Call number: LD2668 .T4 1965 J14 / Master of Science

Historians disagree on the reasons the Populist Movement and labor failed to achieve a political coalition. Some find the cause in a backward-looking Populist ideology that imagined solutions to the problems of rapid industrialization could be found in a yeoman republic. According to this view, rank-and-file Populists neither understood nor had sympathy with the problems facing workers in the mass industries of the late twentieth century. Others see Populism as a progressive movement that accepted industrialization but sought to bring it under government control so that its material advantages would benefit all citizens, especially the producer classes of farmers, laborers, and small businessmen. These historians blame the failure of a coalition to develop on the immaturity of the labor movement; it was not intellectually or organizationally advanced enough to appreciate Populists’ shared interests with workers or to accept their offer of a coalition. Richard Hofstadter and Oscar Handlin are key scholars in the first school; Lawrence Goodwyn and C. Vann Woodward are acknowledged spokespersons for the second. This study attempts to address the coalition issue by examining the responses of Populist and Republican newspapers to the Homestead Strike of 1892 and the Pullman Strike of 1894. These strikes were selected because both were notorious for their violence and bloodshed and both elicited armed government intervention on behalf of business. Newspapers were examined around the time of the strikes to gain a sense of local Populist sympathy with labor and of its commitment to a political coalition of farmers and workers. Populist response was compared to opinions expressed in Republican newspapers to determine if significant ideological differences existed between the Parties. Reviewing newspapers throughout the state and for events that occurred two years apart served as a check on regional and chronological variations. In all, over 400 newspaper editions were reviewed. The study’s findings solidly support to the perspective that depicts Populism as actively seeking a coalition based on a realistic understanding of labor’s position in an industrial economy. Universal editorial stances in favor of labor also advance the position that this was an authentic grass-roots expression and not simply a reflection of national leadership ideology. All Populist newspapers called for a political coalition of farmers and laborers. Populist response was markedly different than Republican. With a few exceptions, Republican newspapers took the side of capital. Further, this investigation revealed no evidence of desire to return to an imaginary yeomen republic in Populist newspapers. The study also examined the newspapers for instances of anti-Semitism and nativism associated with Homestead and Pullman. There was little evidence of either. While this might not be surprising with regard to anti-Semitism since the strikes did not revolve around issues of banking or credit, it is significant with regard to nativism. Anti-foreigner sentiment was often associated with strikes and with the importation of cheap, European labor. If nativism infected the Populist Movement, as is claimed by many historians who see it as a reactionary movement that practiced status politics, it should have been reflected in the pages of these newspapers. Its absence raises questions about negative conceptualizations of the Movement. / Thesis (M.A.)--Wichita State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dept, of History.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1934 H31

Master of Arts / Department of History / Bonnie Lynn-Sherow / In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Timber Culture Act (1873) and the development of the field of scientific forestry shifted the social conception of trees from a cultural icon, into living technological tools. Beginning with the antebellum publications of George Perkins Marsh, who argued for the preservation and restoration of forests for the benefit of all, scientists, railroad developers, and plains settlers advocated for the cultural importance of trees as a living tool. Assured by railroad-boosters, the budding Forestry Bureau, and pro-tree legislators that rainfall would follow their planting efforts, waves of emigrants who relocated to the grasslands from the eastern forested areas planted millions of trees in an attempt to afforest the open prairies, creating traceable environmental and social changes over time. Environmental historian Elliott West asserts, “Only people have tried on a massive scale to move imagined environments out of their heads and to duplicate them in the world where others live,” and the grasslands of Kansas is one of these environments. This thesis argues that the scientific field of forestry developed a system of prairie tree planting (afforestation) aimed at altering the environment of the Great Plains with artificial forests and created a technological construction of the Kansas environment. The enactment of the Timber Culture Act was a watershed moment because it elevated the social conceptions of trees to that of a living tool and created the need for a national Forestry Bureau. Primary source documents reveal that the general perception held in the nineteenth century was that the natural environment and climate was malleable. The development of profit-centered tree farms furthered the idea that forests were like any other manageable crop. The changes over time in the forest cover of Kansas resulted in an altered ecology and the introduction of invasive species, but most importantly, it altered the cultural perception of how Kansas should look.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1985 S56 / Master of Arts

This thesis examines southern reactions to events that occurred in May 1856: the outbreak of civil war in Kansas and the caning of Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. I researched two newspapers from the upper South state of Virginia, the Richmond Enquirer and the Richmond Daily Whig, and two newspapers from the lower South state of Louisiana, the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the New Orleans Bee to determine the extent to which political party sentiment and/or geographic location affected southern opinion towards the two events. Political party ties influenced the material each newspaper printed. Each newspaper worried that these events endangered the Union. Some, however, believed the Union could be saved while others argued that it was only a matter of time before the South seceded.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In 1854 the United States Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska bill which left the question of slavery in the territory up to a vote of popular sovereignty. Upon the passage of the bill, New England’s most elite class of citizens, led by Eli Thayer, mobilized their networks of philanthropy in New England to ensure the Kansas-Nebraska territory did not embrace slavery. The effort by the New England elite to make the territories free was intertwined in a larger web of philanthropic motivations aimed to steer the future of America on a path that would replicate New England society throughout the country. The process and goal of their philanthropy in the Kansas-Nebraska Territory was not dissimilar from their philanthropy in New England. Moral classification of those in material poverty mixed with a dose of paternalism and free labor capitalism was the antidote to the disease of moral degradation and poverty. When Missourians resisted the encroachment of New Englanders on the frontier, the New England elites shifted their philanthropy from moral reform to the funding and facilitation of violence under the guise of philanthropy and disaster relief. For six years, until the outbreak of the American Civil War, New England philanthropists facilitated and helped fund the conflict known as Bleeding Kansas.