American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  Triumphant Republicanism

  [Significance of 1896 election]: Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System, op. cit., esp. ch. 7; Walter Dean Burnham, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (W. W. Norton, 1970), esp. ch. 4’,Jerome M. Clubb, William H. Flanigan, and Nancy H. Zingale, Partisan Realignment (Sage Publications, 1980); V. O. Key, Jr., “A Theory of Critical Elections,” Journal of Politics, vol. 17, no. 1 (February 1955), pp. 3–18; Allan J. Lichtman, “Critical Election Theory and the Reality of American Presidential Politics, 1916–1940,” American Historical Review, vol. 81. no. 2 (April 1976), pp. 317–51. esp. pp. 320–23, 339–44; Fite in Schlesinger, Elections, op. cit.,vol. 2, pp. 1787–1825.

  232–3 [County results in the Midwest]: Sundquist, p. 151.

  233 [Sundquist on “another R”]: ibid., p. 150.

  [Kleppner on the redeveloped Republican party]: Paul Kleppner, “From Ethnoreligious Conflict to ‘Social Harmony’: Coalitional and Party Transformations in the 1890s,” in Seymour Martin Lipset, ed., Emerging Coalitions in American Politics (Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1978), pp. 41–59. quoted at p. 42.

  [Farm support for McKinley, 1896]: Gilbert C. Fite, “Republican Strategy and the Farm Vote in the Presidential Campaign of 1896,” American Historical Review, vol. 65, no. 4 (July 1960), pp. 787–806.

  [Labor support for McKinley]: Morgan, McKinley and His America, op. cit.: see also Irving Bernstein, ed., “Samuel Gompers and Free Silver, 1896,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 29, no. 3 (December 1942), pp. 394–400.

  234 [The McKinley administration]: Morgan; Leonard D. White, The Republican Era: 1869–1901 (Macmillan, 1958); Keller, op. cit., esp. ch. 16.

  [1896 Republican platform on lynching]: quoted in Schlesinger, Elections, vol. 2, p. 1834.

  [Plessy v.Ferguson]: 163 U.S. 537 (1896).

  [Williams v. Miss.]: 170 U.S. 213 (1898).

  [Washington on segregation]: Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (1901), in Louis R. Harlan andJohn W. Blassingame, eds., The Booker T. Washington Papers (University of Illinois Press, 1972–82), vol. 1, pp. 209–385, quoted at p. 342.

  [Carnegie on Washington and blacks]: quoted in Wall, op. cit.,pp. 972–74.

  [Carnegie on “Triumphant Democracy”]: ibid., p. 469.

  [Carnegie on freedom]: ibid.,p. 396. 234–5 [Carnegie’s economic and social views]: AndrewCarnegie, Triumphant Democracy (Scribner’s, 1893); Carnegie, Autobiography, op. cit.: Robert Green McCloskey, American Conservatism in the Age of Enterprise (Harvard University Press, 1951), esp. ch. 6.

  235 [Wall on the have-nots]: Wall, p. 459.

  [The Maine in Havana]: Rickover, op. cit., ch. 4.

  [Spanish-Cuban-American war]: Bailey, Diplomatic History, op. cit., ch. 31; Philip S. Foner, The Spanish-Cuban-American War and the Birth of American Imperialism, 1895–1902 (Monthly Review Press, 1972), vol. 1, passim; Ernest R. May, Imperial Democracy: The Emergence of America as a Great Power (Harper & Row, 1961), parts 4–5; Morgan, chs. 15–17.

  [The Hearst-Pulitzer war]: W. A. Swanberg, Citizen Hearst (Scribner’s, 1961), part 3; Leckie, op. cit., pp. 544–45.

  236 [McKinley and Cuba]: Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of William McKinley (Regents Press of Kansas, 1980); Foner, vol. 1, chs. 11–12.

  237 (Journal on the Maine disaster]: February 17, 1898, quoted in Swanberg, p. 136.

  [Roosevelt on Spanish “treachery”]: Roosevelt to Benjamin Diblee, February 16, 1898, in Elting E. Morison, ed., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (Harvard University Press, 1951–54), vol. 1, p. 775.

  [1976 Navy Department study]: Rickover, passim.

  [1898 court of inquiry report on the Maine]: quoted in ibid., p. 70.

  [Foraker on “aggressive conquest of territory”]: Congressional Record, 2nd Session (Government Printing Office, 1898), vol. 31, part 4, p. 3780 (April 13, 1898).

  238 [American military effort]: Graham Cosmas, An Army for Empire (University of Missouri Press, 1971); David F. Trask, The War with Spain in 1898 (Macmillan, 1981); Foner, vol. 2, ch. 15; Leckie, pp. 546–63; Spector, op. cit., chs. 2–3.

  239 [“Damned Yankees on the run”]: quoted in Leckie, p. 556.

  [“The poor fellows are dying”]: ibid, p. 562.

  [McKinley’s strategy]: see Trask, passim.

  239–40 [Diplomatic resolution of the war]: H. Wayne Morgan, ed., Making Peace with Spain: The Diary of Whitelaw Reid, September–December, 1898 (University of Texas Press, 1965); Morgan, McKinley and His America, pp. 400–414.

  240 [Annexation as “consummation”]: quoted in Bailey, p. 435.

  [Debate over imperialism]: Morgan, McKinley and His America, pp. 415–23 and ch. 19; Daniel B. Schirmer, Republic or Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine War (Schenkman, 1972); Richard E. Welch, Jr., Response to Imperialism: The United States and the Philippine-American War, 1899–1902 (University of North Carolina Press, 1979); see also Walter L. Williams, “United States Indian Policy and the Debate over Philippine Annexation: Implications for the Origins of American Imperialism,” Journal of American History, vol. 66, no. 4 (March 1980), pp. 810–31. [Carnegie on McKinley’s leadership]: quoted in Wall, p. 693.

  [“Triumphant Despotism”]: ibid., p. 694.

  [Hoar on the “downfall” of the republic]: quoted in Schirmer, p. 109.

  [Lodge on passage of the treaty]: ibid., p. 122.

  241 [Philippine insurrection]: John M. Gates, Schoolbooks and Krags: The United States Army in the Philippines, 1898–1902 (Greenwood Press, 1973); Bonifacio S. Salamanca, The Filipino Reaction to American Rule, 1901–1913 (Shoe String Press, 1968), chs. 1–3.

  [Election of 1900]: Coletta, op. cit., ch. 12; Koenig, op. cit., chs. 18–19; Morgan, McKinley and His America, ch. 21; Walter LaFeber, “Election of 1900,” in Schlesinger, Elections, vol. 3, pp. 1877–1962.

  [Imperialism as “paramount” issue]: quoted in LaFeber in Schlesinger, vol. 3, p. 1878.

  [Carnegie’s support of McKinley]: Wall, p. 710.

  [Donnelly on “shooting negroes”]: quoted in LaFeber in Schlesinger, vol. 3, p. 1883.

  [“President of the whole people”]: quoted in Morgan, McKinley and His America, p. 508.

  [“Timekeepers of progress”]: ibid., p. 517.

  [Assassination of McKinley]: A. Wesley Johns, The Man Who Shot McKinley (A. S. Barnes, 1970); see also James W. Clarke, American Assassins: The Darker Side of American Politics (Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 39–62.

  7. THE URBAN PROGRESSIVES

  245 [Origins of progressivism]: Irwin Unger and Debi Unger, The Vulnerable Years: The United States, 1896–1917 (New York University Press, 1978), ch. 4; Richard L. McCormick, “The Discovery That Business Corrupts Politics: A Reappraisal of the Origins of Progressivism,” American Historical Review, vol. 86, no. 2 (April 1981), pp. 247–74; Arthur A. Ekirch,Jr., Progressivism in America (New Viewpoints, 1974); Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (Alfred A. Knopf, 1955), chs. 4, 5; John D. Buenker, “The Progressive Era: A Search for a Synthesis,” Mid-America, vol. 51, no. 3 (July 1969), pp. 175–93; David P. Thelen, “Social Tensions and the Origins of Progressivism,” Journal of American History, vol. 56, no. 2 (September 1969), pp. 323–41; Peter G. Filene, “An Obituary for ‘The Progressive Movement,’ ” American Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 1 (Spring 1970), pp. 20–34; Robert H. Wiebe, Businessmen and Reform: A Study of the Progressive Movement (Harvard University Press, 1962); Samuel P. Hays, The Response to Industrialism, 1885–1914 (University of Chicago Press, 1957).

  245 [Hofstadter on class anxieties]: Hofstadter, p. 137.

  246 [Ungers on development of progressivism]: Unger and Unger, pp. 101–2.

  [Immigration, migration, and population increases]: Richard B. Morris, ed., Encyclopedia of American History (Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 647–62.

  246–47 [Urban crowding]: Joel Arthur Tarr, “From City to Suburb: The ‘Moral’ Influence of Transportation Technology,” in Alexander B. Callow, Jr., ed., American Urb
an History, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 205–6; John A. Garraty, The New Commonwealth (Harper & Row, 1968), pp. 188–93.

  247 [Chicago stink and stench]: quoted in Garraty, p. 193.

  248 [Industrialization of large American cities]: Maury Klein and Harvey A. Kantor, Prisoners of Progress: American Industrial Cities, 1850–1920 (Macmillan, 1976); Blake McKelvey, The Urbanization of America (Rutgers University Press, 1963); Sam Bass Warner, Jr., The Urban Wilderness (Harper & Row, 1972), ch. 4; Allan R. Pred, The Spatial Dynamics of U.S. Urban-Industrial Growth, 1800–1914: Interpretive and Theoretical Essays (MIT Press, 1966).

  [McKelvey on shift from commercial to industrial cities]: McKelvey, p. 48.

  248–49 [Aspects of the industrializing city]: Stephan Thernstrom, “Reflections on the New Urban History,” Daedalus, vol. 100, no. 2 (Spring 1971), pp. 359–75.

  The Shape of the City

  249 [Railroad terminals]: Carroll L. V. Meeks, The Railroad Station: An Architectural History (Yale University Press, 1956).

  [Louis Sullivan on the Chicago station]: quoted in ibid., p. 108.

  [Central business district]: Martyn J. Bowden, “Growth of the Central Districts in Large Cities,” in Leo F. Schnore, ed., The New Urban History (Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 75–109.

  250 [City transport]: Charles N. Glaab and A. Theodore Brown, A History of Urban America (Macmillan, 1967), pp. 147–52; Klein and Kantor, op. cit., pp. 146–51; McKelvey, op.cit.,ch. 5.

  [Mark Twain on hanging on by eyelashes]: quoted in Glaab and Brown, p. 149.

  [Estimate of manure left on streets]: Joel A. Tarr, “Urban Pollution—Many Long Years Ago,” American Heritage, vol. 22, no. 6 (October 1971), pp. 65–106.

  [Sprague on the “Edison legend”]: F.J. Sprague to S. H. Libby, October 10, 1931, in Roger Burlingame, Engines of Democracy (Scribner’s, 1940), p. 198.

  251 [Elevators]: Glaab and Brown, pp. 144–45; Burlingame, pp. 88–89.

  [Traveler on sensations of an express ride]: Julian Ralph, quoted in Glaab and Brown, p. 145.

  [Cast-iron and steel buildings]: Siegfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture (Harvard University Press, 1954), pp. 193–98.

  252 [Sullivan on the power of height]: quoted in Klein and Kantor, p. 158.

  [Woolworth Tower]: ibid., pp. 159–60.

  [Appearance of the grid pattern]: ibid., p. 127.

  [Bryce on monotony]: quoted in ibid.

  253 [The balloon frame]: Giedion, pp. 345–53, G. E. Woodward quoted at p. 347.

  [Sewerage and water]: Klein and Kantor, pp. 165–68; Glaab and Brown, pp. 164–66.

  [Cleveland’s open sewer]: quoted in Garraty, op. cit., p. 192.

  254 [Waring on filth as cause of disease]: quoted in Glaab and Brown, p. 165.

  [Urban parks]: Galen Cranz, The Politics of Park Design (MIT Press, 1982).

  [Mumford on rectangular street platting]: Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities (Harcourt, Brace, 1938), quoted at p. 189.

  The Life of the City

  255 [Social topography of the Lower East Side]: Moses Rischin, The Promised City: New York’s Jews, 1870–1914 (Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. 76–94; see also Irving Howe, World of Our Fathers (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), ch. 2; and, more generally, John Higham, Send These to Me: Jews and Other Immigrants in Urban America (Atheneum, 1975).

  256 [Bennett on the architecture “sweating humanity “]: Arnold Bennett, Those United States (Martin Secker, 1912), p. 239.

  [Cultural and psychological shocks of migration]: Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted, 2nd ed. (Little, Brown, 1973), esp. chs. 9, 10.

  257 [Howe on role of religion]: Howe, p. 70.

  [Italian immigrants]: Robert F. Foerster, The Italian Emigration of Our Times (Harvard University Press, 1919); Andrew F. Rolle, The Immigrant Upraised (University of Oklahoma Press, 1968); Oscar Handlin, ed., Immigration as a Factor in American History (Prentice-Hall, 1959), pp. 29–31, 77–84, 133–35.

  [Italian immigrants in Chicago]: Humbert S. Nelli, Italians in Chicago, 1880–1930 (Oxford University Press, 1970).

  [Italian immigrants adapting to the urban language ]: Joseph Lopreato, Italian Americans (Random House, 1970), p. 57.

  258 [Nelli on the role of the padrone]: Nelli, p. 63.

  [Prices charged by padroni]: Carroll Wright, “Ninth Special Report of the Italians in Chicago,” United States Department of Labor Bulletin, no. 13 (November 1897), p. 727.

  [Pressures on Chicago community life]: Richard Sennett, “Middle-Class Families and Urban Violence: The Experience of a Chicago Community in the Nineteenth Century,” in Stephan Thernstrom and Richard Sennett, eds., Nineteenth-Century Cities (Yale University Press, 1969), pp. 386–420.

  [Smith on transporting of man]: Herbert G. Gutman, “Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America, 1815–1919,” American Historical Review, vol. 78, no. 3 (June 1973. pp. 531–87. quoted at p. 547.

  259 [Communist Manifesto on factories as industrial armies]: in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader (W. W. Norton, 1972), quoted at pp. 341, 342.

  [Immigrants celebrating old-time holidays]: Gutman, pp. 547–48.

  [Jews moving upward]: Bernard D. Weinryb, “Jewish Immigration and Accommodation to America,” in Marshall Sklare, ed., The Jews: Social Patterns of an American Group (Free Press, 1958), pp. 4–22.

  [Irish-American upward mobility]: William V. Shannon, The American Irish (Macmillan, 1966), chs.6, 9; Carl Wittke, The Irish in America (Louisiana State University Press, 1956); Oscar Handlin, Boston’s Immigrants, 1790–1865 (Harvard University Press, 1941).

  260 [MacShinnegan coat of arms]: The Argonaut, quoted in Shannon, p. 88.

  [Marx and Engels on the impact of industrialization and the industrial city]: The German Ideology, in Tucker, quoted at pp. 149–50; I have made minor changes in punctuation.

  [Marx and class consciousness]: Norman Birnbaum, “Afterword,” in Thernstrom and Sennett, pp. 421–30.

  260–61 [Thernstrom on continuity of class membership in one setting]: Stephan Thernstrom, “Urbanization, Migration, and Social Mobility in Late Nineteenth-Century America,” in Callow, op. cit., p. 405.

  261 [Communist Manifesto on proletarianization]: in Tucker, pp. 341–42.

  [Changes in the home]: Elizabeth M. Bacon, “The Growth of Household Conveniences in the U.S. from 1865 to 1900,” Ph.D. dissertation, Radcliffe College, 1942.

  [Domestic science movement]: Barbara J. Harris, Beyond Her Sphere: Women and the Professions in American History (Greenwood Press, 1978), p. 135; Diary of Annie Thompson, private collection; Catharine Esther Beecher, The American Woman’s Home; or, Principles of Domestic Science (J. B. Ford, 1869).

  [Alcott on making a battering-ram of her head]: quoted in Marjorie Worthington, Miss Alcott of Concord (Doubleday, 1958), p. 83.

  [Bradwell]: Bradwell v. Illinois, 83 U.S. 130 (1873), quoted at 141; Harris, pp. 110–12.

  262 [The club movement]: Karen J. Blair, The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868–1914 (Holmes & Meier, 1980).

  [Maine delegate on fashionable clubwomen]: quoted in ibid., pp. 95–96.

  262 [Scientific American on assimilation or extermination]: June 9, 1869, quoted in Gutman, p. 584.

  [“Forget your past”]: quoted in ibid., p. 582.

  (The “clock in the workshop”]: reprinted in ibid., p. 547. I have added the word “to” to the last line.

  The Leaders of the City

  263 [Boss Plunkitt’s day]: William L. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall (E. P. Dutton, 1963), pp. 91–93.

  [Tammany Hall]: Gustavus Myers, The History of Tammany Hall (Boni & Liveright, 1917); M. R. Werner, Tammany Hall (Doubleday, Doran, 1928); John W. Pratt, “Boss Tweed’s Public Welfare Program,” New-York Historical Society Quarterly, vol. 45, no. 4 (October 1961), pp. 396–411.

  264 [ Tammany structure and function ]: Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (Free Press, 1957), pp. 71–82; Eric L. McKitrick,
“The Study of Corruption,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 72, no. 4 (December 1957), pp. 502–14; Seymour J. Mandelbaum, Boss Tweed’s New York (John Wiley, 1965).

  [Other city “machines”]: Harold F. Gosnell, Machine Politics: Chicago Model (University of Chicago Press, 1968); Zane L. Miller, Boss Cox’s Cincinnati (Oxford University Press, 1968); George M. Reynolds, Machine Politics in New Orleans, 1897–1926 (Columbia University Press, 1936); Walter Bean, Boss Ruef’s San Francisco (University of California Press, 1952).

  265 (Lomasney on getting help]: quoted in Lincoln Steffens, Autobiography (Chautauqua Press, 1931), p. 618.

  [Glaab and Brown on machine as “avenue of advance”]: Glaab and Brown, op. cit., p. 225.

  [Merton on corporations and the “economic czar”]: Robert K. Merton, “Latent Functions of the Machine,” in Callow, op. cit., pp. 220–29, quoted at p. 223.

  266 [Boyer on cities replicating the moral order of the village]: Paul Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920 (Harvard University Press, 1978), p. viii.

  [Reformers]: Geoffrey Blodgett, “Reform Thought and the Genteel Tradition,” in H. Wayne Morgan, ed., The Gilded Age, 2nd ed. (Syracuse University Press, 1970), pp. 55–76; John G. Sproat, “The Best Men “: Liberal Reformers in the Gilded Age (Oxford University Press, 1968); Geoffrey Blodgett, The Gentle Reformers: Massachusetts Democrats in the Cleveland Era (Harvard University Press, 1966).

  [Boss Tweed]: Alexander B. Callow, Jr., The Tweed Ring (Oxford University Press, 1966); Merton in Callow, American Urban History; Mandelbaum.

  267 [“What are you going to do about it?”]: quoted in Callow, The Tweed Ring, p. 9.

  [Plunkitt on reform movements as “mornin’glories”]: Riordon, p. 17.

  267–68 [Plunkitt on politics as a business]: ibid., p. 19.

  268 [Steffens on businessmen and corruption]: quoted in Klein and Kantor, op. cit., p. 357.

  [Wiebe on reformers’ dependence on business]: Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (Hill and Wang, 1967), p. 174.