Gilded Age and Progressive Era Notes

The Gilded Age

  • The South's slavery is over, mirroring the nation. The US enters the Gilded Age characterized by industrialization and economic development, particularly in the North.

  • The South needs to diversify its economy beyond cotton.

Key Features of The Gilded Age:

  • Big Business: A defining aspect of the era.

  • Immigration: The second major wave, following the Irish and German influx during the antebellum period.

  • Robber Barons and Captains of Industry: Dual figures representing the industrialists.

Causes of the Emerging Gilded Age

  • Gilded Surface: Represents the positive aspects and industrial transformation of America. However, beneath this surface lie problems like exploitation of workers and consumer safety issues.

  • Negative consequences of the Gilded Age led to the Progressive Era.

Causes of Industrialization:

  • The growth of manufacturing and machinery, fueling expansionism.

  • Technological Innovations:

    • Oil replaces coal and steam.

    • Innovations like the telephone coupled with advancements in steel and railroads.

    • Led to a more interconnected country, revolutionizing transportation and communication.

  • Expansion of Railroads:

    • The Transcontinental Railroad was created in 1869 expanding national markets, facilitating mass distribution of goods nationally.

  • Abundant Labor Supply:

    • Immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe leads to nativism. Nativism was towards new immigrant groups, Southern, Eastern Europeans, and Chinese, leading to the Chinese Exclusion Act.

  • Capital Investment:

    • Growth of banking and investment institutions allows business expansion.

  • Government Policies:

    • Laissez-faire policies with railroad subsidies leading to limited regulation.

    • Farmers were not in favor of this, creating the need for industry regulation later. The government pushed for railroad subsidies.

  • Natural Resources:

    • The Civil War's end helps large-scale industrialization.

Big Business Expansion

  • Businesses expanded through vertical and horizontal integration.

    • Vertical Integration: Controlling every step of the process. Example: United Fruit Company.

    • Horizontal Integration: dominating an entire industry. Popularized by Rockefeller, dominating 90% of oil refineries.

Examples:

  • Carnegie with steel.

  • Rockefeller with oil.

  • Swift and Armour with meat packing.

  • Pillsbury with flour.

Captains of Industry vs. Robber Barons

  • Industrialists exist on a spectrum.

    • Captains of Industry: Positive impact by engaging in philanthropy and helping society.

    • Robber Barons: Negative impact by eliminating competition through shady practices and worker exploitation.

    • The building of trusts, and the treatment of workers contributed to this categorization.

Rise of the Working Class

  • Expansion of the working class under poor conditions.

  • Knights of Labor and the AFL (American Federation of Labor) are major unions:

    • Both grappled with the wage system.

Knights of Labor:

  • Sought alternatives to the wage system by promoting cooperatives, sharing management and profits.

  • Inclusive organization, uniting wage earners regardless of skill promoting the eight hour day, dividing the work day to 8 hours of work, 8 hours of leisure and 8 hours of sleep.

  • Downfall due to the Haymarket Square incident, associating them with anarchists.

AFL (American Federation of Labor):

  • Exclusive to skilled craftsmen, excluding women and minorities.

  • Continued through American history, supporting strikes.

Important Strikes:

  • Great Railroad Strike of 1877, Pullman Strike, Homestead Strike were a result of frustrated workers upset as businesses get wealthier, the workers are not.

  • Workers' demands were not achieved during the Gilded Age, with changes occurring later in the Progressive Era.

Politics

  • Presidents were forgettable with politics evenly divided.

  • Divisions over government's role in the economy, monetary policy, protective tariffs, and cultural issues.

Democrats and Republicans:

  • Republicans: Believed the government could broaden the nation's wealth.

  • Democrats: Advocated for states' rights and unrestricted economic competition. Democrats believed in unrestricted economic competition that when it's without government intrusion, that that best guarantees prosperity.

Monetary Policy:

  • Republicans favored government involvement, while Democrats were skeptical.

  • Free silver inflates the money supply and makes it easier to pay off debts.

  • Business sector opposed as loaned equipment repayment becomes less valuable.

Protective Tariffs:

  • Republicans supported high customs duties to protect American business from foreign competition.

    • Tariffs united republicans.

  • Democrats saw tariffs as burdensome to consumers.

    • Divided Democrats, with emphasis on tariffs for finances, not protection.

Government Regulation

  • Pushes to regulate big business.

  • Interstate Commerce Act to regulate railroads in 1887.

  • Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890 to break up monopolies; the wording said combinations which targetted labor unions.

    • Replaced later by the Clayton Antitrust Act.

Farmer's Organizations

  • Rise of farmers' organizations and the Populist Party.

  • Farmers were upset with railroad prices.

The People's Party (Populist Party):

  • Demanded government ownership of railroads.

  • Called for the direct election of senators.

  • Called for graduated income tax.

  • Called for free silver.

  • The People's party will be important in the elections of 1892, '1896.

  • Their ideas were absorbed into the Democrats.

Immigration and Internal Migration

  • New immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe faced nativist attitudes.

  • Immigrants balance retaining their culture with adopting American culture.

Cities

  • Challenges of tenements existed.

    • Muckraker Jacob Riis exposed tenement conditions.

    • Lack of sanitation and sewage issues also existed.

  • New opportunities existed such as cultural events and theaters, etc.

Expansion of Middle Class

  • Continued expansion of the middle class and the wealthy leading to conspicuous consumerism.

  • The wealthy engaged in a lavish display of wealth.

  • Improved standard of living for most during this time.

  • Expansion of education occurs during this time.

Actions Towards Reform

  • Utopians, Socialists, and the Social Gospel Movement emerged.

  • Walter Rauschenbusch's Social Gospel movement applied Christian ethics to social and economic problems.

  • Jane Addams started the settlement house movement which provided for the needs of city dwellers.

The South During the Gilded Age

  • The South's industrialization never compared to the North.

  • New South: Henry Grady's phrase to diversify the Southern economy towards industrialization.

  • Piedmont community moved towards textile mills.

  • It functioned internally as a colony, with extractive resources like turpentine and lumber resources.

  • Challenges came as a result of the Reconstruction era.

Voter Suppression:

  • Literacy tests, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses.

  • Rise of the KKK suppressed the vote.

  • Jim Crow laws and the ruling of Plessy versus Ferguson (1896) spread throughout the South, creating separate but equal segregation.

Conclusion

  • The Gilded Age was transformative with rapid industrialization and big business influence.

  • Big businessmen were equated to the American economy and the founding fathers were to politics.

  • Problems emerging from the Gilded Age become the focus of the Progressive Era.

The Progressive Era

  • Focus on reforms.

  • College board loves reforms.

  • Formula to follow: Expose a problem, study scientifically through the rise of different studies, and find a legislative solution at state, local, and federal levels.

Exposing Problems

  • Muckrakers exposed problems through journalism.

    • Teddy Roosevelt coined the phrase referring to exposure journalism.

    • The goal was to influence government reaction and intervention.

Prominent Muckrakers:

  • Jacob Riis used writing and photography to expose city conditions.

  • Upton Sinclair exposed the meat packing industry in The Jungle.

  • Ida Tarbell exposed Standard Oil.

Other Forms of Problem Exposure:

  • Events like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire revealed significant problems that could not be ignored.

Progressive Presidents:

  • Teddy Roosevelt (1901-1909)

  • Taft (1909-1913)

  • Wilson (1913-1921)

Teddy Roosevelt:

  • Focused on the Square Deal, addressing conservation, consumer safety, and corporations.

  • Consumer Safety. Food and Drug Administration, the Meat Inspection Act, Pure Food and Drug Act.

  • Trust buster using the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Legislation Under Roosevelt:

  • Hepburn Act empowered the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate maximum railroad fees.

  • Consumer safety focus with food and drug regulations.

Legislation Under Taft:

  • Mann-Elkins Act gave the Interstate Commerce Commission power to regulate telephone and telegraph companies.

  • Sixteenth Amendment: Federal income tax, addressing wealth inequality.

  • Payne-Aldrich Tariff: A tariff.

Legislation Under Woodrow Wilson:

  • Underwood-Simmons Tariff: Reduced the tariff rates.

  • Federal Reserve System: Creating consumer protections.

  • Clayton Antitrust Act: Trust-busting legislation.

  • Keating-Owen Act in 1916: Federal regulation of child labor.

Wilson's New Freedom:

  • Wilson attacked the "triple wall of privilege:" the tariff, banks, and trusts. Clayton Antitrust Act

Areas of Progressive Reform:

  • Race Relations: Lacked major positive changes with reformers like

    • Booker T. Washington promotes accommodation. Black Americans accommodating yourselves, improve yourselves economically, and that will show why you deserve these rights.

    • W.E.B. DuBois who was critical of that. Alright? He's like, well, we've been given these rights, therefore we should demand them.

  • The Niagara Movement and NAACP will rise up as as result of these ideas.

  • Consumer Safety: Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act came as a result of this with the influence of The Jungle.

  • Worker Safety: Keating Owens Act regarding children and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire implemented fire escapes; doors unable to lock from the outside.

  • Political Corruption: Machines provide votes for favors; directly control cities. Robert Lafollette was a political reformer that tried to limit the power of railroads and corporations.

  • States introduced initiatives, referendums, and recalls. The Seventeenth Amendment was introduced which called for direct election of senators.

  • Robert Lafollette of Wisconsin. Okay? He's gonna be a big one.

  • Urban health and safety - Take a look at Jean Adams.

  • Urban health and safety, we can also look at the prohibition movement, right, with, the eighteenth amendment. But just know that the eighteenth amendment, which prohibits alcohol sale, manufacture, and transportation, will be repealed by the twenty first amendment in 1933 because of the great depression.

  • Unfair Business Practices: Robert Lafollette in addition to the sixteenth amendment and the Federal Trade Commission/Federal Reserve, will try to remedy unfair business practices.

  • Sixteenth amendment created the federal trade comission and federal reserve bank.

  • Gender: Nineteenth Amendment culminates with women's' right to vote in 1920.

    • Remember, Nassau, the National American Women's Suffrage Association, and the National Women's Party, Carrie Chapman Catt, and then Alice Paul.

  • Conservationism: Conservation and Preservation was split into these ideas:

    • Conservation: Wise use of the environment.

    • Preservation: Hands off use.

      • President Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot. were prominent conservationists.

      • John Muir of the Sierra Club. was a preservationist.

  • Trust Busting: Sherman Antitrust, creation of the Federal Trade Commission, and the Hepburn Act focused on this.

Goal of Progressive Reform

  • To create a fairer and more equal society by reining in the exploitation that happened during the Gilded Age.

Gilded Age & American Expansionism

  • Big business fuels American expansionism: needing new markets and resources.

US Foreign Policy & Progressivism:

  • Duty connected with progressive ideals influenced foreign policy and expansionism.