koch
Fear Itself
to see the new Robber Barons money be used wastefully! What great
American Patriots they are -
- - - R O T F L - - -
I see where old Tea Patty mentions how great life was in 1860 before we
started to have "income tax".
Of course that was when they started to use income tax to fight the
civil war. I might guess Tea Patty is a States Rightser and really deep
down wished them boys was still on the farm.
Or maybe he thought we were better off with Cholera, Typhus, 'Patent"
medicines, little roads or NON PROGRESSIVE user fee taxes like Ronny
Raygun used (and was used before the civil war.
Those user fee taxes (flat taxes etc) ARE MUCH BETTER FOR THOSE ROBBER
BARONS aren't they Tea Patty?) Sure a little hard on the working man but
who cared?
Perhaps Tea Pattys understands things like the NIH spends more doing
research than all the drug companies combined and gives this research to
the public (and drug companies).
Maybe old Tea Pattys thought that drug companies found/published
research on things like how good exercise and fish oil were for people
(those drug companies can make a mint on research and promotion like
that).
<snip>
American Cultural History
19th Century - 1890 - 1899
By 1900 the Industrial Revolution had transformed the world's economy.
Overview 1890-1899
Beginning of America's Gilded Age | 60% of the stocks listed on the
stock exchange were those of railroad | NYC had become a melting pot of
immigrants from around the world | 23,000 children were employed in the
factories of the 13 southern states
BUSINESS AND ECONOMY
The age of the giant corporation was here. American Tobacco, 1890,
American Sugar Refining Company, 1891, and General Electric, 1892, were
established during this period. At the same time came the working man's
organizations such as United Mine Workers, the American Railway Union
and the National Association of Window Trimmers (founded by L. Frank
Baum author of The Show Window and The Wonderful Wizard of OZ) unions
formed to help people make working conditions better. Giants of the age
were J. P. Morgan, Henry Villard, James Buchanan Duke, Andrew Carnegie,
names still recognized today. The stage for the twentieth century was
set and America was a primary player.
In 1890 Congress enacted the Sherman Anti-trust Act. This began a series
of Supreme Court cases which originated issues of current corporate
rules. Standard Oil was dissolved in 1892 and later reestablished as
Standard Oil of New Jersey in 1899. In 1895, in the United States v. E.
C. Knight Company, the U. S. Supreme Court held that the Sherman
Anti-trust Act covered only monopolies in restraint of trade, not
manufacturing. The Supreme Court held in Addyston Pipe & Steel Company
v. United States, 1899, that negotiations between corporations to
eliminate competition violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
Labor unions were established to improve labor relations. The United
Mine Workers, 1890, was begun by a merger of the Knights of Labor Trade
Assembly No. 135 and the National Progressive Union of Miners and Mine
Laborers. The American Railway Union was organized in 1893 by Eugene V.
Debs. The National Organization of Manufacturers, a businessmen's group
started in 1895. In 1893, financial panic erupted when American gold
reserves fell below $100 million, setting off a national depression that
lasted for four years.
Hundreds of railroad companies, steel mills and other businesses failed.
Over the course of 1894, 750,000 workers went on strike. Congress
declared Labor Day a national holiday. In 1897, seventy-five thousand
UMW coal miners in Ohio, West Virgina and Pennsylvania went on strike
winning an eight hour day, semimonthly pay and the elmination of company
stores. Also in 1897, L. Frank Baum, author of the Oz series of
children's books, published the first issue of The Show Window a monthly
journal on the design of department store window displays. Thorstein
Veblen published the Theory of the Leisure Class in 1899, an attack on
the "conspicuous consumption" of the nation's business elite.
.The deplorable living conditions in the tenaments where many were
forced to live were disclosed in Jacob Riis's book, How the Other Half
Lives. The competition for jobs, accelerated by the Panic of 1893,
stirred antagonism toward these newcomers who were willing to work for
less pay. The Federal Immigration Act of 1891 tightened regulations for
those who would be admitted to the United States. In 1896, the
Immigration Restriction Bill, first of many bills to impose a literary
test for admittance, was introduced in Congress but was vetoed by
President Cleveland. Despite the hardships and the discrimination
still they came although as many as a third found life too hard and
retured to their homelands.
EDUCATION
A wife writing some fifty years after the fact described how her
husband, Thomas A. Spooner, had sought an education in a rural area of
southern Arkansas in order to realize his dream of becoming a
Presyterian minister. The financial difficuties, the travel difficulties
in reaching school, the difficulties experienced on becoming a teacher
at the ripe old age of nineteen, all form a part of the narrative of
what was probably a typical ambitious rural youth of the 1890's.
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
The field of medicine gradually became more modern. Lt. Col. George
Miller Sternberg helped to develop the field of bacteriology. Rubber
gloves were first used in surgery at Johns Hopkins. Drugs were freely
available, and abuse common. Heroin, for instance, was sold as a cough
medicine
As the country became intrenched in the industrial age, it developed a
social conscience. Partly due to the efforts of environmentalist John
Muir, Yosemite National Park and Sequoia National Park were established
in 1890 to protect native species of animal and plant life. The Field
Museum of National History in Chicago, the New York Aquarium and the
Wildlife Conservation Society sprang up to introduce city dwellers to
wildllife.
Horseless carriages came closer to being practical. William Morrison
made an electric automobile in 1891.
By the end of the decade, there were 8,000 automobiles registered in the
entire country, and ten miles of paved roads of many makes and models.
Labor movements grew stronger throughout the 1890's in response to
conditions created by increased industrialization, crowded urban areas,
and the rise of big business. Jacob Riis wrote How the Other Half Lives,
1890, about life in urban slums. The federal government immigrant
receiving station on Ellis Island opened in 1892 to handle the huge
numbers of people coming into America. Jane Addams wrote Hull-House Maps
and Papers in 1895 which reported on the living conditions of poor
Chicagoans. Women's rights grew as suffrage was granted in states like
Colorado, 1893, and Utah. <end snip>