Reform Movements in the Gilded Age

Industrial Capitalism and Its Discontents

Industrial Capitalism Defined: A shift from small-scale, artisanal production to large-scale, factory-based mass production.
- Factories emerged rapidly, employing unskilled laborers to operate machines.
- Goods were produced on a national and international scale.
Laissez-faire Capitalism: Minimal government intervention in business operations.
- Allowed businesses to flourish with few regulations.
- Resulted in wealth concentration among the elite upper class.
Conditions for Workers:
- Low wages, barely enough for survival.
- Dangerous working conditions.
- Long working hours (12-14 hours a day).
- Miserable existence for a significant portion of society.

Artists and critics, including agrarians, utopians, socialists, and advocates of the social gospel, demanded reform.

Critique: It was foolish for so much wealth to be generated while many citizens lived in poverty.
Solution: The single tax on land.
- Landowners gained disproportionate wealth due to increasing land value.
- Taxing them more would level the playing field between them and the working class.

Edward Bellamy:
- Wrote "Looking Backward" (1888), a utopian novel.
- A man wakes up in 2000 to find America transformed into a socialist utopia.
- Capitalism had been crushed, and everyone's needs were met.

Definition: All means of production should be owned and regulated by the community, benefiting everyone equally.
Rationale: Some people thought capitalism had failed in the late 19th century.
Eugene V. Debs:
- Head of a significant union.
- Started the Socialist Party of America in 1901.
- Ran for president but was unsuccessful.

Core Belief: Christian principles should be applied to cure the ills of society.
Focus: Social justice for the urban poor.
Action: Protestant preachers urged the middle class to solve urban poverty as their Christian duty.

Goal: Women's right to vote.
NAWSA: National American Woman Suffrage Association, founded in 1890 by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.
- Worked to secure the franchise for women.
- Their efforts led to constitutional change in 1920.

Definition: The fight against the consumption of alcohol.
Rationale: Drunkenness was a significant problem among urban male factory workers, leading to impoverishment.
Women's Christian Temperance Union:
- Founded in 1874.
- Crusaded for total abstinence from alcohol.
- Had approximately 500,000 members by 1898.
Methods: Peaceful means like protest and lobbying.
Radical Actions:
- Carrie Nation:
  - Used a hatchet to destroy liquor barrels in saloons.