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.

Reform Movements

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

Henry George and the Single Tax on Land

• 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.

Utopians

• 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.

Socialism

• 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.

The Social Gospel

• 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.

Women and Reform

• Women actively participated in various reform movements.

Women's Suffrage

• 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.

Temperance

• 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.