The (re)United States: 1877 - 1900

The (re)United States: 1877 - 1900

Données clés

Faculté	Lettres
Département	Département d’histoire générale
Professeur(s)	Aline Helg
Cours	The United States and Latin America: late 18th and 20th centuries

Lectures

• The Americas on the eve of independence
• The independence of the United States
• The U.S. Constitution and Early 19th Century Society
• The Haitian Revolution and its Impact in the Americas
• The independence of Latin American nations
• Latin America around 1850: societies, economies, policies
• The Northern and Southern United States circa 1850: immigration and slavery
• The American Civil War and Reconstruction: 1861 - 1877
• The (re)United States: 1877 - 1900
• Regimes of Order and Progress in Latin America: 1875 - 1910
• The Mexican Revolution: 1910 - 1940
• American society in the 1920s
• The Great Depression and the New Deal: 1929 - 1940
• From Big Stick Policy to Good Neighbor Policy
• Coups d'état and Latin American populisms
• The United States and World War II
• Latin America during the Second World War
• US Post-War Society: Cold War and the Society of Plenty
• The Cold War in Latin America and the Cuban Revolution
• The Civil Rights Movement in the United States

The train is very important in the reconstruction of the United States after the Civil War; it was a failure, but it was a chance to transform the United States in a different way. The secessionist states of the South are rapidly returning to the Union. From 1870 to 1900, the United States underwent a period of profound changes that transformed it into a major industrial power.

Languages

Español Français

Role of the railways

At the ceremony for the driving of the "Last Spike" at Promontory Summit, Utah, May 10, 1869.

The railways will play an important role, whereas now there are practically no trains in the United States; unlike in Latin America, the construction of railways is not primarily for exports, but for the formation of a huge internal market. The rail network links East to West and also North to South with an internal network.

In 1870, there were 85,000 kilometres of railways, in 1900 320,000, i.e. four times as many. All the railways are privately owned, they impose the four eastern time zones in order to coordinate their schedules. However, this network is formed around corruption, haste, competition, it is a network that is not always well known. Its construction has been heavily subsidized by both the states and the federal government. In the process, companies have become extremely powerful, having accumulated huge land holdings along the railroads.

At the same time as the railroad network was being built, the country was building a communications network through telegraph and post. Even united by the railways and the new means of communication the States of the Union remain very different from each other, we can distinguish three regions which are the West, the South and the North-East.

The West

Conquest of Amerindian territories

Mass grave with Lakota who died after the massacre at Wounded Knee.

These are the states freshly taken from Mexico or Great Britain, these lands were mainly the lands of the Amerindians. From 1850 to 1890, the survivors of the great deportations were again displaced and confined to small reserves under federal control.

It was during this period that the buffalo were literally exterminated on the central plains. The last great battle against the Amerindians took place at Wounded Knee in 1890 when the federal army massacred 200 sick and hungry Sioux.

The total number of Amerindians rose from 330,000 in 1860 to 237,000 in 1900. On the other hand, the population of the West increased from about 2 million to 20 million. The total population of the country increases from 31 million to 76 million.

From 0.1% of the total population in 1860, the Amerindians were only 0.003% in 1900.

Rapid colonization

The American West across the Mississippi River. In dark red, the states that are still considered part of it: California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, plus Alaska and Hawaii. In hatched red, states that are sometimes considered part of the South or Middle West: Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota.

Rid of its Indians and bison, the West was very quickly colonized by railways, but also colonized by the expansion of cattle breeding by cowboys, a quarter of whom were African-Americans. The cows are quickly sent to Chicago, which becomes the capital of beef slaughter and beef industrialism thanks to refrigeration, and it is at this time that steak begins to be part of the American diet.

At the same time, hundreds of thousands of farmers from Eastern, Central and Eastern Europe moved to the Great Plains to cultivate corn and wheat, among other crops.

This colonization by the farmers was difficult, but also by a large part of Chinese who came to settle mainly in California to participate in gold mining and to work in mining camps and small businesses.

The colonization of the interior is difficult even though agriculture is becoming mechanized and transportation is improving the isolation remains strong while the winter is cold and very hot.

It is also in this context that large mail-order companies such as Sears were created with its famous catalogue which not only made products from the cities available to farmers, but standardized consumption at the national level.

Although the West was practically conquered in 1890, it remains very rural. It is a conquest that plays a fundamental role in the national culture, as Frederick Jackson Turner theorized. According to him, the repeated experience of colonizing new frontiers on the continent has made Americans an iniquitous, adventurous, optimistic and democratic people.

It is an interpretation that has been criticized by recent historical research, but one that is still shared by most Americans today and which is maintained in the 19th century by an abundant popular culture. The metaphor of conquest endured, when Kennedy launched his aid programs in Latin America and the peace corps, he said they would conquer a new frontier.

The South

The reunification of the country is to the detriment of blacks, who will very quickly react to the black codes imposed by the southerners and other violations of the law by resorting to the courts.

As early as 1876, the Supreme Court, still dominated by former slaveholders, ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Citizenship Act and the Bill of Rights for American-born blacks did not require the federal government to protect the civil rights of blacks and that each state could regulate race relations as it saw fit.

In 1896, the Supreme Court legalized separation in public places as long as it did not prevent both races from having equal access to public services. Since the end of the reconstruction, the XIV and XV amendments remained a dead letter until the mid-1960s.

The right to vote was to be abolished by the codes, now the Supreme Court legalizes the "separated but equal". The United States Supreme Court carries enormous weight, rights are never taken for granted, and what black African Americans gained in the 1870s disappears very quickly.

Around 1890 in the south, segregation, racial violence, lynchings, black codes were imposed with the consent of the Supreme Court. The large plantation disappears to be replaced by sharecropping, the sharecroppers earn little and become indebted to the owners as the price of cotton on the international market falls. For the South, this is the end of the Cotton King.

In the South, this industrialization that began during the civil war continued mainly in the steel and textile industries. The exploitation of wood is also developing with the massive deforestation of the South. Due to the indebtedness of the South, particularly during the war, all its industries very quickly came under the control of industrialists from the North.

The South remains mainly rural, it continues to produce mainly raw materials processed or consumed in the North and its economy depends on capital and management from the North.

Labour is segregated and slave-like systems dominate, in particular the system of forced labour through the black codes; thousands of blacks are sentenced to long terms of forced labour. All this is done at enormous mortality rates and without moving the financiers and even the citizens of the North.

In general, blacks are excluded from industrial work, but the whites who generally work there come from poor and indebted peasant families are also indebted and underpaid. Small complementary towns will be formed, dominated by a textile industry that supplies and controls everything almost as it did at the time of the plantation, but for the whites. However, the South is maintained in the illusion of the white race.

The Northeast

The northeast is changing profoundly and much more than the south.

Industrialization

In 1865 the value of manufactured goods in the United States was $2 billion, in 1900 it reached $13 billion. The United States has become the world's most productive nation and its industry produces one-third of the world's manufactured goods.

Four factors explain this rapid industrialization:

• creation of a national consumer market through railways, communications, postal services, advertising and mail order sales.
• technological innovations such as Bell's telephone in 1876 and Thomas Edison's light bulb in 1879. All this will lead to the development of industries in which mechanization and rationalization of work, in which workers are increasingly harnessed to the machine.
• Economic protectionism, i.e. the maintenance of high import taxes by a federal government that is very submissive to the major industrialists in order to protect industry from foreign competition.
• unbridled capitalism.

The era of unbridled capitalism

Portrait de John D. Rockefeller peint par John Singer Sargent en 1917.

Within the United States, wild capitalism is developing, with entrepreneurship playing a major role, becoming a model of American society replacing the great merchant and planter of the first half of the century. Two men embody this wild capitalism: Carnegie and Rockefeller.

Carnegie est le symbole du rêve américain, il est né en Écosse, émigre avec sa famille à l’âge de 13 ans, fait tous les métiers puis entre dans une compagnie de chemin de fer n’hésitant pas à hypothéquer la maison de sa mère pour investir dans ses premières affaires qui sont les wagons-lits passant à l’industrie sidérurgique, aux locomotives et à l’acier ; il se spéciale dans la concentration verticale c’est-à-dire de la matière première au produit fini et dans ce cas c’est de la mine de charbon et de fer a l’industrie sidérurgique de pointe. Il est devenu multimillionnaire, mais en 1901 il renonce à son empire et devient un philanthrope jusqu’à sa mort en 1919 en dépensant 350 millions en dons.

Standard Oil Refinery No. 1 in Cleveland, Ohio, 1897.

Rockefeller est un spécialiste de la concentration horizontale c’est-à-dire de la concentration d’un maximum d’entreprises produisant le même produit soit le quasi-monopole dans un secteur donné. Il est né dans l’État de New York commençant par être comptable puis cadre dans une société de courtage ; en 1859, il comprend l’importance que va avoir le pétrole et en 1870 il fonde la Standard Oil Company, 10 ans plus tard il contrôle 95% de la production pétrolière du pays souvent grâce à la coercition fondant le premier trust pétrolier qui lui permit de fixer la quantité de pétrole et le prix de vente du pétrole.

Rockefeller va produire plus de réactions que Carnegie. Lorsque le Congrès tente de protéger les petites entreprises par une loi antitrust, Rockefeller s’entoure d’experts en matière de lois et fonde le premier holding c’est-à-dire une société qui contrôle différentes entreprises en acquérant une partie importante de leur capital, mais sans en avoir le monopole.

Durant les dernières années du XIXème siècle dans tous les grands secteurs, des centaines d’entreprises disparaissent pour être absorbées par des géants dont vont naitre Goodyear ou encore General Electric ; tout se fait avec la protection de la Cour suprême tandis qu’ironiquement la loi antitrust sera appliquée contre les syndicats sous le prétexte qu’ils sont anarchistes et menace la libre concurrence du travail.

La loi du plus fort

En 1890, 125 000 Américains sur 63 millions soit en peu moins de 2% de la population possèdent la moitié de la richesse nationale qu’ils étalent sans vergogne. La quasi-totalité de ces « happy few » est protestants pratiquants et anglo-saxons.

Leur richesse monumentale provoque certaines caricatures, mais pas vraiment de critiques de fond, car elle est justifiée par le darwinisme social de Herbert Spencer qui applique la théorie de l’évolution des espèces de Darwin à l’humanité. Le triomphe des industriels s’explique par la survie des plus forts, des plus doués, des plus méritants ; le triomphe industriel des États-Unis est expliqué par la supériorité de la race anglo-saxonne.

Tout cela est aussi la loi de la nature et la loi de dieu. Carnegie publie L’évangile de la fortune tandis que Rockefeller déclare que « dieu m’a donné mon argent ». Un pasteur vend à un million d’exemplaires un pamphlet qui soutient que construire une fortune est un devoir chrétien.

Vont être mis en compétitions des hommes, des femmes, des enfants de diverses origines, de diverses races que rien ne protège contre la crise économique, les accidents du travail, la maladie ou encore la vieillesse. Les travailleurs travaillent de 10 à 14 heures par jour, 6 à 7 jours par semaine pour un salaire journalier de moins de 1 dollar et sans aucune protection.

Les travailleurs tentent d’améliorer leurs conditions de vie émigrant d’un endroit à l’autre, en travaillant plus et en s’organisant. Cependant, il est difficile de s’organiser quand on est différent ; un syndicat nommé les chevaliers du travail formé en 1870 accepte les travailleurs de toutes origines, de couleur et qui en 1886 compte un million de membres grâce à une campagne en faveur de la journée de 8 heures.

Gravure de 1886 parue dans le journal Harper's Weekly représentant la tragédie de Haymarket Square.

Le premier mai 1886, une bombe dans une manifestation contre la violence policière à Chicago qui tue 7 policiers. La bombe est rapidement attribuée sans preuve à des anarchistes dont quatre sont condamnés à être pendus tandis que la presse accuse faussement les chevaliers du travail d’être en lien avec ces anarchistes amenant à l’interdiction de ce syndicat.

Dès mai 1886, le syndicalisme de classe est en chute libre aux États-Unis pour être remplacé par le syndicalisme de négociation par secteur. La fédération américaine du travail (FAL) est l’incarnation de ce syndicalisme ne représentant que l’aristocratie du travail, les ouvriers qualifiés, les blancs, mais non pas les migrants négociant au cas par cas de meilleures conditions pour ses adhérents tout en poliçant les travailleurs non qualifiés et en rejetant tout programme politique.

Le syndicalisme de négociation qui rejette la lutte de classe domine encore aujourd’hui à la fois à cause de la répression de tout syndicalisme et de classe et dans la foi au rêve américain que chacun peut devenir un Carnegie ou un Rockefeller ; à l’inverse si on est pauvre c’est qu’on est moins capable et qu’on ne travaille pas assez, on mérite d’être riche et on mérite d’être pauvre.

L’urbanisation

Broadway en 1909.

L’urbanisation est due au fait que les grandes fabriques se situent dans les villes et c’est là où les travailleurs se concentrent. Il faut voir que le nord-est s’urbanise encore plus, dès 1890 on a plusieurs villes de plus de 250 000 habitants, New York a plus de 3 millions d’habitants ; dans ces villes se concentre autant la grande richesse que la grande pauvreté.

De plus en plus, les habitants vivent dans des communautés distinctes dans des espaces limités et des ghettos pour les pauvres.

Les partis démocrate et républicain

On a eu une tentative d’une partie du peuple qui aurait regroupé les fermiers du Nord et du Sud, le système bipartite républicain au Nord et dans les Californie représentant l’industrie et le protectionnisme contre les importations et les démocrates représentant le Sud blanc, les fermiers et des groupes d’immigrants au centre, le bipartisme tient bon sans qu’un parti ne remporte une large majorité.

À partir de 1880, les élections représentent une mobilisation spectaculaire et coûteuse ; avec l’accroissement énorme de l’appareil d’État et de la fonction publique, chaque parti devient une machine politique recrutant des électeurs parmi les nouveaux migrants ; la corruption est largement répandue, les législateurs probusiness reçoivent des actions des industries qui les protègent et le votant et militant reçoivent des emplois publics. On est très loin de l’Amérique rurale, vertueuse et puritaine de 1776.

Annexes

• Cosmas, Graham A. An Army for Empire; the United States Army in the Spanish-American War. Columbia: U of Missouri, 1971. Print.
• Wealth, by Andrew Carnegie, North American Review Vol.148, Issue 391 pp. 653–665, June 1889. (Later published as Part I of The Gospel of Wealth)
• The Best Fields for Philanthropy, by Andrew Carnegie, North American Review Vol.149, Issue 397 pp. 682–699, December 1889. (Later published as Part II of The Gospel of Wealth)
• Excerpts from "Wealth" by Andrew Carnegie, North American Review, 148, no. 391 (June 1889)*Carnegie, South American View, 223 no. 876 (October 1982)