Lesson 5 Politics and Government in the Gilded Age

Setting the Stage: The Political Landscape

1. The main political issues were reforms in the Civil Service, currency and tariff legislation.
2. ”Voting the Graveyard” was rampant as political machines cast votes in the name of dead citizens and voting multiple times since limited regulation.
3. Republican Party was made up primarily of Northern White Protestants from Northern Europe, Black men from the North and South, and Union Civil War veterans.
4. Democrat Party consisted primarily of Southern Whites, Roman Catholics, and immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe
   1. Many of the big cities were run by Democratic Party bosses who built effective political machines to keep themselves in power.
   2. They started helping the politically weak.
   3. Democrats started spreading to the North.
   4. William Magear Tweed known as Boss Tweed

Granger Movement (1867-1880) The main gradiences were opposing the high tariffs because they made manufactured goods like farm machinery more expensive, railway freight-rates, the fall of wheat prices, and the increase of mortgages.

A series of laws known as the “Granger Laws” were passed in several states which established public regulations on the rates and operating practices of railroads.

Greenback Party (1876-1884) Party members who supported an expansion of US currency as paper money in order to help the farmers who had been suffering economically. Strongly anti-monopoly and viewed banks as their opposition.

These Green backers formed “the basis of the subsequent populist mobilization”.

Farmers’ Alliance Founded in the 1880’s out of the Granger movement. By 1890, 1.5 million members from New York to California. Included Colored farmers National Alliance made up of Southern African-Americans with over 1 million members.

Wanted regulation of the railroads, currency inflation by using silver to provide debt relief, lowering of the high tariff rates, the establishment of government-owned storehouses and low-interest lending facilities.

Populist Party In 1892. various farmer and labor groups met in Omaha and formed the People’s Party which soon was called the Populist Party.

• Made up of a merger between the Farmers’ Alliance and the Knights of Labor.
• Main issues was money and believed that silver should join gold in being minted for money.
• This would put more money in circulation and create inflation which would help debtors pay off their mortgages with “cheap money”.

What did they want?

1. The free and unrestricted coinage of silver and gold at ratios of 10 to 1.
2. The passage of a progressive income tax based on how much one earns (16th Amendment).
3. A plan to support farm prices to halt the decline in farmers income by having the government buy the crops at a fixed prices.
4. Government ownership of key industries such as railroads, telegraphs, and books instead of attempts to regulate them.
5. Direct election of senators by the people not state legislators (17th Amendment).
6. Secret ballots so no one could know how you voted.
7. An initiative and referendum process so the people could propose their own laws and reject laws passed by legislatures.
8. An eight-hour work day for workers. This was offered to win support of unions and laborers.