Liberalism: Power, Economic Crisis, Reform, War 59The Crisis of the 1890s and the Turn to Empire
The Populists and other protesters were addressing a much bigger problem
that had dominated post-Civil War America, the transition to Industrial
Capitalism and the conditions it had created. While the likes of Rockefeller
and Carnegie had created huge wealth and made the United States a power-
ful economic country, the system also forced workers and farmers into differ-
ent kinds of work with a loss of independence, led to a surge in immigration,
and created a poor working class that rebelled against this new order. In
addition to protests like The Great Uprising, Haymarket or Pullman, or the
emergence of Populism, the government also faced an “army” of unemployed
workers marching on Washington to seek relief, the rise of Socialist and anar-
chist movements, and millions of Americans, like Mark Twain, attacking the
gilded economy. While clearly in power, the ruling class wanted to stop these
opposition movements and find a solution to the economic problems–espe-
cially overproduction and low prices–that still existed. As a result, the United
States would move abroad and for the first time formally acquire foreign
lands. The European powers had been acquiring such lands, colonies, since
Columbus’s voyages, and used them for markets, investment, labor, and
resources—just as the British in North America until 1776. So, in the United
States as well, Imperialism, in this case liberal empire, would become the solu-
tion to the crisis of capitalism.
The 1890s was not the first period when America looked abroad. Indeed,
from colonial times onward, national leaders envisioned a country with abun-
dant resources seeking foreign markets for its raw materials and manufactured
goods. In fact, the founders developed the idea of a free trade system even
before independence. Instead of having a closed colonial system, where the
colonies could only trade with the Mother Country, the Americans wanted a
system in which all countries traded with one another, without barriers or
tariffs. By the 1890s, this idea would become known as The Open Door, mean-
ing that trade would take place freely, as through an open door, instead of
with obstacles that favored certain countries over another, or excluded the
U.S. from economic relations by devices like tariffs and such. It meant that
imperial countries should not have control over other places and dominate
and limit trade or investment in their colonies. Instead, empires should offer
an “open door” to the world, so any country—especially an economically