Western Political Thought Dr. John Paul Tabakian

Political Science 5 Fall 2012 – Power Point #5

COURSE LECTURE: WEEK #5

Today’s Lecture Covers The Following: • Media Propaganda Discussion • Chief Joseph “Indian Perspective” • Homestead and Transcontinental Railroad Act

(1862) • Dawes Act (1887) • Turner from “The Frontier” • Andrew Carnegie “The Gospel Of Wealth” • Upton Sinclair “The Jungle”

CHIEF JOSEPH “INDIAN PERSPECTIVE” (1)

•Best known for his resistance to the U.S. Government's attempts to force his tribe onto reservations.

•Spent much of his early childhood at a mission maintained by Christian missionaries.

•The Nez Perce were a peaceful nation spread from Idaho to Northern Washington. The tribe had maintained good relations with the whites after the Lewis and Clark expedition.

•In 1855 Chief Joseph's father, Old Joseph, signed a treaty with the U.S. that allowed his people to retain much of their traditional lands. In 1863 another treaty was created that severely reduced the amount of land, but Old Joseph maintained that this second treaty was never agreed to by his people.

CHIEF JOSEPH “INDIAN PERSPECTIVE” (2)

•A showdown over the second "non-treaty" came after Chief Joseph assumed his role as Chief in 1877. After months of fighting and forced marches, many of the Nez Perce were sent to a reservation in what is now Oklahoma, where many died from malaria and starvation.

•Chief Joseph tried every possible appeal to the federal authorities to return the Nez Perce to the land of their ancestors. In 1885, he was sent along with many of his band to a reservation in Washington where, according to the reservation doctor, he later died of a broken heart.

HOMESTEAD & TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD ACT OF 1862

Industrialists looked to the Northwest Territory as a market for manufactured goods. A protective tariff restricted the American market to American industry alone. The Homestead Act in 1862 opened more land to settlers, and the Transcontinental Railroad Act of 1862 gave the railroads incentives to link western markets to eastern industry.

DAWES ACT (1887)

•The attempt to assimilate Indians into the population.

•Senator Henry L. Dawes: “Till this people will consent to give up their lands [reservations], and divide them among their citizens, so that each can own the land he cultivates, they will not make much more progress.”

•Emphasis on private property as a means of citizenship. To “civilize” the savage, eliminate cultural patterns. Plains Indians were hunters; other tribes claimed the land was not arable.

•Actually resulted in the reduction of Indian lands as the act permitted sale of land to government at @$2.50/acre.

TURNER FROM “THE FRONTIER” (1)

•Turner’s thesis: “The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development.”

•As a type of determinism, Turner’s thesis ties geography to national ideology/culture, defining the character of Americans and American society: a type of “primitivism” where “[T]he wilderness masters the colonist.” (“meeting point between savagery and civilization.”).

•American social development “continually beginning over again on the frontier.” (“perennial rebirth,” “fluidity of American life”).

TURNER FROM “THE FRONTIER” (2)

•“European life entered the continent” and “America modified and developed that life and reacted on Europe.”

•“New Product” “away from the influence of Europe, a steady growth of independence on American lines.”

•“Composite Nationality”; “tides of continental immigration”; “mixed race”

•Dangers of individualism out of control; relate to DeToequeville.

•What endures? The notion of going west for opportunity, ground for new ideas? Consider that the real move was to the towns and cities along with the expansion into free, wilderness land.

CARNEGIE FROM “WEALTH”

Andrew Carnegie (18351919) was a massively successful business man - his wealth was based on the provision of iron and steel to the railways, but also a man who recalled his radical roots in Scotland before his immigration to the United States. To resolve what might seem to be contradictions between the creation of wealth, which he saw as proceeding from immutable social laws, and social provision he came up with the notion of the "gospel of wealth". He lived up to his word, and gave away his fortune to socially beneficial projects, most famously by funding libraries. His approval of death taxes might surprise modern billionaires!

UPTON SINCLAIR’S “THE JUNGLE”

•Upton Sinclair was a poor reformer who sought to write the Great American Novel.

•“The Jungle” examined the unsanitary methods of Chicago’s meatpacking industry of Chicago. It was released in 1906.

•President Theodore Roosevelt received advanced copy. Used his influence to push Congress to pass a law establishing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Roosevelt coined the term “muckrakers” to describe Sinclair and other reformist crusaders.

•Roosevelt’s phrase was not meant to be wholly complimentary.

•Muckrackers are journalists who expose political and commercial corruption.