Rosenfeld Susan. Encyclopedia of American Historical Documents

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Constitutions of Two Major Feminist

Organizations, 1869

The 19th-century movement in the United States for woman

suffrage split between radical activists, who agitated for a fed-

eral constitutional amendment granting women the franchise,

and moderates, who sought remedy through the state legisla-

tures. The division emerged after the Civil War over the issue

of black suffrage and the proposed Fifteenth Amendment to

the Constitution, which would grant the vote to black males.

The radicals, led by suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth

Cady Stanton, opposed the amendment for failure to extend

the franchise to women. The moderates, represented by social

reformers Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe, backed the

amendment as proposed, arguing that women should not de-

mand federal action until black suffrage had been won.

In 1869 the rival factions organized into the separate

National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), founded by

Anthony and Stanton, and the American Woman Suffrage As-

sociation (AWSA), founded by Stone and Howe. AWSA

adopted its constitution in November 1869 at its founding

convention in Cleveland, Ohio. This organization planned to

achieve woman suffrage through state-level initiatives. NWSA

on the other hand, expected to secure votes for women by

campaigning on a national level.

________________________

_______________________

Constitution of the American Woman Suffrage

Association (AWSA), 1869

November 24-25, 1869

The undersigned, friends of woman suffrage, assembled in

delegate Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, November 24th

and 25th, 1869, in response to a call widely signed and

after a public notice duly given, believing that a truly rep-

resentative National organization is needed for the orderly

and efficient prosecution of the suffrage movement in

America, which shall embody the deliberate action of State

and local organizations, and shall carry with it their united

weight, do hereby form the American Woman Suffrage

Association.

RTICLE

Name: This Association shall be known as the American

Woman Suffrage Association.

RTICLE

II.

Object: Its object shall be to concentrate the efforts of all

the advocates of woman suffrage in the United States for

National purposes only, viz:

Sec. 1. To form auxiliary State Associations in every

State where none such now exist, and to co-operate with

those already existing, which shall declare themselves aux-

iliary before the first day of March next, the authority of

the auxiliary Societies being recognized in their respective

localities, and their plan being promoted by every means in

our power.

Sec. 2. To hold an annual meeting of delegates for the

transaction of business and the election of officers for the

ensuing year; also, one or more national conventions for

the advocacy of woman suffrage.

Sec. 3. To publish tracts, documents, and other matter

for the supply of State and local societies and individuals at

actual cost.

Sec. 4. To prepare and circulate petitions to State Leg-

islatures, to Congress, or to constitutional conventions in

behalf of the legal and political equality of woman; to

employ lecturers and agents, and to take any measures the

Executive Committee may think fit, to forward the objects

of the Association.

RTICLE

III.—O

RGANIZATION

Sec. 1. The officers of this Association shall be a President,

eight Vice-Presidents at Large, Chairman of the Executive

Committee, Foreign Corresponding Secretary, two

Recording Secretaries, and a Treasurer, all of whom shall

be ex-officio members of the Executive Committee from

each State and Territory, and from the District of

Columbia, as hereinafter provided.

Sec. 2. Every President of an auxiliary State society

shall be ex-officio a vice- president of this Association.

Sec. 3. Every chairman of the Executive Committee of

an auxiliary State society shall be ex- officio a member of

the Executive Committee of this Association.

Sec. 4. In cases where no auxiliary State society exists,

a suitable person may be selected by the annual meeting,

by the Executive Committee, as Vice-President or mem-

ber of the Executive Committee, to serve only until the

organization of said State Association.

Sec. 5. The Executive Committee may fill all vacancies

that may occur prior to the next annual meeting.

Sec. 6. All officers shall be elected annually at any

annual meeting of delegates, on the basis of the Congres-

sional representation of the respective States and Territo-

ries, except as above provided.

Sec. 7. No distinction on account of sex shall ever be

made in the membership or in the selection of officers of

this Society; but the general principle shall be that one half

of the officers shall, as nearly as convenient, be men, and

one half women.

Sec. 8. No money shall be paid by the Treasurer

except under such restrictions as the Executive Committee

may provide.

Sec. 9. Five members of the Executive Committee,

when convened by the Chairman, after fifteen days written

982 ERA 5: Civil War and Reconstruction

notice previously mailed to each of its members, shall con-

stitute a quorum. But no action thus taken shall be final,

until such proceedings shall have been ratified in writing

by at least fifteen members of the Committee.

Sec. 10. The Chairman shall convene a meeting when-

ever requested to do so by five members of the Executive

Committee.

RTICLE

IV.

This Association shall have a branch office in every State in

connection with the office of the auxiliary State Society

therein and shall have a central office at such place as the

Executive Committee may determine.

RTICLE

This Constitution may be amended at any annual meeting,

by a vote of three-fifths of the delegates present therein.

RTICLE

VI.

Any person may become a member of the American

Woman Suffrage Association by signing the Constitution

and paying the sum of $1 annually, or life members by pay-

ing the sum of $10, which membership shall entitle the

individual to attend the business meetings of delegates and

participate in their deliberations.

RTICLE

VII.

Honorary members may be appointed by the annual meet-

ing or by the Executive Committee, in consideration of

services rendered.

National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA),

NWSA Constitution, 1869

Constitution—

Article 1. This organization shall be called the

National Woman Suffrage Association.

Article 2. Its object shall be to secure the Ballot to the

women of the nation on equal terms with men.

Article 3. Any citizen of the United States favoring this

object, shall, by the payment of the sum of one dollar

annually into the treasury, be considered a member of the

Association, and no other shall be entitled to vote in its

deliberations.

Article 4. The officers of the Association shall be a

President, a Vice-President from each of the States and

Territories, Corresponding and Recording Secretaries,

Treasurer, an Executive Committee of not less than five

nor more than nine members, located in New York City,

and an Advisory Counsel of one person from each State

and Territory, who shall be members of the National Exec-

utive Committee. The officers shall be chosen at each

annual meeting of the Association.

Article 5. Any Woman’s Suffrage Association may

become auxiliary to the National Association by its officers

becoming members of the Parent Association and sending

an annual contribution of not less than twenty-five dollars.

Source:

Elizabeth Frost and Kathryn Cullen-DuPont. Women’s Suffrage

in America: An Eyewitness History. New York: Facts On

File, Inc., 1992.

Women’s Rights 983

UGGESTED

EADING

The Causes of the Civil War

Paul Finkelman, And His Soul Goes Marching On:

Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid.

Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1995.

Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, 1955. Re-

print, New York, Oxford University Press, 1970.

Thomas M. Gossett, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American

Culture. Dallas, Tex.: Southern University Methodist

Press, 1985.

Kenneth S. Greenberg, Masters and Statesmen: The Polit-

ical Culture of American Slavery. Baltimore: Johns

Hopkins University Press, 1985.

Bruce Levine, Half Slave, Half Free: The Roots of the Civil

War, New York: Noonday Press, 1992.

Stephen B. Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biog-

raphy of John Brown. New York: HarperCollins, 1970.

William McFeeley, ed. Frederick Douglass. New York:

W.W. Norton, 1991.

David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861. New

York: HarperCollins, 1976.

Richard H. Sewell, A House Divided: Sectionalism and

Civil War, 1848–1860. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni-

versity Press, 1988.

Kenneth M. Stampp, America in 1857: A Nation on the

Brink. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

The Civil War Years

Jean H. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography New

York: W.W. Norton, 1987.

Bruce Catton, Noah Andre Trudeau, James M. McPher-

son, eds., The America Heritage New History of The

Civil War. New York: Viking Press, 2001.

David J. Eicher, James M. McPherson, The Longest Night:

A Military History of the Civil War. New York: Simon

& Schuster, 2001.

Drew Gilpin Faust, The Creation of Confederate Nation-

alism. Baton Rouge: Louisiana University State Press,

1988.

———, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding

South in the American Civil War. Chapel Hill, N.C.:

University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Barbara Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle

Ground. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,

1985.

Eric Foner, Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil

War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Joseph Glattner, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance

of Black Soldiers and White Officers. New York: Free

Press, 1990.

Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, How the North Won.

Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1983.

Elizabeth D. Leonard, Yankee Women: Gender Battles in

the Civil War. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994.

James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: the Civil

War Era. New York, Balantine, 1988.

Steven F. Miller, Marc Favreau, Ira Berlin, eds. Remem-

bering Slavery: African Americans Talk about Their

Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation.

New York: The New Press, 2000.

Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None: The Life

of Abraham Lincoln. New York: HarperCollins,

1977.

Michael Perman, The Road to Redemption: Southern Pol-

itics, 1869–1879. Chapel Hill.: University of North

Carolina Press, 1984.

Lawrence Powell, New Masters: Northern Planters During

the Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: Ford-

ham University Press, 1980.

James Roark, Masters Without Slaves: Southern Planters

in the Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: W.W.

Norton, 1977.

Reconstruction

Michael Les Benedict, The Impeachment and Trial of

Andrew Johnson. New York: W.W. Norton, 1973.

Richard N. Current, Those Terrible Carpetbaggers. New

York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolu-

tion, 1863-1877. New York: HarperCollins, 1988.

Thomas Holt, Black over White: Negro Political Leader-

ship in South Carolina During Reconstruction. Cham-

paign: University of Illinois Press, 1977.

Leon Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long. New York: Ran-

dom House, 1979.

Peyton McCrary, Abraham Lincoln and Reconstruction.

Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978.

James McPherson, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and

Reconstruction. New York: McGraw Hill—Higher

Education, 1981, 2000.

Otto H. Olson, Reconstruction and Redemption in the

South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,

1980.

Lawrence Powell, New Masters: Northern Planters During

the Civil War and Reconstruction. New York:

Ford-

ham University Press, 1980.

Howard O. Rabinowitz, Southern Black Leaders of the

Reconstruction Era. Champaign: University of Illinois

Press, 1982.

James Roark, Masters Without Slaves: Southern Planters

in the Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: W.W.

Norton, 1977.

Women’s Rights

Andrea Moore Kerr, Lucy Stone: Speaking out for Equal-

ity. Piscataway, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992.

Mary Gabriel, Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria

Woodhull, Uncensored. Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin

Books of Chapel Hill, 1997.

Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns, Ellen Carol Dubois, Ann

D. Gordon, Martha Saxton, Not for Ourselves Alone:

The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B.

Anthony. New York: Knopf, 1999.

984 ERA 5: Civil War and Reconstruction

985

ERA 6

The Development of the

Industrial United States

(ca. 1870–1900)

★

The post-Reconstruction period in U.S. history sets the

stage for the 20th century–its technological successes, sci-

entific endeavors, and political democratization. But it also

holds the roots of the next century’s biggest problems:

racism, increased immigration, imperialism, industrializa-

tion, and urbanization. Although the Industrial Age had its

roots in the early 19th century, this period has also been

termed “the Gilded Age,” a phrase coined by Mark Twain,

because of the great wealth (and tasteless opulence)

spawned by industrial development, mechanized agricul-

ture, and the rise of corporations. The huge disparities

between rich and poor influenced developments politi-

cally, with small farmers and with labor. Many of their

ideas, promoted by the Populist Party and the Knights of

Labor, would come to fruition with the Progressive Era

early in the next century.

Among the technological achievements of this period

were the telephone and the electric light. Electricity also

aided mass transportation with the trolley car. Railroads

became the major means of moving goods from one area

of the country to the other, vastly speeding the process. At

the same time, cities developed along rail hubs. Farmers

and manufacturers found themselves at the mercy of the

rails. As their operations grew, farmers also became de-

pendent on machinery, which tied them to the merchants

who sold it and the bankers who lent them the money to

buy it. Labor, too, was able to succeed in reforming wages

and working conditions. Lending its weight to big busi-

ness, the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted the Fourteenth

Amendment, originally written to ensure African Ameri-

cans citizenship, to free corporations (legally “persons”)

from most restraints Congress or state legislatures tried to

impose on them.

The post-Reconstruction courts also institutionalized

racism. The Supreme Court made healing the divided coun-

try paramount. Many of their decisions promoting that heal-

ing were at the expense of people of color. The persistence

and legalization of segregation can be traced to this era. By

putting state and local governments in charge of “the Negro

problem,” the Court also in effect abrogated the political

and economic rights of Southern and border state African

Americans, and put the lives of black dissenters at risk.

Asians, brought over to the United States to build rail-

roads and handle risky and low-paying jobs, were also

marginalized by post-Reconstruction policies. Although

not subject to the same laws that discriminated against

Asians and blacks, immigrants from southern and eastern

Europe found that they, too, would be unprotected by

American laws and often kept in poverty by discrimination.

Recent immigrants who stayed in the cities often lived in

tenements and slums and worked in appalling conditions

in sweatshops. As early as 1866, the New York City coun-

cil reported on slum conditions in its immigrant ghettos.

Those who escaped the cities helped feed the growth of

the West. They built railroads, opened small businesses,

and turned the prairie into farmland. Populating the West,

however, had ecological effects that were not appreciated

until the next century. Wherever they landed, immigrants

wanting to achieve the American dream; they attended

public schools and studied English at the same time that

their cultures began to change the dominant Protestant

American culture.

Mechanization of farming hurt small farmers, but

American agribusiness made the United States the world’s

major producer of food, a position it has never relin-

quished. Yet as western agriculture and mining developed,

Native Americans were pushed off valuable land and were

forced onto unproductive reservations. The final Indian

wars take place in this era. Innovations in capitalism like

trusts and cartels also spurred industrial advances, along

with the stunning wealth it brought its leaders and

financiers. Without an income tax to disturb their riches

and protected by sympathetic assemblies and courts, rail-

road, banking, oil, and other barons built palaces as sum-

mer homes, patronized the arts, and financed libraries.

Grass-roots movements sprang up to try to counteract

the dominance of big business and “robber barons.” The

Knights of Labor represented an attempt to create an all-

encompassing union. The more conservative American

Federation of Labor limited its membership to skilled

workers and its goals to working conditions and wages. It

persisted. Yet labor suffered as it had throughout the 19th

century and would for most of the future. The American

dream was too powerful: Every person in the United

States by birth or immigration had the opportunity to

attain economic success, and capitalism was the best way

to keep that opportunity alive.

Farmers also banded together. They produced the

Populist Party from their attempts to gain independence

from bankers and “middlemen” who gave them little for

their produce but charged high prices for farm machinery.

Populism spread to other sectors through efforts to democ-

ratize the economy by making silver a monetary standard.

In 1890, the U.S. census declared that the frontier had

closed. The United States began looking to extend its

influence outside its borders. When the battleship Maine

blew up in Havana Harbor, the nation had its excuse. The

Spanish-American War of 1898 really marks the beginning

of the 20th century for U.S. foreign affairs. Its success

against Spain brought Cuba and the Philippines under

American jurisdiction, making the United States an impe-

rial power. Despite American flirtation with isolation

between World Wars I and II, it has maintained its world-

power status ever since.

986 ERA 6: The Development of the Industrial United States

The Rise of Corporations, Heavy Industry,

and Mechanized Farming

Russell Conwell,

“Acres of Diamonds,” 1876–1925

Inspirational speech given by American Baptist minister Rus-

sell H. Conwell more than 6,000 times between 1876 and

1925. Heard first by Conwell’s Civil War regiment, the speech

quickly gained fame because of its dominant theme: “It is your

duty to be rich.” Everyone, he said, has the “opportunity to be

rich”—to have “acres of diamonds”—because “you must look

around and see what people need and then invest yourself, or

your money, in that which they need most.” Conwell believed

that the rich are rich because God made them so, and his lec-

ture was used as a rationalization of the robber-baron mental-

ity of the Gilded Age in America. Conwell founded Temple

University in 1884 for the explicit purpose of training poor

boys to rise in status through education. However, the mental-

ity defined by Conwell describes the American dream that has

undercut every socialist reform movement from the Jacksonian

Era to the present.

________________________

_______________________

(excerpt)

The title of this lecture originated away back in 1869.

When going down the Tigris River, we hired a guide from

Bagdad to show us down to the Arabian Gulf. That guide

whom we employed resembled the barbers we find in

America. That is, he resembled the barbers in certain

mental characteristics. He thought it was not only his duty

to guide us down the river, but also to entertain us with

stories; curious and weird, ancient and modern, strange

and familiar; many of them I have forgotten, and I am

glad I have. But there was one which I recall tonight. The

guide grew irritable over my lack of appreciation, and a

he led my camel by the halter he introduced his story by

saying: “This is a tale I reserve for my particular friends.”

So I then gave him my close attention. He told me that

there once lived near the shore of the River Indus, toward

which we were then traveling, an ancient Persian by the

name of Al Hafed. He said that Al Hafed owned a large

farm, with orchards, grain fields and gardens; that he

had money at interest, had a beautiful wife and lovely

children, and was a wealthy and contented man. Con-

tented because he was wealthy, and wealthy because he

was contented.

One day there visited this old Persian farmer one of

those ancient Buddhist priests, one of the wise men of the

East, who sat down by Al Hafed’s fireside and told the old

farmer how this world was made. He told him that this

world was once a great bank of fog, and that the Almighty

thrust His finger into this bank of fog, and began slowly to

move his finger around, and then increased the speed of

his finger until he whirled this bank of fog into a solid ball

of fire; and as it went rolling through the universe, burning

its way through other banks of fog, it condensed the mois-

ture, until it fell in floods of rain upon the heated surface

of the world, and cooled the outward crust; then the inter-

nal fires, bursting the cooling crust, threw up the moun-

tains, and the hills, and the valleys of this wonderful world

of ours.

“And” said the old priest, “if this internal melted mass

burst forth and cooled very quickly it became granite, if it

cooled more slowly, it became copper; if it cooled less

quickly, silver; less quickly, gold; and after gold, diamonds

were made.” Said the old priest, “A diamond is a congealed

drop of sunlight.” That statement is literally true.

And the old priest said another very curious thing. He

said that a diamond was the last and the highest of God’s

mineral creations, as a woman is the last and highest of

God’s animal creations. That is the reason, I suppose, why

the two have such a liking for each other.

The old priest told Al Hafed if he had a diamond the

size of his thumb, he could purchase a dozen farms like his.

“And,” said the priest, “if you had a handful of diamonds,

you could purchase the county, and if you had a mine of

diamonds you could purchase kingdoms, and place your

children upon thrones, through the influence of your great

wealth.”

Al Hafed heard all about the diamonds that night, and

went to bed a poor man. He wanted a whole mine of dia-

monds. Early in the morning he sought the priest and

awoke him. Well, I know, by experience, that a priest is

very cross when awakened early in the morning.

Al Hafed said: “Will you tell me where I can find dia-

monds?”

The priest said: “Diamonds? What do you want of dia-

monds?”

Said Al Hafed: “I want to be immensely rich.”

“Well,” said the priest, “if you want diamonds, all you

have to do is to go and find them, and then you will have

them.”

“But,” said Al Hafed, “I don’t know where to go.”

“If you will find a river that runs over white sands,

between high mountains, in those white sands you will

always find diamonds,” answered the priest.

“But,” asked Al Hafed, “do you believe there is such a

river?”

“Plenty of them; all you have to do is just go where

they are.”

“Well,” said Al Hafed, “I will go.”

So he sold his farm; collected his money that was at

interest; left his family in charge of a neighbor, and away

he went in search of diamonds.

He began his search, very properly to my mind, at the

Mountains of the Moon. Afterwards he came around into

Palestine, and then wandered on into Europe. At last,

when his money was all gone and he was in rags, poverty

and wretchedness, he stood on the shore at Barcelona, in

Spain, when a great tidal wave swept through the pillars of

Hercules; and the poor, starving, afflicted stranger could

not resist the awful temptation to cast himself into that

incoming tide; and he sank beneath its foaming crest,

never to rise in this life again.

When the old guide had told me that story, he stopped

the camel I was riding upon and went back to arrange the

baggage on another camel, and I had an opportunity to

muse over his story. And I asked myself this question:

“Why did this old guide reserve this story for his particu-

lar friends?” But when he came back and took up the

camel’s halter once more, I found that was the first story I

ever heard wherein the hero was killed in the first chapter.

For he went on into the second chapter, just as though

there had been no break.

Said he: “The man who purchased Al Hafed’s farm,

led his camel out into the garden to drink, and as the ani-

mal put his nose into the shallow waters of the garden

brook, Al Hafed’s successor noticed a curious flash of light

from the white sands of the stream. Reaching in he pulled

out a black stone containing a strange eye of light. He took

The Rise of Corporations, Heavy Industry, and Mechanized Farming 987

it into the house as a curious pebble and, putting it on the

mantel that covered the central fire, went his way and for-

got all about it.

“But not long after that that some old priest came to

visit Al Hafed’s successor. The moment he opened the

door he noticed the flash of light. He rushed to the mantel

and said:

“‘Here is a diamond! Here is a diamond! Has Al Hafed

returned?’

“‘Oh no, Al Hafed has not returned and we have not

heard from him since he went away, and that is not a dia-

mond. It is nothing but a stone we found out in our gar-

den.’

“‘But,’ said the priest, ‘I know a diamond when I see

it. I tell you that is a diamond.’

“Then together they rushed out into the garden. They

stirred up the white sands with their fingers, and there

came up other more beautiful, more valuable gems than

the first.

“Thus,” said the guide—and friends, it is historically

true—“was discovered the diamond minds of Golconda,

the most valuable diamond mines in the history of the

ancient world.”

Well, when the guide had added the second chapter to

his story, he then took off his Turkish red cap, and swung

it in the air to call my special attention to the moral; those

Arab guides always have morals to their stores, though the

stories are not always moral.

He said to me: “Had Al Hafed remained at home, and

dug in his own cellar, or underneath his own wheat field,

instead of wretchedness, starvation, poverty and death in a

strange land, he would have had acres of diamonds.”

Acres of diamonds! For every acre of that old farm,

yes, every shovelful, afterwards revealed the gems which

since have decorated the crowns of monarchs.

When the guide had added the moral to this story, I

saw why he reserved if for his particular friends. But I

didn’t tell him that I could see it. It was that mean, old

Arab’s way of going around a thing, like a lawyer, and say-

ing indirectly what he didn’t dare say directly; that in his

private opinion “there was a certain young man traveling

down the Tigris River, who might better be at home, in

America.”

I told him his story reminded me of one. You all know

it. I told him that a man in California, in 1847, owned a

ranch there. He heard that they had discovered gold in

Southern California, though they had not. And he sold his

farm to Colonel Sutter, who put a mill on the little stream

below the house. One day his little girl gathered some of

the sand in her hands from the raceway, and brought it into

the house. And while she was sifting it through her fingers,

a visitor there noticed the first shining scales of real gold

that were ever discovered in California. Acres and acres of

gold. I was introduced, a few years ago, while in California,

to the one-third owner of the farm, and he was then receiv-

ing one hundred and twenty dollars in gold for every fif-

teen minutes of his life, sleeping or waking. You and I

would enjoy an income like that, now that we have no

income tax.

Professor Agassiz, the great geologist of Harvard Uni-

versity, that magnificent scholar, told us, at the Summer

School of Mineralogy, that there once lived in Pennsylva-

nia a man who owned a farm—and he did with his farm

just what I should do if I had a farm in Pennsylvania. He

sold it. But, before he sold it, he decided to secure employ-

ment, collecting coal oil. He wrote to his cousin in Canada

that he would like to go into that business. His cousin

wrote back to him: “I cannot engage you, because you

don’t understand the oil business.” “Then,” said he, “I will

understand it,” and with commendable zeal, he set himself

at the study of the whole theory of the coal-oil subject. He

began away back at the second day of God’s creation. He

found that there was once another sun that shone on this

world, and that then there were immense forests of vege-

tation. He found that the other sun was put out, and that

this world after a time fell into the wake of the present sun.

It was then locked in blocks of ice. Then there rose mighty

icebergs that human imagination cannot grasp, and as

those mountains of ice did ride those stormy seas, they

beat down this original vegetation, they planed down the

hills, toppled over the mountains, and everywhere buried

this original vegetation which has since been turned by

chemical action to the primitive beds of coal, and in con-

nection with which only is found coal oil in paying quanti-

ties.

So he found out where oil originated. He studied it

until he knew what it looked like, what is smelled like, how

to refine it, and where to sell it.

“Now,” said he to his cousin in a letter, “I know all

about the oil business, from the second day of God’s cre-

ation to the present time.”

His cousin replied to him to “come on.” So he his farm

in Pennsylvania for $833—even money, no cents.

After he had gone from the farm, the farmer who had

purchased his place, went out to arrange for watering the

cattle; and he found that the previous owner had already

arranged for that matter. There was a stream running

down the hillside back of the barn; and across that stream

from bank to bank, the previous owner had put in a plank

edgewise at a slight angle, for the purpose of throwing over

to one side of the brook a dreadful looking scum through

which the cattle would not put their noses, although they

would drink on this side below the plank. Thus that man,

who had gone to Canada, and who had studied all about

the oil business, had been himself damming back for

twenty-three years a flood of coal oil, which the state geol-

988 ERA 6: The Development of the Industrial United States

ogist said in 1870 was worth to our state a hundred millions

of dollars. A hundred millions! The city of Titusville stands

bodily on that farm now. And yet, though he knew all about

the theory, he sold the farm for $833—again I say “no

sense.”

I need another illustration. I find it in Massachusetts.

The young man went down to Yale College and studied

mines and mining, and became such an adept at mineral-

ogy, that during his senior year in the Sheffield School,

they paid him as a tutor fifteen dollars a week for the spare

time in which he taught. When he graduated they raised

his pay to forty-five dollars a week and offered him a pro-

fessorship. As soon as they did that he went home to his

mother! If they had raised his salary to fifteen dollars and

sixty cents, then he would have stayed. But when they

made it forty-five dollars a week he said: “I won’t work for

forty-five dollars a week! The idea of a man with a brain

like mine, working for forty-five dollars a week! Let us go

out to California and stake out gold and silver and copper

claims, and be rich!”

Said his mother: “Now Charley, it is just as well to be

happy as it is to be rich.”

“Yes,” said he, “It is just as well to be rich and happy

too.”

They were both right about it. And as he was the only

son, and she was a widow, of course he had his way. They

always do. So they sold out in Massachusetts and went, not

to California, but to Wisconsin, and there he entered the

employ of the Superior Copper Mining Company, at fif-

teen dollars a week again. But with the proviso that he

should have an interest in any mines he should discover for

the company. I don’t believe he ever discovered a mine

there. Still I have often felt when I mentioned this fact in

Northern Wisconsin, that he might be in the audience and

feel mad at the way I speak about it. Still here is the fact,

and it seems unfortunate to be in the way of a good illus-

tration. But I don’t believe he ever found any other mine.

Yet I don’t know anything about that end of the line. I

know that he had scarcely gone for Massachusetts, before

the farmer who had purchased his farm was bringing a

large basket of potatoes in through the gateway. You know

in Massachusetts our farms are almost entirely stone wall.

Hence the basket hugged very close in the gate, and he

dragged it on one side and then on the other. And as he

was pulling that basket through the gateway, the farmer

noticed in the upper and outer corner of that stone wall

next to the gate, a block of native silver eight inches

square. And this professor of mines and mining and min-

eralogy, who would not work for forty-five dollars a week,

because he knew so much about the subject, when he sold

that homestead, sat on that very stone to make the bargain.

He was born on that very farm, and they told me that he

had gone by that piece of silver and rubbed it with his

sleeve, until it reflected his countenance and seemed to

say to him, “Here, take me! Here is a hundred thousand

dollar right down here in the rocks just for the taking.” But

he wouldn’t take it. This was near Newburyport, Mass-

achusetts. He wouldn’t believe in silver at home. He said:

“There is no silver in Newburyport. It is all away off,—

well, I don’t know where,”—and he didn’t. But somewhere

else. And he was a professor of mineralogy. I don’t know of

anything I would better enjoy in taking the whole time,

than telling of the blunders like this which I have heard

that “professors” have made.

I say that I would enjoy it. But after all there is another

side of the question. For the more I think about it, the

more I would like to know what he is doing in Wisconsin

tonight. I don’t believe he has found any mines, but I can

tell you what I do believe is the case. I think he sits out

there by his fireside tonight, and his friends are gathered

around him and he is saying to them something like this:

“Do you know that man Conwell who lives in

Philadelphia?”

“Oh, yes, I have heard of him.”

“Well you know that man Jones who live in—”

“Yes, I have also heard of him,” say they.

Then he begins to shake his sides with laughter, and

he says:

“They have both done the same thing I did precisely!”

And that spoils the whole joke.

Because you and I have done it. Yet nearly every per-

son here will say: “Oh no, I never had any acres of dia-

monds or any gold mines or any silver mines.”

But I say to you that you did have silver mines, and

gold mines, and acres of diamonds, and you have them

now.

Now let me speak with the greatest care lest my

eccentricity of manner should mislead my listeners, and

make you think I am here to entertain more than to help.

I want to hold your attention on this oppressive night, with

sufficient interest to leave my lesson with you.

You had an opportunity to be rich; and to some of you

it has been a hardship to purchase a ticket for this lecture.

Yet you have no right to be poor. It is all wrong. You have

no right to be poor. It is your duty to be rich.

Source:

James Andrews and David Zarefsky, eds., American Voices: Sig-

nificant Speeches in American History, 1640–1945. Reading,

Mass.: Longman, 1989.

Munn v. Illinois, 1877

The most important of several decisions of the U.S. Supreme

Court involving agricultural issues, called the Granger Cases.

The Rise of Corporations, Heavy Industry, and Mechanized Farming 989

Issued on March 1, 1877, it concerned the validity of an Illi-

nois law regulating maximum grain storage charges. In 1872

the Chicago storage company of Munn and Cott was found

guilty of violating that law. The company appealed the deci-

sion, claiming that fixing maximum rates violated the Four-

teenth Amendment by confiscating private property without

due process of law. The Supreme Court ruled that because the

warehouses were “affected with a public interest,” their rates

were subject to public regulation. The principle thus estab-

lished led to further public regulation of private businesses

serving the public interest. But by the end of the 1870s, the

granger movement had lost its influence.

On October 25, 1886, in

Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific

Railroad Company v. Illinois

(118 U.S. 557), concerning the

legality of an Illinois statute prohibiting long- and short-haul

clauses in transportation contracts, the U.S. Supreme Court

weakened the ruling in

Munn v. Illinois

. It denied the state on

the grounds that it interfered with interstate commerce, a ruling

that helped lead to the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act.

________________________

_______________________

(excerpt)

Mr. Chief Justice Waite delivered the opinion of the

court.

The question to be determined in this case is whether

the general assembly of Illinois can, under the limitations

upon the legislative power of the States imposed by the

Constitution of the United States, fix by law the maximum

of charges for the storage of grain in warehouses at

Chicago and other places in the State having not less than

one hundred thousand inhabitants, “in which grain is

stored in bulk, and in which the grain of different owners

is mixed together, or in which grain is stored in such a

manner that the identity of different lots or parcels cannot

be accurately preserved.”

It is claimed that such a law is repugnant—

1. To that part of sect. 8, art. 1, of the Constitution of

the United States which confers upon Congress the power

“to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the

several States”;

2. To that part of sect. 9 of the same article which pro-

vides that “no preference shall be given by any regulation

of commerce or revenue to the ports of one State over

those of another”; and

3. To that part of amendment 14 which ordains that no

State shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,

without due process of law, nor deny to any person within

its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

We will consider the last of these objections first.

Every statute is presumed to be constitutional. The

courts ought not to declare one to be unconstitutional,

unless it is clearly so. If there is doubt, the expressed will

of the legislature should be sustained.

The Constitution contains no definition of the word

“deprive,” as used in the Fourteenth Amendment. To de-

termine its signification, therefore, it is necessary to ascer-

tain the effect which usage has given it, when employed in

the same or a like connection.

While this provision of the amendment is new in the

Constitution of the United States, as a limitation upon the

powers of the States, it is old as a principle of civilized gov-

ernment. It is found in Magna Charta, and, in substance if

not in form, in nearly or quite all the constitutions that have

been from time to time adopted by the several States of the

Union. By the Fifth Amendment, it was introduced into the

Constitution of the United States as a limitation upon the

powers of the national government, and by the Fourteenth,

as a guaranty against any encroachment upon an acknowl-

edged right of citizenship by the legislatures of the States.

When the people of the United Colonies separated

from Great Britain, they changed the form, but not the

substance, of their government. They retained for the pur-

poses of government all the powers of the British Parlia-

ment, and through their State constitutions, or other forms

of social compact, undertook to give practical effect to

such as they deemed necessary for the common good and

the security of life and property. All the powers which they

retained they committed to their respective States, unless

in express terms or by implication reserved to themselves.

Subsequently, when it was found necessary to establish a

national government for national purposes, a part of the

powers of the States and of the people of the States was

granted to the United States and the people of the United

States. This grant operated as a further limitation upon the

powers of the States, so that now the governments of the

States possess all the powers of the Parliament of England,

except such as have been delegated to the United States or

reserved by the people. The reservations by the people are

shown in the prohibitions of the constitutions.

When one becomes a member of society, he necessar-

ily parts with some rights or privileges which, as an indi-

vidual not affected by his relations to others, he might

retain. “A body politic,” as aptly defined in the preamble of

the Constitution of Massachusetts, “is a social compact by

which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and

each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be gov-

erned by certain laws for the common good.” This does not

confer power upon the whole people to control rights

which are purely and exclusively private, Thorpe v. R. & B.

Railroad Co., 27 Vt. 143; but it does authorize the estab-

lishment of laws requiring each citizen to so conduct him-

self, and so use his own property, as not unnecessarily to

injure another. This is the very essence of government, and

990 ERA 6: The Development of the Industrial United States

has found expression in the maxim sic utere tuo ut alienum

non loedas. From this source come the police powers,

which, as was said by Mr. Chief Justice Taney in the

License Cases, 5 How. 583, “are nothing more or less than

the powers of government inherent in every sovereignty

. . . that is to say, . . . the power to govern men and things.”

Under these powers the government regulates the conduct

of its citizens one towards another, and the manner in

which each shall use his own property, when such regula-

tion becomes necessary for the public good. In their ex-

ercise it has been customary in England from time

immemorial, and in this country from its first colonization,

to regulate ferries, common carriers, hackmen, bakers,

millers, wharfingers, innkeepers, &c., and is so doing to fix

a maximum of charge to be made for services rendered,

accommodations furnished, and articles sold. To this day,

statutes are to be found in many of the States upon some

or all these subjects; and we think it has never yet been

successfully contended that such legislation came within

any of the constitutional prohibitions against interference

with private property. With the Fifth Amendment in force,

Congress, in 1820, conferred power upon the city of Wash-

ington “to regulate . . . the rates of wharfage at private

wharves, . . . the sweeping of chimneys, and to fix the rates

of fees therefor, . . . and the weight and quality of bread,”

3-Stat. 587, sect. 7; and, in 1848, “to make all necessary

regulations respecting hackney carriages and the rates of

fare of the same, and the rates of hauling by cartmen, wag-

oners, carmen, and draymen, and the rates of commission

of auctioneers,” 9 id. 224, sect. 2.

From this it is apparent that, down to the time of the

adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, it was not sup-

posed that statutes regulating the use, or even the price of

the use, of private property necessarily deprived an owner

of his property without due process of law. Under some

circumstances they may, but not under all. The amend-

ment does not change the law in this particular; it simply

prevents the States from doing that which will operate as

such a deprivation . . .

Source:

Supreme Court Reporter, Vol. 4, pp. 113–154.

Interstate Commerce Act, 1887

Federal law that established the Interstate Commerce Com-

mission (ICC), the first federal administrative agency. The act,

introduced by Illinois senator Shelby M. Cullom and enacted

on February 4, 1887, came as the result of public outcry over

railroad abuses. The act applied only to railroads traveling

through two or more states and provided that all railroad

charges be “reasonable and just.” It prohibited pooling

arrangements, rebates, drawbacks, and other discriminatory

rates, and it made the practice of charging more for a short

haul than a long haul illegal. The ICC, charged with regulating

railroad management, had the power to subpoena witnesses

and documents and to require annual reports. The commis-

sion was strengthened by later legislation.

________________________

_______________________

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives

of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

That the provisions of this act shall apply to any common

carrier or carriers engaged in the transportation of passen-

gers or property wholly by railroad, or partly by railroad

and partly by water when both are used, under a common

control, management, or arrangement, for a continuous

carriage or shipment, from one State or Territory of the

United States, or the District of Columbia, to any other

State or Territory of the United States, or the District of

Columbia, or from any place in the United States to an

adjacent foreign country, or from any place in the United

States through a foreign country to any other place in the

United States, and also to the transportation in like man-

ner of property shipped from any place in the United

States to a foreign country and carried from such place to

a port of trans-shipment, or shipped from a foreign coun-

try to any place in the United States and carried to such

place from a port of entry either in the United States or an

adjacent foreign country: Provided, however, That the pro-

visions of this act shall not apply to the transportation of

passengers or property, or to the receiving, delivering,

storage, or handling of property, wholly within one State,

and not shipped to or from a foreign country from or to

any State or Territory as aforesaid.

The term “railroad” as used in this act shall include all

bridges and ferries used or operated in connection with

any railroad, and also all the road in use by any corporation

operating a railroad, whether owned or operated under a

contract, agreement, or lease; and the term “transporta-

tion” shall include all instrumentalities of shipment or car-

riage.

All charges made for any service rendered or to be

rendered in the transportation of passengers or property as

aforesaid, or in connection therewith, or for the receiving,

delivering, storage, or handling of such property, shall be

reasonable and just; and every unjust and unreasonable

charge for such service is prohibited and declared to be

unlawful.

Sec. 2. That if any common carrier subject to the pro-

visions of this act shall, directly or indirectly, by any special

rate, rebate, drawback, or other device, charge, demand,

collect, or receive from any person or persons a greater or

The Rise of Corporations, Heavy Industry, and Mechanized Farming 991