What were the major features of American politics during the Gilded Age quizlet?

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  • What were the main features of American politics during the Gilded Age?
  • What were the main concerns that shaped politics during the Gilded Age?
  • Which description best defines the politics of the Gilded Age quizlet?
  • Which were characteristics of the Gilded Age quizlet?

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During the late nineteenth century, the US became a nation dominated by rapidly growing cities. Between 1865 and 1900, the urban population skyrocketed from 8 million to 30 million. In 1865, fewer than twenty cities had populations of more than 50,000; by 1900, there were four times that many.
Million of European and Asian immigrants, as well as migrants from America's rural areas, streamed into cities, attracted by the plentiful jobs and excitements they offered. "We cannot all live in cities," cautioned Horace Greely, the NY newspaper editor and Democratic presidential candidate in 1872, "yet nearly all seem determined to do so"
The growth of cities brought an array of problems, among them widespread poverty, unsanitary living conditions, and new forms of political corruption.
How to feed, shelter, and educate was hard as neighborhoods divided by racial and ethnic background as well as social class.

Americans moved to towns and cities after the Civil War, many of which evolved into major metropolitan areas. People from rural areas were attracted by the jobs and excitements of city life. Many had been pushed off the land by new agricultural machinery that sharply reduced the need for farm-workers. Four farm-workers could now perform the labor that earlier had required fourteen.
Immigrants especially congregated in the cities along the Atlantic and Pacific coast where they arrived on ships from Europe or Asia.
While the Far West had the greatest proportion of urban dwellers concentrated in cities like San Fran and Denver, the Northeast and Midwest held far more people in huge cities.
NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and others.
More and more of these cities had little or no money, and nothing but labor to sell.

The wonders of big cities, electric lights, streetcars, telephones, department stores, theaters, and many others attractions were magnetic lures for rural youth bored by the routines of isolated farm life. Thousands moved to the cities in search of economic opportunity and personal freedom.
Yet with 2.3 million people, 2/3 of the city's population were living in overcrowded, often filthy tenement housing.
These cities had poor hosing, unhealthy living conditions, and frequent infectious diseases and fires.
Tenement buildings were usually 6-8 stories tall, lacked elevators, and were jammed so tightly together that most apartments had little or not natural light or fresh air. They typically housed twenty-four to thirty-two families, usually with lots of children.
On average there was only one toilet.
The child-mortality rate was as high as 40%
Streets were filled with contaminated water, horse urine and manure, and roaming pigs.
Garbage and raw sewage were dumped into streets and waterways, causing epidemics of infectious diseases such as cholera, typhoid fever, and yellow fever.
In one poor Chicago district at the end of the century, 3 of every 5 babies died before their first birthday.
So called sanitary reformers, eventually created regulations requiring more space per resident as well as more windows and plumbing facilities.
They also lobbied for new water and sewage systems and for regular trash collection.
Also lobbied to ban slaughterhouse and raising hogs and cattle within city limits.
Horse-drawn street cars were replaced with electric-powered streetcars or trolleys.

Immigration has always been one of the most powerful forces shaping American history. This was especially true between 1860 and 1900, as more and more immigrants, most of them poor, arrived from eastern and southern Europe.
The number of immigrants rose from just under 3 million annually in the 1870s to more than 5 million per year in the 1880s.
In 1890, four out of five New Yorkers were foreign-born.
Rapidly growing industries seeking low-wage workers, including mines, railroads, mills, and factories, sent recruiting agents abroad to stir up interest in migration to the US.
The so called "old immigrants" who came before 1880 were mainly Protestants and Roman Catholics from northern and western Europe.
New Immigrants came from Southern and eastern Europe, especially Russia, Poland, Greece, and Italy.
They made up a majority of the newcomers, and by the first decade of the new century, they formed 70 percent.

immigrants who had come to the US after the 1880s from southern and eastern Europe, especially Russia, Poland, Greece, and Italy.
Their languages and cultural backgrounds were markedly different from those of most old immigrants or of most native-born Americans. The dominant religions of the new immigrants, for example, were Judaism, Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Catholicism, whereas Protestants still formed a large majority of the total US population.
Immigrants were usually poor and needed to find jobs, quickly.
Many were greeted at the docks by family and friends, others were met by representatives of immigrant-aid societies or by company agents offering low-paying and often dangerous jobs in mines, mills, sweatshops, and on railroads.
As strangers in America, most immigrants naturally wanted to live in neighborhoods populated by people from their homeland. The largest cities had vibrant immigrant districts with names such as Little Italy, Little Hungary, and Chinatown.

Bars or taverns where mostly men would gather to drink, eat, relax, play games, and, often, to discuss politics.
These were workingman's social clubs and were especially popular among male immigrants seeking companionship in a strange land. In cities such as New York, Boston, Philly, and Chicago, the customers were often Irish, German, and Italian Catholics.

In his inaugural address, Garfield gave an impassioned defense of civil rights, arguing that "the elevation of the negro race from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution of 1787."
In the continuing feud between the Half-Breed and Stalwart factions of the Republican party, Garfield chose the Half-Breeds.
He appointed James G. Blaine as secretary of state over the objection of Grant.
Garfield would have no time to prove himself as president. On July 2, 1881, after only four months in office, he was walking through the Washington D.C., he was shot in the arm and back by Charles Guiteau, a former Republican who had been turned down for a federal job.
On Sept. 19th, after 79 days, Garfield died of complications resulting from inept medical care. During a sensational ten-week trial Guiteau said that God had ordered him to kill the president.
But he was found guilty.

More than tariffs, trusts, and efforts, to clean up political corruption, national politics during the Gilded Age was preoccupied with monetary issues. The nation's money supply had not grown along with the expanding economy.
Such currency deflation raised the cost of borrowing money as the shrinking money supply enabled lenders to hike interest rates on loans.
Farmers in the Midwest, Great Plains, and South, and miners in the West, demanded more paper money and the increased coinage of silver, which would inflate the currency supply, raise commodity prices and provide them with more income.
In 1876, several farm organizations across the nation had organized the independent "Greenback" party to promote the benefits of paper money over gold and silver coins; Breenbackers won fifteen seats in Congress in 1878, illustrating the significance of currency issues to voters.
Although the Greenback party died out, the demands for increasing the money supply survived.
All six-western states admitted to the Union in 1889 and 1890 had substantial silver mines, and their new congressional delegation, largely Republican, wanted the federal government to buy more silver for minting as coins.

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What were the main features of American politics during the Gilded Age?

Politics in the Gilded Age were characterized by scandal and corruption, but voter turnout reached an all-time high. The Republican Party supported business and industry with a protective tariff and hard money policies. The Democratic Party opposed the tariff and eventually adopted the free silver platform.

What were the main concerns that shaped politics during the Gilded Age?

The major political issues of the Gilded Age were the tariff, currency reform and civil service reform. The first two issues were of obvious interest to businessmen, and they lobbied and spent freely to gain support for favorable tariff legislation and business-friendly monetary policy.

Which description best defines the politics of the Gilded Age quizlet?

Laissez-Faire economics best describes the Gilded Age. This means no government regulation of business.

Which were characteristics of the Gilded Age quizlet?

The defining characteristics in the gilded age included individualism, urbanization, new values, art, and forms of entertainment. The Gilded Age refers to the era of rapid economic and population growth in the United States during the post? Civil War and post-Reconstruction eras of the late 19th century.

What were the main features of American politics during the Gilded Age?

What were the main concerns that shaped politics during the Gilded Age?

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