American Studies Senior Seminar: Weekly Assignment #1

The Era of Reform and the End of The Gilded Age (1870-1900)

Using your text, the internet or a basic American history text of your choice, review and be prepared to talk about the following topics by the time of our meeting next week

1) Laissez-faire economic policy

2) The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887

3) The Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890

4) The Homestead Strike of 1892 and the Pullman Strike of 1894

5) The “Social Gospel”

6) Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives

7) Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward

8) Samuel Gompers and the American Federation of Labor

9) Populism (and the Populist platform)

10) The Panic of 1893

11) Jacob Coxey’s “army”

12) William Jennings Bryan and the “cross of gold”

13) Eugene V. Debs

14) J.P. Morgan and the “money trust”

15) William Dean Howells The Rise of Silas Lapham

16) Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896)