The New Era.
By the year 1876 or 1877, the period of Reconstruction may be said to have come to an end. From that time on the people of the United States were busy developing new ideas and attempting to settle new problems. Only gradually, however, did they recognize this fact; not till the end of the nineteenth century did the country awake to a full realization that the old order was no more, that a new order had come into existence. Just because this new order has been so recently born, however, because so many of its elements are so imperfectly understood, the teacher will probably find special difficulties in teaching it to his classes.
The Age of Extra-Continental Expansion and of New Economic Development.
To begin with, the student must be taught that this last generation in America has witnessed two almost entirely new developments: (1) the extra-continental expansion of the United States, and (2) the growth of enormous combinations of labor and of capital. The first reached its climax in the Spanish-American War, the acquisition of the Philippines and of Porto Rico, the assumption of a quasi-protectorate over the republics of Central America, and the interference in the affairs of China and Japan. With the details of this movement we shall not attempt to deal in this article. Instead we shall devote all of our space to a consideration of the second series of events.
The history and the results of the growth of these large combinations of labor and of capital present themselves in three more or less distinct phases: (a) the struggle of the laborer for his full share in the distribution of wealth; (b) the development of capitalistic enterprise through the large corporations; and (c) the effort of the consumer to keep from being crushed by the weight of the two contending forces.
Though the interest of the consumer in these new economic problems is destined, in the opinion of many students, to become the paramount one, up to the present time it has received but little direct attention from constructive statesmen, and it does not, therefore, properly belong among the subjects to be discussed in the history class room. The teacher may, nevertheless, call the attention of his students to the evidences of the beginning of the definite movement to protect the interests of the consumer: the recent Pure Food Acts, the legislation of the various states designed to limit the profits of railway and other public service corporations, and the widespread agitation of the present day over the high cost of living.
The Labor Problem.
In studying the labor problem, our investigations must begin as far back as the middle of the last century when the first trade unions were organized in the United States. Since then they have grown steadily till to-day they number their members in the millions. In the beginning, these unions were limited to one locality and to men who were working in the same trade; gradually, however, they broadened their scope till they became national in their limits and universal in the class of workmen who were eligible to membership. In presenting the movement, it will be well for the teacher to select some thoroughly typical trade union, such as the Brotherhood of Railway Engineers, some thoroughly typical amalgamated union, such as the American Federation of Labor, for purposes of illustration. To get the class to investigate the history of these unions as far as possible, and to confine the discussion to their activities will be the teacher’s duty, else the study will result in hopeless confusion.
The principal weapons of the unions have been the strike and the boycott. The history of the use of both of these should be followed briefly. Then should come the consideration of the counterblast which the corporations and the consumer have recently called to their aid: the judicial injunction (study the history of the Debs case and the more recent Bucks Stove Case), and the application of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 to the labor unions as associations in restraint of trade (study the Danbury Hatters’ Case, in which the decision of the Court was issued only a few months ago).