The Gilded Age, an overview
- 1. The Gilded Age:Industry, Urbanization, and the West
- 2. Second Industrial RevolutionBegan during Civil War
- 3. Shift: consumer to capital goods
- 4. RRs crucial: 320,000 miles by 1900
- 5. Abundant natural resources: coal, iron, copper, timber, oilImmense demand for labor
- 6. Huge domestic demand for goods
- 7. Abundant Capital – U.S. & European
- 9. Talented managers and entrepreneurs
- 10. Major Inventions: communications, electricity
- 11. Supportive governmentGilded Age Politics: Conservatism & Complacency Shift in focus from politics to economics
- 12. Shift from idealism to cynicism
- 13. Era of “forgettable presidents”
- 14. Problems re: the growth of cities & industry were avoided by national politicians, left to state and local politicians Widespread patronage and corruption
- 15. Civil Service Reform: Pendleton Act (1881) -- shift in role of party workers Tariffs: big disagreement!Laissez-Faire EconomicsAdam Smith’s “Invisible Hand”
- 16. Hands Off vs. Helping Hands
- 19. Horatio Alger myth: the self-made man a rarity – psychological effectsSocial DarwinismIndustrial EmpiresRailroads (Vanderbilt and Gould)
- 20. The Steel Industry: Carnegie Steel; U.S. Steel (J. P. Morgan)
- 21. J. D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil
- 22. Anti-Trust MovementCauses of Labor UnrestDe-skilling created loss of autonomy, repetitive & monotonous workConcentration of wealth & sharper class divisionsWage-based labor: long hours, low pay
- 23. Dangerous working conditions: accidents, chemicals & pollutants Court injunctions
- 24. Industrial warfare: strikes, lockouts, blacklists, yellow-dog contracts, private guards & state militias
- 25. Panics of 1873 and 1892National Labor UnionsNational Labor Union (1866), goals: higher wages, 8-hour day, equal rights for women & blacks, monetary reform, co-opsKnights of Labor (1869, public 1881): Powderly (leader) goals: worker co-ops, ending child labor & monopolies
- 26. AF of L (1886): Gompers (leader) goals: higher wages & safer conditions; tactics: collective bargaining -- first really successful UnionMajor EventsGreat RR Strike (1877)
- 30. Coxey’s Army (1894)Immigration1850-1900 : 16 million immigrants arrived & U.S. pop. grew from 23 to 76 millionReasons for immigration from Europe
- 32. freedom, econ. opportunities, cheap transport
- 33. 1840s to 1880s: NW Europe: Protestants, literate & skilled, meshed well with natives (“Old Immigrants”)
- 34. 1890s to 1914: SE Europe: mostly Catholic, Orthodox & Jewish, illiterate , poor, from autocratic countries (“New Immigrants”) – dangerous work in factories
- 36. First legal restrictions, more rigorous standards
- 37. Labor Unions, Social Darwinists, American Protective LeagueUrbanizationIndustrialization / Population influx
- 38. Skyscrapers: spread upward, technology transformed skylines (steel skeletons, elevators, central heating)
- 39. Streetcar cities: spread outward from commercial center
- 40. Wealthy left central business districts & poor moved in
- 41. Landlords divided up older housing
- 42. New tenements overcrowded, dirty, disease-y
- 44. Boss & machine politics: consolidated power, corrupt but provided social welfare to immigrants By 1900, every major U.S. city had suburbsFarming: Crisis & ResponseNumbers of farmers declined sharply 1860-1900Increased production = falling pricesRising costs: equipment, middlemen, railroads, warehouses, elevators, taxesNational Grange Movement Farmers’ Alliances: 1 million members, some inter-racial orgs in the SouthInterstate Commerce Act (1886) National Alliance’s Ocala platform (1890) re: election reform, tariffs, taxes, banking
- 45. Post-Reconstruction SouthEconomic Development: new industries (lumber, tobacco, cotton mills) & cheap, non-union laborMost profits went North to investorsHigh Poverty Rates: most southerners were sharecropping farmers, barely got byAgricultural Development: increased productivity re: cotton, diversification of cropsFarmers’ Southern Alliance (1 million); Colored Farmers’ National Alliance (250,000) -- lack of unity undercut effectiveness
- 46. Segregation and Loss of Civil Rights“Redeemers” enacted segregationUsed poor whites’ racial fears to deflect common economic concernsSupreme Court: Congress can’t prohibit racial discrimination by private citizens, including railroads, hotels…Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) “separate but equal” ushers in the Jim Crow era Grandfather clauses, literacy tests, property requirements, poll taxes used to disfranchise blacks or liberal whitesBlacks couldn’t serve on juries, harsher punishments, shut out of good jobsWaves of lynching & other forms of terror
- 47. Black ResponsesMigrate: western U.S.; Africa (Bishop Henry Turner, International Migration Society 1894)Ida B. Wells-Barnett, newspaper writer and editor fought against lynching & Jim Crow, death threats forced her to flee to NorthBooker T. Washington: economic uplift, industrial, technical ed., no agitation (Tuskegee Inst. 1881)W.E.B. Du Bois: end segregation, equal civil rights, higher ed., political activism
Editor's Notes
- #2: 2010