The "Gilded Age" that was enjoyed by the topmost precentiles of American society after the recovery from the Panic of 1873 floated on the surface of the newly-industrialized economy of the Second Industrial Revolution and was fired by the period of wealth transfer that catalyzed dramatic social changes and created for the first time a class of the super-rich "captains of industry", the "Robber Barons" whose network of business, social and family connections ruled a largely Anglo-Saxon social world that possessed clearly defined boundaries. The term "Gilded Age" was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their 1873 book, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873), employing the ironic difference between a "gilded" and a Golden Age.
The cohesive ruling class of the Northeast possessed the confidence to proclaim an "American Renaissance", which could be identified in the rush of new public institutions that marked the period—hospitals, museums, schools, opera houses, public libraries, symphony orchestras— and by the the Beaux-Arts architectural idiom in which they splendidly stood forth, after the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.
Also important in the Gilded Age were drastic changes made in education, to assimilate the immigrants, the religion movements, and the huge empires that were built in a newly national press, notably by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer.
Technology of the Gilded Age
There were many advancements in technology. From 1860 to 1890 there were 500,000 patents issued for new inventions, over ten times the number of the previous seventy years. Among these inventions were air brakes for trains, the telegraph, the telephone, and many other advances. Also in this time period, Thomas A. Edison helped make electricity widely available by making a power plant that lit several buildings in New York compared to where they previously had separate generators. Additionally, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone which helped connect the country through communication. Another source of energy that was coming into wide usage was oil. Edwin L. Drake was sent to Pennsylvania to drill for oil. If effective, the project would cut both time and cost for obtaining oil.
Media of the Gilded Age
Prior to the Gilded Age, journalism in the U.S. had been largely political. The Gilded Age saw the rise of yellow journalism, in which sensationalism—reporting of fires, gory accidents, crimes, and sentimental stories—took at least as prominent a role as politics. This title came from a simple cartoon, known as the The Yellow Kid. Sometimes reporters got carried away to the point of becoming ridiculous.
The Gilded Age also saw the rise of cinema and recorded music.
The American West
The Gilded Age was rooted in heavy American industrialization, the construction of railroads and the expansion of the American West. The contemporary mythos of the American West centers on the independent exploration of adjacent territory by frontiersmen, but in fact the exploration also involved a government-backed plan of expansion. This perception of individualism was the result of (or was expressed in) the political theories of Frederick Jackson Turner, who theorized that the strong development of democracy in the United States was the result of an open frontier.
The government issued 160 acre (64 ha) land grants to families moving to the west under the Homestead Act. The expansion into the West created a need for workers in the area to build railroads and facilitate trade. When Americans began to move west, the Native Americans resisted. Land conflicts arose, and eventually, the U.S. government stipulated that the Native Americans settle in a fixed area to allow the region around them to progress and fill with American citizens. However, the Native Americans followed the buffalo and, being an inherently nomadic civilization, had no interest in settling. In response the American government declared "war" on the buffalo.
Because of all the people moving west the federal government had to again move the Native Americans from the lands that they were moved to, and move the western tribes onto reservations in Indian Territory. This was met with many hostilities. The Army was used to fight off the Native Americans and protect the settlers moving west. Key battles of the Indian Wars included the Sand Creek Massacre, Battle of the Little Bighorn, and the Massacre of Wounded Knee in 1890 which ultimately ended the Indian Wars The most prestegious actor during the guilded age was CJ (Chartfield) Bliss. Many people loved to watch him perform his riskay shows where he stripped while sliding down "the pole".
Industrial Revolution
- Main article: Second Industrial Revolution
The Second Industrial Revolution is also called the second phase of the Industrial Revolution, since from a technological and a social point of view there is no clear division. Indeed, it might be argued that it stems from the middle of the nineteenth century with the growth of railways and steam ships, for crucial inventions such as the Bessemer and the Siemens steel making processes were invented in the decades preceding 1871.
Frederick Winslow Taylor observed operations in the steel plant where he was chief engineer and concluded that worker efficiency could be improved through analysis of the amount of time it took to do the job and the motions it took to do the job. His redesign increased the speed of factory machines, and the productivity of factories, but at the expense of a massive de-skilling of the factory workforce. "Taylorism" transformed the factory floor from a collaboration of tradesmen to an assemblage of unskilled laborers each doing highly repetitive tasks.
Urbanization
Urbanization was a direct result from Industrialization. Big factories would be located in cities to have a central location for workers. Immigrants and displaced rural workers flooded cities in the hopes of finding employment.
Positive effects of Urbanization
New technologies such as elevators, skyscrapers, street lighting, and sewage systems.
Negative effects of Urbanization.
Bad working conditions, child labor, slums, and bad sanitation.
Politics during the Gilded Age
After the Reconstruction, many American politicians began to question the policies supporting direct government intervention in the market. Instead, they proposed, allow the market to govern the American economy. As such, the government policy changed to more of a Laissez-Faire system. In such a system, the government takes a "hands-off" approach, as the United States did with many businesses during the late 1800s. Laissez-Faire literally means "let do, let pass," and many Americans supported it in theory. Supporters of the theory claim that if the government does not interfere, the strongest business will succeed and, as a whole, make the nation wealthier; a sort of Social Darwinism. However, many people supported government intervention that was beneficial to the nation such as high tariffs and subsidies.
During this time period corruption ruled supreme in the political system. President Andrew Jackson's "spoils system," which stated that winning political office was much like winning a war and as such allows for people who helped the candidate win to be placed in political offices, allowed would-be politicians to pay their way into office. This of course led to major corruption in the federal government. Many who were elected to office used their power to gain personal profit. There were a multitude of scandals involving politicians exploiting contracted companies, such as the Credit Mobilier incident.
Between Republicans and Democrats, presidential elections were often very close; no holds were barred, no punches pulled. Republicans of this era employed an election tactic known as "waving the bloody shirt." Candidates, especially when combating corruption charges, would remind voters that the Republican Party had saved the nation from Civil War. During the 1870s, voters were repeatedly reminded that the Democrats had been responsible for the bloody upheaval, an appeal that attracted many Union veterans. The Republicans consistently carried the North in presidential elections. The South, on the other hand, was solidly Democratic. The horror and deprivation of the Civil War and Reconstruction were still fresh in many minds; Republicanism was equated with Northern aggression and domination. Politicians invoked images of the "lost cause" and the glorious "stars and bars" in much the same way Republicans "waved the bloody shirt." Overall, Republican and Democratic political platforms remained remarkably constant during the years before 1900.
Influential People
Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller were two of the most influential people during the Gilded Age. Carnegie was born into a poor Scottish family and began his career at the age of 13 working for a local cotton factory. He got a break at the age of 14 when Thomas A. Scott saw the talent that Carnegie demonstrated while working as a messenger, and decided to make him his secretary. In 1870 Carnegie erected his first blast furnace. He took on several partners to promote his business. After becoming wealthy, Carnegie decided that rich persons should donate much of their wealth to charity. During the final years of his life and after his death his estate donated 350 million dollars and built 3,000 public libraries. John D. Rockefeller was an American capitalist who was most famous for his role in the early petroleum industry. He started the company Standard Oil with his brother William Rockefeller, railroad magnate Henry M. Flagler and a silent partner Stephen V. Harkness.
Transportation Revolution
Railroads allowed goods to be transported farther into the country. Unlike canals that would freeze over during the cold winter months, railroads could be allowed to run year round. Railroads also made it much easier to go up hills and mountains. Railroads in the long run would increase the economic growth of the country greatly and it still has an affect today.
The railroad very much affected the Gilded Age. By the early twentieth century, American manufacturing production had surpassed the combined total of Great Britain, Germany, and France. Railroad mileage tripled between 1860 and 1880, and tripled again by 1920, opening new areas to commercial farming, creating a national market for manufactured goods, and inspiring a boom in coal mining and steel production. The voracious appetite for capital of the great trunk railroads facilitated the consolidation of the nation's financial market in Wall Street. By 1900, the process of economic concentration had extended into most branches of industry- a few giant corporations dominated in steel, oil, sugar, meatpacking, and the manufacture of agriculture machinery.
Immigration
During the Gilded Age millions of immigrants came to the United States for many reasons: religious persecution and bad economies are just examples. Between 1865 and 1890 about 10 million immigrants entered the United States from countries in northwestern Europe. Between 1890 an 1920 the pattern of immigration shifted and more people were coming from south and eastern Europe, about 16 million from these areas during this time. There were many port cities for immigrants to come through, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and New York. About 70% of all immigrants came through New York City.
Immigration in part contributed to the mass corruption in politics during the Gilded Age. The large increase in population due to immigration in big cities across the United States made cities have an even stronger impact on the government. This gave these areas more influence and power which with it attracted power-hungry politicians. These corrupt politicians would fix voting, or force the many immigrants to vote for them to get into office. Then, while in office they would use their power to steal money(ex. kickbacks) from the government and even the citizens who voted for them.
Through a large part of the nineteenth century immigrants came through the Castle Garden depot on the southern tip of Manhattan. Because of all the immigrants coming into the country the Federal Government built Ellis Island in 1892 near the Statue of Liberty. Also in 1892 all immigrants were required to undergo physical exams and many with diseases were deported or quarantined. Immigrants that made it into the country settled in areas where others of the same ethnicity had settled.
Immigrants sought to be with settlers from their homelands. Doing this large groups of Poles and Italians grew in places such as Buffalo and Cleveland. Not surprisingly, not many immigrants went to the South, which offered very few jobs to newcomers. Similar attitude was found in other areas that had restrictive covenants. These were discriminatory (but legal at the time) agreements among homeowners not to sell real estate to certain groups of people. These actions prevented immigrants from living in nicer neighborhoods.
The Chinese Exclusion
As white settlement brought industrial opportunity to the West, a growing number of Chinese immigrants began to pour into California via the Pacific Ocean. By the turn of the century, there were about 300,000 Chinese immigrants in the West. Most of the Chinese obtained low-paying jobs working for the Union Pacific & Central Pacific Railroad companies (the two railroads that would join at Promontory, Utah to form the First Transcontinental Railroad). A large number of Chinese immigrants returned to their countries (a greater proportion than most other immigrant groups); however, most of them did stay in the United States. Those who stayed often created "Chinatowns." Such separation by ethnic group was common – it provided comfort and familiarity to the immigrants, while most of the "native" citizens of the U.S. were apathetic to this separation.
However, most Chinatowns enjoyed a larger sense of community and familiarity than other pockets of immigrant groups. The success of the Chinese despite harsh and often unfair labor conditions was essentially the reason why many people found reasons to dislike them. Unions were especially opposed to the influx of Chinese labor because it caused competition between the immigrants and the original citizens. Because of this, many Chinese businesses were shut down by locals. Many cases were brought through the judicial system; one of the more prominent cases was Yick Wo vs. Hopkins. Hopkins was a San Francisco sheriff who began closing Chinese businesses citing that the Chinese, most of whom were not American citizens, did not enjoy rights provided to citizens. However, Hopkins's case was defeated, as the Supreme Court concluded that all people on American soil are entitled to American rights and liberties regardless of their status. Unfortunately, this decision caused Congress to ban further Chinese immigration through the Chinese Exclusion Act.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882. The act prohibited Chinese laborers from entering the U.S., however if immigrants had already entered the U.S. and left, they would still be able to come back. The act was renewed in 1892 and 1902 and then made permanent. In 1910, the federal government built an immigration center on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, here immigrants underwent a lengthy examination before they could become a resident.
Labor unions
Modern labor unions were born when wage labor became prevalent. The unions were started in order to maintain the dignity of American laborers. Strong localized unions appeared after the Civil War in order to help workers through hard times, but became used to voice worker's demands such as shorter workdays and higher wages. The National Labor Union formed in Baltimore in 1866. This was an attempt at a nationwide union. Other attempts at a nationwide union were the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor
Pullman (a maker of luxury rail cars) created a factory with a town surrounding it in order to bring workers closer to the factories; however, workers soon became dissatisfied with working conditions and revolted. Pullman brought in the Pinkerton Detective Agency to defend the factory and subdue the riots. In response, Eugene Debs told railroad workers (all members of the American Railroad Union) to stop handling Pullman rail cars, effectively halting the movement of trains with Pullman cars.
Pullman's staff pored over federal laws and regulations, eventually discovering that if they attached a federally owned post-car to Pullman trains, it would be a federal offense to stop them. Naturally, a lawsuit followed when workers and union members halted federal cars. A significant court opinion was issued called In Re Debs (essentially meaning "regarding Debs", a prominent figure in politics and labor unions). This opinion essentially stated that the unions were companies and that under the Sherman Antitrust Act, companies could not conspire to constrain or control trade. It was concluded that Debs's attempt to stop the movement of Pullman's trains was a conspiracy to constrain trade. Debs was put in jail and received no support from Samuel Gompers (head of the AFL). He spent six months in jail and the ARU (the American Railway Union, which was headed by Debs) was in shambles. Employees of Pullman were forced to sign anti-union low-paying contracts and the situation only worsened. Debs went on to found the Socialist Party of America, an offshoot of Debs's Social Democratic Party, which advocated socialist ideals.
References
- Nancy Cohen; The Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865-1914 University of North Carolina Press, 2002
- Fine, Sidney. Laissez Faire and the General-Welfare State: A Study of Conflict in American Thought, 1865–1901. University of Michigan Press, 1956.
- Jensen, Richard. "Democracy, Republicanism and Efficiency: The Values of American Politics, 1885-1930," in Byron Shafer and Anthony Badger, eds, Contesting Democracy: Substance and Structure in American Political History, 1775-2000 (U of Kansas Press, 2001) pp 149-180; online version
- H. Wayne Morgan, ed. The Gilded Age: A Reappraisal Syracuse University Press 1970.
- Ted Curtis Smythe; The Gilded Age Press, 1865-1900 Praeger. 2003.
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