The Homestead Act - Essay Example

Signed into law in February 1881, this act was sponsored by Massachusetts Senator H.L Dawes, to provide for the granting of landholdings to Native Americans for replacing communal tribal holdings. This act aimed at including social divisions in the national society. This act also formed a trust fund to gather and disseminate the proceeds from timber, oil, mineral, and grazing leases on the lands of Native Americans. Legislators hoped to complete the absorption process through the division of reservation lands into privately owned lands (Kutler 220). They wanted to put an end to the communal lifestyle that the Native Americans had been living, by imposing Western values within the small household units. Allotments could be sold after a 25-year period, which was the statutory period, and non-allotted surplus land opened to settlers. After years the act hurt the unity, culture, and self-government of the Native Americans.

Part II

What devices did John D. Rockefeller use to gain control of 90% of the oil refining business by 1890?

Immediately after the discovery of oil, Rockefeller was immediately attracted to this business. In 1863, he joined hands with partners to create a refining business. In 1870, he teamed with his brother to form the Standard Oil Company, which employed several devices to gain control of 90% of the oil business. Rockefeller bought every component demanded for producing oil barrels, and this way, he was able to keep his competitors away because he had monopolized the business. The Standard Oil Company cut its prices to withstand short-term losses. This rate-war strategy ensured that smaller competitors were kicked out of the market since they could not keep pace. Rockefeller also believed in intimidation, and, on one incidence, Standard Oil sent thugs to break the operations of its competitors (Kutler 142). He used both horizontal and vertical integration to acquire all oil refining companies giving Standard Oil immense volume, this way, Rockefeller was able to demand a refund on the railroad’s public rates.

Why did American cities experience explosive growth in the late nineteenth century?

In the late nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution increased the number of people who moved into cities to seek employment in factories. As factories increased in the U.S., several people left Europe and several parts of the world to America to search for jobs. The Industrial Revolution created a demand for a workforce and several people decided to move from the countryside to the industrialized cities (Kutler 94). In addition, the effects of the 1873-1896 depression encouraged people to proceed to cities and find employment. The industrial expansion changed the face of America’s cities with slums, air pollution, traffic jams, noise, and sanitation problems becoming commonplace. There was demand for mass transit leading to the emergence of cable cars and subways. Commuters traveling in and out of the city increased, and suburbs emerged just beyond the city.

Cause of Gold Speech

After the Coinage Act, the United States began to operate a gold standard, meaning that they would have to abandon the policy of bimetallism. The Democratic Party opposed a monometallic gold standard and wanted to standardize the dollar value to silver. The speech recommended bimetallism and was delivered by William Jennings Bryan in 1896.

It seems Bryan had devoted his speech to responses raised by other speakers that he felt had left a great mark in American history, but whose work had been forgotten. From his argument, he must have belonged to the borrower's or farmers' group because he seemed to oppose the policies of moneylenders. He also advocated for the interests of rural dwellers as opposed to urban dwellers and supported economic nationalists. Bryan seems to be against anyone who supports the U.S. abandoning the gold standard. He played the role of a supporter of economic populism.

Those who supported the monometallic gold standard argued that protecting inflation was of great importance for America, and they settled on the monometallic gold standard as the best way of ensuring such security could be accorded. Inflation would mean that one’s savings lost value and it would be disadvantageous to the creditors due to the change in value. From the arguments, it seems the U.S. economy was experiencing a money shortage, and the currency was based on the gold standard. Bryan was advocating for monetary redistribution, which would mean goods gained value than currency putting debtors and poorer people at an advantage.