Republicans claimed that tariffs benefitted workers

Republicans claimed that tariffs benefitted workers because they
created jobs, blocked low-wage foreign competition, and
safeguarded America from the kind of industrial poverty that had
arisen in Europe
○ Tariffs helped American men earn enough to support their
families
○
Allowed wives to devote themselves to homemaking
○ Allowed children to go to school, and a not a factory to
work
●
Both sides were paritally right
○
Tariffs played a role in economic growth and helped
transform the US into a global industrial power
○ Tariffs did not prevent industrial poverty
■
Corporations accumulated massive benefits, but
failed to pass them along to workers
○ Tariffs allowed some corporations to dominate whole
sectors of the economy and wield near-monopoly power
○ The Role of Courts
■ Republicans did not give government enough power over the new
corporations
●
State legislatures passed hundreds of regulatory laws after the
Civil War, but interstate companies challenged them in federal
courts

○ Munn v. Illinois
■
Supreme Court affirmed that states could regulate
key businesses (railroads and grain elevators) that
were in the public interest
■ Justices feared too many state and local
regulations would impede business and fragment
the national marketplace
■ Interpreted “due process” clause of the 14th
amendment (no state could deprive any person of
life, liberty, or property without due process [fair
treatment through normal judicial system] of law) as
shielding corporations from excessive regulation
■
Federal courts promoted economic development at the expense of racial
justice
● New Mexican and Arizonian land remained in the hands of
Mexican farmers and ranchers
○
Many lived as peones, under longstanding agreements
with landowners who held large tracts originally granted by
the Spanish crown
○
After the Civil War and with the increase in railroads in the
area, land-hungry anglos came
■ Mexican shepherds were “asked” to leave their
ranges
●
Congress set up special courts to rule on land titles
○
1891-1904: court invalidated most traditional claims
■ Mexican Americans lost 64 percent of the contested
lands
■
Land was sold or appropriated through legal
machinations known as the Santa Fe Ring
● Result: displacement of thousands of
Mexican American villagers and farmers
○ Some became railroad builders or
min workers
○ Others moved and developed sheep
raising into a major enterprise
○ Silver and Gold
■ Industrializing nations tried to develop an international system of standard

measurement and a unified currency
●
Proposals failed becasue of nations’ self-interest
●
But governments agreed that mone should be based on gold
○ Great Britian long held the gold standard
■ The practice of backing a country’s currency with its
reserves of gold. In 1873 the United States,
following Great Britain and other European nations,
began converting to the gold standard.