history paper
A D o c u m e n t a r y R e a d e r
EDITED BY
WILLIAM A. LINK AND SUSANNAH J. LINK
THE
GILDED AGE AND
PROGRESSIVE ERA
EDITED BY
LINK AND
LINK
U n c o v e r i n g T h e P a s t D o c u m e n t a r y R e a d e r s i n A m e r i c a n H i s t o r y
“This treasure trove of documents is a terrifi c classroom resource. The Links chose carefully to achieve geographic, chronological, and thematic balance. The book’s organization represents all aspects of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era and ties them together interpretatively. Professors will fi nd themselves assigning documents from the reader week after week. This is one of the most useful teaching books I’ve seen.”
Glenda Gilmore, Yale University
“Three cheers for William and Susannah Link, whose documentary reader offers interpretive structure and focus alongside its thoughtfully chosen collection of primary sources. This reader is authoritative while still compact, giving enough points of view to spark controversy without closing down conversation. It is the perfect companion to the US survey or more specialized courses in modern American history.”
Jane Dailey, University of Chicago
“Wisely selected fi rst-person accounts coupled with the editors’ trenchant introductions bring to life civics and society at the dawn of modern America. It is a valuable resource that will engage students.”
Andrew Haley, University of Southern Mississippi
Following the conclusion of the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Progressive Era brought a wholesale restructuring of social and political institutions. The period from the 1870s through World War I was characterized by the nationalization of American life, the establishment of the United States as a global power, the refashioning of social relationships, and the reconstruction of the political system.
This volume gathers together documents that illustrate the variety of experiences and themes involved in the transformation of American political, economic, and social systems during this period, and presents the essential perspectives of race, class, gender, and culture. Situating the documents within their historical context, the book is divided into fi ve thematic sections: the American frontier after Reconstruction; the transformations that arrived with industrialization; the social and political crisis that gripped the United States at the end of the nineteenth century; reform; imperialism and war.
This collection enables readers to engage actively in historical interpretation and to understand the interplay between social and political forces in the period, exploring the experiences of people during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era from a variety of diverse perspectives.
William A. Link is Richard J. Milbauer Professor of History at the University of Florida. His publications include Roots of Secession: Slavery and Politics in Antebellum Virginia (2003) and Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern American Conservatism (2008).
Susannah J. Link is instructor in American history at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
Cover image: ‘The Trust Giant’s Point of View’, cartoon by Horace Taylor showing John D. Rockefeller holding the White House and President McKinley in the palm of his hand, 1900. © Photos 12/Alamy.
Cover design by Simon Levy
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Uncovering the Past: Documentary Readers in American History Series Editors: Steven Lawson and Nancy Hewitt
The books in this series introduce students in American history courses to two important dimensions of historical analysis. They enable students to engage actively in historical interpretation, and they further students’ understanding of the interplay between social and political forces in historical developments.
Consisting of primary sources and an introductory essay, these readers are aimed at the major courses in the American history curriculum, as outlined further below. Each book in the series will be approximately 225–250 pages, including a 25–30‐page introduction addressing key issues and questions about the subject under consideration, a discussion of sources and method- ology, and a bibliography of suggested secondary readings.
Published
Paul G.E. Clemens The Colonial Era: A Documentary Reader
Sean Patrick Adams The Early American Republic: A Documentary Reader
Stanley Harrold The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Reader
Steven Mintz African American Voices: A Documentary Reader, 1619–1877
Robert P. Ingalls and David K. Johnson The United States Since 1945: A Documentary Reader
Camilla Townsend American Indian History: A Documentary Reader
Steven Mintz Mexican American Voices: A Documentary Reader
Brian Ward The 1960s: A Documentary Reader
Nancy Rosenbloom Women in American History Since 1880: A Documentary Reader
Jeremi Suri American Foreign Relations Since 1898: A Documentary Reader
Carol Faulkner Women in American History to 1880: A Documentary Reader
David Welky America Between the Wars, 1919–1941: A Documentary Reader
William A. Link and Susannah J. Link The Gilded Age and Progressive Era: A Documentary Reader
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The Gilded Age and Progressive Era
A Documentary Reader
Edited by William A. Link
and Susannah J. Link
A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication
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This edition first published 2012 © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Limited
Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley‐Blackwell.
Registered Office John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK
Editorial Offices 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148–5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK
For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley‐blackwell .
The right of William A. Link and Susannah J. Link to be identified as the authors of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.
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Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
The Gilded Age and Progressive Era : a documentary reader / edited by William A. Link and Susannah J. Link. p. cm. – (Uncovering the past : documentary readers in American history ; 12) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4443-3138-7 (hardback) – ISBN 978-1-4443-3139-4 (paperback) 1. United States–History–1865-1921–Sources. 2. United States–Politics and government–1865-1933–Sources. 3. United States–Social conditions–1865-1918–Sources. 4. Progressivism (United States politics)–Sources. I. Link, William A. II. Link, Susannah J. E661.G455 2012 973.8–dc23
2011034658
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Set in 10/12.5pt Sabon by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India
1 2012
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Big Business 77
4 US Supreme Court, Slaughterhouse Cases , 1873 6
The US Supreme Court’s decision in the Slaughterhouse Cases, resolved in April 1873, represents the Court’s first interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, ratified in 1868. In 1869, the Louisiana state legislature granted the Crescent City Livestock Landing & Slaughterhouse Company exclusive rights to slaughter animals in New Orleans. While the state of Louisiana viewed this measure as a way to centralize the slaughterhouse industry and improve health and safety standards, local butchers argued that the new law, which prohibited independent slaughterhouses from operating in New Orleans, created a monopoly and violated the “ privileges or immunities” of US citizenship conferred by the Fourteenth Amendment .
After state courts upheld the law, butchers appealed to the US Supreme Court in 1873. In a five‐to‐four decision, the Court ruled the Louisiana law constitutional, arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment only protected the rights of federal, not state citizenship. This narrow reading of the Fourteenth Amendment constitutes an important decision in early civil rights legislation and marked a significant limitation over civil protections provided in the Reconstruction amendments.
. . . . Mr. Justice MILLER, now, April 14 th , 1873, delivered the opinion of the court.
These cases are brought here by writs of error to the Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana. They arise out of the efforts of the butchers of New Orleans to resist the Crescent City Livestock Landing and Slaughter‐House Company in the exercise of certain powers conferred by the charter which created it, and which was granted by the legislature of that State.
The cases named on a preceding page, with others which have been brought here and dismissed by agreement, were all decided by the Supreme Court of Louisiana in favor of the Slaughter‐House Company, as we shall hereafter call it for the sake of brevity, and these writs are brought to reverse those decisions.
The records were filed in this court in 1870, and were argued before it at length on a motion made by plaintiffs in error for an order in the nature of an injunction or supersedeas, pending the action of the court on the merits. The opinion on that motion is reported in 77 U. S. 10 Wallace 273. . . .
The statute thus assailed as unconstitutional was passed March 8 th , 1869, and is entitled “An act to protect the health of the city of New Orleans, to
6 83 U.S. 36 (1873).
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78 The Gilded Age and Progressive Era
locate the stock landings and slaughterhouses, and to incorporate the Crescent City Livestock Landing and Slaughter‐House Company.”
The first section forbids the landing or slaughtering of animals whose flesh is intended for food within the city of New Orleans and other parishes and boundaries named and defined, or the keeping or establishing any slaughterhouses or abattoirs within those limits except by the corporation thereby created, which is also limited to certain places afterwards mentioned. Suitable penalties are enacted for violations of this prohibition.
The second section designates the corporators, gives the name to the corporation, and confers on it the usual corporate powers.
The third and fourth sections authorize the company to establish and erect within certain territorial limits, therein defined, one or more stockyards, stock landings, and slaughterhouses, and impose upon it the duty of erecting, on or before the first day of June, 1869, one grand slaughterhouse of sufficient capacity for slaughtering five hundred animals per day.
It declares that the company, after it shall have prepared all the necessary buildings, yards, and other conveniences for that purpose, shall have the sole and exclusive privilege of conducting and carrying on the livestock landing and slaughterhouse business within the limits and privilege granted by the act, and that all such animals shall be landed at the stock landings and slaughtered at the slaughterhouses of the company, and nowhere else. Penalties are enacted for infractions of this provision, and prices fixed for the maximum charges of the company for each steamboat and for each animal landed.
Section five orders the closing up of all other stock landings and slaugh- terhouses after the first day of June, in the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Bernard, and makes it the duty of the company to permit any person to slaughter animals in their slaughterhouses under a heavy penalty for each refusal. Another section fixes a limit to the charges to be made by the company for each animal so slaughtered in their building, and another provides for an inspection of all animals intended to be so slaughtered by an officer appointed by the governor of the State for that purpose.
These are the principal features of the statute, and are all that have any bearing upon the questions to be decided by us.
. . .
The institution of African slavery, as it existed in about half the States of the Union, and the contests pervading the public mind for many years between those who desired its curtailment and ultimate extinction and those who desired additional safeguards for its security and perpetuation,
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Big Business 79
culminated in the effort, on the part of most of the States in which slavery existed, to separate from the Federal government and to resist its authority. This constituted the war of the rebellion, and whatever auxiliary causes may have contributed to bring about this war, undoubtedly the overshadowing and efficient cause was African slavery.
In that struggle, slavery, as a legalized social relation, perished. It perished as a necessity of the bitterness and force of the conflict. When the armies of freedom found themselves upon the soil of slavery, they could do nothing less than free the poor victims whose enforced servitude was the foundation of the quarrel. And when hard‐pressed in the contest, these men (for they proved themselves men in that terrible crisis) offered their services and were accepted by thousands to aid in suppressing the unlawful rebellion, slavery was at an end wherever the Federal government succeeded in that purpose. The proclamation of President Lincoln expressed an accomplished fact as to a large portion of the insurrectionary districts when he declared slavery abolished in them all. But the war being over, those who had succeeded in reestablishing the authority of the Federal government were not content to permit this great act of emancipation to rest on the actual results of the contest or the proclamation of the Executive, both of which might have been questioned in after times, and they determined to place this main and most valuable result in the Constitution of the restored Union as one of its fundamental articles. Hence, the thirteenth article of amendment of that instrument.
. . .
Before we proceed to examine more critically the provisions of this amendment, on which the plaintiffs in error rely, let us complete and dismiss the history of the recent amendments, as that history relates to the general purpose which pervades them all. A few years’ experience satisfied the thoughtful men who had been the authors of the other two amendments that, notwithstanding the restraints of those articles on the States and the laws passed under the additional powers granted to Congress, these were inadequate for the protection of life, liberty, and property, without which freedom to the slave was no boon. They were in all those States denied the right of suffrage. The laws were administered by the white man alone. It was urged that a race of men distinctively marked, as was the negro, living in the midst of another and dominant race, could never be fully secured in their person and their property without the right of suffrage. . . .
The first section of the fourteenth article to which our attention is more specially invited opens with a definition of citizenship—not only citizenship
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80 The Gilded Age and Progressive Era
of the United States, but citizenship of the States. No such definition was previously found in the Constitution, nor had any attempt been made to define it by act of Congress. It had been the occasion of much discussion in the courts, by the executive departments, and in the public journals. It had been said by eminent judges that no man was a citizen of the United States except as he was a citizen of one of the States composing the Union. Those, therefore, who had been born and resided always in the District of Columbia or in the Territories, though within the United States, were not citizens. Whether this proposition was sound or not had never been judicially decided. But it had been held by this court, in the celebrated Dred Scott case, only a few years before the outbreak of the civil war, that a man of African descent, whether a slave or not, was not and could not be a citizen of a State or of the United States. This decision, while it met the condemnation of some of the ablest statesmen and constitutional lawyers of the country, had never been overruled, and if was to be accepted as a constitutional limitation of the right of citizenship, then all the negro race who had recently been made freemen were still not only not citizens, but were incapable of becoming so by anything short of an amendment to the Constitution.
To remove this difficulty primarily, and to establish clear and comprehen- sive definition of citizenship which should declare what should constitute citizenship of the United States and also citizenship of a State, the first clause of the first section was framed. . . . It declares that persons may be citizens of the United States without regard to their citizenship of a par- ticular State, and it overturns the Dred Scott decision by making all persons born within the United States and subject to its jurisdiction citizens of the United States. That its main purpose was to establish the citizenship of the negro can admit of no doubt. . . .
The next observation is more important in view of the arguments of coun- sel in the present case. It is that the distinction between citizenship of the United States and citizenship of a State is clearly recognized and established.
Not only may a man be a citizen of the United States without being a citizen of a State, but an important element is necessary to convert the former into the latter. He must reside within the State to make him a citizen of it, but it is only necessary that he should be born or naturalized in the United States to be a citizen of the Union.
It is quite clear, then, that there is a citizenship of the United States, and a citizenship of a State, which are distinct from each other, and which depend upon different characteristics or circumstances in the individual.
We think this distinction and its explicit recognition in this amendment of great weight in this argument, because the next paragraph of this same section, which is the one mainly relied on by the plaintiffs in error, speaks
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only of privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, and does not speak of those of citizens of the several States. The argument, however, in favor of the plaintiffs rests wholly on the assumption that the citizenship is the same, and the privileges and immunities guaranteed by the clause are the same.
The language is, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States .” It is a little remarkable, if this clause was intended as a protection to the citizen of a State against the legislative power of his own State, that the word citizen of the State should be left out when it is so carefully used, and used in con- tradistinction to citizens of the United States in the very sentence which precedes it. It is too clear for argument that the change in phraseology was adopted understandingly and, with a purpose.
Of the privileges and immunities of the citizen of the United States, and of the privileges and immunities of the citizen of the State, and what they respectively are, we will presently consider; but we wish to state here that it is only the former which are placed by this clause under the protection of the Federal Constitution, and that the latter, whatever they may be, are not intended to have any additional protection by this paragraph of the amendment.
If, then, there is a difference between the privileges and immunities belonging to a citizen of the United States as such and those belonging to the citizen of the State as such, the latter must rest for their security and protection where they have heretofore rested, for they are not embraced by this paragraph of the amendment.
. . .
With the exception of these and a few other restrictions, the entire domain of the privileges and immunities of citizens of the States, as above defined, lay within the constitutional and legislative power of the States, and without that of the Federal government. Was it the purpose of the fourteenth amendment, by the simple declaration that no State should make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, to transfer the security and protection of all the civil rights which we have mentioned, from the States to the Federal government? And where it is declared that Congress Shall have the power to enforce that article, was it intended to bring within the power of Congress the entire domain of civil rights heretofore belonging exclusively to the States?
All this and more must follow if the proposition of the plaintiffs in error be sound. For not only are these rights subject to the control of Congress
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82 The Gilded Age and Progressive Era
whenever, in its discretion, any of them are supposed to be abridged by State legislation, but that body may also pass laws in advance, limiting and restricting the exercise of legislative power by the States, in their most ordinary and usual functions, as in its judgment it may think proper on all such subjects. And still further, such a construction followed by the reversal of the judgments of the Supreme Court of Louisiana in these cases, would constitute this court a perpetual censor upon all legislation of the States, on the civil rights of their own citizens, with authority to nullify such as it did not approve as consistent with those rights, as they existed at the time of the adoption of this amendment. The argument, we admit, is not always the most conclusive which is drawn from the consequences urged against the adoption of a particular construction of an instrument. But when, as in the case before us, these consequences are so serious, so far‐reaching and pervading, so great a departure from the structure and spirit of our institutions; when the effect is to fetter and degrade the State governments by subjecting them to the control of Congress in the exercise of powers heretofore universally conceded to them of the most ordinary and fundamental character; when, in fact, it radically changes the whole theory of the relations of the State and Federal governments to each other and of both these governments to the people, the argument has a force that is irresistible in the absence of language which expresses such a purpose too clearly to admit of doubt.
We are convinced that no such results were intended by the Congress which proposed these amendments, nor by the legislatures of the States which ratified them.
. . .
In the light of the history of these amendments, and the pervading purpose of them, which we have already discussed, it is not difficult to give a meaning to this clause. The existence of laws in the States where the newly emancipated negroes resided, which discriminated with gross injustice and hardship against them as a class, was the evil to be remedied by this clause, and by it such laws are forbidden.
If, however, the States did not conform their laws to its requirements, then by the fifth section of the article of amendment Congress was authorized to enforce it by suitable legislation. We doubt very much whether any action of a State not directed by way of discrimination against the negroes as a class, or on account of their race, will ever be held to come within the purview of this provision. It is so clearly a provision for that race and that emergency that a strong case would be necessary for its application to any other. But as it is a State that is to be dealt with, and not alone the validity of its laws, we
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