Year of Award

2019

Document Type

Professional Paper

Degree Type

Master of Arts (MA)

Degree Name

History

Department or School/College

Department of History

Committee Chair

Professor Jeff Wiltse

Commitee Members

Richard Drake, Christopher Muste

Keywords

tariff, Homestead, labor history, political culture, Gilded Age

Subject Categories

Labor History | Political History | United States History

Abstract

Members of Congress appropriated the 1892 labor conflict at Homestead, Pennsylvania as a point of partisan rhetorical debate over the ills or benefits of the 1890 McKinley Tariff. This appropriation demonstrated how congress found the tariff in general useful not only for engaging public concerns over industrial era woes like wage insecurity, but also for deflecting public discussion away from an underlying federal helplessness to mitigate those same detrimental effects of industrial capitalism.

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© Copyright 2019 Paul T. Thompson