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The railroad workers went on strike from Baltimore to St. Louis, causing numerous shutdowns in the railroad system.
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During the Gilded Age, a moniker borrowed from an 1873 Twain and Warner novel, owners in the transportation and financial sectors saw unprecedented wealth while workers in those and other industries experienced dangerous working conditions and poverty, which sparked tensions between the two sections of society. In his 1879 book, Progress and Poverty, Henry George wrote: "This association of poverty with progress is the great enigma of our times."
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From 1880-to 1900, the United States workers experienced or participated in over 20,000 lockouts and strikes as industrial workers as they fought for a living wage and safer working conditions.
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Peaking in the 1870s, the population of bison in America abated rapidly from around 10 million around the 1850s to merely a few hundred during the 1880s. The bison were slaughtered by railroad agents and the US Army to clear the land of Native Americans, which used bison as a major food source. Homesteaders benefitted from the bison slaughter because it removed an impediment to cattle ranching. Bison were also over-hunted for their leather and skulls, which were used for fertilizer.
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When Reconstruction attempted to give freed slaves their full civil rights, some whites fought against that. Organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and laws such as the Jim Crow laws, which supported segregation, appeared as a result. Lynching involved murder, dismemberment, and/or torture. Portraying all Black males as rapists, the Ku Klux Klan used the excuse of protecting “white women’s virtue" to justify their hate crimes. From 1880 to 1950, almost 5,000 Black males were killed via lynching.
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Between 1870 and 1920, over 25 million people arrived in the United States as immigrants. Poles, Italians, and Eastern Jews were a larger portion of the immigrants than were Irish and Germans. Capitalism and jobs fueled immigration to the US in the 1880-1920 era.
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The Immigration Act was passed in August of 1882. This act denied admission to the U.S. to people who weren't able to support themselves, the mentally ill, convicted criminals, or those who threatened national security. However, the category of excludable people grew after 1882 so that by 1885 it included foreign workers and by 1891 it made all groups of excludable people deportable.
By 1903, those with opposing ideological views could also be deported. Most of these were Catholic or Jewish. -
The Populist Party, which had evolved from the Farmer's Alliance, was relatively successful in its endeavors to provide workers with fair wages. It gained enormous popularity in the mid-1890s and was considered a third-party competitor of the Democratic and Republican parties.
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Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris in 1898. This treaty ended the Spanish American War. The treaty stated that the United States would pay Spain $20 million in return for sovereignty over the Philippine Islands.
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By 1900, the United States had become the world’s top manufacturer of goods.