. Other champions of muscular Christianity, such as the Young Men’s Christian Association, built gymnasiums, often attached to churches, where young men could strengthen their bodies as well as their spirits. It was YMCA leader who coined the term bodybuilding; others invented the sports of basketball and volleyball.

The need to protect working-class women was starkly illustrated in 1911 when the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Manhattan caught fire. The doors of the factory had been chained shut to prevent women employees from taking unauthorized breaks. The managers who held the keys had saved themselves when the fire broke out, but they left over two hundred women locked in the factory. A rickety fire escape ladder on the side of the building collapsed immediately. Women lined the rooftop and crowded the windows of the ten-story building to avoid the flames and smoke. Many jumped, landing in what newspaper reports described as a “mangled, bloody pulp”. Life nets held by firemen tore at the impact of the falling bodies. Among the onlookers, “women were hysterical, scores fainted; men wept [and] hurled themselves against the police lines.” By the time the fire burned itself out, 71 workers were injured and 146 had died.

The WCTU called alcohol a “home wrecker.”

The Yards were already processing two million animals annually in 1870, and by 1890 they processed 9 million animals a year.

In 1900 Alabama had 121,159 literate black men of voting age. Only 3,742 were registered to vote. 130,000 black Louisiana voters had voted in the contentious election of 1896. Only 5,320 voted in 1900. While African Americans were clearly the target of these laws, some whites were disenfranchised as well

Felton praised the killing of Sam Hose, saying he had deserved less sympathy than a rabid dog.

sixteen all-white battleships

Asian trade remained comparatively small, and yet the idea that Asian markets were vital to American commerce affected American policy and, when those markets were threatened, prompted interventions.

that monopolies and trusts controlled too much of the economy, and that owners and investors grew rich while the workers who had produced their wealth suffered from low pay, long hours, and unsafe working conditions.

William Jennings Bryan was among the most influential losers in American political history.

He believed that reissuing silver dollars, by inflating American currency, could alleviate farmers’ debts.

The Farmer’s Alliance had failed to challenge the pervasive white supremacy of the American South in their call for a grand union of the producing classes. Their constitution had banned black membership, citing as an excuse that the Alliance was a social organization “where we meet with our wives and daughters.”

The alliance’s cooperatives spread across the South between 1886 and 1892 and reached more than a million members at their high point.

Darwin’s theory had gained widespread traction among biologists, naturalists, and other scientists in the United States and had begun to challenge the social, political, and religious beliefs of many Americans.

Despite repeated failure, workers continued to strike industrial corporations. In 1894, 4,000 workers in Pullman rail car factories in Chicago struck when George Pullman cut wages by a quarter but kept rents and utilities in his company town constant

“The Chinese Must Go”. Many Chinese people ran laundries that competed with the company’s detergent and washing machines.

Republicans used their control of government to enact  high protective tariffs designed to shield American businesses from foreign competition. Southern planters had vehemently opposed tariffs before the war but could do nothing to prevent their increase.