Canned fruits and meats appear in stores | There are 87,000 miles of rail in America | U.S. frontiersman W.F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody organizes his 'wild west show.' | The first regulatory commission was set up to regulate railroad rates | Andrew Carnegie opened his first public library | Women were participating in more sports than ever before | Excluding blacks from jury duty was held unconstitutional | Fencing of public lands was prohibited by an act of Congress | Transit workers strike | The Oklahoma land rush bagan at noon on April 22, 1899. | Oil!
ART AND ARCHITECTURE
The home of William Kissam Vanderbilt was built on 5th Ave and 52nd St in NYC at a cost of $3,000,000. Henry Hobson Richardson built shingled houses in Mass. (Bellaman House). He brought his functional approach to suburban railroad stations. He completed the Marshall Field Building in Chicago. John A. Roebling designed the Brooklyn Bridge. A masonry building, the Monadnock Building, was 16 stories - in Chicago. Steel skeleton construction was used in Chicago by architect William L. Jenney. Asbestos curtains were used in theaters to deter fire. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was opened, sponsored by wealthy families. The main building for the Boston Public Library was begun by Charles Follen McKim of McKim, Mead and White, a great architectural firm of the 19th and early 20th century. The library contained decorative ideas by Saint-Gaudens and murals by Edwin Abbey and John Singer Sargent.
It was during this decade that millionaires became art collectors. Mary Cassatt, an expatriate, showed at the Paris Impressionist exhibits. Portraitists Eastman Johnson and John Singer Sargent (Portrait of Madame X) were extremely popular. Trompe l'oeil paintings of William Michael Harnett, After the Hunt, were so realistic that many a drinker reached for the painted jug. Douglas Tilden, a West Coast sculptor, created Tired Wrestler, Baseball Player and Young Acrobat. Augustus Saint-Gaudens completed Abraham Lincoln in Chicago. Olin Levi Warner and others specialized in painting American Indians. John La Farge, church muralist, painted the Ascension for Church of the Ascension in New York.
BUSINESS AND ECONOMY
Industrialization, improved transportation via the completed nationwide rail system, and immigration all had a great impact on business and economic conditions in the last part of the 19th century. Mechanization altered the way work was performed. As the process of producing goods shifted, the workplace changed for working men and women. Rail transport of goods improved the manufacturing process by supplying materials and moving finished products to markets. By 1882, 789,000 immigrants a year were coming to America to work in the factories, mines and businesses created by the new economy, the highest level in the 19th century. Immigrants often took the least desirable jobs with ethnic groups specializing in particular areas of work. The Slavs became steel workers, Greeks opened small stores, Mexicans worked in agricultural jobs in the west, Jews in New York's lower Eastside worked in tailoring, or opened restaurants and delicatessens. In cities like Boston, New York and Chicago, the Irish, Jews and Germans dominated city jobs and political machines.
Trade unions like the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada, (1881) predecessor of the American Federation of Labor (1886) were established to protect worker's rights. In 1883, the Civil Service Commission was established with passage of the Pendleton Act. Workers of the Missouri Pacific Railroad opposed a wage cut and initiated the Great Southwest Strike of 1886. Workers in Chicago lobbied for an 8-hour workday. Union strikers at the McCormick Reaper Works rallied at Haymarket, where police fired upon the protesters, killing two and injuring others. The resulting riots lasted for several days. Policemen and workers were killed and at least eight of the rally leaders were arrested. Seven were later executed. In 1888, President Cleveland signed a bill into law creating the Department of Labor.
Dow, Jones & Company, a financial news service, was established in 1882. American and Canadian railroads adopted standard time zones in 1883 and helped regulate clocks across America. In 1885, Charles Alderton created the recipe for Dr. Pepper. Congress enacted the Hatch Act, 1887, which established agricultural research and experiment stations in each state with land-grant colleges. Asa Candler bought part interest in a patent medicine known as Coca-Cola in 1887 and Richard W. Sears and Alvah C. Roebuck began to sell watches by mail. In 1889, Dow Jones & Co. began publishing the Wall Street Journal, Andrew Carnegie published the Gospel of Wealth, Isaac Merrit Singer began selling sewing machines and George Eastman invented celluloid-based roll film of high quality.
BOOKS AND LITERATURE
As always, literature helped people better understand the world they lived in. Henry James' Portrait of a Lady centered on the psychological story of an American woman, inheriting money and living in Europe. Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn, his most famous and most complex work about freedom. Ramona, then A Century of Dishonor were written by Helen Hunt Jackson describing eye-opening accounts of the U.S. governments ruthless treatment of the Indians.
These books created great sympathy for their plight. Henry Adams published Democracy, set in Washington. Albion W. Tourgee wrote a novel of life in postwar North Carolina, Bricks without Straw. Books in native dialect became popular, examples are The Old Swimmin' Hole and 'Leven More Poems by James Whitcomb Riley and In the Tennessee Mountains by Charles Egbert Craddock. A Utopian fantasy by Edward Bellamy was a hit for expressing concern with social problems in an industrial society, Looking Backward, 2000-1887. The Winning of the West by Theodore Roosevelt, depicted the westward movement. Authors like William Dean Howells wrote literature taking up causes, like labor (Annie Kilburn), as topics. This was also the decade that introduced The Wall Street Journal.
Lovell's Library made its appearance and consisted of cheap books selling at 10 to 20 cents. (Later Lovell's Popular Library). Important reference books include The Spirit of Modern Philosophy by Josiah Royce, Personal Memoirs by Ulysses S. Grant, The Library of American Literature, edited by Edmund Clarence Stedman, and The History of the United States by Henry Adams (volumes one and two). Other important books published during the decade included:
· Ben Hur | Lew Wallace
· Anne | Constance Fenimore Woolson - life in northern Michigan
· Mr. Isaacs | Francis Marion Crawford | first of many romances
· The Rise of Silas Lapham |Williams Dean Howells | depicting self-made man trying to climb the social ladder.
· Life on the Mississippi | A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court | Mark Twain
Childrens books included The Five Little Peppers by Margaret Sidney. Little Lord Fauntleroy, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, was enormously popular. Casey at the Bat was written by Ernest Thayer. Eugene Field published two of his best loved poems, Little Boy Blue and Wynken, Blynken and Nod. Louisa May Alcott wrote Jo's Boys.
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MIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION
Railroads now crisscrossed most of the West and farmers were persuaded to move into the region by railroad advertising and the relative ease of train travel. The Mormons had demonstrated what irrigation could accomplish to make the desert into productive farm land. The railroads made it possible to transport crops and cattle to the markets in the East. Cow towns such as Abilene, Kansas grew up as such men as Joseph G. McCoy established cattle yards for Texas beef. First the miners, then the cattlemen, and lastly the farmers had taken over what had been the land of the Great Plains Indians. On July 18, 1881 Sitting Bull surrendered at Fort Buford, and the fight to retain their way of life was essentially over. A last holdout, Geronimo, gave up in 1886. The federal government did make some effort to protect Indian land. In 1881 Buffalo soldiers of the Ninth Cavalry were sent to Oklahoma Indian Territory to prevent white settlers from encroaching on Indian land. The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 sought to protect tribal holdings by dividing the land into individual homesteads. There were provisions aimed at preventing the Native Americans from being cheated, but those provisions were ineffective. By 1934, Native Americans had seen their land shrink from 150,000,000 acres to less than 60,000,000 acres - all lost to white settlers. A last effort to reestablish the Indian way of life started with the Ghost Dance cult in the late 1880's and ended at the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. The Oklahoma Land Rush on April 22, 1889 opened the Indian Territory to homesteaders. This was the last major area to be opened to settlement in the continental United States.
· Photos of Native American by tribe | Searchable - Curtis Collection of copperplate photographs.
The 1880's saw 5,248,568 immigrants come to the United States. Most of these people still came from northern and western Europe, but the tide began to change during the decade as more and more of the immigrants came from southern and eastern Europe. Steamships had increasingly made the voyage to America faster, safer, and more comfortable. American industry contracted foreign labor until the Foran Act of 1885 made it illegal. The padrone system had flourished as the padrone, or labor boss, encouraged nationalities such as Italians and Greeks to come the U.S. for jobs. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 sought to halt the arrival of Chinese into country. People of different ethnic backgrounds, the "new immigrants" began to outnumber the British, Irish, Scotch, Scandinavian, and German "old immigrants."
EDUCATION
Frontier schools in this era were primitive by today's standards but suceeded in their goal of educating children. The McGuffey texts taught morality along with reading and patriotism along with history.The one-room school house did not have much in the way of creature comforts or educational supplies. Many did not even have a blackboard. Sometimes the students were expected to provide their own books and thus each child might be learning his or her lessons from a different source. An educator of the time, Edwin Hewett wrote a Treatise on Pedagogy for Young Teachers in which he saw nothing amiss about this situation. The working under these conditions received little pay. The average salary for women was $54.50 a year and for men $71.40. The discipline could be harsh. Misbehaving children could feel the sting of the switch, the darkness of being locked in a closet, or the embarassment of sitting on a stool in the front of the class wearing a dunce cap. Getting to and from school could also be hazardous. In what became known as the "school children's blizzard" in January 1888 on the Nebraska plains many children died on their route home from school. One teacher, Minnie Freeman, became a heroine for her efforts that saved the children in her care. In 1882 Massachusetts made an effort to improve the rural schools in the state by passing a law requiring them to consolidate into larger districts. In New York City Julia Richman used her influence as a principal and later District Superintendent for the Lower East Side to promote her progressive education ideas and the Americanization of the immigrant children pouring into the city. In Boston Pauline Agassiz Shaw persuaded the Boston School Committee to add her privately financed kindergartens to the city's public school system in 1888. Her aim was much like Richman's - to integrate the immigrant children in Boston into their new country. Francis W. Parker, also an advocate of progressive education, became principal of the Cook County Normal School in Chicago in 1883. He trained his student teachers in the theory and methods of this new philosophy. This decade saw the founding of the Tuskegee Institute by the famous African American scientist, Booker T. Washington. The school placed emphasis on vocational training for its students. Spelman College in Atlanta became the first liberal arts college for African-American women in 1881.
NEWS AND EVENTS
IN THE NEWSFLASH! The most popular names for children are John, William, Mary and Anna. FLASH! Southern states segregate 'colored' riders on trains and other transportations FLASH! Over 600 lynchings of African Americans during the decade. FLASH! 10 story Home Insurance Building built in Chicago FLASH! Clara Barton organizes the American Red Cross. FLASH! Secret ballot system introduced into U. S. FLASH! Electrocution replaces hanging as the official method of capital punishment in New York State. FLASH! October 28, 1886. Statue of Liberty dedicated in New York Harbor. FLASH! 1882. In Boston, a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe is lighted by electric incandescent light bulbs, the first such use of the new technology. FLASH! In New York, Edison's Pearl Street power company begins to supply electricity for the city.
MUSIC AND THEATER
Operas and operettas, particularly those by Gilbert and Sullivan, were traveling the country. Lillian Russell had begun her rise to operatic stardom. Burlesque, still a new form of entertainment, had up to this time, been a parody on popular operettas and stage productions of the day. Shapely women showed as much leg as the law would allow, and witty humor was the mainstay. But by the 1880's, the shows, comprised of ten to twenty acts, featured bawdy humor and a dance similar to the cancan. Vaudeville began to separate itself from Burlesque, as Tony Pastor, often called the father of vaudeville, established a theater in New York where the entire family could enjoy a "straight, clean variety show." While Strolling Through the Park began as a vaudeville song and later was a soft shoe dance routine. Although many vaudeville performers got their start in Burlesque, only those who were washed up would return. Ed Harrigan and Tony Hart originated musical comedies on Broadway.
The "Boston Classicists," a group of musicians including George Chadwick, Arthur Foote, Horatio Parker, Amy Beach and Arthur Whiting represented German Romanticism and classical harmony and counterpoint.
John Philip Sousa, conductor of the US Marine Band, wrote Semper Fidelis in 1888, and the Washington Post March in 1889. Thomas Edison incorporated other people's ideas into an improved phonograph that used wax cylinders in 1888.
Popular songs of the time included:
Oh, My Darling Clementine
There is a Tavern in the Town
Sweet Violets
Musical playlist for Billings Montana in the 1880's