Cash Crops

The Big Question How did farmers, activists, workers and politicians face the problems of industrial America during the Populist and Progressive Eras?

Section 1: Short-answer questions (30 points)
In this section, you will write a two- to three-sentence response to each of the following items. Remember to use examples and be specific.

1. What factors caused many people to give up farming and move to the city? Fill in the boxes below to explain how each step led many farmers to leave their farms for a life in the city. (7 points)

Cash Crops

In the late 1800’s the majority of farmers grew enough food to support themselves, with a small percentage of product for sale to others, and the farmers were making profit. A much higher production drove down the price, which had the effect of making it more affordable to live in the city, and then added effect of forcing farmers who could not compete to find another line of work. Farmers had quit and moved to the city in the Industrial Revolution because they could get better pay working in the factories and could better support their families.

Technology

An advancement of farm technology allowed larger plots of land or numbers of animals to be grown and raised by few numbers of people, which by taking dairy farming, and one pumping machine can do the work of 5-6 people in half of the time. By being said of plowing versus someone spading and any number of other cases.

Debts
Factories in the cities attracted workers, and the availability of workers had turned into a attracted but more industry, and at the same time, as agricultural productivity steadily increased, farm land and labor were released for many other uses.

Jobs in the City
Most city jobs tend to pay more (unless you are the farm owner… especially ones subsidized by the US government), but there is public transportation and everything is closer together, so it tends to be a more convenient life.

2. What was each group’s goal, and what did they accomplish? Fill in the chart. (8 points) Group
Woman’s Christian
Temperance Union

Goal

Settlement House Movement

Urban reformers

Prohibitions of alcohol

It was critical due to its primary goal, which was to settle people into houses, and many people were settled, and many houses were
filled. To “fix” the deficiencies in education, working skills, and selfdiscipline.

Accomplishment
They had the eighteenth amendment passed, which was the prohibition of alcohol. The prohibition was a ban of sale and consumption of
alcohol.

They had cleaned up cities such as New York, makinggovernment change to a more

Muckrakers

To reform some of the country’s many problems, and the muckrakers were trying to protect consumers and put an end to the injustice and dangers of big business. Effect way of running the city to improve their citizens knowledge. The filth & horror working conditions in the meat packing industry, He’d had gone under cover to work in a packing house first so that he could write about it with greatest accuracy. He was considered a “muckraker” because he wrote about something factual and awful happening in society that most people agreed needed fixing. It worked. The novel became a bestseller, and the government cracked down on health & sanitation issues in the packing houses.

3. Study this quotation and answer the question. (6 points)
“To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land, or who underestimate the importance of preservation friendly relations with the southern white man who is their next door neighbor, I would say: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” Cast it down, making friends in every manly way of the people of all races, by whom you are surrounded. To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South…I would repeat…Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your fireside. Cast down your bucket among these people… —Booker T. Washington, 1895

In this speech at the Atlanta Cotton Exposition, Washington was talking to both black and white southerners. What was he telling them to do in order to be successful in the New South?

By making friends in every manly way of the people of all races, by whom you are surrounded, refers to sending your bucket deep into the well and bringing up a wealth of good stuff, and It’s a metaphor for casting out your life in a friendly caring way and seeing what comes back to you.

4. Explain how each of these leaders responded to the question of race relations. (9 points) Ida B. Wells:

In 1906, Ida B. Wells joined with William E.B. DuBois and others to further the Niagara Movement, and she was one of two African American women to sign “the call” to form the NAACP in 1909. Although Ida B. Wells was one of the founding members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), she was also among the few Black leaders to explicitly oppose Booker T. Washington and his strategies. As a result, she was viewed as one the most radical of the so-called “radicals” who organized the NAACP and marginalized from positions within its leadership.

W.E.B. Du Bois:

W.E.B. DuBois responded to race relations by becoming one of the founders of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored Pe ople) in 1909, and his accomplishments included being the first African-American to earn his PhD from Harvard in 1895 and in 1903 he published “The Souls of Black Folks”.

Marcus Garvey:

Garvey was deeply influenced by Booker T. Washington’s example of se lf-reliance and moral uplift, but did not agree with Washington’s accommodating stance on race relations. Rather than compromise with white Americans, Garvey urged blacks to abandon them. He railed against race mixing and openly distrusted light-skinned blacks (who often dominated leadership positions in rival organizations such as the NAACP). One of Garvey’s most controversial acts was to meet with Ku Klux Klan leaders in Atlanta in 1922 to demonstrate his agreement with the KKK’s view on miscegenation. Garvey left behind a powerful legacy of newly awakened black pride, economic independence, and reverence for Africa.

Section 2: Extended Writing (30 points)
In this section, you will show your knowledge of the content by constructing a paragraph. Remember to use examples from this unit, be specific, and follow proper paragraph- and essay-writing conventions. Write a paragraph of at least 5 sentences explaining how unions, strikes, and boycotts helped advance the interests of workers in America in the late 19th century, and what problems they faced. Organize your thoughts around these questions:

What kinds of unions were formed, and what were their goals?

Terence Powderly of the Knights of Labor and Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor, had each interested in advancing the cause of workers, but each had a very different vision of how to do so.

What actions did unions use to achieve their goals?

A strike occurs when union members decide that they will cease to work, and that they will only recommence once they are satisfied that their employer will meet their conditions.

What actions were the most successful? Which ones caused problems? Now that you have organized your thoughts, write your paragraph below .

Unions, strikes, and boycotts had helped advanced the interests of workers in America in the late 19th century, and the problem they did face was in 1902, a strike of anthracite coal miners, under the banner of the United Mine Workers. More than 100,000 miners in northeastern Pennsylvania called a strike on May 12, and kept the mines closed all that summer, and on Oct. 3, and on Oct. 16 appointed a commission of mediation and arbitration. Five days later the miners returned to their jobs, and five months later the Presidential Commission awarded them a 10 percent wage increase and shorter work days-but not the formal union recognition they had sought. Labor movement has always been divided over aims and tactics Some unions wanted broad social change, others focused narrowly on issues of wages, benefits, but by working rules.

Some of these unions wanted to organize all workers into industrial organizations, othe rs wanted to organize smaller units of skilled workers into craft organizations, so then they divided between these two broad approaches to the labor movement can be seen clearly in the experiences of two most important American union leaders of the late nineteenth century. The National Labor Union, Knights of Labor, and American Federation of Labor, but the first two failed due to different reasons, while the AFL succeeded. The AFL sought to protect all skilled workers and wanted a fair share of labor, and they didn’t push for extreme reforms only shorter hours, increased conditions, and wages, but after the panic of 1893 they continued to grow (500,000 members).