William Bryan's speech "Cross of Gold" uses the arguments of the common man to depict why the gold standard is unjust. He believes that the government should represent everybody, and not just the big businessmen like Ford, Rockefeller, and Morgan. He defends the governments right to control currency, taxes, and inflation while saying that doing so through bimetallism. He points out that many of the proponents of the gold standard a few months before his speech are now trying to replace it, but they do not know what reliable system to replace it with. He agrees with the growing national sentiment that the gold standard values money too high and only empowers the rich money holders, and the banks loaning out the money. He is a proponent of devaluing the currency to help the middle and lower class. People then were trying to repeal the gold standard but did not know what to replace it with, today the same is true of Obamacare:
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The Dawes Act greatly improved the land distribution among Indians in the US. Prior to 1887 Indian Reservations were held in a trust set up by the US government, and the Indians were allowed to live there, but not to own the land. However, with the Dawes Act this land was given to individual tribesmen based on age, gender, and status. While it was better than the situation before, this act was not without its faults. It still preserved the US government's right to build infrastructure on these lands that were not their's. It excluded the 5 civilized tribes, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. Also, it encourage the Indians to sell their land to American settlers. Despite this it was still a step up because now the Indians owned the land. They were also given a path to citizenship with this act, where 25 years after owning land, they would be able to reap the benefits to citizenship such as education and legal protection. With that said, many Indians did not l...
1. In the preamble the Populist Party outlines its stance against the rampant corruption in politics of the time. They address the state of the union by saying that it is on the verge of demoralization, with the people's free speech being silenced and the means of production in the hands of a select few. They feel that the people are being abused by these oligarchs and that the government is simply a puppet for them, seeing as all the politicians are backed by their donations. They end the preamble with the bold claim that given the power they would fix all the problems the working class faced. (side-note: Mao said very similar things) 2. In their platform they further clarify their views on how wealth should be distributed. They say that they think wealth should remain in the hands of those who have earned it. However, they don't believe that market forces can accurately depict a persons contribution to society. and rather they feel that market forces over-allocate wealth to...
McKinley had many reasons to intervene in the Spanish American war in 1898. The sinking of the Maine was the final straw in a long and drawn out string of aggravations from the Spanish against the Cubans. This was a direct act of war by the Spanish against the US, however it was not their only transgression. For years this war had hurt American trade with both Spain and Cuba as we tried to stay neutral and avoid war. There was no clear end in sight to the war, and McKinley feared that it would either continue on or end in colonization. He could not let this stand when the only two feasible outcomes without US involvement were a breaking of the Monroe Doctrine or perpetual war. With that in mind, McKinley felt a need to give aid to Cuba and set up a stable, allied government there. He felt justified in doing so both for the betterment of the US and for the Cuban people. When the Maine was sunk this was only proof of his fears over the Spanish warmongering. USS Maine: RMS Lusitania:...
My impression from Andrew Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth was that he was a Social Darwinist, but not in the traditional sense. Social Darwinism in Carnegie's time was generally filled with racial stigma. It was a philosophy that the society should be dominated by Whites, who were superior, and held up by Blacks, who Social Darwinists considered inferior. However, Carnegie did not seem to care about race. Rather, he addressed the economic side of social Darwinism. He felt that the rich deserved to be rich because they were adequately rewarded for their contributions to society by the free market system, seeing as the free market paid them. Therefore, he supported a laissez-faire economy vehemently because it adequately rewards those who deserve to be rewarded for their ingenuity and contributions. However, this posed the question of some people having so much money, that they did not use it all and either left it to the public or to their relatives after death. This meant that peop...