The Smart Aleck's Guide to American History

by Adam Selzer

  McKinley, smiling.

  Meanwhile, John D. Rockefeller amassed one of history’s largest fortunes by forming the Standard Oil Company, which soon became so powerful that it could—and did—buy off large chunks of the government. Monopolies, companies that controlled an entire industry, were illegal, but one of Rockefeller’s attorneys came up with the idea of making the company into a holding company, a collection of smaller companies that could get away with more than one big one. Rockefeller thus became the richest man in the world—some say the richest of all time. If you measure how much he had as a percentage of the total economy, nobody today, not even Bill Gates, comes close to being a rich as Rockefeller was.

  THE CROSS OF GOLD

  One thing from this era that you hear about a lot is William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech. By 1895, the number-one issue in the country was bimetallism: using both silver and gold, not just gold, to back money. Some people thought this would really boost the economy (though it probably wouldn’t have), and others feared it would keep the rich from getting richer. Boring as this sounds, it was the debate of the day. At the Democratic Convention of 1896, a thirty-six-year-old named William Jennings Bryan (pictured below) made a speech about it, saying that you could tear down the cities and they would grow back up, but if you tore down the farms, the country was done for. He ended by extending his arms, as though he were nailed to a cross, and saying, “You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!” The speech was such a success that Bryan became the Democratic nominee for president. The Democrats only had three hundred thousand dollars to spend on a campaign, however, while the Republicans may have spent as much as seven million for their nominee, William McKinley. McKinley won.

  These new trusts were able to take over entire industries, and soon about five thousand major companies had been organized into about three hundred trusts that pretty much ran the country. Without any competition, these trusts kept prices high and wages low. And the presidents at the time couldn’t do much about it. After all, the government was very much under the control of the jerks who ran the trusts.

  It didn’t stop there. Newspaper barons such as William Randolph Hearst hit on the notion that if nothing exciting was going on, they could just make something up. They used sensational stories in their newspapers to push the country into the Spanish-American War strictly because they knew that wars sold newspapers.

  J. P. Morgan practices his lightsaber skills.

  LABOR

  Rich and jerky though these guys were, they were also noted philanthropists, giving huge amounts to charity and establishing museums that we still visit today (many of which have above-average gift shops!). At the same time, many of them treated their employees like dirt.

  People in those days sometimes worked sixteen-hour days in factories that were dark and dangerous, and when the unsanitary conditions made you sick, you couldn’t take a sick day or expect any health benefits—you either showed up to work or got fired. Life expectancy for factory workers tended to be low, and the pay was lousy. Many companies only “paid” in the form of credit to the company store, which often had higher prices than anyone could really afford. After sixteen hours of work, workers still wouldn’t have made enough to cover the day’s expenses, and ended up even further in debt. And there are countless stories of workers getting together and asking for a raise only to be fired on the spot just for asking.

  The Haymarket Riot, a Chicago rally for an eight-hour workday that ended badly when police charged on it. Someone threw a bomb, killing seven policemen and injuring an unknown number of ralliers. Rather than find out who threw the bomb, police arrested eight of the protestors. Five were sentenced to hang at the urging of local rich people such as Marshall Field, who wanted to make an example of them so poor people would learn not to fight for better conditions. Note the guy who appears to be looking at his watch and saying, “Look at the time! I have to get back to work!”

  Even worse, there were no real child labor laws in those days, and many of the nastier jobs were held by kids. At one point, something like 20 percent of all kids in the country were working in a place like a factory or mine. It paid better than going to school but was far less pleasant.

  Every now and then, workers would try to get organized and form a union, threatening to quit if conditions weren’t improved. Often, entire workforces were fired just for bringing up the idea. Other times, strike breakers—guy with clubs and rifles—were sent in to attack the strikers and force them back to work. Irish coal miners formed a group called the Molly Maguires, and after being accused of violence, nineteen or twenty of their leaders were executed. A couple of years later, when railroad workers went on strike after having their already-tiny salaries cut, more than one hundred workers were killed, and thousands were put in jail. As strikes got bigger, robber barons used their influence to get the government to send the army to break up the strikers.

  One of the most common arguments against labor organizations was the claim that they were run by socialists or anarchists. Often this was true. Many of the groups had plans beyond just improving conditions for workers; they wanted to reorganize society itself. Their followers are still hanging around outside of rock concerts, passing out pamphlets and looking generally unclean. These wide-eyed plans ended up doing most of the organizations more harm than good, and the ones that went off the deep end with plans for a “new society” or “worker’s paradise” didn’t get much done at all.

  Less radical groups got more accomplished. The American Federation of Labor, for instance, focused on more practical matters, like better pay, better safety, an eight-hour workday, and a five-day work week. These guys were much more successful at getting fair labor laws passed, but the robber barons and the trusts were still in charge of the country. And everyone knew it.

  THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR

  The Spanish-American War of 1898 didn’t happen just because the newspapers made up stories to provoke such public outrage that citizens would demand that the country go to war. That might have been one of the major reasons we ended up getting involved, but there were legitimate reasons as well.

  At the time, Cuba was still controlled by Spain, and Spain was rejecting the Cubans’ request to become independent. As tensions between loyalists (who wanted to stay Spanish) and rebels got violent, a battleship called the USS Maine was sent to Cuba, only ninety-odd miles from Florida, to protect American interests there. The Maine sank in Havana Harbor the next month. What caused it to sink has never really been determined. The Americans said it was a gunpowder explosion, and the Spanish believed there had been some sort of internal explosion. But newspaper editors, most notably William Randolph Hearst, had no qualms about telling people that the Spanish officials had sunk the ship, and American voters began to cry a slogan written for them by the newspapers: “Remember the Maine, and to Hell with Spain!” Gradually, as the situation between the loyalists and the Cuban rebels became more and more of a civil war, the American government, then led by William McKinley, decided to support the rebels. In April of 1898, the United States declared war on Spain, with the intention of driving them out of Cuba.

  YOUR LIFE IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY

  Your life probably would have stunk in the years after the Civil War, too. You wouldn’t have been getting shot at once the war was over, but you probably wouldn’t have been in school, either, and your life as a factory worker wouldn’t have been much more pleasant—or much safer, for that matter—than life as a soldier or slave.

  If you had been a slave, you would be free now, but not much better off. Employment opportunities for former slaves were pretty scarce; odds are good that you’d still have been working at the same plantation where you’d been a slave, doing pretty much the same work for pretty much the same pay (i.e., none). But you would have at least been free to leave if you wanted to, which was certainly progress, and you would have had the opportunity to pick out a last name (which most slaves didn’t
have—even their first names were often assigned by their owners). Many people say that most slaves took on the last names of their former owners, but it was actually more common for them to pick names that sounded “American,” such as Jackson and Washington.

  Colonel Theodore Roosevelt and his men on top of San Juan Hill. Their hats may be silly, and their mustaches even sillier, but we wouldn’t pick a fight with them.

  Theodore Roosevelt, a historian (like us!) who had worked as a cowboy, been appointed to the United States Civil Service Commission, taken control of (and cleaned up) the New York Police Department, become a political rock star, and ended up assistant secretary of the navy, resigned his commission to fight in the war. He helped organize a group of cowboys into a volunteer band of soldiers known as the Rough Riders, which he was eventually put in charge of.

  In the most famous battle of the war (in fact, probably the only famous battle of the war), Roosevelt led the Rough Riders in a charge up San Juan Hill. The Spanish surrendered only four months after the war began, and Roosevelt became a national hero. He returned home and became governor of New York, but he never stopped referring to the Battle of San Juan Hill as his finest hour. For the rest of his life, he preferred to be called “Colonel,” even though (spoiler alert) “Mr. President” would have been more appropriate.

  Roosevelt was born into a rich New York family. After graduating from Harvard, he became a cattle rancher in the Dakotas. Other ranchers initially made fun of him (few of them would shout things like “Hasten forward quickly!” at their cowboys), but his energy, work ethic, and sense of adventure won them over. Cowboys described him getting dragged through freezing mud and shouting, “Good God! This is fun!”

  The Spanish-American war may have been short, and ultimately forgettable, but it did help heal the still-festering wounds of the Civil War. For the first time since the 1860s, Northern and Southern soldiers (not to mention black and white soldiers) fought alongside one another toward a common goal. During Roosevelt’s later political campaigns, groups of Confederate veterans were known to sing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” while bands of Union veterans played “Dixie,” in a remarkable showing of mutual respect.

  THEODORE ROOSEVELT

  These qualities won the American public over, too. When Roosevelt was still in his twenties, he became a noted historian, and the numerous magazine articles he wrote gave him the status of a nationally known intellectual. By the time he became governor of New York, at barely forty years of age, he was one of the most admired men in the country.

  Theodore Roosevelt: trust-buster, intellectual, soldier, reformer, conservationist, reader, author, historian, cowboy, explorer, butt-kicker.

  Roosevelt’s daughter Alice (posing here with an accessory dog) was almost as popular as he was. Women at this time were still expected to be “proper,” but Alice smoked, drank, partied, gambled, and often burst into the Oval Office to give her father advice. Her antics and pranks got her banned from the White House during the Taft and Wilson administrations, and she was known as a witty figure in Washington until her death at age ninety-seven. Her most famous line may be “If you can’t think of anything nice to say, come sit next to me!”

  Other members of the Republican Party, of which he was a member, were a bit afraid of him. By this time, the long process by which the Republican Party became the more conservative party (while the Democrats became the more liberal party) was well under way, and Roosevelt, who was really into reforming the country by standing up to the robber barons and other rich jerks, was considered dangerously progressive by the party leaders.

  So the party decided to give him a job where they didn’t think he’d be able to bother anybody: they made him vice president. The vice presidency had been little more than a political tomb for years (though not for Andrew Johnson and Chester A. Arthur, of course). Roosevelt became vice president for McKinley’s second term but served only a matter of months before McKinley was assassinated. Roosevelt then became president, and overnight, he put an end to the long era of forgettable presidents. Some people said Roosevelt was a dangerous radical, some said he was a fraud, and some said he was a maniac, but nobody said he was boring.

  Roosevelt promised to carry on McKinley’s work, and did—at least at first. But after he won the 1904 election, he moved to the left politically and began aggressively taking on the trusts and robber barons, issuing lawsuit after lawsuit against major corporations.

  GUZZLIN’ ROOSEVELT

  Roosevelt didn’t drink alcohol, but he drank roughly a gallon of coffee per day. It’s a wonder he got any work done, considering how much time he must have spent getting up to pee.

  TEDDY BEARS

  While he was president, Roosevelt went on a hunting trip in Mississippi. When he couldn’t find anything to shoot, a group of people chased a black bear down, clubbed it half to death, tied it to a tree, and offered Roosevelt the chance to shoot it. Roosevelt refused, feeling that shooting a tied-up, injured bear was unsportsmanlike. The event was memorialized in political cartoons, and a toy store owner began selling stuffed bears he called Teddy bears, after the president. Soon, every other toy store was copying him.

  He was a popular character, known for being a rough-and-tumble sort of guy—kind of like Andrew Jackson, only smarter, less corrupt, and not as intent on screwing Native Americans over. He had so much energy that some of the people around him joked that he was like a six-year-old. He knew he was popular, and loved attention. His daughter Alice famously said that he wanted to be “the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral.”

  But he was famous not only for his personality but also for his policies. Roosevelt took on the robber barons and finally ended the long period during which rich business owners were allowed to do whatever they wanted. He was also the first president to take an active role in conserving the environment. If it hadn’t been for him, for example, developers would have filled in the Grand Canyon, robbing the country of a national treasure (and a whole pile of awesome gift shops). The man got an awful lot done as president—and still found time to horse around with his children and read upward of two or three books per day.

  Roosevelt realized, perhaps better than anyone, that the world in the twentieth century was going to be a very different place, and that America’s place in it was going to change. When his parents were born, America was still seen as a quirky little experimental country where other countries could send the “wretched refuse of their teeming shores.” When Roosevelt was a boy, the Civil War was raging, and America was often seen as a failed experiment.

  But in the twentieth century, Roosevelt knew, America was going to be a force to be reckoned with. During his presidency, the United States became one of the most admired and respected countries in the world. He pushed endlessly for innovation and reform to shape America into a twentieth-century power.

  Roosevelt campaigns for the Bull Moose Party.

  ROOSEVELT AND THE BULL MOOSE PARTY

  After his second term came to an end, Roosevelt went on safari in Africa, leaving the country in the hands of William Taft, his handpicked successor, who is best known today for being, by a wide margin, our fattest president. But while Roosevelt was in Africa, news of how Taft was doing angered him. The new president wasn’t nearly as progressive as Roosevelt had hoped. So he returned to America and ran for the Republican nomination for a third term. He managed to win the primaries handily, but primaries in those days didn’t really mean a thing; the party nominee was chosen by delegates at the convention in Chicago, no matter who won the primaries.

  It’s interesting to imagine what might have happened if Roosevelt had been nominated. It’s generally believed now that he would have won the general election, and that the Republican party would have become the party of reform. However, the nomination went to Taft (many felt that he stole it fair and square), and the once-radical Republicans solidly became the party of conservatives.

  When it appeared that the no
mination was going to Taft, Roosevelt decided to leave the Republican Party altogether. He formed the more liberal Progressive Party, which came to be known as the Bull Moose Party after Roosevelt quipped that he felt as strong as a bull moose.

  The Progressive Party was way ahead of its time—or way ahead of the other parties, anyway. It was the first major national party that allowed women to serve on its board, and Roosevelt declared that he was absolutely, unconditionally in favor of women’s rights. The Progressive Party platform was filled with talk of social justice, social welfare, and economic reforms that wouldn’t actually come to pass for decades.

  ROOSEVELTISMS

  Roosevelt was one of our most quotable presidents. A couple of his famous lines:

  “Speak softly and carry a big stick, and you will go far.”

  “The only man who never makes a mistake is a man who doesn’t do anything.”

  “A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car, but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.”

  But his most famous saying was a simple word: “Bully.” This basically means “Great!” As in, “Mr. President, they’re having a sale on monocles down at the haberdashery.” “Bully! Let’s go!”

  Though even he had little chance of winning the election as a third-party candidate, Roosevelt threw himself wholeheartedly into the campaign, going on a grueling speaking tour while Taft, knowing that he’d never beat Roosevelt (and not really wanting to—he didn’t care much for being president anyway), went on vacation. Roosevelt’s campaign rallies were likened to religious revivals, with Bull Moosers screaming in ecstasy, interrupting the speeches to break out in spontaneous renditions of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and Roosevelt himself declaring, “We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord!” Having lost the battle for the soul of the Republican Party, he felt that he was battling for the soul of America itself.