After mastering this chapter, you should be able to:
- Discuss the stalemate of partisan politics in the 1870s and 1880s.
- Explain the rise of the early state regulatory commissions.
- Trace the reassertion of presidential power from 1876 to 1888.
- Identify and describe the legislation passed by the Republican party in 1890 and the voters' response to that "billiondollar Congress."
- Describe and evaluate the American agrarians' grievances in the late nineteenth century.
- Trace the growth of the farmers' protest from the Grange through the Farmers' Alliance.
- Detail the establishment of the Populist party, its platform, and its first presidential election.
- Discuss the march of "Coxey's Army" and the "great" Pullman strike of 1894 and its importance in the 1890s.
- Explain the divisions between capital and labor and between "old" and "new" miners in the Midwestern coal strike of 1894.
- Describe the changes in American attitudes toward poverty brought on by the depression of the 1890s.
- Describe the changes in the American work force brought on by the depression of the 1890s.
- Trace the rise of the new realist and naturalist movements in American literature and explain why they emerged.
- Explain how the silver issue served as a symbol for a social and political movement.
- Compare and contrast the Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns
of 1896.
- Evaluate the role of the election and administration of William McKinley in the emergence of modern urban, industrial government and politics.
