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.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

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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Immigrants in the Industrial Age 165

5 Theodore Roosevelt, Hyphenated Americanism, 1915 11

From the 1890s until the early 1920s, the term “hyphenated American” was used as a derogatory description of immigrant Americans who retained strong loyalties to their native countries, particularly Irish‐ Americans and German‐Americans during World War I. Both Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson applied this term to those they believed did not have as their primary goal the best interests of the American republic.

Figure 7.2 Sweatshop in Ludlow Street Tenement, New York, 1889. From Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half Lives , 1890 (New York: Dover Publications, 1971), p. 96. Source : Photograph by Jacob A. Riis, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

11 October 12, 1915, address to the Knights of Columbus, Carnegie Hall, New York City.

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166 The Gilded Age and Progressive Era

The following speech, delivered to the Irish‐American, Catholic group Knights of Columbus, has been used up to the present day by conservative and nativist Americans who disagree with growing multiculturalism, ethnic identity, and immigration in American society. Historians have disagreed over the intent of Roosevelt’s speech and have used it to justify nationalism and anti‐immigrant sentiments, as well as to confirm the view that Roosevelt was a racist who opposed immigration to the United States by non‐Europeans, particularly Asians.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.

The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German‐Americans, Irish‐Americans, English‐Americans, French‐ Americans, Scandinavian‐Americans or Italian‐Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart‐allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.

For an American citizen to vote as a German‐American, an Irish‐ American, or an English‐American, is to be a traitor to American

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Immigrants in the Industrial Age 167

institutions; and those hyphenated Americans who terrorize American politicians by threats of the foreign vote are engaged in treason to the American Republic.

Americanization

The foreign‐born population of this country must be an Americanized pop- ulation—no other kind can fight the battles of America either in war or peace. It must talk the language of its native‐born fellow‐citizens, it must possess American citizenship and American ideals. It must stand firm by its oath of allegiance in word and deed and must show that in very fact it has renounced allegiance to every prince, potentate, or foreign government. It must be maintained on an American standard of living so as to prevent labor disturbances in important plants and at critical times. None of these objects can be secured as long as we have immigrant colonies, ghettos, and immigrant sections, and above all they cannot be assured so long as we consider the immigrant only as an industrial asset. The immigrant must not be allowed to drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter. Our object is not to imitate one of the older racial types, but to maintain a new American type and then to secure loyalty to this type. We cannot secure such loyalty unless we make this a country where men shall feel that they have justice and also where they shall feel that they are required to perform the duties imposed upon them. The policy of “Let alone” which we have hitherto pursued is thoroughly vicious from two stand‐points. By this policy we have permitted the immigrants, and too often the native‐born laborers as well, to suffer injustice. Moreover, by this policy we have failed to impress upon the immigrant and upon the native‐born as well that they are expected to do justice as well as to receive justice, that they are expected to be heartily and actively and single‐mindedly loyal to the flag no less than to benefit by living under it.

We cannot afford to continue to use hundreds of thousands of immi- grants merely as industrial assets while they remain social outcasts and menaces any more than fifty years ago we could afford to keep the black man merely as an industrial asset and not as a human being. We cannot afford to build a big industrial plant and herd men and women about it without care for their welfare. We cannot afford to permit squalid over- crowding or the kind of living system which makes impossible the decen- cies and necessities of life. We cannot afford the low wage rates and the merely seasonal industries which mean the sacrifice of both individual and family life and morals to the industrial machinery. We cannot afford to

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168 The Gilded Age and Progressive Era

leave American mines, munitions plants, and general resources in the hands of alien workmen, alien to America and even likely to be made hostile to America by machinations such as have recently been provided in the case of the two foreign embassies in Washington. We cannot afford to run the risk of having in time of war men working on our railways or working in our munition plants who would in the name of duty to their own foreign coun- tries bring destruction to us. Recent events have shown us that incitements to sabotage and strikes are in the view of at least two of the great foreign powers of Europe within their definition of neutral practices. What would be done to us in the name of war if these things are done to us in the name of neutrality?

One America

All of us, no matter from what land our parents came, no matter in what way we may severally worship our Creator, must stand shoulder to shoulder in a united America for the elimination of race and religious prejudice. We must stand for a reign of equal justice to both big and small. We must insist on the maintenance of the American standard of living. We must stand for an adequate national control which shall secure a better training of our young men in time of peace, both for the work of peace and for the work of war. We must direct every national resource, material and spiritual, to the task not of shirking difficulties, but of training our people to overcome difficulties. Our aim must be, not to make life easy and soft, not to soften soul and body, but to fit us in virile fashion to do a great work for all mankind. This great work can only be done by a mighty democracy, with these qualities of soul, guided by those qualities of mind, which will both make it refuse to do injustice to any other nation, and also enable it to hold its own against aggression by any other nation. In our relations with the outside world, we must abhor wrongdoing, and disdain to commit it, and we must no less disdain the baseness of spirit which lamely submits to wrongdoing. Finally and most important of  all, we must strive for the establishment within our own borders of that stern and lofty standard of personal and public neutrality which shall guarantee to each man his rights, and which shall insist in return upon the full performance by each man of his duties both to his neighbor and to the  great nation whose flag must symbolize in the future as it has symbolized in the past the highest hopes of all mankind.

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