Industrialization, Urbanization, and
Business and industrialization centered on the cities.
The ever increasing number of factories created an intense need
for labor, convincing people in rural areas to move to the city, and
drawing immigrants from Europe to the United States. As a result,
the United States transformed from an agrarian to an urban nation,
and the demographics of the country shifted dramatically.
Roughly 10 million European immigrants settled in the
U.S. between 1860 and 1890. Nearly all of these immigrants were
from northern and western Europe, which was the traditional point
of origin for European immigrants to the United States. During the 1890s,
though, new immigrants began to come to the United States: Greeks,
Slavs, Armenians, and Jews from various countries. Most of these
“new” European immigrants settled in the Northeast, dominated by
Irish and Italians, and the Midwest, dominated by Germans. While
the West also experienced an influx of European immigrants, it mostly attracted
immigrants from China. Lured by the prospect of earning money by
working on the expanding western railroad system, many Chinese immigrants
settled in California.
Many immigrants found the transition to American life
difficult, despite their efforts to ease the transition by founding
churches and charity organizations. Often poor, immigrants lived
in dirty, crowded conditions and worked unskilled jobs in potentially
dangerous factories. More than 500,000 injuries to workers were
reported each year in the 1880s and 1890s. Immigrants, especially
“new” immigrants, also faced extreme discrimination in the workplace
from native workers who resented the immigrants’ willingness to
accept lower wages and work in worse conditions. In the presidential
election of 1880, both major party platforms included anti-immigration
measures, and in 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion
Act, placing a ten-year ban on Chinese immigration.
The Development of Urban Life
The growth of U.S. cities gave rise to a number of features
of urban life not before seen in American history. One such feature
was the spread of tenements, which were narrow four- or
five-story buildings with few windows, limited plumbing and electricity,
and tiny rooms often packed with people, mostly blacks and immigrants.
Tenements were the main housing available in slums and ghettos,
the segregated communities into which blacks and immigrants were
forced by poverty, prejudice, even law. These ghettos fostered disease, high
infant mortality, and horrific levels of pollution, and were often
the site of racial and ethnic strife.
While tenements housed the poor, plush areas arose to
house the rich. During the 1870s and 1880s, the cities’ rich inhabitants
moved outside the city center to escape the overcrowded conditions.
Developments sprung up around many of the major cities, their cleanliness
and preservation of green spaces a sharp contrast to the cities
they abutted. Electric streetcars, commuter trains, and trolleys
ferried these inhabitants to and from their city jobs.
Local politics during this era were marked by machine
politics, so called because the system and the party, rather
than individuals, held power. In virtually every region of the U.S., local
officials, or “machines,” controlled voter loyalty by distributing
political and economic benefits such as offices, jobs, and city
contracts. “Machines” were presided over by “party bosses,” professional
politicians who dominated city government. These bosses often controlled
the jobs of thousands of city workers and influenced the activities
of schools, hospitals, and other city-run services. Machine politics
thrived on corruption, which contributed to the system’s collapse
around the turn of the twentieth century.
The presidents of this period were generally weak, pro-business,
and never served more than one term in office (with the exception
of Grover Cleveland, who served two non-consecutive terms). None
of these presidents are terribly important in terms of the test,
though it is helpful to have a general sense of the politics of
the nation during the period. We have included a quick overview
of each administration so you can keep track of all the political turnover.
- James Garfield, elected in 1880, was fatally
shot four months after
- Chester Arthur, Garfield’s vice president, served as president
from 1881 to 1885. Congress, spurred on by Arthur’s reputation as
a corrupt politician and a supporter of machine politics, passed
the Pendleton Act in efforts to create a meritocratic
and professional civil service.
- Grover Cleveland served as president from 1885 to 1889.
He pushed for a reduction of tariffs, and, in 1887, he signed the
Interstate Commerce Act into law.
- Benjamin Harrison was president from 1889 to 1893. A pro-business Republican,
he supported high protective tariffs, and brought about a
severe economic depression beginning in 1893.
- Grover Cleveland won a second term from 1893 to 1897.
He is the only president to serve two terms out of sequence. His
second term was dominated by efforts to deal with the economic depression
that started in 1893, under Benjamin Harrison.
The Struggles of Farmers
Farmers found themselves on the bottom rungs of the economic
ladder after the Civil War. They struggled to pay off mounting debts
as land prices rose but crop prices plummeted. Struggling farmers
demanded help from state and federal governments. When this relief did
not come, Midwestern farmers banded together to form the Grange in
1867. By 1875, the Grange had more than 800,000 members. The Grange
offered farmers education and fellowship through biweekly social
functions, at which farmers shared their grievances and discussed
agricultural and political reforms. To increase farm profits, Grangers
negotiated deals with machinery companies and set up cooperatives
and grain storage facilities. They also fought against railroad
companies for hiking prices for short-distance shipment. The efforts
of the Grange played a big role in the passage of the 1887 Interstate
By 1880, the Grange had faded and was replaced by the Farmers’
Alliance. Beginning as a local phenomenon in Texas in the
late 1870s, alliances spread throughout the South and Northwest,
and by 1890, boasted a membership of 1.5 million nationwide. The
alliances proved to be powerful political forces. Alliance-supported
candidates did well throughout the Great Plains and South in the
elections of 1890. In 1892 Alliance members were central actors
in the founding of the People’s Party of the United States, or Populist
Party, discussed below.
Political Activism: Farmers and Labor Unite
The Populist Party, founded by members of the Farmer’s
Alliance, also drew support from urban laborers. The Populist Party
supported policies that would create inflation, making debts easier
to pay off and raising crop prices. The party’s candidate in the
1892 election did not do well.
However, the Panic of 1893 gave the Populists
new life. In the three years after 1893, unemployment soared, worker
strikes spread, and support for the Populist Party grew. Already
opposed to President Cleveland, the Populists were further enraged
by Cleveland’s deals with J.P. Morgan and other powerful industrialists
to bail out the U.S. government: the bankers lent $62 million to
the government in return for U.S. bonds. The Populists portrayed
Cleveland as a pro-business Republican who neglected the poor, and they
began rallying for the next election.
In the 1896 election, the Populists joined with the Democratic
Party in supporting William Jennings Bryan. Republicans
backed William McKinley, who ran on a pro-business
platform and supported high protective tariffs. Six years earlier,
as a Representative in Congress, McKinley had engineered the passage
of the McKinley Tariff (1890), a protective tariff
that raised the price of imports by nearly 50 percent. By doing
so, he gained the support of business interests. Boosted by this
business backing and the enormous contributions from the industrialists
J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, McKinley won the election against
During McKinley’s two terms as president, the depression
eased and prosperity began to return. This turnaround, combined
with Bryan’s defeat, broke up the Populist Party and pushed the
Democratic Party back to its minority position in the South.