Chapter 16-- America's Gilded Age

The Second Industrial Revolution 

• Rapid & profound economic growth, natural resources, good labor, investment, etc.

The Industrial Economy

• By 1913, the USA produced ⅓ of the world's industrial output.

• Majority of the workforce were in non-farming jobs.

• Heartland of the 2nd industrial revolution was the region around the Great Lakes.

  • Pittsburgh - world's center of iron and steel manufacturing.

  • Chicago - nation's 2nd largest city - steel and farm machinery and giant stockyards where cattle were processed into meat products

Railroads & the National Market 

• Railroad track tripled from 1860-1880 and tripled again by 1920

• Major railroad companies divided the nation into the four time zones we still use today

• Spread of national brands (Ivory soap & Quaker Oats) symbolized economic growth

• Promotion of development by the federal government

  • tariffs, land subsidies to railroads, removal of indians from western lands

The Spirit of Innovation

• Atlantic cable allowed for electronic telegraph messages between the USA and Europe

• 1870s-80s: Telephone, typewriter, and camera came into use

• Scientific breakthroughs: Thomas Edison w/ the phonograph, lightbulb, motion pictures, and the system for generating and distributing electric power

  • Power was essential to industrial and urban growth - reliable source of energy

• Nikola Tesla of Croatia developed an electric motor using alternating currents

Competition & Consolidation

• Economy suffered downturns in the 1870-90s. 1873-1897 was the Great Depression

• Businesses established trusts - legal devices whereby the affairs of several rival companies were managed by a single director

  • led to monopolies 

    • Many companies fell by the wayside or were gobbled up by others

The Rise of Andrew Carnegie 

• Thomas A. Scott - leader of the Pennsylvania Railroad - had the biggest corporation.

• Andrew Carnegie - Industrial giant, who emigrated with his family from Scotland

• Andrew Carnegie set out to establish a steel company that incorporated vertical integration - one that controlled every phase of the business from raw materials to transportation, manufacturing, and distribution.

• His father promoted socialist views, while his mother promoted social darwinism

  • donated to libraries, but his factories operated 24/7 with July 4 off

The Triumph of John D. Rockefeller

• Known for his enormous wealth and dominated the oil industry. He drove out rival firms through cutthroat competition, arranging secret deals with railroad companies, and fixing prices and production quotas

• Horizontal expansion - buying out competing oil refineries, but later incorporated vertical integration like Andrew Carnegie

• Donated his money to education and medical research. Fighted off Unions like A.C.

• Robber Barons - wielded power without any accountability in an unregulated marketplace. They were also known as captains of industry

Workers’ Freedom in an Industrial Age

• "The Miner's Freedom" - elaborate work rules that left skilled underground workers free of managerial supervision on the job. Skilled workers fixed output quotas...

• Economic insecurity remained a basic fact of life for many workers

• Many workers labored 60 hour weeks w/o pensions, compensations for injuries, or protections against unemployment. American's received higher wages, but they had more dangerous working conditions. 35,000 workers died in 20 years

Sunshine and Shadow: Increasing Wealth and Poverty

• Class divisions became more visible

• The working class lived in desperate conditions in the city's slums

The Transformation of the West

• Capitalism penetrated rapidly and dramatically in the trans-Mississippi West

A Diverse Region

• Indigenous inhabitants were often pushed aside as centralizing governments brought large interior regions under their control in many parts of the world

• The Morrill Land-Grant Act established public universities in Western states.

• Easterners were hesitant to grant statehood to Mormon & non-white western areas

• Construction of irrigation systems and dams opened large areas to commercial farming

• Place of rugged individualism and sturdy independence

Farming on the Middle Border

• Many families acquired farms under the Homestead Act

• Many farmers grew corn and wheat on the middle border (MN, ND, SD, KS)

• The most multicultural state in the late 19th century was North Dakota

• Farming on the Great Plains was a difficult task (rattlesnakes, blizzards, droughts, etc)

  • Much burden fell on the women

Bonanza Farms

• John Wesley Powell suggested large-scale irrigation projects for the West

• Bonanza farms - Covered thousands of acres and employed large numbers of agricultural wage workers

• Family farms still dominated the trans-Mississippi West (area west of MS)

• Many migrant laborers worked in these places

• CA’s “wheat barons” owned ranches of many acres & shipped grain from San Francisco all the way to Great Britain

The Cowboy and the Corporate West

• Low-wage workers who drove cattle across land → became less common as farmers began to enclose their land with barbed wire, making grazing difficult

• California's economy's center was San Francisco - major manufacturing & trading

• Coastal forests were decimated (pine trees and other lumber)

• 20 families in New Mexico owned ¾ of the state's sheep. They had to go work at new mines and railroads in order to get more stable income

The Chinese Presence

• Began at the time of the California gold rush and continued in the postwar years

• Most immigrants were men brought in by labor contractors (gold, railroad, and factories) 

• White men grew resentment towards immigrants for mining 

Conflict on the Mormon Frontier

• Moved to the Great Salt Lake Valley in the 1840s to practice free religion and escape persecution. They envisioned their community in Utah, and called it Deseret

• Brigham Young was going to be removed, but refused and federal troops entered the Salt Lake Valley. During this time of tension, Mormons attacked a wagon train of non-Mormon settlers traveling through Utah and intending to settle in California. This is called the Mountain Meadows Massacre that resulted in the death of over 100 people

• Utah banned polygamy in 1880 in the state's constitution-a requirement before the area gained admission as a state in 1896

The Subjugation of the Plains Indians

• The transcontinental railroad brought tens of thousands of newcomers to the West

• The buffalo almost went extinct, and colonizers sought to destroy the Indians' culture

“Let Me Be a Free Man”

• O. O. Howard pursued the Nez Percé Native Americans on a 1700 mile chase

  • Forced the Indians to surrender after four months

• Nez Percé leader, Chief Joseph, delivered a speech in Washington condemning the policy of confining Indians to reservations. "Treat all men alike... Give them the same law."

• Most famous Indian victory took place in 1876 at the Battle of the Little Bighorn

  • General George A. Custer and his entire command of 250 men perished. The Sioux and Cheyenne warriors were led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, and they were defending tribal land in the Black Hills of the Dakota territory

Remaking Indian Life

• Sitting Bull asked for a life of freedom, but that conflicted with the interests of whites

• 1871 - Congress eliminated the treaty system where the government negotiated agreements with Indians as if they were independent nations. A step backward… Supported by railroad companies that found the Native Americans an obstacle

• The Bureau of Indian Affairs established boarding schools where Indian children were removed from their parents and tribes, dressed in non-Indian clothes, given new names, and educated in white ways

The Dawes Act

• Dawes Act (1887) - Broke up the land of nearly all tribes into small parcels to be distributed to Indian families, with the remainder auctioned off to white purchasers

Indian Citizenship

• Killing of buffalo affected the Native American tribes severely

• Elk v. Wilkins (1884) - US Supreme Court agreed 14th & 15th Amendment didn’t apply to Native Americans

  • Questioned if Indians had achieved the degree of civilization 

The Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee

• Ghost Dance - a time when the leaders foretold a day when whites would disappear, the buffalo would return, and Indians could once again practice their ancestral customs

• Wounded Knee massacre - greatly applauded by the press. The government feared a general uprising, so they sent troops to the reservations. Soldiers opened fire on the Ghost Dancers encamped near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota, killing between 150 and 200 Indians, mostly women and children. Twenty soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor. This event revealed the limits on Americans' efforts to seek in the West the freedom to practice non mainstream religions

Myth, Reality, and the Wild West

• The events were later turned into Hollywood & theatrical performances

Politics in a Gilded Age 

• The era from 1870-1890 is the Gilded Age, named after a title of a Mark Twain novel. Gilded means covered with a layer of gold but suggests that the glittering surface masks a core of little real value and is therefore deceptive

The Corruption of Politics

• Political machines like New York's Tweed Ring plundered the city of tens of millions of dollars. "Boss" William M. Tweed's organization reached into every neighborhood

• Many lawmakers supported bills aiding companies they had invested in

  • Crédit Mobilier, a corporation formed by an inner ring of Union Pacific Railroad stockholders, oversaw the line's government-assisted construction

  • Whiskey Ring (Grant administration)

    • United Republican officials, tax collectors, and whiskey manufacturers in a massive scheme that defrauded the federal government of large tax $$

The Politics of Dead Center

• Every Republican candidate for president from 1868 to 1900 had fought in the Union army, with the exception of James G. Blaine

• Democrats did well among Catholics and Irish-Americans

• A lavish system of pensions for Union soldiers consumed more than 40% of the federal budget in 1893

• White House staff was small

Government & the Economy

• Nation's political structure was not prepared to deal with problems created by rapid growth of the economy

• Many activities were almost entirely under the control of local and state governments

• For the first time since the Civil War, the USA returned to the gold standard, where paper currency became exchangeable for gold at a fixed rate

• Republican economic policies favored the interests of easterns, but they were a disadvantage to southerners and westerners (had to pay a premium for goods)

Reform Legislation

• The Civil Service Act of 1883 created a merit system for federal employees, with appointments via competitive examinations rather than political influence

• The Interstate Commerce Commission ensured that the rates railroads charged farmers and merchants to transport their goods were "reasonable"and did not offer more favorable treatment to some shippers. 1st federal agency to regulate economic activity

• Sherman Antitrust Act banned all combinations and practices that restrained free trade

Political Conflict in the States

• The Greenback-Labor Party proposed that the federal government stop taking

• "greenback" money out of circulation. More funds would be available for investment

• The Grange was established to call on state governments to establish fair freight rates and warehouse charges

• The labor movement, revitalized during the Civil War, demanded laws establishing eight hours as a legal day's work. Seven northern legislatures passed these laws

Freedom in the Gilded Age

The Social Problem

• Class divisions were prevalent

• Congress and a number of states established investigating committees to inquire into the relations between labor and capital. Their hearings produced powerful evidence of distrust between employees and employers. The Massachusetts Bureau of Labor statistics reported that virtually every worker it interviewed complained of overwork, poor housing, and tyrannical employers

Freedom, Inequality, and Democracy

• Americans viewed concentration of wealth as inevitable, natural, and justified by progress

• Liberal reformers broke with the Republican Party in 1872 and helped bring about a change in northern opinion regarding Reconstruction. They feared that with lower-class groups seeking to use the government to advance their own interests, democracy became a threat to individual liberty and the rights of property. Urged that voting should be limited to property owners

Social Darwinism in America

• Social Darwinism - evolution is a natural process in human society and government must not interfere. "Survival of the fittest"; your outcome is in your hands

• Yale professor William Graham Sumner said that in a free society, nobody should seek or be obligated to help one another. You work for yourself

Liberty of Contract

• Social Darwinism was embraced by the business and professional classes.

• Labor contracts reconciled freedom and authority in the workplace.

  • Workers seeked an outline of their jobs

The Courts and Freedom

• Liberty of Contract defined the 14th amendment's true meaning - state laws cannot violate the citizens' rights

• The government viewed any kind of state regulations with businesses an insult to free labor

• The courts generally sided with business enterprises that complained of a loss of economic freedom

Labor and the Republic

“The Overwhelming Land Question”

• Great Railroad Strike - Workers protesting a pay cut paralyzed rail traffic in much of the country. Militia units tried to force them back to work. They killed 20 workers, and the people responded by burning the city's railroad yards

The Knights of Labor and the “Conditions Essential to Liberty”

• Knights of Labor - The first group to try to organize unskilled workers as well as skilled, women alongside men, and blacks as well as whites (excluded Asians). Involved millions of workers in strikes, boycotts, political action, and educational and social activities

• George E. McNeill argued that "extremes of wealth and poverty" threatened the existence of the democratic government

• July 4, 1886 - Federated Trades of the Pacific Coast rewrote the Declaration of Independence. Listed mankind's inalienable rights: "Life and the means of living, Liberty and the conditions essential to liberty."

Middle-Class Reformers

• Caesar's Column (1891) was a novel that ended with civilized society destroyed in a savage civil war between labor and capital

• The most popular were Progress and Poverty, The Cooperative Commonwealth, and Looking Backward

• All the writers sought to reclaim an imagined golden age of social harmony and American freedom

Progress and Poverty

• Commanded the most attention than any book on economics in American history

• Henry George's solution was the single tax, which would replace other taxes with a levy on increases in the value of real estate

The Cooperative Commonwealth

• The first book to popularize socialist ideas for an American audience, written by Laurence Gronlund, a lawyer who emigrated from Denmark in 1867

• Portrayed socialism as the end result of a process of peaceful evolution. He made socialism seem more acceptable to the middle class in America

Bellamy’s Utopia

• Edward Bellamy wrote Looking Backward, which promoted socialist ideas while writing of nationalism at the same time

• The main character falls asleep in the late nineteenth century to awaken in the year 2000, in a world where cooperation has replaced class strife

Protestants and Moral Reform

• Tried to stamp out sin during the Gilded age

• "Moral suasion" was the preferred approach of many organizations such as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, National Reform Association, and Reform Bureau

  • They tried to "Christianize the government."

    • No alcohol, gambling, prostitution, polygamy, or birth control.

• The Bible Belt - A place where political action revolved around religious principles

• Mann Act of 1910 - banned the prostitutional transportation of women across state lines

A Social Gospel

• The Social Gospel movement originated as an effort to reform Protestant churches by expanding their appeal in poor urban neighborhoods and making them more attentive to the era's social ills. It established missions and relief programs in urban areas that attempted to alleviate poverty, combat child labor, and encourage the construction of better working class housing. They worked with the Knights of Labor and other groups demanding health and safety laws

The Haymarket Affair

• The iron-moulders union organized a strike against a wage reduction in Chicago. The city's government sided with the company's decision to install new machinery that reduced its dependence on iron moulders' skills.

• May 3, 1886 - four strikers were killed by police

• Haymarket Affair - people gathered in Haymarket Square to protest the killings

  • Someone threw a bomb into the crowd that killed a policeman. The police opened fire, shooting several bystanders and a number of their own force. Eight anarchists were charged with plotting and carrying out the bombing. ⅞ were foreigners