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| Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) |
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| The American Chinese Exclusion Act was an immigration policy instituted in May 1882 designed initially to keep Chinese laborers from immigrating to the US, although in practice it targeted all but a select handful of Chinese elites from coming to America. It is largely recognized as one of the major defining events of Chinese American history, and of American immigration history, as it defines the first time in American history that a racial or ethnic group was barred from coming to the US. |
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| Joseph "Cowboy" McCoy (December 21, 1837 – October 19, 1915) was a 19th century cattle baron. Joseph McCoy made good on his pledge to Texas ranchers that if they would drive their Longhorn cattle from Texas to Kansas that he would have them shipped by rail to other markets and that the ranchers would receive a good price for their stock. |
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| Wyoming Stock Growers’ Assoc. |
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| The Wyoming Stock Growers Association (WSGA) is a historic American cattle organization created in 1873. The Association was started among Wyoming cattle ranchers to standardize and organize the cattle industry, but quickly grew into a political force that has been called "the de facto territorial government"[1] of Wyoming's organization into early statehood, and wielded great influence throughout the Western United States.[ |
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| The term "sodbuster" came about during the American Civil War with the introduction of the Homestead Act in 1862. This law allowed U.S. citizens to file an application to live on and own up to 160 acres of unused federal land outside the original colonies. |
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| Barbed wire was the first wire technology capable of restraining cattle. Wire fences were cheaper and easier to erect than their alternatives. Joseph F. Glidden of DeKalb, Illinois, received a patent for the modern invention in 1874 after he made his own modifications to previous versions. |
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| Oliver Dalrymple was an American bonanza farmer[1][2] and land speculator[3] who grew very rich during his time in the 19th century. He was notable for his production of 600,000 bushels of wheat in one year,[4] with one of the largest farms in the United States.[5][6] It's size has been estimated at about 115 square miles,[7] and was opened in 1875 |
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| The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, also simply styled the Grange, is a fraternal organization for American farmers that encourages farm families to and together for their common economic and political well-being. Founded in 1867 after the Civil War, it is the oldest surviving agricultural organization in America. President Andrew Johnson sent Oliver Hudson Kelley to the South to collect agricultural data. Kelley saw the need for an organization that would bring farmers together and advance their interests. After consultations with the other founders, the Grange was born in 1867. Seven men co-founded the Grange: Oliver Hudson Kelley, William Saunders, Francis M. McDowell, John Trimble, Aaron B. Grosh, John R. Thompson, and William M. Ireland. |
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| Frederick Jackson Turner (November 14, 1861 – March 14, 1932) was an influential American historian in the early 20th century. He gained his Ph.D. in history from Johns Hopkins University in 1890 with a thesis on the Wisconsin fur trade, directed by Herbert Baxter Adams. As a professor of history at Wisconsin (1890–1910), and later Harvard (1911–1924), Turner trained scores of disciples, who in turn dominated American history programs throughout the country. Two theories in particular were influential, the "Frontier Thesis" and the "Sectional Hypothesis". |
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| The Cross of Gold speech was delivered by William Jennings Bryan at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago on July 8, 1896.[1][2][3] The speech advocated bimetallism. Following the Coinage Act (1873), the United States abandoned its policy of bimetallism and began to operate a de facto gold standard, which was then modified by the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1890. |
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| William Jennings Bryan (March 19, 1860 – July 26, 1925) was an American politician in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. In his three presidential bids, he promoted Free Silver in 1896, anti-imperialism in 1900, and trust-busting in 1908, calling on Democrats to fight the trusts (big corporations) and big banks, and embrace anti-elitist ideals of republicanism. President Wilson appointed him Secretary of State in 1913, After 1920 he was a strong supporter of Prohibition and energetically attacked Darwinism and evolution, most famously at the Scopes Trial in 1925. Five days after Bryan had won the case, he died in his sleep. |
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| The People's Party, also known as the "Populists", was a short-lived political party in the United States established in 1891. It was most important in 1892-96, then rapidly faded away. Based among poor, white cotton farmers in the South.it represented a radical crusading form of agrarianism and hostility to banks, railroads, and elites generally. It sometimes formed coalitions with labor unions, and in 1896 endorsed the Democratic presidential nominee, William Jennings Bryan. A People's Party grew out of agrarian unrest in response to low agricultural prices in the South and the trans-Mississippi West. |
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| Louis Henri Sullivan (September 3, 1856 – April 14, 1924) was an American architect, and has been called the "father of skyscrapers"[1] and "father of modernism"[2] He is considered by many as the creator of the modern skyscraper, was an influential architect and critic of the Chicago School. Buildings should have substance over form. |
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| Jacob August Riis (May 3, 1849 – May 26, 1914) He is known for using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City; those impoverished New Yorkers were the topic of most of his prolific writings and photography. He endorsed the implementation of "model tenements" in New York with the help of humanitarian Lawrence Veiller. Additionally, as one of the most famous proponents of the newly practicable casual photography, he is considered one of the fathers of photography due to his discovery the use of flash in photography.[1] While living in New York, Riis experienced poverty and became a police reporter writing about the quality of life in the slums. He attempted to alleviate the bad living conditions of poor people by exposing their traditionalism to middle class ridicule. Wrote "How the Other Half Live." |
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| was a New York political organization founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789 as the Tammany Society. It was the Democratic Party political machine that played a major role in controlling New York City politics and helping immigrants, most notably the Irish, rise up in American politics from the 1790s to the 1960s. It controlled Democratic Party nominations and patronage in Manhattan from the mayoral victory of Fernando Wood in 1854 through the election of John P. O'Brien in 1932. |
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| Women’s Christian Temperence Union |
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| Organized at a national convention in Cleveland, Ohio in 1874,[1] the group spearheaded the crusade for prohibition. Members in Fredonia, New York advanced their cause by entering, singing, praying, and urging saloon keepers to stop selling alcohol. The purpose of the WCTU was to combat the influence of alcohol on families and society. The first president was Annie Wittenmyer. |
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| Society for the Suppression of Vice |
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| The Society for the Suppression of Vice was a nineteenth-century English society established in 1802. The Obscene Publications Act was introduced in September 1857 (superseding the 1787 Proclamation). One effect of the Act was to forbid the distribution of information about contraception and human biology to the working classes. |
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| Phineas Taylor Barnum (July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891) was an American showman, businessman, remembered for founding the circus that became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. He used the transcontinental RR to deliver the show all across the US in 1869 |
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| Scott Joplin (c. 1867 – April 1, 1917) was an American composer and pianist. One of his first pieces, the "Maple Leaf Rag", became ragtime's first and most influential hit, and has been recognized as the archetypal rag. During the late 1880s he travelled around the American South as an itinerant musician, and went to Chicago for the World's Fair of 1893 which played a major part in making ragtime a national craze by 1897 |
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| was recognized as the first heavyweight champion of gloved boxing from February 7, 1881 to 1892, and is generally recognized as the last heavyweight champion of bare-knuckle boxing. He was the first American sports hero to become a national celebrity and the first American athlete to earn over one million dollars. |
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| McGuffey Readers were a series of graded primers that were widely used as textbooks in American schools from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, and are still used today in some private schools and in homeschooling. It is estimated that at least 120 million copies of McGuffey's Readers were sold between 1836 and 1960, placing its sales in a category with the Bible and Webster's Dictionary. |
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| Du Bois was the African American leader most opposed to the gradual approach of achieving equal rights presented by Booker T. Washington. Du Bois advocated immediate equal treatment and equal educational opportunities for blacks. He helped initiate the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909. |
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| Veblen is famous in the history of economic thought for combining a Darwinian evolutionary perspective with his new institutionalist approach to economic analysis. He combined sociology with economics in his masterpiece, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), arguing there was a basic distinction between the productiveness of "industry," run by engineers, which manufactures goods, and the parasitism of "business," which exists only to make profits for a leisure class. The chief activity of the leisure class was "conspicuous consumption", and their economic contribution is "waste," activity that contributes nothing to productivity. The American economy was therefore made inefficient and corrupt by the businessmen. |
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| Addams was a reformer and pacifist best known for her founding of Hull House, an early setllement house, in 1889. Hull House provided various educational and cultural activities for poor immigrants. |
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