A summary of Time Period #6 [1865–1898]

The transformation of the United States from an agricultural to an increasingly industrialized and urbanized society brought about significant economic, political, social, environmental, and cultural changes.

In the decades following the Civil War, the United States experienced extraordinary economic growth. New technologies, abundant natural resources, expanding railroad networks, growing markets, immigration, and government policies favorable to business helped accelerate industrialization. Railroads linked producers and consumers across the continent, encouraged western settlement, stimulated industries such as steel and coal, and contributed to the development of a more integrated national economy.

Industrialization encouraged the growth of increasingly large corporations. Business leaders used strategies such as vertical and horizontal integration to consolidate production and reduce competition. Corporations, trusts, and holding companies accumulated unprecedented economic power in industries such as oil, steel, railroads, and finance. Supporters of the new industrial order emphasized technological progress, economic growth, individual initiative, and theories such as Social Darwinism, while critics questioned the growing concentration of wealth and power.

Industrial growth also transformed the lives of American workers. Millions of Americans increasingly depended on wages earned in factories, mines, railroads, and other industrial workplaces. Workers frequently faced long hours, dangerous conditions, low wages, and limited job security. In response, organizations such as the Knights of Labor and American Federation of Labor attempted to increase workers' bargaining power. Labor conflicts including the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, Haymarket affair, Homestead Strike, and Pullman Strike demonstrated growing tensions between workers and employers and raised questions about the government's role in the industrial economy.

The West

Economic development was accompanied by rapid settlement of the West. Federal policies, railroad construction, mining, ranching, and the availability of farmland encouraged hundreds of thousands of settlers to move westward. The Homestead Act, transcontinental railroads, and federal land policies facilitated migration and linked western farms, ranches, and mines to national and international markets.

Expansion came at enormous cost to Native Americans. The federal government repeatedly violated treaties and supported policies designed to place Native peoples on reservations and open additional lands to white settlement. Warfare, destruction of the buffalo, loss of tribal lands, and reservation policies threatened Native communities and cultures. Native peoples resisted through military action, negotiation, migration, and efforts to preserve their cultures and communities.

By the late nineteenth century, federal policy increasingly emphasized assimilation. The Dawes Act of 1887 divided tribal lands into individual allotments in an effort to encourage Native Americans to adopt white farming practices and private property ownership. The policy weakened tribal landholding and contributed to the transfer of millions of acres of Native land to non-Native ownership. Boarding schools and other assimilation programs also attempted to suppress Native languages and cultural traditions.

Western agriculture became increasingly commercialized. Farmers purchased machinery, borrowed money, and depended on railroads and distant markets to sell their crops. Increased agricultural production in the United States and abroad contributed to declining commodity prices, while farmers faced debts, railroad charges, and other economic pressures. These conditions contributed to the growth of organizations such as the Grange and Farmers' Alliances and eventually helped produce the Populist movement.

Immigration and Urbanization

Industrialization and immigration contributed to dramatic urban growth. Millions of immigrants came to the United States seeking economic opportunities or escaping poverty, political upheaval, and religious persecution. Earlier nineteenth-century immigration had come largely from northern and western Europe, while increasing numbers of immigrants toward the end of the century came from southern and eastern Europe. Chinese immigrants also played an important role in the economy of the West, particularly in railroad construction, mining, agriculture, and urban businesses.

Rapid urbanization created both opportunities and serious problems. Cities offered jobs, education, entertainment, consumer goods, and the possibility of economic advancement, but they also experienced overcrowding, inadequate sanitation, dangerous housing, poverty, and stark inequalities of wealth. By 1890, approximately 28 percent of Americans lived in cities with populations greater than 10,000, illustrating the dramatic shift toward an increasingly urban society.

Immigrants frequently created ethnic neighborhoods, churches, mutual-aid societies, businesses, and cultural organizations that helped preserve community traditions while assisting newcomers in adapting to American life. Urban political machines also provided jobs and social services in exchange for political support. Reformers responded to urban problems through organizations such as settlement houses, while middle-class women became increasingly involved in charitable and reform activities.

Immigration also generated strong nativist reactions. Critics blamed immigrants for urban problems, labor competition, and cultural change. Anti-Chinese sentiment in the West contributed to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which severely restricted Chinese immigration. Immigration therefore simultaneously contributed to American economic growth and cultural diversity while generating debates about race, citizenship, labor, and national identity. The CED specifically identifies international and internal migration as forces that transformed American cities and culture during Period 6.

The New South and African American Life

Southern political and business leaders promoted the idea of a "New South" based on industrial development and economic diversification. Textile mills, tobacco processing, railroads, and other industries expanded, but agriculture remained central to the southern economy. Sharecropping and tenant farming kept many Black and white farmers economically dependent on landowners and merchants.

African Americans faced increasingly severe political and social restrictions as white southern Democrats regained control of state governments following Reconstruction. Poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, intimidation, and violence restricted Black political participation. State and local governments constructed a system of racial segregation commonly known as Jim Crow.

In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court upheld state-mandated racial segregation under the doctrine commonly described as "separate but equal." African Americans responded to discrimination by building churches, schools, businesses, mutual-aid organizations, and community institutions and by developing different strategies for pursuing economic advancement and civil rights.

Gilded Age Politics and Populism

Gilded Age politics were characterized by intense party competition, high voter participation, patronage, and recurring debates over economic policy. Tariffs, currency, civil service reform, railroad regulation, and the proper relationship between government and business became major political issues. Critics charged that corporations and wealthy individuals exercised excessive influence over government, while supporters of limited government generally resisted extensive federal regulation of the economy.

Farmers became particularly active in demanding reform. Falling crop prices, debt, railroad rates, and dependence on distant markets encouraged the formation of farmers' organizations. During the 1890s, many of these reform efforts converged in the People's Party, or Populist Party.

Populists called for a stronger governmental role in regulating the economy and proposed reforms including railroad regulation, a graduated income tax, direct election of senators, and expansion of the money supply through the free coinage of silver. Their program challenged prevailing assumptions about limited government and reflected growing demands that government respond more actively to the economic disruptions created by industrial capitalism.

The monetary debate became especially important during the election of 1896. Farmers and debtors who favored expanding the money supply often supported free silver, while many business interests favored maintaining the gold standard. The election demonstrated the political significance of the economic and regional divisions produced by industrialization and marked an important transition in late nineteenth-century politics.

Responses to Industrialization

Industrialization produced competing interpretations of American economic and social life. Some Americans defended large fortunes and economic inequality through ideas such as Social Darwinism and emphasized individual competition. Others argued that the nation's growing wealth created obligations toward those who had benefited less from industrialization.

The Social Gospel applied Christian principles to problems associated with poverty, inequality, and urbanization. Reformers established settlement houses and charitable organizations and advocated improvements in housing, sanitation, education, and working conditions. Writers and intellectuals also questioned the social consequences of concentrated wealth and rapid industrial development.

These debates reflected a larger question that increasingly confronted Americans during the Gilded Age: What role should government play in an industrial society? Labor unions sought protection for workers, farmers demanded regulation of railroads and financial policies favorable to agricultural interests, and reformers challenged corruption and inequality. Although the federal government remained relatively limited in its regulation of the economy, these movements established ideas and organizations that would influence the Progressive movement of the early twentieth century.

By 1898, the United States had been fundamentally transformed. A predominantly rural and agricultural nation was becoming an industrial, urban, corporate, and increasingly interconnected society. Railroads linked the continent, corporations accumulated enormous economic power, cities expanded, immigration increased the nation's ethnic and cultural diversity, and western settlement brought Native peoples under increasing pressure from federal policies and white settlement.

Economic growth created substantial new wealth and opportunities, but its benefits were unevenly distributed. Industrial workers, farmers, immigrants, African Americans, Native Americans, and women confronted different forms of economic, political, and social inequality. The conflicts that emerged over corporate power, labor, immigration, race, western land, and government regulation would provide much of the foundation for the reform movements of the Progressive Era.

APUSH Historical Thinking Focus

Period 6 is especially important for causation, comparison, and continuity and change over time. Students should be able to explain the causes of rapid industrialization; connect technological innovation and railroad expansion to the development of a national market; and explain how industrialization contributed to urbanization, immigration, and changing working conditions.

Students should also be able to compare the experiences and responses of industrial workers, farmers, immigrants, African Americans, and Native Americans to the economic and social transformations of the Gilded Age. A particularly important causal chain is industrialization → economic consolidation and disruption → worker and farmer organization → demands for government intervention and reform.

The central tension of Period 6 is therefore the relationship between economic growth and its consequences. Industrialization created unprecedented productive capacity and national wealth while simultaneously producing economic insecurity, labor conflict, racial and ethnic tensions, environmental change, and debates over the proper role of government in regulating an increasingly complex national economy.