Gilded Age: Industrialization, Labor, and Reform

Technological Innovation and Westward Expansion

• Technological Innovation:

  • Played a key role in the rise and expansion of industrial capitalism.

  • Examples include the Bessemer process which made stronger steel (American industry was built with steel).

  • This contributed to the U.S. becoming a major industrial power.

• Westward Expansion:

  • Provided greater access to natural resources that helped with industrialization.

Large-Scale Industrial Production and Business Practices

• Vertical Integration:

  • Pioneered by Andrew Carnegie.

  • Involves acquiring all industries needed for manufacturing (e.g., owning the land with trees, trains, and factories to produce chairs).

• Horizontal Integration:

  • Associated with John D. Rockefeller.

  • Aims to eliminate competitors to dominate an industry; to get as big and powerful as possible.

• Monopolies and Trusts:

  • The ultimate goal of the industrial practices during the Gilded Age.

• Laissez-faire Policies:

  • Characterized the anti-regulation atmosphere of the federal government.

  • Allowed industrialists to accumulate wealth and establish monopolies.

• Social Darwinism in Business:

  • Applied the concept of "survival of the fittest" to business, suggesting that the strong should dominate the weak.

• Gospel of Wealth:

  • Promoted by Andrew Carnegie.

  • Argued that the wealthy had a moral obligation to better society with their riches.

Labor and the Middle Class

• Rise of the Middle Class:

  • New industries required middle managers (white-collar workers).

  • White-collar workers managed the process but did not engage in manual labor.

  • Blue-collar workers worked in factories and mines.

• Labor Unions:

  • Factory work was dangerous, exhausting, and poorly paid.

  • Workers formed labor unions to bargain collectively for better wages and conditions.

• Knights of Labor:

  • A labor union that disappeared after the Haymarket Square riot.

• American Federation of Labor:

  • Another labor union that crusaded for better wages, shorter workdays, and safer working conditions.

• The reforms didn't come to fruition until the next period.

Immigration and Internal Migration

• Immigration:

  • Significant immigration from Europe and Asia.

  • The reasons behind it were: Escaping poverty, religious persecution, and seeking economic opportunities.

  • Immigrants settled in urban areas, forming ethnic enclaves to preserve their culture and influence their receiving society.

• Migration:

  • Movement within the same country.

• Exoduster Movement:

  • Mass migration of black people from the South to the Midwest

  • They wanted to establish homesteads, become farmers, and escape Jim Crow laws and violence.

Opposition and Assistance to Immigrants

• Opposition:

  • Labor unions opposed immigrants because they worked for low wages.

  • Nativists sought to protect the rights and culture of native-born people by advocating for anti-immigrant policies.

  • The American Protective Association was anti-Catholic due to the influx of Irish immigrants.

  • The Chinese Exclusion Act restricted immigration from China.

  • Social Darwinism contributed to nativist sentiments.

• Assistance:

  • Jane Addams founded settlement houses like the Hull House to assimilate immigrants to American society by teaching them English and helping them find jobs.

Reform Movements

• Social Gospel:

  • Growing number of Christians who believe that the gospel and biblical injunctions should be applied to the ills of society and not just the sins of the individual soul.

  • They emphasized reducing poverty.

• Socialism:

  • There was increased interest in socialism due to the gap between the wealthy and the poor.

  • Eugene V. Debs was a key figure and leader of a major labor union who championed it as the cure for the sicknesses of the Gilded Age and founded the Socialist Party of America.

  • He ran for president five times, never winning.

• Populist Party:

  • Represented the interests of farmers.

  • Sought to address the concentration of economic power held by trusts and banks.

• Omaha Platform:

  • The populist party platform was published in the Omaha Platform.

  • It advocated for the direct election of senators, initiative and referendum, and the unlimited coinage of silver.

• Women's Suffrage:

  • There was a big push for women's suffrage.

  • The National American Woman Suffrage Association and Women's Christian temperance movement rose to prominence.

• Suffrage means the right to vote.

Politics in the Gilded Age

• Characterized by party divisions from the Civil War.

• The gilded age was like a golden-covered turd, with a few people doing incredibly well but many people not.

• There was corruption in politics.

• Democrats and Republicans:

  • Their platforms coincided with the beliefs before and just right after the civil war.

• Patronage vs. Civil Service:

  • The parties battled over the appropriateness of patronage for civil service jobs.

  • The Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1881 replaced the patronage system with competitive civil service examinations.

• Gold Standard vs. Silver Coinage:

  • There were fights over the gold standard.

  • Farmers and entrepreneurs argued for the unlimited coinage of silver, which would help them with their financial troubles.

• Tariffs:

  • Protective tariffs supported American industry but made imports expensive.

  • Industrialists loved protective tariffs, but people who relied on them had to pay extra.

• Government Corruption:

  • The proliferation of urban political machines, such as Tammany Hall in New York led by Boss Tweed.

  • They figured out how to get people in the community so they could vote for them on election day.