Gilded Age/ Period 6

Interstate Commerce Act 1877 - nominal restrictions but set precedent for gov to protect public interest against private enterprise

nominal restrictions but set precedent for gov to protect public interest against private enterprise

Created an enormous domestic market & made true westward expansion possible but at the cost of nature and natives

Vanderbilt

.Made his fortune in steamboats then built a railway between Chicago and New York. He popularized the use of steel rails in his railroad and consolidated control using coercion and threats.

Rockefeller

.Created Standard Oil Company which controlled 95% of all of the refineries in the US by 1877. Used “Horizontal Integration,” buying out or controlling a majority of stock in competitors to avoid competition.

Carnegie

Used "Vertical Integration" to control every step of the steel-making process; his goal was to improve efficiency and controlling the quality of the product at all stages of production by eliminating  competition and the middle man. Sold Carnegie Steel to JP Morgan & engaged in philanthropic endeavors (“Gospel of Wealth”).

Morgan

Banker and investor who played a role in the consolidation of a number of industries, including the creation of General Electric & the buyout of Carnegie Steel to create US Steel. He also loaned the US government around $70 million in 1895 when gold was draining from the treasury at a dangerous rate.

Vertical Integration

Controlling every step to process (eliminating middle man)

Horizontal Integration

Buying out companies or stock to avoid competition

Laissez-Faire

• gov policies led to immense wealth for business owners but poor conditions for workers

  • Manipulated 14th Amendment to avoid corporate regulation by the states by deeming corporations the status of  legal “persons.”

Social Darwinism

• survival of the fittest” though more influenced by classical economists than Darwin

American Dream - “up by your bootstraps”

Rebate

rail barons granted secret kickbacks to powerful shippers for steady traffic

Pool

agreed to divide the business in an area & share profits

Trust

consolidation proved profitable than ruinous price wars

Gospel of Wealth

• Carnegie supported

• Belief that weather should aid the poor the way the wealthy saw fit

• Wealth was a manifestation of God’s will

• Social Darwinists opposed this idea

• Often patronizing bc the wealth looked down on the poor

Sherman Anti-Tryst Act

was the first measure passed by Congress to prohibit trusts.

•  reflected a growing concern by the American public that the growth and expansion of monopolies were detrimental to the free market 

- vague wording and its interpretation by a very conservative judiciary made the act ineffective at first

1877 Railroad Strikes

over wage cuts quelled by federal troops → over 100 deaths

1886 Haymarket Square

labor demonstration turned violent as a bomb was thrown, killing 12 incl. police → Radical anarchists blamed

1892 Homestead Steel Strikes

• battle with Pinkerton guards & ultimately federal troops who crushed the strike 

  • Carnegie increased hours and decreased wages

1894 Pullman Strike

• Eugene Debs  led over 125,000 workers to strike – disrupts railroad industry 

Strike ended by federal injunction & used Sherman Antitrust Act as rationale to end strike

Populist Party

est. - demanded inflationary coinage, graduated income tax, government ownership, of infrastructure, immigration restrictions, one term presidency, etc

National Labor Union

excluded Chinese, women, & blacks

Knights of Labor

the “one big union:” allowed skilled, unskilled, men, women, white and black workers

AFL

Led by Samuel Gompers, an association of unions pursuing “bread & butter issues”: higher wages, shorter working hours & better conditions

189w Presidential Election

Populist candidate James Weaver won over a million votes… however both in this election & the Election of 1896, the interests of Big Business triumphs

Boss Tweed

• Led Tammany Hall in political machine NYC in favor of the Democratic Party 

• Made over $200 million by securing bribes and manipulating the government through embezzlement, fake leases, padded bills, etc.

• Schemes uncovered by cartoonist Thomas Nast of the New York Times

• Boss Tweed sent to prison

Panic of 1873

after collapse of major railroad co. → Grant unable to stop downturn & unemployment reached 14%

Great Railroad Strike 1877

• protesting low wages & gained sympathy from other citizens → Hayes sent federal troops to end the strike

Set stage for future unrest: Haymarket Square, Homestead Steel Strike & Pullman Strike

Kearneyites

irish immigrants who resented cheap labor competition attacked Chinese

Chinese Exclusion Act 1882

prohibited immigration from China until 1943

Populists

• Grew from Farmers Alliance and Granger Movement rooted in midwest

• Supported inflationary monetary policies (silver coinage), graduated income tax, government ownership of railroads, telegraphs & phones; direct election of senators, shorter workday & immigration restrictions

• Strikes led some to fear white urban workers would join the movement

• Racial tension fragmented the Populists

Pro Silver / Willam Jennings Bryan

• Supporters: owners of silver mines in the West, farmers who believed that an expanded currency would increase the price of their crops, and debtors who hoped it would enable them to pay their debts more easily.

Divergence in interests between Eastern manufacturing/banking and Western farmers

McKinley Tariff

Supported by Industrialists

•  Poor farmers had to buy high-priced manufactured goods but sell goods on competitive, unprotected global market

Bimetallism

Favored by Demo Party

• rival to Republicans and Gold Standard

Sherman Silver Purchase Act

required the Treasury to increase its purchases of silver but concern about the US abandoning the gold standard drove up the demand for gold, which drained the Treasury’s gold (people exchanging silver currency for gold)

Depression of 1893

JP Morgan loaned the government money as Gold drained from the treasury

Democrats during Gilded Age

• Lutheran & Catholics

• More recent immigrants

• Opposed government efforts to impose a single moral standard on the entire society

• South and in the northern industrial cities

• Agreed w/ Repubs on tariff & civil service reform

• Strong, loyal following who voted on party line (80% voter turnout)

Republicans during Gilded Age

• Puritan

• strict codes of personal morality and believed that government should play a role in regulating both the economic and the moral affairs of society.

• Midwest and the rural and small-town Northeast

• Grand Army of the Republic (GAR)—a politically potent fraternal organization of several hundred thousand Union veterans of the Civil War.

• Large manufacturers

Sharecropping & Crop liens

 kept newly “freed” blacks in debt to white landowners

Black Codes/Jim Crow

banned blacks from serving on juries, banned gathering in large, unauthorized groups, and even punished blacks for “idleness.”

Disenfranchisement

 literacy tests and poll taxes to deny blacks the ballot. The notorious “grandfather clause” exempted from those requirements anyone whose ancestors had voted in 1860

W.E.B DuBois

• advocated political action and a civil rights agenda (helped found the NAACP)

•  argued social change could be accomplished by developing the small group of college-educated blacks he called “the Talented Tenth”

• Editor of The Crisis magazine & Wrote The Souls of Black Folks

Booker T Washington

• philosophy of self-help, racial solidarity and accommodation → accept discrimination temporarily and concentrate on elevating themselves through hard work. 

• Education in the crafts, industrial and farming skills (Tuskegee Institute)

City Life in the end of the 19th Century

• The price of goods decreased & workers’ real wages increased, providing new access to a variety of goods & services

• Glittering city lights, department stores, telephones, skyscrapers & feats of engineering like the Brooklyn Bridge 

• standards of living improved, while the gap between rich and poor grew

• Issues of waste disposal highlight new consumer culture & lack of urban planning 

• Urban slums - dumbbell tenements poorly ventilated with a shared toilet housed immigrant masses

Continuity in New and Old Immigrants

Political machines provide aid to immigrants for their votes

→ Nativism & opposition to immigrants: Know-Nothings & American Protective Association campaigned for laws to restrict immigration.

→ immigrants worked lowest paying jobs

Changes in New & Old immigrants

• New definitions of “undesirables”: from Irish/Germans to S/E Europeans

  → Laws passed: Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882; attempts to pass literacy tests vetoed by Cleveland 

  → “Old immigrants” assimilated more quickly while “New immigrants” tried to preserve their Old Country culture in America by creating ethnic enclaves

  →New Immigrants poorer and less literate 

  → identified with subversive ideas: anarchism, communism, etc. 

Yellow journalism

newspapers emphasizing sensationalism over facts

Settlement houses

women (like Jane Addams & Hull House) lived among immigrant poor and educated/Americanized them, provided childcare, etc

Social Gospel

Protestant ministers used religion to demand better housing and living conditions for the urban poor

Temperance

 to outlaw consumption of alcohol which plagued urban poor communities - Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), Anti-Saloon League & Carrie Nation

“Comstock Law”

• to promote sexual purity  

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

author of Women & Economics who advocated cooperative cooking and child care to promote women's economic independence and equality

POLITICAL MACHINES

Boss Tweed led Tammany Hall in political machine NYC in favor of the Democratic Party. Made over $200 million by securing bribes and manipulating the government through embezzlement, fake leases, padded bills, etc.

CREDIT MOBILIER SCANDAL,

Congressmen accepted bribes in company stock to pay a sham construction company used by the Union Pacific Railroad to turn a huge profit.

Hard Money

• gold standard

• Deflationary and favored by lenders

Soft Money

• silver & greenbacks

• Inflationary

• Favored by debtors

GREENBACK PARTY

sought to elect candidates who supported the continued issuance of paper money and called for the end of government corruption,regulation of the railroads and other corps and conservation of natural resources

CRIME OF 1873

 Signed by Grant to end silver coinage & adhere to the Gold Standard. Caused silver prices to drop & put the miners in the West at odds with the bankers in the East

Sherman Silver Purchase Act

 required the Treasury to increase its purchases of silver but concern about the US abandoning the gold standard drove up the demand for gold, which drained the Treasury’s gold (people exchanging silver currency for gold)

PANIC OF 1893

Due to over-speculation and overbuilding in the railroad industry and labor disputes, businesses couldn't pay the loans taken out to build the railroads and they began to cut wages.

• JP Morgan loaned the government money as Gold drained from the treasury

• COXEY’S ARMY - protest march by unemployed workers on Washington DC, led by a Ohio businessman

Progressivism

• middle class men and women who wanted to get rid of laissez faire

• Waged war against monopoly & socialinjustice

• Power to people, strengthen, state, gov as protector of social welfare

MULLER V. OREGON (1908)

accepted the constitutionality of laws protecting women workers by presenting evidence of the harmful effects of factory labor on women's weaker bodies

TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FACTORY FIRE (1911)

• doors were locked and windows were too high for them to get to the ground. 

  • Dramatized the poor working conditions and let to federal regulations to protect workers

Square Deal

Roosevelt domestic policy

• 3 Cs: control corporations, consumer protection & conservation

• Sided with strikers in 1902

• 1903 - est. Dept of Labor & Commerce

• Differentiated between “good” & “bad” trusts → attacked JP Morgan’s Northern Securities Co.

Conservationism

TR Domestic Policy

•  worked with John Muir Gifford Pinchot to set aside national forests & made plans to irrigate the arid west

Dollar Diplomacy

Taft Foreign policy

• use American investment abroad to boost American political influence

  • Pumped money into Honduras, Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic & Nicaragua to “prevent economic & political instability”

Election of 1912

• Taft v Roosevelt (Bull Moose party & Activism)

• Wilson as democratic nominee (New Freedom)

• Eugene Debs: Socialist Party

Wilson Foreign Policy

MORAL DIPLOMACY - U.S. would encourage countries to adopt democratic ideals  

→ sent marines to Haiti, undermining “anti- imperialist” ideals 

→ Opposed Huerta in Mexico by sending aid to rivals

Wilson’s Ideals

• New Freedom” favored small enterprise, entrepreneurship & unregulated, un-monopolized free markets

• Underwood Tariff passed despite lobbyists’ protests → reduced tariffs

• urged sweeping reforms of the banking system

  • Federal Reserve Act - increased amount of currency in circulation

Federal Farm Loan Act - low interest loans (Populist goal)

Federal Trade Commission Act

presidentially appointed commission could actively investigate businesses engaging in interstate commerce

Clayton Anti-Trust Act

widened the scope of business practices considered objectionable (ex. Interlocking directorates in which individuals served as directors of allegedly competing firms)

Ulysses S. Grant

The Presidency was his first elected office and his underlings were notoriously corrupt. He did attempt Civil Service Reforms but was largely ineffective.

 Rutherford B. Hayes

He became president as a result of the Compromise of 1877.  He vetoed Democratic congressmen's attempt to pass federal laws denying Southern Blacks the right to vote, but his presidency marks the end of Reconstruction.

James A. Garfield

He was assassinated by a Stalwart who opposed Civil Service Reform.

Chester A. Arthur

He was added to the GOP ticket to keep the Stalwarts as part of the Republican Party. He fought for lower tariffs and modernized the navy

Grover Cleveland

After he served as governor of New York, he became the first Democratic president since 1856. He was elected to two non-consecutive terms. He set a veto record with 304.

Benjamin Harrison

His grandpa had served as president also, but he lasted much longer in the White House than his grandpa. As president, he proposed the annexation of Hawaii and signed off on the McKinley Tariff