included in a Sioux reservation by an earlier treaty. When the Sioux attempted to force the Poncas off their land in the 1870s, the government intervened and shipped the Poncas against their will to the Indian Territory of present-day Oklahoma, where many died of disease. Then, when Chief Standing Bear led a Ponca band back to its homeland in 1879, the Army moved in to stop them. Meanwhile, popular sentiments had also been aroused by the flight of Cheyennes from the Indian Territory to their traditional tribal lands in Montana. Led by Dull Knife and Little Wolf, the band eluded troops across Kansas and Nebraska, only to be cut down by soldiers after attempting to break out of their eventual confinement at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, in 1878.

Chapter 3 Evaluating Primary Sources52

Such determined efforts to return to lost homes drew a sympathetic white response and swelled the ranks of Indian reformers by 1880. In 1879, the Philadelphia-based Woman’s National Indian Association and the Boston Indian Citizenship Committee were formed in the wake of the Ponca affair. Three years later, the Indian Rights Association was organized in Philadelphia, and the year after that representatives of these and other Indian-reform groups came together on the shores of Lake Mohonk to discuss the Indians’ future. Indeed, not since the end of the Civil War had prospects looked better for the advocates of reform. They would be boosted further when New England–born Helen Hunt Jackson decided to write a book after attending a lecture by Ponca chief Standing Bear on the tribe’s heartbreaking loss of its ancestral land. Published in 1881, A Century of Dishonor provided an account of the government’s “shameful record of bro- ken treaties and unfulfilled promises” regarding the Indians.1 Jackson, who sent copies of the book to every member of Congress, helped win even greater sup- port for resolving once and for all the country’s long-standing “Indian problem.”

Increasingly organized, and armed with Jackson’s exposé, reformers set their sights on government policy toward the Indian. It was an issue with which these mostly well-to-do Protestants were already familiar. In 1869, the Grant administration brought religious denominations into the administration of Indian policy through the Board of Indian Commissioners, established to help oversee a scandal-ridden Office of Indian Affairs. The commissioners—one of whom owned the Mohonk House and many of whom represented Protestant religious groups—for a time administered Indian policy and disbursed reser- vation funds. Meanwhile, various missionary organizations took over the ap- pointment of reservation agents. Like other reformers who initially supported the reservation system, the commissioners had put great faith in its power to reform the Indian. By the late 1870s, however, Protestant reformers came to view the reservation itself as the chief obstacle in the way of Native American progress. There they saw a still-corrupt federal Indian service, increasing Native American dependence on government largesse, and stubborn resistance to a new way of life. The solution to the “Indian problem,” they concluded, re- quired breaking up the reservations. And that was not all. This radical change in policy had to be accompanied by a program to educate Indian children. By the time of the first Lake Mohonk conference, these determined reformers were devoting their efforts almost exclusively to promoting these goals. Before the end of the decade, their labors would begin to bear fruit.

I N V E S T I G A T I O N

This chapter contains a variety of primary sources relating to late nineteenth-century Indian reform. Produced both by white reformers and by Native Americans, the sources are as useful for the opinions and biases that they

Sources 53

reveal as for the facts that they contain. As you analyze them, your main job is to evaluate the Indian reform program and its impact on Native Americans. In other words, you must determine in what ways late nineteenth- century reformers’ efforts to “save” the Indian succeeded or failed and the reasons why their fruits proved bitter or sweet to Native Americans themselves. A good analysis of this reform movement will address these questions:

1. What did white reformers hope to achieve with the breakup of the reser- vations and with schools for Indian children? What problems were these reforms designed to solve? Were their goals and remedies appropriate?

2. What were the reformers’ attitudes toward the Indians and their culture? How did their views or beliefs influence their proposals?

3. What impact did the reformers’ solutions to the “Indian problem” have on the Indians and their culture? How did the Native Americans’ views or beliefs influence their response to these reforms?

4. What were the most important factors influencing the nature and impact of Indian reform? What factors or circumstances would have changed the outcome?

As you evaluate the sources in this chapter, look not only for the stated beliefs but also the unstated assumptions of white reformers and Native Americans. Before you begin, read the sections in your textbook on the opening of the West and white–Indian relations after the Civil War as well as any discussion of the Indian reform movement. Pay particular attention to your text’s interpretation of the last development, for you may want to use the evidence in this chapter to assess it.

S O U R C E S

Reformers and the Reservation

This section contains a selection by a prominent Indian reformer on the need to abandon the reservation system (Source 1) and an excerpt from the General Allotment Law of 1887, commonly known as the Dawes Act (Source 2). As you evaluate these sources, look for evidence of the way reformers defined the “Indian problem,” their views about the reservation, and their attitudes toward the Indians. Also consider the ways in which the Dawes Act reflected these views.

1 Merr i l l E . Ga tes was one o f the mos t p rominent la tenineteenth-century Indian reformers. The president of Rutgers College and, later, Amherst College, Gates was appointed by President

Chapter 3 Evaluating Primary Sources54

Chester A. Arthur to the Board of Indian Commissioners in 1884. For many years, he also presided over the Lake Mohonk conferences. In 1885, he pre- sented a paper to the Board of Indian Commissioners that advanced his solution to the Indian problem. What are his views on the nature of Indian society?

“Land and Law as Agents in Educating Indians” (1885) Two peculiarities which mark the Indian life, if retained, will render his progress slow, uncertain and difficult. These are:

1. The tribal organization. 2. The Indian reservation.

I am satisfied that no man can carefully study the Indian question with- out the deepening conviction that these institutions must go if we would save the Indian from himself. . . .

A false sentimental view of the tribal organization commonly presents itself to those who look at this question casually. It takes form in such objections as this:

The Indians have a perfect right to bring up their children in the old devotion to the tribe and the chief. To require anything else of them is unreasonable. These are their ancestral institutions. We have no right to meddle with them.

The correction for this false view seems to me to come from the study of the tribe and its actual effects upon the family and upon the manhood of the individual.

The highest right of man is the right to be a man, with all that this in- volves. The tendency of the tribal organization is constantly to interfere with and frustrate the attainment of his highest manhood. The question whether parents have a right to educate their children to regard the tribal organiza- tion as supreme, brings us at once to the consideration of the family.

And here I find the key to the Indian problem. More than any other idea, this consideration of the family and its proper sphere in the civilizing of races and in the development of the individual, serves to unlock the difficul- ties which surround legislation for the Indian.

The family is God’s unit of society. On the integrity of the family depends that of the State. There is no civilization deserving of the name where the family is not the unit of civil government. . . .

The tribal organization, with its tenure of land in common, with its con- stant divisions of goods and rations per capita without regard to service

Source: Merrill E. Gates, “Land and Law as Agents in Educating Indians,” in Francis Paul Prucha, ed., Americanizing the American Indians: Writings by the “Friends of the Indian,” 1880–1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 48–52; originally from Seventeenth Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners (1885).

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rendered, cuts the nerve of all that manful effort which political economy teaches us proceeds from the desire for wealth. True ideas of property with all the civilizing influences that such ideas excite are formed only as the tribal relation is outgrown. . . .

But the tribal system paralyzes at once the desire for property and the family life that ennobles that desire. Where the annuities and rations that support a tribe are distributed to the industrious and the lazy alike, while almost all property is held in common, there cannot be any true stimulus to industry. . . .

As the allegiance to tribe and chieftain is weakened, its place should be taken by the sanctities of family life and an allegiance to the laws which grow naturally out of the family! Lessons in law for the Indian should begin with the developing and the preservation, by law, of those relations of prop- erty and of social intercourse which spring out of and protect the family. First of all, he must have land in severalty.

Land in severalty, on which to make a home for his family. This land the Government should, where necessary, for a few years hold in trust for him or his heirs, inalienable and unchargeable. But it shall be his. It shall be pat- ented to him as an individual. He shall hold it by what the Indians who have been hunted from reservation to reservation pathetically call, in their requests for justice, “a paper-talk from Washington, which tells the Indian what land is his so that a white man cannot get it away from him.” “There is no way of reaching the Indian so good as to show him that he is working for a home. Experience shows that there is no incentive so strong as the con- fidence that by long, untiring labor, a man may secure a home for himself and his family.” The Indians are no exception to this rule. There is in this consciousness of a family-hearth, of land and a home in prospect as perma- nently their own, an educating force which at once begins to lift these sav- ages out of barbarism and sends them up the steep toward civilization, as rapidly as easy divorce laws are sending some sections of our country down the slope toward barbaric heathenism. . . .

We must as rapidly as possible break up the tribal organization and give them law, with the family and land in severalty as its central idea. We must not only give them law, we must force law upon them. We must not only offer them education, we must force education upon them. Education will come to them by complying with the forms and the requirements of the law.

2 The passage of the General Allotment Law, or Dawes Act, in 1887 rep-resented a major victory for reformers. Sponsored by Massachusetts Republican Senator Henry L. Dawes, the act allotted reservation lands

in severalty (that is, with individual ownership rights) to Indians. How do the specific provisions of this law reflect widespread assumptions about the Indians and their culture?

Chapter 3 Evaluating Primary Sources56

The Dawes Act (1887) An act to provide for the allotment of lands in severalty to Indians on the various reservations, and to extend the protection of the laws of the United States and the Territories over the Indians, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That in all cases where any tribe or band of Indians has been, or shall hereafter be, located upon any reservation created for their use, either by treaty stipulation or by virtue of an act of Congress or executive order setting apart the same for their use, the President of the United States be, and he hereby is, authorized, whenever in his opinion any reservation or any part thereof of such Indians is advantageous for agricultural and grazing purposes, to cause said reservation, or any part thereof, to be surveyed, or resurveyed if necessary, and to allot the lands in said reservation in severalty to any Indian located thereon in quantities as follows:

To each head of a family, one-quarter of a section; To each single person over eighteen years of age, one-eighth of a section; To each orphan child under eighteen years of age, one-eighth of a section;

and To each other single person under eighteen years now living, or who may

be born prior to the date of the order of the President directing an allotment of the lands embraced in any reservation, one-sixteenth of a section: Provided, That in case there is not sufficient land in any of said reservations to allot lands to each individual of the classes above named in quantities as above provided, the lands embraced in such reservation or reservations shall be allotted to each individual of each of said classes pro rata in accordance with the provisions of this act: And provided further, That where the treaty or act of Congress setting apart such reservation provides for the allotment of lands in severalty in quantities in excess of those herein provided, the President, in making allotments upon such reservation, shall allot the lands to each in- dividual Indian belonging thereon in quantity as specified in such treaty or act: And provided further, That when the lands allotted are only valuable for grazing purposes, an additional allotment of such grazing lands, in quanti- ties as above provided, shall be made to each individual.

Sec. 2. That all allotments set apart under the provisions of this act shall be selected by the Indians, heads of families selecting for their minor children, and the agents shall select for each orphan child, and in such manner as to embrace the improvements of the Indians making the selec- tion. Where the improvements of two or more Indians have been made on the same legal subdivision of land, unless they shall otherwise agree,

Source: United States Statutes at Large, 24 (1887): pp. 388–391.

Sources 57

a provisional line may be run dividing said lands between them, and the amount to which each is entitled shall be equalized in the assignment of the remainder of the land to which they are entitled under this act: Pro- vided, That if any one entitled to an allotment shall fail to make a selection within four years after the President shall direct that allotments may be made on a particular reservation, the Secretary of the Interior may direct the agent of such tribe or band, if such there be, and if there be no agent, then a special agent appointed for that purpose, to make a selection for such Indian, which election shall be allotted as in cases where selections are made by the Indians, and patents shall issue in like manner. . . .

Sec. 5. That upon the approval of the allotments provided for in this act by the Secretary of the Interior, he shall cause patents to issue therefor in the name of the allottees, which patents shall be of the legal effect, and declare that the United States does and will hold the land thus allotted, for the period of twenty-five years, in trust for the sole use and benefit of the Indian to whom such allotment shall have been made, or, in case of his decease, of his heirs according to the laws of the State or Territory where such land is located, and that at the expiration of said period the United States will convey the same by patent to said Indian, or his heirs as aforesaid, in fee, dis- charged of said trust and free of all charge or incumbrance whatsoever. . . .

Sec. 6. That upon the completion of said allotments and the patenting of the lands to said allottees, each and every member of the respective bands or tribes of Indians to whom allotments have been made shall have the benefit of and be subject to the laws, both civil and criminal, of the State or Territory in which they may reside; and no Territory shall pass or enforce any law denying any such Indian within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law. And every Indian both within the territo- rial limits of the United States to whom allotments shall have been made under the provisions of this act, or under any law or treaty, and every Indian born within the territorial limits of the United States who has vol- untarily taken up, within said limits, his residence separate and apart from any tribe of Indians therein, and has adopted the habits of civilized life, is hereby declared to be a citizen of the United States, and is entitled to all the rights, privileges, and immunities of such citizens, whether said Indian has been or not, by birth or otherwise, a member of any tribe of Indians within the territorial limits of the United States without in any manner, impairing or otherwise affecting the right of any such Indian to tribal or other property. . . .

Sec. 8. That the provision of this act shall not extend to the territory occupied by the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles, and Osage, Miamies and Peorias, and Sacs and Foxes, in the Indian Territory,

Chapter 3 Evaluating Primary Sources58

nor to any of the reservations of the Seneca Nation of New York Indians in the State of New York, nor to that strip of territory in the State of Nebraska adjoining the Sioux Nation on the south added by executive order.

Native Americans and Severalty

This section contains sources that reflect Native Americans’ views. In sources 3, 4, and 5, Native Americans speak for themselves revealing their attitudes about the land and their experience with severalty and farming of reservation lands. As you examine these sources, consider what they reveal about the Dawes Act as a solution to the Indian problem.

3 Wooden Leg was a Northern Cheyenne who fought George Custer and his forces at Little Big Horn, Montana, in 1876. In the early twen- tieth century, he recounted his early life to a white physician who was

practicing among the Cheyennes. In the following passage, he recalls his father’s views about the land. What do Wooden Leg’s recollections suggest about the forces working against the reformers’ plans for the Indians?

A Cheyenne Tells His Son About the Land (ca. 1876) After we had been driven from the Black Hills and that country was given to the white people my father would not stay on any reservation. He said it was no use trying to make farms as the white people did. In the first place, that was not the Indian way of living. All of our teachings and beliefs were that land was not made to be owned in separate pieces by persons and that the plowing up and destruction of vegetation placed by the Great Medicine and the planting of other vegetation according to the ideas of men was an inter- ference with the plans of the Above. In the second place, it seemed that if the white people could take away from us the Black Hills after that country had been given to us and accepted by us as ours forever, they might take away from us any other lands we should occupy whenever they might want these other lands. In the third place, the last great treaty had allowed us to use all of the country between the Black Hills and the Bighorn river and mountains as hunting grounds so long as we did not resist the traveling of white people through it on their way to or from their lands beyond its borders. My father decided to act upon this agreement to us. He decided we should spend all of our time in the hunting region. We could do this, gaining our own living in this way, or we could be supported by rations given to us at the agency. He chose to stay away from all white people. His family all agreed with him.

Source: Thomas B. Marquis, Wooden Leg: A Warrior Who Fought Custer (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), pp. 155–156.

Sources 59

4 John Stands-in-Timber was a Northern Cheyenne who related his tribe’s experience with farming in the late 1870s. What do his recol- lections reveal about the difficulties of transforming the Indian into a

yeoman farmer?

Cheyennes Try Farming (ca. 1877) The government started the Indians raising gardens as soon as they surren- dered. Some had gardens of corn and other crops. . . . They had forgotten how, though they all used to garden in the old days before they hunted buf- falo. Now they were learning about new crops as well, things they had never seen before. The Dull Knife people got to Oklahoma in 1877 about the time the watermelons ripened, and when the Southern Cheyennes gave them some they cut them up and boiled them like squash. They did not know you could eat them raw. But later when they planted their own they put sugar with the seeds. They said it would make them sweeter when they grew.

When they reached Tongue River every man was supposed to have a garden of his own. A government farmer went around to teach them. And many of them worked hard, even carrying buckets of water from the river by hand. One man, Black White Man, wanted to raise cotton. He had seen it in Oklahoma. He plowed a piece of ground and smoothed it up, and when it was ready he took his wife’s quilt and made little pieces from the inside and planted them with a garden hoe. When his wife missed the quilt, she got after him. He was afraid to tell her, but finally he said, “I got it and took out the cotton and planted it. We will have more quilts than we need, as soon as it grows.”

When they first learned to plow in Oklahoma the farmer told them to get ready and come to a certain place and he would show them. They did not understand. They thought “Get ready” meant fancy costumes and not their new pants and shirts. So everybody had feathers on their heads and neck- laces and leggings and fancy moccasins. It looked like a dance, not a farming lesson. And all the women and children went along to see them.

The farmer told one man to grab the handles while he started ahead with the team. But the plow jumped out of the ground and turned over, and the Indian fell down. But he tried again, and by the time they got back around he was doing pretty well. Then they all tried. At last they came to one man who had been watching closely. When he started off the dirt rolled right over and he went clear around that way, and the criers started announcing, “Ha-aah! See that man!” The women made war cries and everybody hol- lered just as if he had counted coup.*

*To ceremoniously recount one’s exploits in battle.

Source: John Stands-in-Timber and Margo Liberty, Cheyenne Memories (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1967), pp. 276–278.

Chapter 3 Evaluating Primary Sources60

Another time when they practiced plowing down there, one man plowed up a bull snake and the next man plowed up a rattlesnake, and after that they were all afraid to go.

In Montana they began to help each other. The government issued plows to quite a few men, and in Birney the Fox Military Society used to plow together as soon as the frost was out. They would all gather at the farthest place up the river and work together until that was done, and then move to the next. They had seven or eight plows and it went faster that way. Besides, it was more fun. . . .

5 Ella C. Deloria, a Yankton Sioux, recalled the impact of the division of reservation lands into individual allotments. What does her account reveal about the Dawes Act’s impact on traditional patterns of life?

A Sioux Recalls Severalty (ca. 1900) At length there came the time when individual allotments of land were made. Families were encouraged to live out on them and start to be farmers forthwith. Equipment for this, as well as some essential furniture, was given the most docile ones by way of inducement. But again, it wasn’t easy to make the spiritual and social adjustment. The people were too used to living in large family groups, cooperatively and happily. Now, here they were in little father-mother-child units (with an occasional grandparent, to be sure), often miles from their other relatives, trying to farm an arid land—the very same land from which, later on, white farmers of Old World tradition and training could not exact even a subsistence living. Enduring frightful loneli- ness and working at unfamiliar tasks just to put himself ahead financially were outside the average Dakota’s ken. For him there were other values. The people naturally loved to foregather; and now the merest excuse for doing so became doubly precious. For any sort of gathering it was the easiest thing to abandon the small garden, leave the stock to fend for themselves, and go away for one to four weeks. On returning, they might find the place a wreck. That was too bad; but to miss getting together with other Dakotas was far worse. . . .

The man was the tragic figure. Frustrated, with his age old occupation suddenly gone, he was left in a daze, unable to overcome the strange and passively powerful inertia that stayed him from doing anything else. And so he sat by the hour, indifferent and inactive, watching—perhaps envying— his wife, as she went right on working at the same essential role of woman

Source: Ella C. Deloria, Speaking of Indians (Vermillion, S.Dak.: Dakota Press, 1979), pp. 60, 62–63.

Sources 61

that had been hers since time immemorial. In such a mental state, what did he care that unsympathetic onlookers called him “lazy Indian” and accused him of driving his wife, like a slave, while “he took his ease“! As though he enjoyed it! If, as he sat there, someone had called, “Hey! There’s a herd of buffalo beyond that hill! Come quick!” he would have sprung into life in- stantly again. But, alas, no such thing would ever happen now. All he could do, or thought he could do, on his “farm” was to water the horses mechani- cally, bring in fuel and water, cut a little hay, tend a little garden. He did it listlessly, almost glad when the garden died on his hands for lack of rain. His heart was not in what he was doing anyway—until something human came up: a gathering of the people, where he could be with many relatives again; or a death, when he must go to help with the mourning; or a cow to be butchered, reminiscent of the hunt; or time to go to the agency for the biweekly issue of rations. That he must not miss. For him and his family, that was what still gave meaning to life.

6 The table on the next page relates to land holding among Indians subject to the Dawes Act in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. What does it reveal about one impact of severalty on Native

Americans? Do previous sources provide any explanations for the pattern revealed in this table?

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