Gilded Age� Industrialism

Unit 6A

​

AP U.S. History

Gilded Age music accompaniment

Think About It

• Evaluate the extent of causes of acquisition of power and wealth of Gilded Age capitalists.

The Gilded Age

• “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today was a famous satirical novel by Mark Twain set in the late 1800s, and the term “Gilded Age” soon came to define the tumultuous years between the Civil War and the turn of the twentieth century. During this era, America became more prosperous and saw unprecedented growth in industry and technology. But the Gilded Age had a more sinister side: It was a period where greedy, corrupt industrialists, bankers and politicians enjoyed extraordinary wealth and opulence at the expense of the working class. In fact, it was wealthy tycoons, not politicians, who inconspicuously held the most political power during the Gilded Age.”

Captains of Industry OR Robber Barons?

• Using four business entrepreneurs as case studies for American innovation, industrial growth, and expansion of capitalism.

​

• Cornelius Vanderbilt
• Andrew Carnegie
• John D. Rockefeller
• J.P. Morgan

American Fundamentals Fueling the Gilded Age Economy

• Individualism
• Private property
• Free enterprise
• Laissez-faire

Captains of Industry OR Robber Barons:�Cornelius Vanderbilt and Railroads

• Transportation
• Railroads
• Granger Movement

Development and Impact of Railroads

• Development
• Pacific Railway Acts
• Transcontinental railroads
• Cornelius Vanderbilt and Leland Stanford
• Standardization and innovations
• Time zones
• Gauges and couplings
• Steel lines
• Air brakes – George Westinghouse
• Impact
• Created a truly national marketplace
• Connected local farmers to national markets
• Western mines to Northeastern factories
• Transportation
• From New York to San Francisco took six days instead of six months
• Time zones
• Financial system and businesses
• Massive need of financial capital
• Management and ownership

​

The Business of Railroads

• Consolidation and Monopolies
• Cornelius Vanderbilt
• Jay Gould
• Rebates
• Freight/shipping discounts given to larger companies
• Pools
• Competing lines fixed prices and divided business for max profits

Farmer Problems

• Panic of 1873 and Panic of 1893
• Falling crop prices
• Mechanization
• Foreign competition
• Increase in railroad and storage fees
• Short-haul and long-haul rate discriminations
• Sound currency policies
• Federal government focused on gold standard

Granger Movement

• Patrons of Husbandry founded in 1867
• Granger Laws
• State legislatures set maximum freight and passenger railroad rates and prohibit price discrimination
• Cooperatives
• Local and regional farmers collectively worked to finance and market crops

The Farmers and the Railroads: The Grange Awakening the Sleepers, John Donaghy (1873)

Farmer Protests Expand

• Munn v. Illinois (1877)
• U.S. Supreme Court upheld state railroad and grain elevator regulations
• Business-Affected-with-a-Public-Interest
• Wabash v. Illinois (1886)
• Railroad rates regulation unconstitutional as only Congress can regulate interstate commerce
• Interstate Commerce Act/Commission (ICC)
• Railroad rates must be reasonable and just
• Prohibited price discriminations
• Required public posting of rates
• Farmers’ Alliance
• National Farmers’ Alliance (Midwest farmers); National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union (Southern white farmers); Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Cooperative Union (Southern black farmers)
• Ocala Demands (1890)
• Free silver
• Railroad regulation
• Direct election of U.S. Senators
• National income tax
• Government storage silos

​

Decline of American Agriculture

• Farming's share of the Gross Domestic Product in the 1870s: 38%�Farming's share of the Gross Domestic Product in the 1890s: 24%

Captains of Industry OR Robber Barons:�Andrew Carnegie and Steel

• Steel
• Vertical Integration
• Urbanization and Cities
• Gospel of Wealth
• Labor Unions and Strikes

Bessemer Process

• Oxidation of iron ore to remove impurities
• Steel is lighter, stronger, rust-resistant
• Carnegie and Steel
• Adopted and adapted Bessemer Process to steel plants
• Increased supply of quality steel dropped steel prices
• Abundance of steel significantly impacted American industrial growth and expansion

Steel Production

Vertical Integration/Monopoly

• Purchase and acquire all aspects of production
• Effects
• Limited competition
• Maximized profits
• Lowered costs

Steel Skyscrapers

NYC 1850

NYC c. 1900

Urban Infrastructure

• Infrastructure
• Grand Central Station
• Brooklyn Bridge
• Urban Innovation
• Mass Transit
• Elevated rails
• Cable cars
• Subways
• Elevators
• Central steam-heating systems

​

Gilded Age Urbanization

• 20% of Americans lived in cities by 1860
• 40% of Americans lived in cities by 1900

Labor Force in the Gilded Age

Labor Wages

• Time and Pay
• Average work week for industrial worker: 60 hours
• Average hourly rate for unskilled industrial worker: $0.10
• No benefits
• No vacation days, sick leave, health insurance, workers’ compensation, pensions
• Iron Law of Wages
• Real wages always tend toward the living wage in the long run

​

Cost of Living in the Gilded Age

• Average annual expenditures (1901): $755
• Average annual expenditures for food, rent, fuel, lighting, clothing (1901): $574

Labor Conditions

• Poor working conditions
• Mining suffered through fires and gas leaks
• Factories suffered through gas leaks, volatile chemicals, dangerous and unreliable machines
• Long hours and no benefits led to exhaustion and disease
• Statistics
• In 1882, average of 675 workers killed each week
• 35,000 workers killed each year between 1881-1900

Child Labor in the Gilded Age

• Work
• Farm laborers
• Mining
• Factories
• Street trades
• “Newsies” and message carrying
• Statistics
• In 1870, 1 out of every 8 children worked; by 1900, 1 out of every 5
• Between 1890-1910, 18% of all children ages 10-15 worked

Labor Unions

• Causes
• De-skilling and devaluing of labor
• Poor and dangerous working conditions
• Use of immigrants
• Meager salaries and no benefits
• Purpose
• Collective bargaining
• Demand higher wages, benefits, shorter working days, safer working conditions
• Tactics
• Political action and efficacy
• Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
• Closed shops
• Slowdowns and Soldiering
• Picketing
• Boycotts
• Strikes
• Sabotage

Management on Unions

• Rationales
• Capitalists took the financial risks
• Provided labor opportunities
• Expanded economies and affordable consumer costs
• Social Darwinism
• Tactics against Unions
• Linked unions to socialism and anarchism (radicalism)
• Lockouts
• Scabs
• Yellow-dog contracts
• Blacklists
• Pinkertons
• Lobby government officials
• Court injunctions

​

Knights of Labor

• Founded in 1869
• Terrence Powderly
• Open Membership
• Excluded Chinese
• Platform
• 8-hour workday
• Child labor laws
• Anti-trust laws
• Promotion of cooperatives
• Pursued idealistic reforms
• Tactics
• Arbitration
• Strikes

​

Great Railroad Strike of 1877

• July 14-September 4, 1877
• Wage cuts, layoffs, and longer hours
• Panic of 1873
• B&O Railroad and Pennsylvania Railroad
• Strikes
• Strikes began in West Virginia and Maryland and spread across Northeast and Midwest
• Strikers resorted to violence, vandalism, rioting
• Government Response
• President Hayes filed injunctions to avoid insurrections
• Dispatched federal troops and exacerbated the violence
• Impact
• Would lead to better organization of workers and labor unions
• Legislation to limit unions and preparations for potential conflicts
• "The strikes have been put down by force; but now for the real remedy. Can't something [be] done by education of strikers, by judicious control of capitalists, by wise general policy to end or diminish the evil? The railroad strikers, as a rule, are good men, sober, intelligent, and industrious.“ – President Rutherford B. Hayes

Haymarket Riot of 1886

• Series of Events
• May Day (May 1^st)
• Strike begins of harvesting workers
• May 3^rd
• Police sent to protect strikers
• Fight broke out and one person killed and several injured
• May 4^th Protest
• Anarchists planned demonstration against police brutality
• Police dispersed crowd of 2,000
• A pipe bomb exploded and killed 7 police officers
• Police fired into crowd killing 4
• Trial
• 8 innocent anarchists convicted of murder in a show trial
• 4 hanged, 1 committed suicide, 3 pardoned by governor
• Impact
• Public criticized labor unions for violence
• Weakened the Knights of Labor

American Federation of Labor (AFL)

• Founded in 1886 by Samuel Gompers
• Limited Membership
• Trade/craft unions – skilled workers
• Avoid industrial unions
• No women, minorities, foreign labor
• Platform – “Bread and Butter”
• Higher wages
• 8-hour workday
• Safer working conditions
• Child labor laws
• Tactics
• Collective bargaining and Arbitration
• Political lobbying and neutrality
• Walkouts and strikes as last resort
• Avoid radicalism and violent tactics

​

Homestead Strike

• June 30-July 6, 1892
• Henry Frick
• Manager of Carnegie Steel
• Pursued wage cuts due to lower steel prices
• Attempted to weaken steel workers union
• Events
• Frick orders a lockout and hires scabs
• Striking workers barricade themselves in front of the steel plant
• Use of Pinkertons to disperse strikers
• Pennsylvania state militia ultimately ends strike
• Strike fails and union broken
• Impact
• Weakened steel workers union
• Tarnished Carnegie’s reputation

Pullman Strike (1894)�Pullman Palace Car Company

• Pullman cars
• Sleeper cars
• Company town
• Built to attract quality employees
• Built outside city limits allowing Pullman near-absolute control
• Panic of 1893
• Pressured Pullman Co. to lower wages by 25%-50% and layoff half of the workforce
• Rents and utility rates remain unchanged
• 25% higher than surrounding areas

Pullman Strike (1894)

• Strike and Boycott
• Pullman refused to bargain and fired union leaders
• Strikers joined by the American Railway Union led by Eugene V. Debs
• ARU refused to work on Pullman cars
• Government Response
• Railcars attached to mail cars; disrupting U.S. mail service
• Attorney General Olney filed for a court injunction based on violation of Sherman Antitrust Act and Interstate Commerce Act
• President Grover Cleveland dispatched federal troops to break up the strike
• “If it takes the entire army and navy of the United States to deliver a postcard in Chicago that card will be delivered.”
• Conflict
• Strikers overturned and burned railcars and engaged national guard
• 26 civilians killed in the riot violence
• Public Opinion
• Violent actions by striking workers lost public sympathy
• In re Debs (1895)
• Debs was arrested for violating the court injunction
• Supreme Court ruled Debs’s arrest constitutional as federal government had power to regulate interstate commerce, ensure postal service, and “ensure the general welfare of the public”

Growth of Unions during the Gilded Age

Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)�“The Wobblies”

• Established in 1905
• Big Bill Haywood
• Membership
• Made up of socialists, anarchists, syndicalists
• Open to minorities, women, skilled, unskilled, poor farmers/sharecroppers
• Platform
• “One Big Union” and Worker solidarity
• “an injury to one is an injury to all”
• All workers as one large class
• End of wage labor and capitalism
• Tactics
• Boycotts
• Strikes
• Extreme direct action of sabotage and violence

Anti-Union Sentiment

• “God had intended the great to be great and the little to be little… The trade unions, which originated under the European system, destroys liberty. I do not say a dollar a day is enough to support a working man, but it is enough to support a man. Not enough to support a man and five children if a man insists on smoking and drinking beer…[b]ut the man who cannot live on bread and water is not fit to live.” – Reverend Henry Ward Beecher (July 1877)

The Organizing of Labor into Unions Is Dangerous;�Labor Unions Are Essential

Henry Clews – “The Folly of Organized Labor” (1886)

• The organizations have sacrificed the sympathy which lately was entertained for them on account of inequities existing in certain employments; they stand discredited and distrusted before the community at large as impracticable, unjust, and reckless; and, occupying this attitude before the public, their cause is hone and their organization doomed to failure. They have opened the floodgates to the immigration of foreign labor, which is already pouring in by the thousands; and they have set a premium on nonunion labor, which will be more sought for than ever, and will not be slow to secure superior earnings by making arrangements with employers upon such terms and for such hours as may best suit their interests… There have been numerous vacanies created by the strikers voluntarily resigning. There has been no difficulty in filling these vacancies by those that are equally capable, if not more so, from other countries flocking to our shores...Strikes may have been justifiable in other nations but they are not justifiable in our country, and there is where the mistake was in organizing such a movement. The Almighty has made this country for the oppressed of other nations, and therefore this is the land of refuge for the oppressed, and the hand of the laboring man should not be raised against it.

Samuel Gompers – “Open Letter to Judge Peter Grosscup” (1894)

• You say that “labor cannot afford to attack capital.” Let me remind you that labor has no quarrel with capital, as such. It is merely the possessors of capital who refuse to accord to labor the recognition, the right, the justice which is the laborers’ due with whom we contend… Are you aware that all the legislation ever secured for the ventilation or safety of mines, factory, or workshop is the result of the efforts of organized labor? Do you know that the trade unions were the shield for the seven-year-old children from being the conqueror’s trophy until they become somewhat older? And that the reformatory laws now on the statute books protecting or defending the trophies of both sexes, young and old from the fond care of the conquerors were wrested from congresses, legislatures, and parliaments despite the Pullmans, the Jeffries, the Ricks, the Tafts, the Williams, the Woods, or the Grosscups... Year by year man’s liberties are trampled underfoot at the bidding of corporations and trusts, rights are invaded, and law perverted. In all ages, wherever a tyrant has shown himself, he has always found some willing judge to clothe that tyranny in the robes of legality, and modern capitalism has proven no exception to the rule.

Captains of Industry OR Robber Barons:�John D. Rockefeller and Oil

• Horizontal Integration
• Standard Oil
• Trusts and monopolies
• Sherman Anti-trust Act (1890)

Horizontal Integration/Monopoly

Business Control and Monopoly

• Trust
• A legal combination of firms run by a board of trustees
• Standard Oil Trust
• Holding Company
• A company formed to purchase and own controlling stock in several companies
• Cartel
• An association of manufacturers with the purpose of maintaining prices at a high level and restricting competition

Standard Oil Trust

• Established a 9-member trust to avoid state regulations
• Board of Trustees included John D. Rockefeller and Henry Flagler
• Tactics
• Lowered prices to drive out competitors (rate wars)
• Threatened companies to sell to Standard Oil (buyouts)
• Bribed railroads to buy Standard Oil fuel (rebates, kickbacks)
• Bribed Congress members

A Gilded Age Government

• Political situation during the Gilded Age
• Both political parties shared little differences
• Avoided taking strong positions on growing issues (farmers, labor)
• GOP dominated White House; Congress relatively evenly split
• Pro-business policies
• Protective tariffs
• Hard money/gold standard
• Graft and corruption
• Political machines
• Senate as “rich man’s club”
• Scandals
• Black Friday (1869)
• Credit Mobilier (1869)
• Whiskey Ring (1875)
• Salary Swap (1873)
• Patronage

Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)

• Provisions
• Section 1: Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal.
• Section 2: Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony…
• Effect
• Vague language made it difficult for courts to interpret
• Rarely enforced against businesses
• Applied more toward labor unions

Gilded Age U.S. Supreme Court

• Munn v. Illinois (1877)
• Business-Affected-with-a-Public-Interest
• Wabash v. Illinois (1886)
• Interstate commerce exclusive to Congress
• Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886)
• railroad corporations are “persons” (corporate personhood)
• United States v. E.C. Knight Co. (1895)
• Manufacturing not subject to interstate commerce regulation

​

Captains of Industry OR Robber Barons:�J.P. Morgan and Electricity

• Banking and Financing
• Corporations
• Science and Innovation
• Consumerism

Electricity

• Thomas Edison
• The Wizard of Menlo Park
• Incandescent light bulb
• Safer than kerosene lamps
• New York City
• Direct current (DC)
• Edison developed system of power stations
• Nicola Tesla
• Alternate current (AC)
• Transfer of electricity faster and farther

Gilded Age Innovation

• Sewing Machine (1855)
• Isaac Singer
• Transatlantic cable (1866)
• Cyrus Field
• Dynamite (1866)
• Alfred Nobel
• Typewriter (1867)
• Christopher Scholes
• Air brakes (1868)
• George Westinghouse
• Mail-order catalog (1872)
• A.M. Ward
• Blue jeans (1873)
• Levi Strauss
• Barbed wire (1873)
• Joseph Glidden
• Telephone (1876)
• Alexander Graham Bell*
• Phonograph (1877)
• Thomas Edison
• Incandescent Light bulb (1879)
• Thomas Edison*
• Cash register (1879)
• James Ritty

• Universal stock ticker (1885)
• Thomas Edison
• Transformer (1885)
• Nikola Tesla
• Gasoline automobile (1885)
• Karl F. Benz
• Skyscraper (1885)
• William Le Baron Jenney
• Film roll and Kodak camera (1889)
• George Eastman*
• Motion picture camera (1891)
• Thomas Edison*
• Radio (1895)
• Guglielmo Marconi
• Subway (U.S.) (1895)
• X-ray (1895)
• Wilhelm C. Rontgen
• Powered flight (1903)
• George and Wilbur Wright
• Alkaline battery (1906)
• Thomas Edison
• Model T (1908)
• Henry Ford

Monumental Innovation

• Charles Alderton
• Experimented with various syrups and flavorings
• Robert Lazenby
• Developed Dr. Pepper by 1885
• Patented and incorporated by 1891
• St. Louis World’s Fair and Exposition (1904)
• Introduces Dr. Pepper to the world
• Along with hot dogs, hamburgers, and ice cream cones

Number of Patents Issued

Scientific Management�“Taylorism”

• Standardization and production based on science, not rules of thumb
• “Now one of the very first requirements for a man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type. The man who is mentally alert and intelligent is for this very reason entirely unsuited to what would, for him, be the grinding monotony of work of this character. Therefore the workman who is best suited to handling pig iron is unable to understand the real science of doing this class of work. He is so stupid that the word "percentage" has no meaning to him, and he must consequently be trained by a man more intelligent than himself into the habit of working in accordance with the laws of this science before he can be successful.”
• Designed hierarchies and subdivisions of labor
• Managers plan, schedule, train, and supervise
• “Managers plan the work, workers work the plan.”
• Workers perform assigned tasks best suited to skills
• Choose appropriate personnel
• Time management
• Pay based on results

Mass Production

• United States became world’s leading manufacturer by 1900
• Economies of scale

Morganization – Corporations and Mergers

• Incorporation laws
• “Morgan reinvented how monopolies can be created by eliminating competition through buying up smaller companies, decreasing prices until the competitors went bankrupt trying to compete, buying up the bankrupt competitors to cover more ground in a market and slashing the workforce behind the company while reducing wages. Collectively, these actions maximized the monopoly's profit. Morgan eventually took control of three major industries: railroads, electricity and steel, and his dedication to efficiency and modernization revolutionized American business.” - Investopedia
• American Telephone and Telegraph Co. (1885)
• J.P. Morgan Co. financed merger of Bell and communication companies
• General Electric (1892)
• J.P. Morgan merged Edison General Electric and Thomas-Houston Electric Company
• U.S. Steel (1901)
• J.P. Morgan bought Carnegie Steel and merged with other steel companies
• Becomes first billion dollar company in world

Corporate Mergers - 1895-1910

Consumerism

• Wide variety of mass produced goods led to new marketing and sales
• Brand names and logos
• Department stores
• R.H. Macy’s
• Chain stores
• Woolworth’s
• Grocery stores
• Mail order catalogs
• Montgomery Ward
• Sears, Roebuck, Co.

Gilded Age�Society and Culture

Think About It

• Evaluate the extent of changes in American society during the Gilded Age industrialization period of 1865 and 1900.

Gilded Age Urbanization

• Causes
• Industrialization
• Farm mechanization
• Redeemer South
• Immigration

Urban Problems

• Political machines and boss politics
• Overcrowding
• Infrastructure did not keep pace with urban sprawl
• Tenement living
• Pollution
• Crime
• Poverty and high unemployment
• Escape to vices such as gambling, alcoholism, prostitution
• Sanitation/Water Treatment
• Indoor plumbing limited to wealthy
• No systemized public sanitation
• Disease
• Cholera
• Yellow fever
• Tuberculosis
• 25% of babies died before reaching age 1

Political Machines�Tammany Hall

• William “Boss” Tweed
• Graft and corruption
• “Elections”

Tenement Living

• “[T]he typical tenement:… it is generally a brick building from four to six stories high on the street, frequently with a store on the first floor… four families occupy each floor, and a set of rooms consists of one or two dark closets, used as bedrooms, with a living room twelve feet by ten. The staircase is too often a dark well in the centre of the house, and no direct through ventilation is possible, each family separated from the other by partitions… The tenements to-day are New York, harboring three fourths of its population.” – Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives

Immigration

• Massive Influx
• 16.2 million immigrants (1850-1900)
• 8.8 million (1901-1910)
• Old Immigrants
• Northern and Western Europe
• New Immigrants
• Southern and Eastern Europe; Asia
• Catholics, Jews

Immigrant Issues

• Sociopolitical Enemies
• Nativists
• Josiah Strong - Our Country
• Political Machines
• Employment, housing, social services for votes
• Immigration Restrictions
• Immigration Acts of 1882, 1891
• Forbid convicts, lunatics, idiots, diseased, disabled

“The Yellow Peril”

• Early encouragement of Chinese immigration in Burlingame Treaty (1868)
• Chinese Immigration Restriction
• Page Act (1875)
• Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
• Geary Act (1892)
• Oppression
• Hard labor in Western states and territories
• Lynching and massacres
• Exclusion

Gilded Age Immigration�Ethnic Enclaves/Neighborhoods

• Little Italy
• Chinatown

Ellis Island

“…Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore…”

​

Emma Lazarus - The New Colossus, 1883

Third Great Awakening�(1855-1930)

• Characteristics
• Post-millennialist
• Concentrated mostly in urban areas
• Prayer meetings
• More use of man-made objects and techniques for revivalism
• National and global missionary work
• Inspired Social Gospel movement
• New Denominations
• Christian Science
• Healing power of prayer
• Jehovah’s Witnesses
• Witnessing
• Avoid celebrations
• “in this world” but “not of this world”
• Millennialist
• The Watchtower
• Salvation Army

Social Gospel

• Inspired by post-millennial religious revival
• Address urban and poverty problems
• Based on Matthew 6:10 “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”
• “What would Jesus do?” (1896)
• Josiah Strong and Our Country: It’s Possible Future and Present Crisis (1885)
• "The Anglo-Saxon is the representative of two great ideas, which are closely related. One of them is that of civil liberty. Nearly all of the civil liberty of the world is enjoyed by Anglo-Saxons: the English, the British colonists, and the people of the United States....The other great idea of which the Anglo-Saxon is the exponent is that of a pure spiritual Christianity.”
• Becomes inspiration for progressive reforms

​

​

Social Gospel�Urban and Social Reform

• Settlement Houses
• Established in poor urban neighborhoods
• Provided education, daycare, and health services
• English lessons for immigrant children and families
• Middle class volunteers
• Jane Addams and Hull House
• "to teach by example, to practice cooperation, and to practice social democracy, that is, egalitarian, or democratic, social relations across class lines."
• YMCA and YWCA
• Salvation Army

Urban and Social Reform

• Jacob Riis
• How the Other Half Lives (1889)
• Henry George
• Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth: The Remedy (1879)
• "Take now... some hard-headed business man, who has no theories, but knows how to make money. Say to him: "Here is a little village; in ten years it will be a great cityóin ten years the railroad will have taken the place of the stage coach, the electric light of the candle; it will abound with all the machinery and improvements that so enormously multiply the effective power of labor. Will in ten years, interest be any higher?" He will tell you, "No!" "Will the wages of the common labor be any higher...?" He will tell you, "No the wages of common labor will not be any higher..." "What, then, will be higher?" "Rent, the value of land. Go, get yourself a piece of ground, and hold possession." And if, under such circumstances, you take his advice, you need do nothing more. You may sit down and smoke your pipe; you may lie around like the lazzaroni of Naples or the leperos of Mexico; you may go up in a balloon or down a hole in the ground; and without doing one stroke of work, without adding one iota of wealth to the community, in ten years you will be rich! In the new city you may have a luxurious mansion, but among its public buildings will be an almshouse."

Gilded Age Socioeconomics

• Socioeconomic gap extensively widened
• Top 1% Ownership of Nation’s Wealth
• 1820: 20.3%
• 1860: 27%
• 1900: 37.3%
• Top 20% Ownership of Nation’s Wealth
• 1820: 72%
• 1860: 88.1%
• 1900: 97.3%
• Statistics
• Total national wealth in 1860: $16 billion
• Total national wealth in 1900: $88 billion
• National wealth per capita in 1860: $500
• National wealth per capita in 1900: $1100
• GDP Growth Rate (1870-1899): 4.5%
• Real Wage of Unskilled Labor: 1.43%
• Cost of Living: -1.5%

Gilded Age Social Class Developments

• Upper Class� Nouveau-riche
• Middle Class
• 5%-10% of American families
• White-collar managers, small business owners, engineers, office staff, sales, educators, bureaucrats
• Highly educated
• Working Class
• Blue-collar factory and manufacturing workers
• Rise in unskilled labor
• 2/3 of workforce were wage laborers
• Wage labor sometimes referred to as wage slavery

“Ostentatious Wealth and Conspicuous Consumption”

• Andrew Carnegie
• Carnegie Steel
• $101B (2018)
• John D. Rockefeller
• Standard Oil
• $253B (2018)
• Cornelius Vanderbilt
• Steamships and railroads
• $205B (2018)
• J.P. Morgan
• Banking and financial industry
• Henry Flagler
• Standard Oil Trust
• Florida East Coast Railway
• William Randolph Hearst
• Newspapers
• Jay Gould
• Railroads
• $78.3B (2018)

• James Buchanan Duke
• American Tobacco Company owned 40% of cigarette industry
• Duke University
• Collis Potter Huntington
• Railroads
• Henry B. Plant
• Railroads and hotels
• John Jacob Astor
• Fur trade and real estate
• America’s first multimillionaire with $20 million by 1848
• Also dealt in opium smuggling
• $138B (2018)
• Jay Cooke
• Investment banking
• Andrew W. Mellon
• Investment
• $63.2B (2018)

Social Darwinism

• Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner
• “Survival of the fittest”
• Competition between classes and nations leads to social evolution
• Wealth a result of hard work and brilliance
• Poor and unfortunate were lazy
• Fueled and Influenced…
• Laissez-faire economics
• Racism
• Nativism
• Imperialism/The White Man’s Burden
• Eugenics
• Horatio Alger Myth

Horatio Alger Myth

• Young adult novels by Horatio Alger
• “Rags-to-riches”
• Young boys rise to middle-class wealth and success through:
• Hard work
• Honesty
• Courage
• Determination

Gospel of Wealth

• Based on the article, “Wealth” written by Andrew Carnegie
• Guardians of the nation’s wealth
• “In bestowing charity, the main consideration should be to help those who will help themselves; to provide part of the means by which those who desire to improve may do so; to give those who desire to use the aids by which they may rise; to assist, but rarely or never to do all. Neither the individual nor the race is improved by alms-giving.”

Gilded Age Philanthropy

• Andrew Carnegie
• Contributed to construction of over 2,000 libraries
• Donated 90% of his fortune
• Carnegie Hall
• Carnegie-Mellon University
• John D. Rockefeller
• Contributed to growth of the University of Chicago
• Medical research and facilities at Johns Hopkins and Harvard
• Cornelius Vanderbilt
• Vanderbilt University
• Donations to various churches
• J.P. Morgan
• Benefactor to Metropolitan Museum of Art (“The Met)

Growing Temperance

• Urbanization and effects of industrialization led to growth in breweries and consumption
• Temperance Movement
• Dominated by upper and middle class urban women
• Evolved sense of maternal responsibility to society
• Primarily Protestant and American Catholics
• Alcohol led to prostitution, corruption, spousal abuse
• National Prohibition Party (1869)
• Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) (1874)
• Frances Willard
• Anti-Saloon League (1893)
• Political lobbying and activism
• Dry counties and states
• Carrie Nation
• “Hatchetations”

Gilded Age Social Norms

• Comstock Laws
• Federal laws against the distribution of:
• Obscenity
• Pornography
• Abortion
• Contraceptives
• Literature related to the above
• Free Love
• Victoria Woodhull

Gilded Age Women

• Maternal Commonwealth
• “Cult of domesticity” outside the private sphere
• Upper and middle class women played dominant role in social reforms
• The New Woman and Gibson Girl
• Upper-class and middle-class women
• College educated and literary clubs
• Increased independence
• Increased participation in athletic activities
• Educational Opportunities
• By 1910, 40% of college students were women
• Vassar, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe

Gilded Age Women and the Workplace

• Increased opportunities in the workplace
• 1 in 5 women were wage earners by 1900
• 5% of female laborers were married
• Low-income families and western farms required women to work
• Types of Work
• Home-associated industry
• Textiles, food processing, domestic service
• 70% of working women were domestic servants (African-American and Irish dominated)
• New opportunities
• Secretaries, bookkeepers, typists, communication operators

Gilded Age Academics

• Educational Reforms
• Public Education
• Comprehensive education
• Compulsory Education
• Most states required 8-14 year olds to attend schools
• Kindergartens
• Led to 90% literacy rate
• Colleges and Universities
• Increased through federal land grants and philanthropy
• 250 new colleges and universities opened between 1880-1900
• Women’s colleges and universities
• By 1910 40% of college students were women
• Black colleges and universities
• Science
• Charles Darwin and Evolution
• Technological Innovation
• Social Sciences
• Scientific method applied to behavioral sciences
• Development of psychology, sociology, political science

Leisure Time and Amusement

• Theater and Stage shows
• Minstrel
• Vaudeville
• Burlesque
• Nickelodeons
• Circus
• P.T. Barnum
• Parks
• Bicycles
• Sports
• Tennis
• Football
• Baseball
• Horse racing

Gilded Age Newspapers

• Industrialization and urbanization expanded circulation
• 700% increase in circulation between 1870 and 1900
• Sunday newspaper
• Associated Press (AP)
• New York Times
• William Randolph Hearst
• New York World
• Joseph Pulitzer
• The New York Journal
• Sensationalism and Yellow Journalism
• Exaggerated and scare headlines
• Fake interviews and pseudoscience
• Imaginary drawings
• Dramatic sympathy for underdog against the system

The Yellow Press

L.M. Glackens (1910)

Gilded Age Magazines

• Monthly forums for in-depth articles, investigative journalism, political satire and cartoons
• Harper’s
• The Atlantic
• Puck
• The Nation
• McClure’s

​

Gilded Age Literature

• Dime novels
• American Realism and Naturalism
• Stephen Crane
• The Red Badge of Courage
• Mark Twain
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today
• Kate Chopin
• The Awakening
• Theodore Dreiser
• Sister Carrie
• Edward Bellamy
• Looking Backward (2000-1887)
• Jack London
• The Call of the Wild
• Social Darwinist ideals
• Horatio Alger
• “rags-to-riches”
• Poetry
• Walt Whitman
• Leaves of Grass
• O Captain! My Captain!
• Emily Dickinson

​

Gilded Age Architecture

Chicago Stock Exchange Building (1894)

Louis Sullivan

“form follows function”

Carson Mansion (1886)

Victorian

Fireproof house

Frank Lloyd Wright

Gilded Age Art

Breezing Up (A Fair Wind) (1876)

Winslow Homer

​

Cross Streets of New York (1899)

Everett Shin

Ashcan School

New York (1911)

George Bellows

Gilded Age Music

• Mainstream Music
• John Philip Sousa – The March King
• The Washington Post
• Stars and Stripes Forever
• Semper Fidelis
• Screamers – Circus Marches
• Entry of the Gladiators
• Popular Music
• Ragtime
• Originated from black communities combining African syncopation and classical music
• Scott Joplin
• The Entertainer
• The Blues
• Originated c. 1890 from Deep South based on ballads among slaves
• Lyrics mostly soulful and melancholy