The assigned readings focused on the seven year corrupted political battle for the location of port Los Angeles. Each source offers their own take on how this political battle began, from corruption in California's state government to Santa Monica almost becoming the Port of Los Angeles. In the chapter by Bill Deverell, the Octopus, Southern Pacific Railroad, is shown how the company had both political and economic power during the Gilded Age. Its main goal was to move the Port of Los Angeles to Santa Monica in order to become a monopoly power, but progressive reformers realized the evil doings of SP, and decided to take the conflict to the U.S Senate. As for Moss's article, he portrays the same controversial and corrupted story by using a
Susan Lee Johnson in her book, Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush, gives a collections of histories of the same event from multiple sources’ perspectives. She does not try to decipher which interpretation or version of events is the accurate one. Johnson believes that the multitude of versions is more telling of the actual themes that were bing played out in this area of the southern mines of California. Johnson tackles issues of labor in these mining camps throughout her book. She pays close attention to the Anglo-American migrants and their disgruntled claims against the system of peonage employed by Sonoran and other Latino patrons.
Major Political Actors Bill AB 1124 was approved by Governor Jerry Brown on 6th October 2015. The bill stipulates that the administrative director should create a drug formulary before 1st July 2017 to be in the medical treatment schedule regarding medications prescribed to workers in the compensation system (Perea 2016). The important bill was introduced by democrat Henry Perea with the goal of preventing the overutilization of numerous drugs and opioids. Also, the bill aimed at saving taxpayer’s money for other important ventures while still meeting worker’s requirements for medication within the system. Henry Perea’s decision to sponsor the bill was informed by a study that revealed the numerous savings states like Washington and Texas were making by adopting formularies.
Urban/political machines played a major role in late nineteenth-century American cities. These machines were powerful political organizations that controlled local government and politics in many cities. They were often led by a single powerful leader, known as a “boss”, who had the ability to influence elections and appointments to public office. The machines were able to control the city’s resources and patronage, and they used these resources to reward their supporters and punish their opponents. The machines were able to gain power by providing services to the city’s residents.
Over the next forty-years, Vanderbilt’s shipping empire becomes the largest in the world. At the beginning of the Civil War, when the railroad system was just starting to develop, Cornelius sees the potential that the railroad system will have on the world once it is fully set. He then decides to take a huge risk and sell all of his shipping
We are in an era of great wealth and prosperity in America, but there is a dark secret to this period of economic growth. Cornelius Vanderbilt and Jay Gould are two of the most influential railroad barons of the time, but their business practices are anything but honorable. Vanderbilt and Gould use their immense wealth and power to create monopolies and exploit the railroad industry for their own gain. They manipulate the stock market, bribe politicians, and use intimidation tactics to ensure their success.
For more than a hundred years, critics have been ripping the business strategies that allowed big industrialists to build powerful monopolies—but those much-maligned monopolies brought desperately needed order to America's immature economic system. Many have also long resented the immense fortunes of personal wealth that a handful of big businessmen were able to acquire—but that wealth paid for a huge surge in philanthropy, building hundreds of libraries, schools, museums, and other public facilities still enjoyed by the American people even today. Reformers decried the way urban politicians turned corruption into a way of life—but those same crooked politicians also provided vital services to working-class and immigrant neighborhoods. The Gilded Age was a dynamic age of incredible economic opportunity, just as it was a harsh era of incredible economic exploitation. Any version of this tale that includes only the exploitation but not the dynamism—or vice versa—is missing half the story.
The actual document begins with Plunkitt discussing the difference between honest graft and dishonest graft. He asserts that during this period of time many questions arose involving Tammany men becoming wealthy, while in office. This questioning defeated Tammany in 1901 due to the fact that the New York individuals thought some of the Tammany men were stealing from the city treasury. He argues that, “There’s an honest graft, and I’m an example of how it works. I might sum the whole thing by sayin’: ‘I seen my opportunities and I took ‘em” (49).
The Progressive Era was a time in United States history when social and political ideologies formed as a response to rapid industrialization. This period lastly roughly from 1895-1920 and is the focus of David E. Alsobrook’s article in the April 2002 issue of The Alabama Review. Alsobrook’s commentary focuses on the port city of Mobile, AL and the progressive reorganizations that occurred in the city the decades after reconstruction. He argues that the reforms of the city were caused by the influx of entrepreneurs brought by newly completed railroads. These businessmen were successful in obtaining leadership roles previously reserved for those of the gentry class (i.e. cotton plantation owners) and had different concepts of what made a successful
As seen in the 1882 political cartoon, an Octopus with the words “Corporate Greed. All for Ourselves. Nothing for the Public,” while hoarding crates underneath it with names of railroads depicts what railroads were doing to businesses. Railroads were setting high rates and over charging that made it hard for entrepreneurs to make money. The cartoon also depicted the mind sets rich business men had.
In the second half of the 19th-century migration to California increased due to railroad-inspired land boom. However, migration to California was not welcoming and tolerant to one specific group of migrants, and this group was the Chinese. As new rails were being built there was a demand for workers to build railways throughout California and eastward to connect the Transcontinental Railroad with Union Pacific (Textbook, 269). Big railroad industries, such as Central Pacific hired Chinese immigrants as part of their workforce. The Chinese worked tirelessly and through tough environmental conditions and earned low wages.
La Paz Brief history Founded in 1548 by Spanish conquistadores looking for gold, *La Paz* swiftly became a thriving economic centre with merchants from all over heading here to trade in coca, tin, silver and gold, and facilitating routes from coast to Andes and onward to [Buenos Aires]. Within a century, the city was inhabited by a few hundred Spaniards and quite a few thousand indigenous Bolivians, each fraction taking up opposite shores of the Choqueyapu River. Although several Indio rebellions initiated here, each was met with tough and brutal resistance from the occupiers, and it wasn’t until 1825 that independence from the Spanish Crown was finally achieved. By then, *La Paz* was the most prominent and largest of all the cities, and even though *Sucre* remained the official capital, * La Paz* was, and still remains, home of the President and Government.
California is the “beauty of the eye of the beholder” since all people who come from different background, race, and religion are able to set their own dreams without being criticized. People especially immigrants have viewed California as the “land of opportunity,” which influenced them to leave everything behind in their hometown, to sacrifice their time and to focus on their dreams. Despite the fact that California was lauded as a utopian society, people soon found out that they were going through endeavors and couldn’t overcome them quickly as possible. In fact, Mr. Rawls wanted to express the grievances, struggles, and success that people endure in their rise to the California dream in his short essay, “California: A Place, A People,
The railroad shipped $50 million worth of freight coast to coast each year. The railroad brought an economic growth for businesses. It also allowed people to travel across country at a cheaper rate and at a much faster pace. The railroad brought many positive effects to California but it didn’t stay that way.
With more widespread access to magazines, news, movies, and other “luxuries”, the containment of individuality and shared opinions of those not in the upper status became increasingly hard. In short, the political leaders of this time tried too hard to control population, cultural assimilation, and force of growth of industry. He uses the historical facts about important public figures of the time such as Theodore Roosevelt, W.E.B Du Bois, and the Rockefellers while explaining and aligning the movements themes and events in relation to the rebels and the Progressives during the particular period of the era he was outlining. He uses these characters of time
“Throughout 1849, people around the United States (mostly men) borrowed money, mortgaged their property or spent their life savings to make the arduous journey to California. In pursuit of the kind of wealth they had never dreamed of, they left their families and hometowns...”. The young ambitious men would later be called the “49ers” by people around the world. They would have to travel the hard terrain of America and the harsh seas of the Pacific and Atlantic ocean to finally arrive in California. Even before California became part of the union in the late year of 1849 as the 31st state of America, all the gold there wasn’t owned by the government and was all up for