Unit 5: The Gilded Age

There are four causes of the Industrial Revolution:

• Cause #1: The 1st Industrial Revolution

  • New inventions

    • It gave Americans the capital, necessary to invest, which led to the 2nd Industrial Revolution

    • They had to make enough money for the 2nd Industrial Revolution to happen

• Cause #2: Technological Innovations

  • New inventions

  • Communication

    • Alexander Graham Bell

      • He invented the telephone which affected American communication

    • Thomas Edison

      • Born in Ohio, given credit for inventing the lightbulb, replacing oil and candle lamps

    • Nikola Tesla

      • Invented alternating current (AC) which is a way of moving electricity over long distances without anything blowing up

• Cause #3: Expansion of Railroad Transportation

  • Transcontinental railroad

    • Connect both the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean

    • Provide easy transportation for western settlers, bring in new immigrants and migrants to the frontier, and American-made products to the West

    • Railroad companies are going to be one of the biggest employers

  • Employment

    • Railroads are the biggest money-makers

• Cause #4: Westward Expansion

  • The Homestead Act, 1862

    • An attempt to encourage westward migration out into the big plains

    • This law offers plots of land to anyone who intends to become a citizen

      • They have to stay and take care of that land for five years for them to become citizens

  • Life on the Farm

    • Most of them are poor farmers and their life is characterized by isolation and loneliness

    • They had to take out loans to buy new technology

• The Populist Party (1892-1896)

  • Populism is the idea that ordinary people should be in control of the government

    • 5 strong desires for an alternative to the Republican-Democratic Parties:

      • They want the government to start regulating big business, especially the railroads (mainly because the railroads are the reason people are in debt)

      • They want to give women the right to vote

      • They want new constitutional amendments and federal income tax and want a new amendment to where they can elect their new senators instead of having the government appoint them

      • They want to establish a secret ballot because train owners look at who the poor farmers are voting for and when they see them voting for people they do not like, the train owners raise their rates

      • Try to gain the support of factory workers and want to limit the working day in the factories to eight hours a day to make their lives a little better

• Pressures on Native Americans

  • About 325,000 Native Americans were living West of the Mississippi River before the Indian Removal Act

  • The U.S. tried to enter a series of treaties that were meant to respect their territory and in exchange, Native Americans would agree to stop attacking Western settlers

  • The buffalo was the most important resource for Native Americans, whether for food, clothing, culture, or other purposes.

  • In 1870 alone, American settlers killed about two million of them because of overhunting

• The Native American Wars (1864-1890)

  • A series of wars between the U.S. Army and individual Native Americans

  • The Cheyenne War

    • The Sand Creek Massacre, 1864

      • Colorado slaughtered about 150 unarmed women, children, and elderly

  • The Lakota War

    • The Battle of the Little Bighorn, 1876

      • The U.S. 7th calvary was under the command of George A. Custard

        • He decided he was good with taking 200 Calvary men against an army of about 2,000 Lakota warriors

        • Lakota slaughtered all of the calvaries and won

    • The Massacre at Wounded Knee, 1890

      • The U.S. army had surrounded a Lakota encampment for them to turn in their weapons when a shot went off, making the U.S. soldiers panic and end up killing about 300 Lakota

• A Century of Dishonor by Helen Hunt Jackson

  • She investigated all the ways that the Americans were treating the Native Americans and how poorly they were in a book

  • It highlights all of the massacres and the broken treaties committed by the U.S. government and the U.S. Army

• The Dawes Severalty Act, 1887

  • President Groover Cleveland, who was the first president ever to win two nonconsecutive terms, convinced Congress to pass this act

  • This act is going to require Native Americans to assimilate

• The Bureau of Indian Affairs

  • This requires many rules such as the haircut rule

    • Men have to wear their hair short

• Native American Boarding Schools

  • This is when Native American children go to boarding school where they are not allowed to use their language, clothing, or cultural practices

• New Natural Resources

  • Gold and silver are found a lot during this time

  • Iron to Steel (Bessemer Process)

    • The Bessemer Process is when they take iron and transform it into steel, which is stronger, cheaper, more efficient, and longer-lasting

  • Oil

    • It provides heat, but it will help more with electrical power and help fuel the new industrial engines that are coming out of this revolution

• Emergence of Corporate America

  • America’s economy is going to move away from being based on small business owners to being based on corporations

    • They would have numerous investors, providing capital which reduces their risk of losing their business, but it can help increase the profit more than ever before

    • Economic recession is a short-term of business laws, the economy is doing poorly whereas the economic depression is a very long, sustaining economic problem

  • Boom or Bust Economy

    • Economic recessions where people fail or succeed with their businessesEmergence of the first-ever billionaires

      • Robber Barons

        • people called the first billionaires this because they believed that these people earned money from cheating and mistreating people

      • Captains of Industry

        • People say they are smart leaders who treat people well, etc.

          • they believed that captains worked hard

      • Cornelius Vanderbilt

        • he owns the railroad industry and has a railroad monopoly

        • he achieves this monopoly by a process called horizontal integration which means you are purchasing your rival companies and trying not to compete

        • he employed people to work the railroads (captain of industry)

        • he overcharged people to go on this railroad (robber baron)

      • Andrew Carnegie

        • steel is only made by himself and in the U.S.

        • uses a practice called horizontal AND vertical integration (vertical integration is when they own every step in the production process)

          • He owns iron mines, owns his trains, and steamboats to own his supplies, owns all steel mills, owns a sales company

        • he does not have to pay anyone to make steel because he is making it himself

        • Carnegie Steel – Steel Monopoly

          • 100% steel monopoly

          • Carnegie is the only person in the U.S. in the Gilded Age selling steel

        • Social Darwinism

          • This belief that the natural order of society includes the people who are born with the ability to be super wealthy and people who were not born with the ability to be super wealthy (the division of the rich and the poor was natural)

    • The Gospel of Wealth

      • Carnegie believed that the wealthy were obligated to share their wealth with the poor

      • This was because the poor were not capable of improving themselves financially

  • John D. Rockefeller

    • Standard Oil Company – Oil Monopoly

      • He continued 90% of the nation’s oil production by the 1870s

    • Horizontal integration

      • Price cutting → now and then there would be a business owner who did not want to sell his business to Rockefeller

        • To pressure this person into selling the business to him, Rockefeller would engage in that practice

        • Rockefeller would lower his oil prices so low to the point where the person he was trying to buy could not keep up with the price

    • Secret deals

      • He would make these between other business owners and politicians and it is secret because these deals are illegal

    • Trusts

      • Used to avoid anti-monopoly laws

      • Small business that a bigger company secretly controls 

• Early Reform Efforts

  • Munn v. Illinois

    • Supreme Court clarified that states had the right to regulate businesses within their states

• The Interstate Commerce Act

  • Establishes the idea that the federal congress could investigate businesses to see if they were committing crimes and if so, then Congress could sue those businesses and threaten to take away their money

• labor

  • positives

    • paid more in the Gilded Age than in the earlier periods

    • they were capable of making bigger and stronger purchases

    • more people are working in the workforce including women

  • negatives

    • there would be long working hour shifts when working 10-12 hour shifts

    • the wages were high, but not high enough to cover the cost of living

    • child labor was being involved because they did not need a lot of money, could fit into small spaces, and the producers could control the children more easily

• Blue-collar or unskilled labor

  • they did not have a lot of education or training

  • anybody could do anyone’s job

  • jobs were unsafe and there were not a lot of safety hazards

• laissez-faire

  • no government involvement at all

  • the producers make all of the rules

    • they were concerned about profits (how much money they make)

    • they believed in Social Darwinism heavily

• labor unions

  • group of workers come together to achieve specific goals such as better pay or safer working conditions/benefits

    • Knights of Labor

      • first national union and trying to unite unskilled workers throughout the country

      • they allowed women and African Americans to join

      • this group promoted a liberal reform agenda which included economic and social goals

        • economic goal: 8-hour workdays

        • social goal: wanted more social freedom for women and African Americans

    • Haymarket Riot

      • destroyed any popularity that the knights had

    • American Federation of Labor (AFL)

      • second national union → union for skilled workers only

      • did not allow women or African Americans to join

      • focused more on economic goals: better pay, higher wages, safer working conditions, and workers’ compensation (if workers got injured, they could still get paid)

• labor strike

  • when all union members refuse to work until their goals are met

  • Homestead Strike

    • strike of Carnegie steel workers

    • foreman of steel factory: Henry Clay Frick

      • he fires all of the union workers and replaces them with new workers

    • the state government sends a national guard to protect the new workers and keep the factory going

    • federal government had intervened in favor of the producers

  • Pullman Strike

    • Eugene V. Debs is the leader of the American Railway Union and leaves his workers on strike

      • this leads to shutting down the national railroads

    • Grover Cleveland

      • will use the army to keep the trains moving

      • the federal government had intervened in favor of the producers (this is a violation of the laissez-faire rule)

• Old Immigration (1840-1859)

  • most old immigrants came from Ireland (largest) and Germany (2nd largest)

  • common language: English

  • predominately Roman Catholic

  • the vast majority settled in northern cities because of textile factories

    • South had fewer job opportunities and there was a lot of labor

• New Immigration (1870-1924)

  • the biggest group was coming from Poland and Russia (Eastern) and Italy and Greece (Southern)

  • second biggest group came from Japan and China

  • at this point, there were diverse languages

  • religion: Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Eastern Orthodox

  • push-pull factor

    • push: decline in jobs

    • pull: excessive jobs

    • push: a shortage of farmland

    • pull: Homestead Act

    • push: religious discrimination (mostly toward Jewish people)

    • pull: first amendment

  • if European immigrants came to the U.S., they would land in Ellis Island, New York

    • they would have to go through this process: buy a travel ticket, get on a boat, get past a security check, and had to pass a medical exam

      • this whole process took at least one day on average

  • if Asian immigrants came to the U.S., the process would take place on Angel Island in San Francisco, California

    • they would have to go through this process: sail across the Pacific Ocean and pass a security background check

      • the process was more strict and Asians had to stay in California for at least 2-3 weeks

        • they were going to reject a lot more people than normal despite having fewer Asian immigrants coming in

        • they did not speak English and were not Protestant

        • Americans believed that immigrants were willing to work for small wages

        • Asian immigrants faced a lot of racism from Americans

  • The Chinese Exclusion Act, 1907

    • put a strict limit on how many Chinese immigrants are allowed in the country

  • The Gentleman’s Agreement of 1907

    • only allowed skilled workers to go to the U.S. (Japan agreed to this)

      • in exchange, the U.S. decided to stop segregating Japanese students

  • religious prejudice against Europeans

    • American Protestants thought the Roman Catholics were corrupt because of their “drunk behavior”

    • they do not think Catholics are going to respect democrats because they respect the Pope

  • Jewish immigrants faced anti-semitism

    • Major colleges: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Colombia put a limit to the number of Jewish students they will accept in their university

  • Nativism → Nativist

    • a political movement that is defined by its opposition to immigration

    • if you were a Nativist, you were believed to be a threat to Americans and economics

    • you would want as many restrictions as you can get

  • American Protective Associations

    • target Catholic immigrants, stop Catholic immigrants from entering the U.S.

      • if someone has already moved to the U.S. and they are Catholic, they would not be able to run for public office

  • Assimilation Process

    • adopt/blend in different cultures such as languages, clothing, traditions, and food

    • most new immigrants will settle in places that have similar cultural backgrounds

  • Self-Help Societies

    • help the assimilating process

    • immigrants helping other immigrants to assimilate

      • help with food, shelter, translating, clothing, jobs, services, etc.

  • Americanization Movement

    • Americans helping immigrants assimilate

    • primary contributions are education for English, American history, and civics and teachers were sponsoring

      • offered classes for both children and adults

• Urbanization

  • the U.S. is going to increase very quickly because of people moving into the cities

  • 5 causes:

    • most immigrants are going to settle in cities

    • 2nd Industrial Revolution

    • railroads are needed to hold the supply for the northern cities

    • lower crop prices make food more affordable

    • exciting social and cultural opportunities in the city (department stores, shopping, factories, etc.)

  • Problems of the Gilded Age cities:

    • housing could not keep up with the amount of people living in the cities

      • they had to live in tenements and they had tall and narrow spaces to live in it

      • it is very crowded and people make more money by just cramping people into one room

    • there is no airflow

    • the disease could happen and spread

    • cities were overcrowded and had a high crime rate

    • the town was considered unhealthy and dirty

    • air pollution will make it hard to breathe into

    • water pollution

• Political Machines

  • most cities will have this machine running

  • this got started to clean up some stuff in the city

  • people will offer to provide and help with cleaning and make it nicer

    • in return, the residents have to vote where the machine tells the resident to vote for

    • the machine takes over the city government

      • bribery, blackmail, violence, and kickbacks

  • Tammany Hall

    • the most powerful political machine that controlled the city AND state government of New York

    • William Magear “Boss” Tweed was the leader of Tammany Hall

      • people would have to get his approval for everything