Continuity and Change in Period 6 in two minutes
- The 1890 census reported that the frontier line had broken up, and on July 12, 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner argued that free land made Americans practical, inventive, individualist, and democratic.
- Evidence for change pointed to industry: railroad track tripled from 1870 to 1890, steel output grew more than fiftyfold, and Chicago grew from about 300,000 people to over a million by 1890.
- Prices fell and real wages rose, but depressions in 1873 and 1893, child labor, and violent strikes showed uneven gains while the gap between rich and poor widened.
- Immigration, the new middle class, department stores, and women's organizations changed daily life, while the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago showed off electric light and the Ferris wheel.
- Continuity remained: most Americans still lived in the country in 1890, and Jim Crow, Chinese exclusion, the Dawes Act, and women's lack of a national vote kept power unequal.
- Government kept aiding business through land grants, tariffs, and injunctions, and the Panic of 1893 and the Pullman strike in 1894 raised the question of who the new economy served.
- On the exam: expect continuity and change questions, often with a Turner stimulus; the period connects back to Reconstruction in Period 5 and forward to Period 7, which begins in 1890.
Topic 6.14 key terms
- Industrialization
The shift from farms and workshops to machines, factories and railroads. Between 1865 and 1898 steel, oil, electricity and giant corporations drove it, and it changed how Americans worked, where they lived and what they bought.
- World's Columbian Exposition
The 1893 world's fair in Chicago, held for the 400th anniversary of Columbus's voyage. It drew about 27 million admissions in six months and showed off American industry, electricity and city planning.
- Gilded Age
The late 1800s, named for an 1873 novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner. Gilded means covered in a thin layer of gold: dazzling growth and wealth on the surface, with poverty, corruption and inequality underneath.
- Frontier thesis
Frederick Jackson Turner's 1893 argument that the moving edge of settlement, the frontier, shaped American democracy and character, and that its closing ended an era. Critics point out the land was not empty: it was taken from Native nations.
- Frontier line
The western edge of settled land on census maps: the line where population fell below two people per square mile. It moved west with every census from 1790 to 1880. In 1890 the Census Office said it could no longer be drawn.
- Corroborate
Back a claim up with evidence. If a source or fact supports the argument, you say so, and you say why.
- Qualify
Show where a claim stops being true. The argument holds in some places, for some people, or for some years, and not others.
- Modify
Rewrite the claim to fit the evidence. If the facts contradict part of the argument, change the claim.
- Continuity and change
An AP way of reasoning about a period: show what stayed the same, show what changed, then judge how much changed overall.
- Gospel of Wealth
Andrew Carnegie's argument that the rich owe society and should give their fortunes away in ways that benefit everyone. Universities and libraries were the classic gifts.
- Real wages
Pay measured by what it can buy. When prices fall faster than pay, real wages rise even if the paycheck stays the same. Between 1865 and 1898 real wages rose for many workers, while the gap between rich and poor widened.
- Urbanization
The growth of cities and the rising share of Americans who live in them. Between 1870 and 1890 the urban share rose from about 26% to about 35%, fed by farm families and immigrants.
- Complexity
Making an argument that weighs change against continuity, or shows how one development affected different groups differently. A thesis with complexity says what changed, what didn't, and for whom.
- Spoils system
Giving government jobs to loyal party workers as rewards. A disappointed job-seeker shot President Garfield in 1881, and Congress answered with the Pendleton Act (1883), which put some federal jobs under a merit exam (KC-6.3.II.A).
- Panic of 1893
A severe depression that began in 1893 as railroads and banks failed. Hundreds of banks and thousands of businesses closed, millions of workers lost their jobs, and Washington offered no relief. Hard times lasted until about 1897 (KC-6.1.II.A).
- Pullman Strike (1894)
A nationwide railroad boycott that began when Pullman's workers struck. Eugene Debs's American Railway Union refused to handle Pullman cars, and President Cleveland used a court order and federal troops to break the strike (KC-6.1.II.C).
- Staff
The White City's 'marble': plaster of Paris and jute fiber, cast in molds and painted white over a timber or steel frame. It was cheap, fast to hang and only meant to last one season.
Transcript
Quotes are from the historical record and name their source. Lines marked Dramatized are reconstructions.
The Gold Key
May 1, 1893
Key terms: Industrialization, World's Columbian Exposition, Gilded Age, Frontier thesis
Promontory Summit, Utah Territory May 10, 1869
Western Union operator at Promontory
DONE.
Almost twenty-four years after DONE, another telegraph key sat on a table in Chicago.
It was an ordinary telegraph key. Except it was gold, and the button was ivory.
Grover Cleveland
As by a touch the machinery that gives life to this vast exposition is now set in motion…
Across the grounds, the circuit started a giant steam engine in Machinery Hall.
Fountains leapt. Flags unrolled along the rooftops. A cloth dropped from a gilded Republic, sixty-five feet tall.
This was the World's Columbian Exposition, for the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus's voyage. It opened a year late.
People called it the White City. Almost none of it was built to last.
That summer, in a room downtown, a young historian said the frontier was gone. And with it, the first period of American history. Was he right?
The Line
1890–July 12, 1893
Key terms: Frontier line, Frontier thesis, Corroborate, Qualify, Modify
Every ten years, the census marked where settlement thinned to two people per square mile. That frontier line crept west for a century.
In 1890, the line broke into islands, and the Census Office said so.
Frederick Jackson Turner
…at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line.
A new hall on Michigan Avenue, built for the fair's congresses. Hot. Frederick Jackson Turner, thirty-one, of Wisconsin, had a paper to read.
Several papers came first. Some listeners had spent the afternoon at Buffalo Bill's Wild West. They had already seen the frontier that day.
Frederick Jackson Turner
The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development.
Each new frontier, he argued, rebuilt settlers as practical, inventive, individualist and, above all, democratic Americans.
…the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.
Frederick Jackson Turner
…the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.
The room was unmoved. Within a generation, it was one of the most influential essays American historians had written.
Turner said the frontier made America. This unit pointed at the railroad, the factory and the city.
Test it three ways. Evidence can corroborate a claim, qualify it, or make you modify it.
Dusk
a composite evening, September 1893
Key terms: World's Columbian Exposition, Continuity and change, Frontier thesis, Industrialization
Now test him.
Here's where this unit happened.
Almost every story in this unit left something at this fair.
An evening in September 1893. It costs fifty cents to get in. The fair also sells its own fifty-cent coin. For a dollar.
Carry Turner's sentence with you. At each lamp there's a piece of evidence. File it as change, continuity or both, and watch what it does to his claim.
Look at his sentence now. It's covered in your red pencil. That's an argument getting better.
Two Hundred Sixty-Four Feet
the same night, September 1893
Key terms: Gospel of Wealth, Real wages, Urbanization, Complexity
Daniel Burnham, who ran construction, wanted something to top the Eiffel Tower. A Pittsburgh bridge builder named George Ferris answered with a wheel.
Two hundred sixty-four feet high. Thirty-six cars, sixty riders each. Fifty cents a ride, on top of the fifty at the gate.
From up here, the change is easy to see. Most of these lamps run on Westinghouse's alternating current.
On the Midway's edge is the University of Chicago, opened last October with Rockefeller's money. Carnegie called that kind of giving the Gospel of Wealth.
Now look past the lights. That orange glow to the south is Illinois Steel's South Works. Farther on lies Pullman's company town.
West, the Union Stock Yards. North, a city of a million, where three in four people are immigrants or their children.
In these years prices fell and real wages rose. More children worked for wages. The gap between the richest and everyone else grew faster.
From 1870 to 1890 the population grew by more than half. Railroad track tripled. Steel output grew about sixtyfold. And most Americans still lived in the country.
Henry Adams
Chicago asked in 1893 for the first time the question whether the American people knew where they were driving.
Here's one answer. Industrialization changed America more than the frontier ever did: how people worked, where they lived, what they bought.
It changed much less about who held power. Race, sex and conquest still decided who shared in it.
That's complexity: what changed, what didn't, and for whom. Your version may use different evidence. It should.
Frederick Jackson Turner
…the American energy will continually demand a wider field for its exercise.
Down on the Midway, a round building holds a painted volcano, Kīlauea. Its promoter, Lorrin Thurston, helped overthrow Hawaii's queen that January.
Staff
October 1893–July 1894
Key terms: Spoils system, Panic of 1893, Pullman Strike (1894), Staff, Gilded Age
The fair was supposed to close with a grand ceremony on October 30. It never happened.
Carter H. Harrison
Two nights before, a man shot Mayor Carter Harrison dead. He believed the mayor owed him a city job. Twelve years earlier, a disappointed office-seeker had killed President Garfield.
That winter, jobless men slept on the stone floors of police stations and City Hall. Some found shelter in the empty palaces.
In May 1894, Pullman's workers struck. Their wages had been cut by about a quarter. Their rents hadn't.
In July, fourteen months after he pressed the gold key, President Cleveland sent federal troops into Chicago.
On the evening of July 5, fire broke out in the empty fairgrounds. Nobody ever proved who started it.
Most of the Court of Honor burned that night. A huge crowd watched from the shore, as if it were one last show.
The white skin was staff, plaster and jute fiber painted to look like marble. It fell away in sheets. Underneath, the big halls' steel frames still stood.
By morning, the palaces were charred wood, blackened plaster and bent steel.
Above the ruins, the gilded Republic still stood.
Twain and Warner called this era the Gilded Age: a thin coat of gold over something cheaper. The White City was a Gilded Age you could walk through.
But the steel under the plaster was real. So was the question the fair never answered: who was all of this for?