History Paper 1877 – 1900

Over the old age of 1877 to the 1900s many changes were occurring. The entropyern cities were changing faster than anyone couldve imagined with mod transportation, ripening industries, and the end of slavery. Not to mention, the changing role of women. In the New South by the year 1880, steel and iron mills were progressing across the North. Railroad wind was fast paced in the 1880s. Comparing 1880 to 1890 the tracks had doubled with Texas and Georgia having the biggest growth. In 1886, an agreement was made to have a standardized width on the railroad tracks.This would armed service create a national transportation system. By creating this, the increasing demand of obtaining and selling goods would be fulfilled at a faster pace. Also, with this new transportation came new land for families to move into for work. The textile industriousness was growing significantly also because more people were traveling to the South. With immigrants and Southerners needing a steady crap of income entrepreneurs took on the textile business non only to build good relationships with the people of the South but also to be less dependent on capital and manufactured products from the North.Tobacco was also a growing business with Virginia leading in the sales of chewing tobacco plant across the nation. When the discovery of bright-leaf tobacco was made, tobacco habits were changed into the form of cigarettes by James B. Duke. He had the first cigarette-making machine installed in his plant and by the year 1900, Dukes tobacco company was controlling lxxx percent of tobacco manufacturing in the United States. With these booming industries came low wages. The South experienced a downfall with the rise they were experiencing.Since the workers of the South were poorly paid they could not afford to buy much so the market in the South for manufactured goods was kept low as was the consumer demand. Low wages only brought in immigrants that were low-skilled so skilled laborers we re more likely to go north and work complicated machinery to produce high-quality goods. The South had close to no capital reserves to aggrandize leaving Northern financers to purchase the five major rail lines serving the South at a bargain after failing during a first gear in the 1870s.Since the South was such a risk to invest in the textile industry stayed small-scale. On the other hand, the Souths largest industry, the lumber industry grew. Since it required little capital and provided unskilled laborers with a job, these raw materials were quickly produced. The tobacco industry unlike the textile industry avoided some turmoil. James B. Dukes tobacco company was profitable enough to become its own bank. With enough capital to have the latest technologies on his plants, he was fortunate enough to buy out his competitors.In the late nineteenth century women began fighting to improve the status of women, sometimes by joining with men. Because women in the South were left with pro viding for their families when the South alienated the war, some never wanting to depend on men again and others who dealt with Southern men who were shaken by defeat, they were not as motivated to bunk reform and threaten gender role changes. Despite such battles, southern women found opportunities in schools, and stores for example that expanded their social role twenty years after 1880.Women of the South, both black and blank of the middle class, played important roles in civic work and reform. These middle class women began performing in activities ranging from lobbying for discordant causes, taking leadership on plenty of important issues and organizing clubs. Some of the first womens clubs starting in the 1880s were self-improvement societies that did not care for reform. Womens clubs grew and by 1890, most towns and cities had several womens clubs. Some of the clubs and its members even began taking part in political issues. eyepatch both black and fresh women had their clubs, the activities of black womens clubs were slightly different in comparison to the white womens clubs. Black womens clubs looked out for the women and children in their cities, supporting daycare facilities for works mothers and settlement houses in poor black neighborhoods. They also established homes for single black women so that they would not be an easy victim to sexual exploitation. battle of Atlantas Neighborhood Union founded playgrounds, a health center and also received a grant to improve black education.These women also worked for woman suffrage. While both groups of women had strong beliefs and motives to speak their minds they rarely communicated with each other. Some white women would even use racial solidarity as a weapon to promote white womens right to vote. They did this to prove the point that with white men and womens votes combined they could further white interests. The black generation that came of age in this surroundings where blacks and whites could maintain cordial relations expected many privileges in society like the right to vote, work and attend school.Among these, they also wanted self-respect, dignity and to be considered equal to the white men and women. White southerners who came of age in this same environment saw blacks as the enemy. They wanted to preserve white purity and dominance. Because the tensions between blacks and whites continued to grow, not only on the view of equality but in jobs as well, violence against black people boomed in the 1890s. Some of these slam-bang crimes included lynching. After two of the unspoken rules had been violated the lynchings started.White men began to see themselves as protectors of the weak, but it more importantly reinforced white solidarity and reminded the blacks that white conquest ruled the South. When the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed freedmen the right to vote, poll taxes, literacy test, understanding clause and grandfather clause were all some of the disfranchising legislation that began to prevent blacks from voting. Blacks began moving to cities in the South where they could be somewhat free from white surveillance after feeling like American democracy had hung a whites only sign.Blacks began to create their own bounteous communities and the businesses and institutions they built during Reconstruction began to grow and some even flourish. By the year 1900, black southerners had less political power than they had before and were far more separate from white southerners. Despite every obstacle, they were successful in building a comfortable community life and a rising middle class, all date being in a restricted environment.The changes brought over the time frame of 1877 to the 1900s were the framework for some of the opportunities we have today. The South had plenty going on over the years, from building and trying to keep industries, to men and women moving into the Southern cities with new opportunity that their ancestors did not have an d Blacks fighting for their rights when white solidarity was having such a heavy effect on their lifestyles. The South was fast growing but holding itself back with segregation, and black disfranchisement.