1. General information about The Gilded Age
The Glided Age in United States history is the
late 19th century, from the 1870s to about 1900.
The early half of the Gilded Age roughly coincided with the middle portion of the Victorian era in Britain and Belle Époque in France.
Name of the era - the term "gilded age" was applied to the era by historians in the 1920s, who took the term from one of Mark Twain's lesser known novels, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873). The book (co-written with Charles Dudley Warner) satirized the promised 'golden age' after the American Civil War, portrayed as an era of serious social problems masked by a thin gold gilding of economic expansion. In the 1920s and 30s "Gilded Age" became a designated period in American history, with the term applied to the post Civil War period up to 1900.
The term was adopted by literary and cultural critics as well as historians, including Van Wyck Brooks, Lewis Mumford, Charles Austin Beard, Mary Ritter Beard, Vernon Louis Parrington and Matthew Josephson. For them, "Gilded Age" was a pejorative term used to describe a time of materialistic excesses combined with extreme poverty.
The early half of the Gilded Age roughly coincided with the middle portion of the Victorian era in Britain and Belle Époque in France.
Name of the era - the term "gilded age" was applied to the era by historians in the 1920s, who took the term from one of Mark Twain's lesser known novels, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873). The book (co-written with Charles Dudley Warner) satirized the promised 'golden age' after the American Civil War, portrayed as an era of serious social problems masked by a thin gold gilding of economic expansion. In the 1920s and 30s "Gilded Age" became a designated period in American history, with the term applied to the post Civil War period up to 1900.
The term was adopted by literary and cultural critics as well as historians, including Van Wyck Brooks, Lewis Mumford, Charles Austin Beard, Mary Ritter Beard, Vernon Louis Parrington and Matthew Josephson. For them, "Gilded Age" was a pejorative term used to describe a time of materialistic excesses combined with extreme poverty.
More recently, historians have often used the political realignment in 1896 to date the end of the Gilded age and the start of the Progressive Era.
The Gilded Age was an era of rapid economic growth, especially in the North and West. As American wages were much higher than those in Europe, especially for skilled workers, the period saw an influx of millions of European immigrants. The rapid expansion of industrialization led to real wage growth of 60% between 1860 and 1890, spread across the ever-increasing labor force. However, the Gilded Age was also an era of abject poverty and inequality as millions of immigrants—many from impoverished European nations—poured into the United States, and the high concentration of wealth became more visible and contentious.
The Gilded Age was an era of rapid economic growth, especially in the North and West. As American wages were much higher than those in Europe, especially for skilled workers, the period saw an influx of millions of European immigrants. The rapid expansion of industrialization led to real wage growth of 60% between 1860 and 1890, spread across the ever-increasing labor force. However, the Gilded Age was also an era of abject poverty and inequality as millions of immigrants—many from impoverished European nations—poured into the United States, and the high concentration of wealth became more visible and contentious.
Railroads were the
major industry, with the factory system, mining, and finance increasing in
importance. Immigration from Europe and the eastern states led to the rapid
growth of the West, based on farming, ranching and mining. Labor unions became
important in the very rapidly growing industrial cities. Two major nationwide
depressions—the Panic of 1873 and the Panic
of 1893— interrupted growth and caused social and political upheavals.
The South after the Civil War remained economically devastated; its economy became increasingly tied to cotton and tobacco production, which suffered from low prices. With the end of the Reconstruction era in 1877, black people in the South were stripped of political power and voting rights and were left economically disadvantaged.
The South after the Civil War remained economically devastated; its economy became increasingly tied to cotton and tobacco production, which suffered from low prices. With the end of the Reconstruction era in 1877, black people in the South were stripped of political power and voting rights and were left economically disadvantaged.
The political
landscape was notable in that despite some corruption, turnout was very high
and national elections saw two evenly matched parties. The dominant issues were
cultural (especially regarding prohibition, education
and ethnic or racial groups), and economic (tariffs and money supply). With the
rapid growth of cities, political machines increasingly took control of urban
politics. Unions crusaded for the
8-hour working day and the abolition of child
labor; middle class reformers demanded civil service reform, prohibition,
and women's suffrage. Local
governments across the North and West built public schools chiefly at the
elementary level; public high schools started to emerge. The numerous religious
denominations were growing in membership and wealth, the Catholics moving to
the largest totals. They all expanded their missionary activity to the world
arena. Catholics and Lutherans set up parochial schools and the larger
denominations set up numerous colleges, hospitals and charities.
2. Industrial and technological advances
A. Technology and change - "The
Civil War," says one writer, "cut a wide gash through the history of
the country; it dramatized in a stroke the changes that had begun to take place
during the preceding 20 or 30 years...." War needs had enormously
stimulated manufacturing, speeding an economic process based on the
exploitation of iron, steam and electric power, as well as the forward march of
science and invention. In the years before 1860, 36,000 patents were granted;
in the next 30 years, 440,000 patents were issued, and in the first quarter of
the 20th century, the number reached nearly a million.
As early as
1844, Samuel F. B. Morse had perfected electrical telegraphy, and soon
afterward distant parts of the continent were linked by a network of poles and
wires. In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell exhibited a telephone instrument and,
within half a century, 16 million telephones would quicken the social and
economic life of the nation. The growth of business was speeded by the
invention of the typewriter in 1867, the adding machine in 1888 and the cash
register in 1897. The linotype composing machine, invented in 1886, and rotary
press and paper-folding machinery made it possible to print 240,000 eight-page
newspapers in an hour. Thomas Edison's incandescent lamp eventually lit
millions of homes. The talking machine, or phonograph, too, was perfected by
Edison, who, in conjunction with George Eastman, also helped develop the motion
picture. These and many other applications of science and ingenuity resulted in
a new level of productivity in almost every field.
Concurrently,
the nation's basic industry - iron and steel - was forging ahead, protected
by a high tariff. Previously concentrated in the Eastern states, the iron
industry moved westward as geologists discovered new ore deposits, notably the
great Mesabi iron range at the head of Lake Superior, which became one of the
largest ore producers in the world. The ore lay on the surface of the ground and
was easy and cheap to mine. Remarkably free of chemical impurities, it could be
processed into steel of superior quality at about one-tenth the previously
prevailing cost.
Technical advances - the Gilded Age was a period of economic growth as the United States jumped
to the lead in industrialization ahead of
Britain. The nation was rapidly expanding its economy into new areas,
especially heavy industry like
factories, railroads, and coal mining. In 1869,
the First Transcontinental Railroad opened
up the far-west mining and ranching regions. Travel from New York to San
Francisco now took six days instead of six months. Railroad track mileage
tripled between 1860 and 1880, and then doubled again by 1920. The new track
linked formerly isolated areas with larger markets and allowed for the rise of
commercial farming, ranching and mining, creating a truly national marketplace.
American steel production rose to surpass the combined total of Britain,
Germany, and France.
London and
Paris poured investment money into the railroads through the American financial
market centered in Wall Street. By 1900, the process of economic concentration had
extended into most branches of industry—a few large corporations, called "trusts",
dominated in steel, oil, sugar, meat and farm machinery. Through vertical integration these
trusts were able to control each aspect of the production of a specific good,
ensuring that the profits made on the finished product were maximized, and by
controlling access to the raw materials, prevented opponents from entering the
marketplace. This practice would lead to a sole producer of a certain
manufactured good and meant no competition in the marketplace to lower prices.
Increased
mechanization of industry is a major mark of the Gilded Age's search for
cheaper ways to create more product. Frederick Winslow Taylor observed
that worker efficiency in steel could be improved through the use of very close
observations with a stop watch to eliminate wasted effort. Mechanization made
some factories an assemblage of unskilled laborers performing simple and
repetitive tasks under the direction of skilled foremen and engineers. Machine
shops grew rapidly, and they comprised highly skilled workers and
engineers. Both the number of unskilled and skilled workers increased, as their
wage rates grew. Engineering colleges were
established to feed the enormous demand for expertise. Together with
rapid growth of small business, a new middle class was rapidly growing,
especially in northern cities.
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Mulberry Street, along which Manhattan's Little Italy is centered. Lower East Side, circa 1900. Almost 97% of residents of the 10 largest American cities of 1900 were non-Hispanic whites |
The United
States became a world leader in applied technology. From 1860 to 1890, 500,000
patents were issued for new inventions—over ten times the number issued in the
previous seventy years. George Westinghouse invented air
brakes for trains (making them both safer and faster). Theodore Vail established the American Telephone
& Telegraph Company and built a great communications network. Thomas Edison, in addition to inventing hundreds of
devices, established the first electrical lighting utility, basing it on direct
current and an efficient incandescent
lamp. Electric power delivery spread rapidly across Gilded Age cities. The
streets were lighted at night, and electric streetcars allowed for faster
commuting to work and easier shopping.
Petroleum
launched a new industry beginning with the Pennsylvania oil fields in the
1860s. The U.S. dominated the global industry into the 1950s. Kerosene replaced whale
oil and candles for lighting homes. John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil Company and
monopolized the oil industry, which mostly produced kerosene before the
automobile created a demand for gasoline in the 20th century.
B. Railroads - according to
historian Henry Adams the system of railroads needed: the energies
of a generation, for it required all the new machinery to be created--capital,
banks, mines, furnaces, shops, power-houses, technical knowledge, mechanical
population, together with a steady remodelling of social and political habits,
ideas, and institutions to fit the new scale and suit the new conditions. The
generation between 1865 and 1895 was already mortgaged to the railways, and no
one knew it better than the generation itself.
Railroads invented modern management, with clear chains of command, statistical reporting, and complex bureaucratic systems. They systematized the roles of middle managers and set up explicit career tracks. They hired young men ages 18–21 and promoted them internally until a man reached the status of locomotive engineer, conductor or station agent at age 40 or so. Career tracks were invented for skilled blue-collar jobs and for white-collar managers, starting in railroads and expanding into finance, manufacturing and trade.
Railroads invented modern management, with clear chains of command, statistical reporting, and complex bureaucratic systems. They systematized the roles of middle managers and set up explicit career tracks. They hired young men ages 18–21 and promoted them internally until a man reached the status of locomotive engineer, conductor or station agent at age 40 or so. Career tracks were invented for skilled blue-collar jobs and for white-collar managers, starting in railroads and expanding into finance, manufacturing and trade.
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The May 10, 1869 celebration of the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad
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RAILROADS, REGULATIONS AND THE TARIFF - railroads became increasingly important to the expanding nation, and unfair railroad practices proliferated. Rail lines extended cheaper rates to large shippers by rebating a portion of the charge, operated to the disadvantage of small shippers. Also, some railroads charged arbitrarily higher rates to some shippers than to others between certain points, regardless of distance.
Moreover, while competition held down freight charges between cities with several rail connections, rates were excessive between points served by only one line. Thus it cost less to ship goods 1,280 kilometers from Chicago to New York than to places a few hundred kilometers from Chicago. And by joint action to avoid competition -- pooling -- rival companies divided the freight business according to a prearranged scheme that placed the total earnings in a common fund for distribution.
Popular resentment at these practices stimulated state efforts at regulation. These had some effect, but the problem was national in character and demanded congressional action.
In 1887 President Grover Cleveland signed the Interstate Commerce Act, which forbade excessive charges, pools, rebates and rate discrimination, and created an Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to guard against violations of the act. In the first decades of its existence, however, the railroads used conservative Supreme Court decisions to thwart virtually all the ICC's efforts at regulation and rate reductions.
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| Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837 – June 24, 1908) was the 22nd and 24th President of the United States |
Cleveland was also active in combating the high tariff, which, adopted originally as an emergency war measure, had come to be accepted as permanent national policy under the Republican presidents who dominated the politics of the era. Cleveland, a Democrat, regarded excessive tariffs as responsible in large measure for a burden some increase in the cost of living and for the rapid development of trusts. After many years, during which the tariff had not been a political issue, the Democrats in 1880 demanded a "tariff for revenue only," and soon the clamor for reform became insistent. In his annual message to Congress in 1887, Cleveland, despite warnings to avoid the explosive subject, startled the nation by denouncing the extremes to which the principle of protecting American industry from foreign competition had been pushed.
The tariff became the main issue of the presidential election campaign in 1888, and Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison, a defender of protectionism, won in a close race. The Harrison administration, fulfilling its campaign promises, passed in 1890 the McKinley tariff bill, a measure designed to protect established industries as well as to foster so-called "infant industries." The new tariff's generally high rates contributed to high retail prices, triggering widespread dissatisfaction.
During this period, public antipathy toward the trusts increased. The nation's gigantic corporations, subjected to bitter attack through the 1880s by such reformers as Henry George and Edward Bellamy, became a hotly debated political issue. To break the monopolies, the Sherman Antitrust Act, passed in 1890, forbade all combinations in restraint of interstate trade and provided several methods of enforcement with severe penalties. Couched in vague generalities, the law itself accomplished little immediately after its passage. But a decade later, in the administration of Theodore Roosevelt, its effective application earned the president the nickname of "trust-buster."
The impact can be examined through five aspects: shipping, finance, management, careers, and popular reaction.
Shipping
freight and passengers - first they provided a highly
efficient network for shipping freight and passengers across a large national
market. The result was a transforming impact on most sectors of the economy
including manufacturing, retail and wholesale, agriculture and finance. The
United States now had an integrated national market practically the size of
Europe, with no internal barriers or tariffs, all supported by a common
language, and financial system and a common legal system.
Basis
of the private financial system - railroads financing provided the basis for a dramatic expansion of the
private (non-governmental) financial system. Construction of railroads was far
more expensive than factories. In 1860, the combined total of railroad stocks
and bonds was $1.8 billion; 1897 it reached $10.6 billion (compared to a total
national debt of $1.2 billion). Funding came from financiers throughout
the Northeast, and from Europe, especially Britain. About 10 percent of
the funding came from the government, especially in the form of land grants
that could be realized when a certain amount of trackage was opened. The
emerging American financial system was based on railroad bonds. New York by
1860 was the dominant financial market. The British invested heavily in
railroads around the world, but nowhere more so than the United States; The
total came to about $3 billion by 1914. In 1914-1917, they liquidated their
American assets to pay for war supplies.
Inventing
modern management - railroad
management designed complex systems that could handle far more complicated
simultaneous relationships than could be dreamed of by the local factory owner
who could patrol every part of his own factory in a matter of hours. Civil
engineers became the senior management of railroads. The leading innovators
were the Western Railroad of Massachusetts and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
in the 1840s, the Erie in the 1850s and the Pennsylvania in the 1860s.
Career
paths - the railroads
invented the career path in the private sector for both blue-collar workers and
white-collar workers. Railroading became a lifetime career for young men; women
were almost never hired. A typical career path would see a young man hired at
age 18 as a shop laborer, be promoted to skilled mechanic at age 24, brakemen at
25, freight conductor at 27, and passenger conductor at age 57. White-collar
careers paths likewise were delineated. Educated young men started in clerical
or statistical work and moved up to station agents or bureaucrats at the
divisional or central headquarters.
At each level
they had more and more knowledge experience and human
capital. They were very hard to replace, and were virtually guaranteed permanent
jobs and provided with insurance and medical care. Hiring, firing and wage
rates were set not by foreman, but by central administrators, in order to
minimize favoritism and personality conflicts. Everything was by the book, and
increasingly complex set of rules told everyone exactly what they should do it
every circumstance, and exactly what their rank and pay would be. By the 1880s
the career railroaders were retiring, and pension systems were invented for
them.
Love-hate
relationship with the railroads - America developed a love-hate relationship with railroads. Boosters in
every city worked feverishly to make sure the railroad came through, knowing
their urban dreams depended upon it. The mechanical size, scope and efficiency
of the railroads made a profound impression; people who dressed in their Sunday
best to go down to the terminal to watch the train come in. Travel became much
easier, cheaper and more common. Shoppers from small towns could make day trips
to big city stores. Hotels, resorts and tourist attractions were built to
accommodate the demand. The realization that anyone could buy a ticket for a
thousand-mile trip was empowering.
Historians Gary Cross and Rick Szostak argue: with the
freedom to travel came a greater sense of national identity and a reduction in
regional cultural diversity. Farm children could more easily acquaint
themselves with the big city, and easterners could readily visit the West. It
is hard to imagine a United States of continental proportions without the
railroad.
The engineers
became model citizens, bringing their can-do spirit and their systematic work
effort to all phases of the economy as well as local and national
government. By 1910, major cities were building magnificent palatial
railroad stations, such as the Pennsylvania Station in New York City, and
the Union Station in Washington DC.
But there was
also a dark side. By the 1870s, railroads were vilified by Western farmers
who absorbed the Granger movement theme that monopolistic carriers controlled
too much pricing power, and that the state legislatures had to impose maximum
prices. Local merchants and shippers supported the demand and got some
"Granger Laws" passed. Anti-railroad
complaints were loudly repeated in late 19th century political
rhetoric. The most hated railroad man in the country was Collis P. Huntington (1821-1900),
the president of the Southern Pacific Railroad who
dominated California's economy and politics. One textbook argues:
"Huntington came to symbolize the greed and corruption of
late-nineteenth-century business. Business rivals and political reformers
accused him of every conceivable evil. Journalists and cartoonists made their
reputations by pillorying him.... Historians have cast Huntington as the
state's most despicable villain." However
Huntington defended himself: "The motives back of my actions have been
honest ones and results have redounded far more to the benefit of California
that have to my own."
C. Economic growth
CARNEGIE AND
THE ERA OF STEEL - Andrew
Carnegie was largely responsible for the great advances in steel production.
Carnegie, who came to America from Scotland as a child of 12, progressed from
bobbin boy in a cotton factory to a job in a telegraph office, then to one on
the Pennsylvania Railroad. Before he was 30 years old he had made shrewd and
farsighted investments, which by 1865 were concentrated in iron. Within a few
years, he had organized or had stock in companies making iron bridges, rails
and locomotives. Ten years later, the steel mill he built on the Monongahela
River in Pennsylvania was the largest in the country.
Carnegie
acquired commanding control not only of new mills, but also of coke and coal
properties, iron ore from Lake Superior, a fleet of steamers on the Great
Lakes, a port town on Lake Erie and a connecting railroad. His business, allied
with a dozen others, could command favorable terms from railroads and shipping
lines. Nothing comparable in industrial growth had ever been seen in America
before.
Though
Carnegie long dominated the industry, he never achieved a complete monopoly
over the natural resources, transportation and industrial plants involved in
the making of steel. In the 1890s, new companies challenged his preeminence,
and at first, stung by competition, Carnegie threatened to build an even more
powerful business complex. But now, a tired old man, he was persuaded to merge
his holdings with an organization that eventually would embrace most of the
important iron and steel properties in the nation.
Scottish immigrant Andrew
Carnegie led the enormous expansion of the American steel
industry.
CORPORATIONS - the United States Steel Corporation, which resulted from this merger in 1901, illustrated a process under way for 30 years: the combination of independent industrial enterprises into federated or centralized companies. Begun during the Civil War, the trend gathered momentum after the 1870s, as businessmen began to fear that overproduction would lead to declining prices and falling profits. They realized that if they could control both production and markets, they could bring competing firms into a single organization. The "corporation" and the "trust" were developed to achieve these ends.
Corporations, making available a deep reservoir of capital and giving business enterprises permanent life and continuity of control, attracted investors both by the anticipated profits and by the limited liability in case of business failure. In turn, the trusts, were in effect combinations of corporations whereby the stockholders of each placed stocks in the hands of trustees. Such trusts made possible large-scale combinations, centralized control and administration, and the pooling of patents. Their larger capital resources provided power to expand, to compete with foreign business organizations, and to drive hard bargains with labor, which was beginning to organize effectively. They could also exact favorable terms from railroads and exercise influence in politics.
The Standard Oil Company, founded by John D. Rockefeller, was one of the earliest and strongest corporations, and was followed rapidly by other combinations -- in cottonseed oil, lead, sugar, tobacco and rubber. Soon aggressive individual businessmen began to mark out industrial domains for themselves. Four great meat packers, chief among them Philip Armour and Gustavus Swift, established a beef trust. Cyrus McCormick achieved preeminence in the reaper business. A 1904 survey showed that more than 5,000 previously independent concerns had been consolidated into some 300 industrial trusts.
The trend toward amalgamation was manifest in other fields, particularly in transportation and communications. Western Union, earliest of the large communications combinations, was followed by the Bell Telephone System and eventually by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. In the 1860s, Cornelius Vanderbilt consolidated some 13 separate railroads into a single line connecting New York City and Buffalo, about 800 kilometers away. During the next decade he acquired lines to Chicago, Illinois, and Detroit, Michigan and the New York Central Railroad System came into being. Other consolidations were already under way, and soon the major railroads of the nation were organized into trunk lines and systems directed by a handful of men.
During the
1870s and 1880s, the U.S. economy rose at the fastest rate in its history, with
real wages, wealth, GDP, and capital
formation all increasing rapidly. For example, between 1865 and 1898, the
output of wheat increased by 256%, corn by 222%, coal by 800% and miles of
railway track by 567%. Thick national networks for transportation and
communication were created. 
The corporation became the dominant form of business organization, and a scientific management revolution transformed business operations. By the beginning of the 20th century, gross domestic product and industrial production in the United States led the world. Kennedy reports that "U.S. national income, in absolute figures in per capita, was so far above everybody else's by 1914." Per capita income in the United States was $377 in 1914 compared to Britain in second place at $244, Germany at $184, France at $153, and Italy at $108, while Russia and Japan trailed far behind at $41 and $36. Europe, especially Britain, still remained the financial center of the world until 1914 yet the United States' growth caused foreigners to ask, as British author W. T. Stead wrote in 1901, "What is the secret of American success?" The businessmen of the Second Industrial Revolution created industrial towns and cities in the Northeast with new factories, and hired an ethnically diverse industrial working class, many of them new immigrants from Europe.
Wealthy
industrialists and financiers such as John D. Rockefeller, Jay
Gould, Henry Clay Frick, Andrew
W. Mellon, Andrew Carnegie, Henry
Flagler, Henry H. Rogers, J. P.
Morgan, Leland Stanford, Charles
Crocker, Cornelius Vanderbilt would
sometimes be labeled "robber barons" by
their critics, who argue their fortunes were made at the expense of the working
class, by chickanery and a betrayal of democracy.
Their admirers argued
that they were "Captains of industry" who built the core America
industrial economy and also the non-profit sector through acts of philanthropy. For
instance, Andrew Carnegie donated over 90% of his wealth and said that
philanthropy was their duty—the "Gospel
of Wealth". Private money endowed thousands of colleges, hospitals, museums,
academies, schools, opera houses, public libraries, and charities. John D. Rockefeller donated
over $500 million to various charities, slightly over half his entire net
worth. Nevertheless, many business leaders were influenced by Herbert
Spencer's theory of Social
Darwinism, which justified laissez-faire capitalism, ruthless competition and social stratification.
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| Cartoon showing Cyrus Field, Jay Gould, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Russell Sage, seated on bags of "millions", on large heavy raft being carried by workers. |
This emerging
industrial economy quickly expanded to meet the new market demands. From 1869
to 1879, the U.S. economy grew at a rate of 6.8% for NNP (GDP minus capital
depreciation) and 4.5% for NNP per capita. The economy repeated this period of
growth in the 1880s, in which the wealth of the nation grew at an annual rate
of 3.8%, while the GDP was also doubled. Economist Milton Friedman states
that for the 1880s, "The highest decadal rate [of growth of real
reproducible, tangible wealth per head from 1805 to 1950] for periods of about
ten years was apparently reached in the eighties with approximately 3.8
percent."
D. Cities
In this new industrial order, the city was the nerve center, bringing to a focus all the nation's dynamic economic forces: vast accumulations of capital, business and financial institutions, spreading railroad yards, smoky factories, and armies of manual and clerical workers. Villages, attracting people from the countryside and from lands across the sea, grew into towns and towns into cities almost overnight. In 1830 only one of every 15 persons lived in communities of 8,000 or more; in 1860 the ratio was nearly one in every six; and in 1890 three in every 10. No single city had as many as a million inhabitants in 1860; but 30 years later New York had a million and a half, and Chicago, Illinois, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, each had over a million. In these three decades, Philadelphia and Baltimore, Maryland, doubled in population, Kansas City, Missouri, and Detroit, Michigan, grew fourfold, Cleveland, Ohio, sixfold, Chicago tenfold. Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Omaha, Nebraska, and many communities like them hamlets when the Civil War began increased 50 times or more in population.
A. Waves of old and new immigrants - prior to the Gilded Age, the time commonly referred to as the old immigration saw the first real boom of new arrivals to the United States. During the Gilded Age, approximately 10 million immigrants came to the United States in what is known as the new immigration. Some of them were prosperous farmers who had the cash to buy land and tools in the Plains states especially. Many were poor peasants looking for the American Dream in unskilled manual labor in mills, mines and factories. Few immigrants went to the poverty-stricken South, though. To accommodate the heavy influx, the federal government in 1892 opened a reception center at Ellis Island near the Statue of Liberty.
D. Cities
American society experienced significant changes in the period following the Civil War, most notably the rapid urbanization of the North. Due to the increasing demand for unskilled workers, most European immigrants went to mill towns, mining camps and industrial cities. New York, Philadelphia and especially Chicago saw rapid growth. Louis Sullivan became a noted architect using steel frames to construct skyscrapers for the first time while pioneering the idea of "form follows function". Chicago became the center of the skyscraper craze, starting with the ten-story Home Insurance Building in 1884–1885 by William Le Baron Jenney.
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The Home Insurance Building in Chicago, built in 1885, was the world's first skyscraper
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Expansion required a better transportation system than horse-drawn street cars. Electric trolleys and street railways were the rage in the 1880s, followed by elevated railways and subways in the largest cities. Most factory workers, however, lived in nearby tenements and walked to work. As immigration increased in cities, poverty rose as well. The poorest crowded into low-cost housing such as the Five Points and Hell's Kitchen neighborhoods in Manhattan. These areas were quickly overridden with notorious criminal gangs such as the Five Points Gang and the Bowery Boys. The living conditions were as such that the death rates in these crowded urban tenements vastly exceeded those in the countryside.
3. Immigration
A. Waves of old and new immigrants - prior to the Gilded Age, the time commonly referred to as the old immigration saw the first real boom of new arrivals to the United States. During the Gilded Age, approximately 10 million immigrants came to the United States in what is known as the new immigration. Some of them were prosperous farmers who had the cash to buy land and tools in the Plains states especially. Many were poor peasants looking for the American Dream in unskilled manual labor in mills, mines and factories. Few immigrants went to the poverty-stricken South, though. To accommodate the heavy influx, the federal government in 1892 opened a reception center at Ellis Island near the Statue of Liberty.
These immigrants consisted of two groups: The last big waves of the "Old Immigration" from Germany, Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia, and the rising waves of the "New Immigration", which peaked about 1910. Some men moved back and forth across the Atlantic, but most were permanent settlers. They moved into well-established communities, both urban and rural. The German American communities spoke German, but their younger generation was bilingual. The Scandinavian groups generally assimilated quickly; they were noted for their support of reform programs, such as prohibition.
In terms of immigration, after 1880 the old immigration of Germans, British, Irish, and Scandinavians slackened off. The United States was producing large numbers of new unskilled jobs every year, and to fill them came number from Italy, Poland, Austria, Hungary, Russia, Greece and other points in southern and central Europe, as well as French Canada. The older immigrants by the 1870s had formed highly stable communities, especially the German Americans.
The British immigrants tended to blend into the general population. The Irish Catholics had arrived in large numbers in the 1840s and 1850s in the wake of the great famine in Ireland when starvation killed millions. Their first few decades were characterized by extreme poverty, social dislocation, crime and violence in their slums. However, by the late 19th century, the Irish communities had largely stabilized, with a strong new "lace curtain" middle-class of local businessmen, professionals, and political leaders typified by P. J. Kennedy (1858 – 1929) in Boston. In economic terms, the Irish Catholics were nearly at the bottom in the 1850s; however they reached the national average by 1900; and by the late 20th century they far surpassed the national average. In political terms, the Irish Catholics comprised a major element in the leadership of the urban Democratic machines across the country. Although they were only a third of the total Catholic population, the Irish also dominated the Catholic Church, producing most of the bishops, college presidents, and leaders of charitable organizations. The network of Catholic institutions provided high status, but low-paying lifetime careers to sisters and nuns in parochial schools, hospitals, orphanages and convents. They were part of an international Catholic network, with considerable movement back and forth from Ireland, England, France, Germany and Canada.
B. New immigrants - the "New Immigration" were much poorer peasants and rural folk from southern and eastern Europe, including mostly Italians, Poles and Jews. Some men, especially the Italians and Greeks, saw themselves as temporary migrants who planned to return to their home villages with a nest egg of cash earned in long hours of unskilled labor. Others, especially the Jews, had been driven out of Eastern Europe and had no intention of returning. (The option of Israel did not yet exist.)
Historians analyze the causes of immigration in terms of push factors (pushing people out of the homeland) and pull factors (pulling them to America). The push factors included economic dislocation, shortages of land, and antisemitism. Pull factors were the economic opportunity of good inexpensive farmland or jobs in factories, mills and mines.
The first generation typically lived in ethnic enclaves with a common language, food, religion, and connections through the old village. The sheer numbers caused overcrowding in tenements in the larger cities. In the small mill towns, however, management usually built company housing with cheap rents.
C. Chinese immigrants - Chinese at this time—were hired by California construction companies for temporary railroad work. The European Americans strongly disliked the Chinese for their alien life-styles and threat of low wages. The construction of the Central Pacific Railroad from California to Utah was handled largely by Chinese laborers. In the 1870 census, there were 63,000 Chinese men (with a few women) in the entire U.S.; this number grew to 106,000 in 1880. Labor unions, led by Samuel Gompers strongly opposed the presence of Chinese labor. Immigrants from China were not allowed to become citizens until 1950; however, as a result of the Supreme Court decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, their children born in the U.S. were full citizens.
Congress banned further Chinese immigration through the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882; the act prohibited Chinese laborers from entering the United States, but some students and businessmen were allowed in on a temporary basis. The Chinese population declined to only 37,000 in 1940. Although many returned to China (a greater proportion than most other immigrant groups), most of them stayed in the United States. Chinese people were unwelcome in urban neighborhoods, so they resettled in the "Chinatown" districts of large cities. The exclusion policy lasted until the 1940s.
4. Social conditions
A. Wages - real wages (adjusting for inflation) rose steadily. Economic historian Clarence D. Long estimates that (in terms of constant 1914 dollars), the average annual incomes of all American nonfarm employees rose from $375 in 1870 to $395 in 1880, $519 in 1890 and $573 in 1900, a gain of 53% in 30 years. Australian historian Peter Shergold found that the standard of living for industrial workers was higher than in Europe. He compared wages and the standard of living in Pittsburgh with Birmingham, England, one of the richest industrial cities of Europe. After taking account of the cost of living (which was 65% higher in the U.S.), he found the standard of living of unskilled workers was about the same in the two cities, while skilled workers in Pittsburgh had about 50% to 100% higher standard of living as those in Birmingham, England. According to Shergold the American advantage grew over time from 1890 to 1914, and the perceived higher American wage led to a heavy steady flow of skilled workers from Britain to industrial America. According to historian Steve Fraser, workers generally earned less than $800 a year, which kept them mired in poverty. Workers had to put in roughly 60 hours a week to earn this much.
Wage
labor was widely condemned as 'wage slavery' in
the working class press, and labor leaders almost always used the
phrase in their speeches. As the shift towards wage labor gained momentum,
working class organizations became more militant in their efforts to
"strike down the whole system of wages for labor." In 1886,
economist and New York Mayoral candidate Henry
George, author of Progress and Poverty, stated
"Chattel slavery is dead, but industrial slavery remains."
B. Inequality of income - the unequal distribution of wealth remained high during this period. From
1860 to 1900, the wealthiest 2% of American households owned more than a third
of the nation's wealth, while the top 10% owned roughly three fourths of
it. The bottom 40% had no wealth at all. In terms of property, the
wealthiest 1% owned 51%, while the bottom 44% claimed
1.1%. Historian Howard
Zinn argues that this disparity along with precarious working and living
conditions for the working classes prompted the rise of populist, anarchist and socialist movements. French
economist Thomas Piketty notes
that economists during this time, such as Willford
I. King, were concerned that the United States was becoming increasingly
inegalitarian to the point of becoming like old Europe, and "further and
further away from its original pioneering ideal."
There was a
significant human cost attached to this period of economic growth, as
American industry had the highest rate of accidents in the world. In 1889,
railroads employed 704,000 men, of whom 20,000 were injured and 1,972 were
killed on the job. The U.S. was also the only industrial power to have no
workman's compensation program in place to support injured workers.
C. Rise of labor unions
Craft-oriented labor
unions, such as carpenters, printers, shoemakers and cigar makers, grew
steadily in the industrial cities after 1870. These unions used frequent short
strikes as a method to attain control over the labor market, and fight off
competing unions. They generally blocked women, blacks and Chinese from
union membership, but welcomed most European immigrants.
 |
| New York police violently attacking unemployed workers in Tompkins Square Park, 1874. |
The railroads
had their own separate unions. An especially large episode of unrest
(estimated at eighty thousand railroad workers and several hundred thousand
other Americans, both employed and unemployed) broke out during the economic
depression of the 1870s and became known as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, which was,
according to historian Jack
Beatty, "the largest strike anywhere in the world in the 19th
century." This strike did not involve labor unions, but rather
uncoordinated outbursts in numerous cities. The strike and associated riots
lasted 45 days and resulted in the deaths of several hundred participants (no
police or soldiers were killed), several hundred more injuries, and millions in
damages to railroad property. The unrest was deemed severe enough by the
government that President Rutherford B. Hayes intervened
with federal troops.
 | ||
Rutherford B. Hayes
| ||
Starting in
the mid-1880s a new group, the Knights
of Labor, grew rapidly. Too rapidly, for it spun out of control and failed to
handle the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886. The Knights
avoided violence, but their reputation collapsed in the wake of the Haymarket
Square Riot in Chicago in 1886, when anarchists allegedly bombed the policemen
dispersing a meeting. Police then randomly fired into the crowd, killing
and wounding a number of people, including other police, and arbitrarily
rounded up anarchists, including leaders of the movement. Seven anarchists went
on trial; four were hanged even though no evidence directly linked them to the
bombing. One had in his possession a Knights of Labor membership
card. At its peak, the Knights claimed 700,000 members. By 1890,
membership had plummeted to fewer than 100,000, then faded away.
Strikes
organized by labor unions became routine events by the 1880s as the gap between
the rich and the poor widened. There were 37,000 strikes between 1881 and 1905.
By far the largest number were in the building trades, followed far behind by
coal miners. The main goal was control of working conditions and settling which
rival union was in control. Most were of very short duration. In times of
depression strikes were more violent but less successful, because the company
was losing money anyway. They were successful in times of prosperity when the
company was losing profits and wanted to settle quickly.
The largest
and most dramatic strike was the 1894 Pullman
Strike, a coordinated effort to shut down the national railroad system. The
strike was led by the upstart American Railway Union led by Eugene
V. Debs and was not supported by the established brotherhoods. The union
defied federal court orders to stop blocking the mail trains, so President
Cleveland used the U.S. Army to get the trains moving again. The ARU vanished
and the traditional railroad brotherhoods survived, but avoided strikes.
The new American Federation of Labor, headed
by Samuel Gompers, found the
solution. The AFL was a coalition of unions, each based on strong local
chapters; the AFL coordinated their work in cities and prevented jurisdictional
battles. Gompers repudiated socialism and abandoned the violent nature of the
earlier unions. The AFL worked to control the local labor market, thereby
empowering its locals to obtain higher wages and more control over hiring. As a
result, the AFL unions spread to most cities, reaching a peak membership in
1919.
Severe
economic recessions—called "panics"—struck the nation in the Panic
of 1873 and the Panic
of 1893. They lasted several years, with high urban unemployment, low incomes for
farmers, low profits for business, slow overall growth, and reduced
immigration. They generated political unrest.
 |
| The Panic of 1873 was a financial crisis that triggered a depression in Europe and North America that lasted from 1873 until 1879 |
 |
| The Panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression in the United States |
5. Politics
A. General information - Gilded Age politics, called the Third
Party System, featured intense competition between two major
parties, with minor parties coming and going, especially on issues of concern
to prohibitionists, to labor unions and to farmers. The Democrats and Republicans (also
called the Grand Old Party, GOP) fought over control of offices, which were the
rewards for party activists, as well as over major economic issues. Very high
voter turnout often exceeded 80% or even 90% in some states as the parties
drilled their loyal members much as an army drills its soldiers. Competition
was intense and elections were very close. In the southern states, lingering
resentment over the Civil War remained and meant that much of the South would
vote Democrat. After the end of Reconstruction in 1877, competition in the
South took place mainly inside the Democratic Party. Nationwide, turnout fell
sharply after 1900.
B. Metropolitan area politics - the major metropolitan centers underwent rapid population growth and as a
result had many lucrative contracts and jobs to award. To take advantage of the
new economic opportunity, both parties built so-called "political
machines" to manage elections, to reward supporters and to pay off
potential opponents. Financed by the "spoils
system", the winning party distributed most local, state and national
government jobs, and many government contracts, to its loyal supporters. Large
cities became dominated by political
machines in which constituents supported a candidate in exchange for
anticipated patronage. These votes would be repaid with favors back from
the government once the appropriate candidate was elected; and very often
candidates were selected based on their willingness to play along with the
spoils system. Perhaps the largest example of a political machine from this
time period is Tammany Hall in New York City, led by Boss
Tweed.
Political
corruption was rampant, as business
leaders spent significant amounts of money ensuring that government did not
regulate the activities of big
business - and they more often than not got what they wanted. Such corruption
was so commonplace that in 1868 the New York state legislature legalized such
bribery. Historian Howard Zinn argues that the U.S. government was acting
exactly as Karl Marx described capitalist states: "pretending
neutrality to maintain order, but serving the interests of the rich".
Reformers like the cartoonist Joseph
Keppler depicted the Senate as controlled by the giant
moneybags, who represented the nation's financial trusts and monopolies.
C. National politics - major scandal reached into Congress with the Crédit Mobilier of America scandal of 1872,
and disgraced
the White House during the Grant Administration
(1869-1877). This corruption divided the Republican party into two different
factions: the Stalwarts led
by Roscoe Conkling and the Half-Breeds led
by James G. Blaine. There was a
sense that government-enabled political machines intervened in the economy and
that the resulting favoritism, bribery, inefficiency, waste, and corruption
were having negative consequences. Accordingly, there were widespread calls for
reform, such as Civil Service Reform led by
the Bourbon Democrats and
Republican Mugwumps. In 1884, their support elected Democrat Grover
Cleveland to the White House, and in doing so gave the Democrats their first
national victory since 1856.
The Bourbon Democrats
supported a free-market policy, with low tariffs, low taxes, less
spending and, in general, a laissez-faire (hands-off)
government. They argued that tariffs made most goods more expensive for the
consumer and subsidized "the trusts" (monopolies). They also
denounced imperialism and overseas expansion. By contrast,
Republicans insisted that national prosperity depended on industry that paid
high wages, and warned that lowering the tariff would bring disaster because
goods from low-wage European factories would flood American markets.
Presidential
elections between the two major parties were so closely contested that a slight
nudge could tip the election in the advantage of either party, and Congress was
marked by political stalemate. With support from Union veterans, businessmen,
professionals, craftsmen and larger farmers, the Republicans consistently
carried the North in presidential elections. The Democrats, often led
by Irish Catholics, had a base
among Catholics, poorer farmers, and traditional party-members.
Some sources
consider that America in the Gilded Age was led by a string of relatively weak
presidents collectively referred to as the "forgettable presidents" (Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur and Harrison, with the
possible exception of Cleveland) who
served in the White House during this period. "What little political
vitality existed in Gilded Age America was to be found in local settings or in
Congress, which overshadowed the White House for most of this period."
Overall,
Republican and Democratic political platforms remained remarkably constant
during the years before 1900. Republicans generally favored inflationary,
protectionist policies, while Democrats favored hard-money, free
trade and other laissez-faire policies.
Ethnocultural
politics: pietistic Republicans versus liturgical Democrats
Voting behavior by religion, Northern
USA, late 19th century
|
||
% Dem
|
% GOP
|
|
Immigrant Groups
|
||
Irish Catholics
|
80
|
20
|
All Catholics
|
70
|
30
|
Confessional German Lutherans
|
65
|
35
|
German Reformed
|
60
|
40
|
French Canadian Catholics
|
50
|
50
|
Less Confessional German Lutherans
|
45
|
55
|
English Canadians
|
40
|
60
|
British Stock
|
35
|
65
|
German Sectarians
|
30
|
70
|
Norwegian Lutherans
|
20
|
80
|
Swedish Lutherans
|
15
|
85
|
Haugean Norwegians
|
5
|
95
|
Natives: Northern Stock
|
||
Quakers
|
5
|
95
|
Free Will Baptists
|
20
|
80
|
Congregational
|
25
|
75
|
Methodists
|
25
|
75
|
Regular Baptists
|
35
|
65
|
Blacks
|
40
|
60
|
Presbyterians
|
40
|
60
|
Episcopalians
|
45
|
55
|
Natives: Southern Stock (living in North)
|
||
Disciples
|
50
|
50
|
Presbyterians
|
70
|
30
|
Baptists
|
75
|
25
|
Methodists
|
90
|
10
|
From 1860 to
the early 20th century, the Republicans took advantage of the association of
the Democrats with "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion".
"Rum" stood for the liquor interests and the tavernkeepers, in
contrast to the GOP, which had a strong dry element.
"Romanism" meant Roman Catholics, especially Irish
Americans, who ran the Democratic Party in most cities, and whom the reformers
denounced for political corruption and their separate parochial-school system.
"Rebellion" harked back to the Democrats of the Confederacy, who had
tried to break the Union in 1861, as well as to their northern allies, called
"Copperheads."
Demographic
trends boosted the Democratic totals, as the German and Irish Catholic
immigrants became Democrats and outnumbered the English and Scandinavian
Republicans. The new immigrants who arrived after 1890 seldom voted at this
time. During the 1880s and 1890s, the Republicans struggled against the
Democrats' efforts, winning several close elections and losing two to Grover
Cleveland (in 1884 and 1892).
Religious
lines were sharply drawn. In the North, about 50% of the voters were
pietistic Protestants (especially Methodists, Scandinavian Lutherans,
Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Disciples of Christ) who believed in using
the government to reduce social sins, such as drinking. They strongly supported
the GOP, as the table shows. In sharp contrast, liturgical groups, especially
the Catholics, Episcopalians, and German Lutherans, voted for the Democrats.
They saw the Democratic party as their best protection from the moralism of the
pietists, and especially from the threat of prohibition. Both parties cut
across the class structure, with the Democrats more bottom-heavy and the GOP
better represented among businessmen and professionals in the North.
Many cultural
issues, especially prohibition and foreign-language schools, became hard-fought
political issues because of the deep religious divisions in the electorate. For
example, in Wisconsin the Republicans tried to close down German-language
Catholic and Lutheran parochial schools, and were defeated in 1890 when the Bennett
Law was put to the test.
Prohibition
debates and referendums heated up politics in most states over a period of
decades, as national prohibition was finally passed in 1919 (and repealed in
1933), serving as a major issue between the wet Democrats and the dry GOP.
6. Rural life and farming in US
A dramatic
expansion in farming took place during the Gilded Age, with the number of
farms tripling from 2.0 million in 1860 to 6.0 million in 1905. The number of
people living on farms grew from about 10 million in 1860 to 22 million in 1880
to 31 million in 1905. The value of farms soared from $8.0 billion in 1860 to
$30 billion in 1906.
The federal
government issued 160-acre (65 ha) tracts
virtually free to settlers under the Homestead
Act of 1862. Even larger numbers purchased lands at very low interest
from the new railroads, which were trying to create markets. The railroads
advertised heavily in Europe and brought over, at low fares, hundreds of
thousands of farmers from Germany, Scandinavia and Britain.
Despite their
remarkable progress and general prosperity, 19th-century U.S. farmers
experienced recurring cycles of hardship, caused primarily by falling world
prices for cotton and wheat.
Along with the
mechanical improvements which greatly increased yield per unit area, the amount
of land under cultivation grew rapidly throughout the second half of the
century, as the railroads opened up new areas of the West for settlement. The
wheat farmers enjoyed abundant output and good years from 1876 to 1881 when bad
European harvests kept the world price high. They then suffered from a slump in
the 1880s when conditions in Europe improved. The farther west the settlers
went, the more dependent they became on the monopolistic railroads to move
their goods to market, and the more inclined they were to protest, as in the
Populist movement of the 1890s. Wheat farmers blamed local grain
elevator owners (who purchased their crop), railroads and eastern bankers for
the low prices.
The first
organized effort to address general agricultural problems was the Grange
movement. Launched in 1867, by employees of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Granges
focused initially on social activities to counter the isolation most farm
families experienced. Women's participation was actively encouraged. Spurred by
the Panic of 1873, the Grange soon grew to 20,000 chapters and 1.5 million
members. The Granges set up their own marketing systems, stores, processing
plants, factories and cooperatives. Most went
bankrupt. The movement also enjoyed some political success during the 1870s. A
few Midwestern states passed "Granger
Laws", limiting railroad and warehouse fees.
Grange poster hailing the yeoman farmer, 1873.
A similar expansion of agricultural lands in other countries, such as Canada, Argentina, and Australia, created problems of oversupply and low prices in the international market, where half of American wheat was sold.
In the South, Reconstruction brought major changes in agricultural practices. The most significant of these was sharecropping, where tenant farmers "shared" up to half of their crop with the landowners, in exchange for seed and essential supplies. About 80% of the African American farmers and 40% of its white ones lived under this system after the Civil War. Most sharecroppers were locked in a cycle of debt, from which the only hope of escape was increased planting. This led to the over-production of cotton and tobacco (and thus to declining prices and income), soil exhaustion, and poverty among both landowners and tenants.
7. South and West
A. South
 |
| The Southern United States |
There were
only a few scattered cities; small courthouse towns serviced the farm
population. Local politics revolved around the politicians and lawyers based at
the courthouse. Mill towns, narrowly focused on textile production or cigarette
manufacture, began opening in the Piedmont region especially
in the Carolinas. Racial segregation and outward signs of inequality were
everywhere, and rarely were challenged. Blacks who violated the color line were
liable to expulsion or lynching. Cotton became even more important than before,
as poor whites needed the cash that cotton would bring. But cotton prices were
much lower than before the war, so everyone was poor. White southerners showed
a reluctance to move north, or to move to cities, so the number of small farms
proliferated, and they became smaller as the population grew. Many of the white
farmers, and most of the blacks, were tenant farmers who
owned their work animals and tools, and rented the land. Others were day
laborers or very poor sharecroppers, who worked
under the supervision of the landowner. There was little cash in circulation,
because most farmers operated on credit accounts from local merchants, and paid
off their debts at cotton harvest time in the fall. Although there were small
country churches everywhere, there were only a few dilapidated elementary
schools. Apart from private academies, there were very few high schools until
the 1920s. Conditions were marginally better in newer areas, especially in
Texas and central Florida, with the deepest poverty in South Carolina,
Mississippi, and Arkansas.
The vast
majority of American blacks lived in the South, and as the promises of
emancipation and reconstruction faded, they entered the nadir of race
relations. Every Southern state and city passed Jim Crow laws that were in
operation between the late 19th century and 1964, when they were abolished by
Congress. They mandated de jure (legal) segregation in all public
facilities, such as stores and street cars, with a supposedly "separate
but equal" status for blacks. In reality, this led to treatment and
accommodations that were dramatically inferior to those provided for white
Americans, systematizing a number of economic, educational and social
disadvantages. Schools for blacks were far fewer and poorly supported by
taxpayers, although Northern philanthropies and churches kept open dozens of
academies and small colleges.
In the face of
years of mounting violence and intimidation directed at blacks during
Reconstruction, the federal government was unable to guarantee constitutional
protections to freedmen and women. In the Compromise
of 1877 President Hayes withdrew Union troops from the South;
"Redeemers" (white
Democrats) acted quickly to reverse the groundbreaking advances of
Reconstruction. Black political power was eliminated in the 1880s and in the
1890s new laws effectively blocked over 90% of the blacks from voting (with
some exceptions in Tennessee; blacks did vote in the border states).
B. The West - in 1869,
the First Transcontinental Railroad—a combination
of the Union Pacific from
Omaha to Utah and the Central Pacific from
Utah to California—opened up the far west mining and ranching regions. Travel
from New York to San Francisco now took six days instead of six months.
After the
Civil War, many from the East Coast and Europe were lured west by reports from
relatives and by extensive advertising campaigns promising "the Best
Prairie Lands", "Low Prices", "Large Discounts For
Cash", and "Better Terms Than Ever!". The new railroads provided
the opportunity for migrants to go out and take a look, with special family
tickets, the cost of which could be applied to land purchases offered by the
railroads. Farming the plains was indeed more difficult than back east. Water
management was more critical, lightning fires were more prevalent, the weather
was more extreme, rainfall was less predictable. The fearful stayed home, while
migrants were mainly motivated by a search improve their economic life. Farmers
sought larger, cheaper and more fertile land; merchants and tradesman sought
new customers and new leadership opportunities. Laborers wanted higher paying
work and better conditions. With the Homestead Act providing free land to
citizens and the railroads selling cheap lands to European farmers, the
settlement of the Great Plains was swiftly accomplished, and the frontier had
virtually ended by 1890.
8. Native assimilation
As in the East, expansion into the plains and mountains by miners, ranchers and settlers led to increasing conflicts with the Indians of the West. Many tribes of Native Americans -- from the Utes of the Great Basin to the Nez Perces of Idaho fought the whites at one time or another. But the Sioux of the Northern Plains and the Apache of the Southwest provided the most significant opposition to frontier advance. Led by such resourceful leaders as Red Cloud and Crazy Horse, the Sioux were particularly skilled at high-speed mounted warfare. The Apaches were equally adept and highly elusive, fighting in their environs of desert and canyons.
Conflicts with the Plains Indians began with a Sioux massacre of whites in 1862 and continued through the Civil War. In 1876 the last serious Sioux war erupted, when the Dakota gold rush penetrated the Black Hills. The Army was supposed to keep miners off Sioux hunting grounds, but little was done to protect Indian lands. Yet when ordered to take action against bands of Sioux hunting on the range according to their treaty rights, the Army moved vigorously.
In 1876, after several indecisive encounters, General George Custer found the main encampment of Sioux and their allies on the Little Big Horn River. Custer and his men -- who were separated from their main detachment -- were completely annihilated. Later, in 1890, a ghost dance ritual on the Northern Sioux reservation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, led to an uprising and a last, tragic encounter that ended in the death of hundreds of Sioux men, women and children.
Long before this, however, the way of life of the Plains Indians had been destroyed by the slaughter of the buffalo, almost exterminated in the decade after 1870 by indiscriminate hunting. Meanwhile, the Apache wars in the Southwest dragged on until Geronimo, the last important chief, was captured in 1885.
Government policy ever since the Monroe administration had been to move the Indians beyond the reach of the white frontier. But inevitably the reservations had become smaller and more crowded, and many began to protest the government's treatment of Native Americans. Helen Hunt Jackson, for example, an Easterner living in the West, wrote a book, A Century of Dishonor (1881), which dramatized the Indians' plight and struck a chord in the nation's conscience. Most reformers believed the Indian should be assimilated into the dominant culture. The federal government even set up a school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in an attempt to impose white values and beliefs on Indian youths. (It was at this school that Native American Jim Thorpe, often considered the best athlete the U.S. has produced, gained fame in the early 20th century.)
Native American policy was set by the national government (the states had very little role), and after 1865 the national policy was that Native Americans either had to assimilate into the larger community or remain on reservations, where the government provided subsidies. Reservation natives were no longer allowed to roam or fight their traditional enemies. The U.S. Army was to enforce the laws. Natives of the West came in conflict with expansion by miners, ranchers and settlers. By 1880, the buffalo herds, a foundation for the hunting economy had disappeared. Violence petered out in the 1880s and practically ceased after 1890.
Native
Americans individually had the choice of living on reservations, with food,
supplies, education and medical care provided by the federal government, or
living on their own in the larger society and earning wages, typically as a
cowboy on a ranch, or manual worker in town. Reformers wanted to give as many
Native Americans as possible the opportunity to own and operate their own farms
and ranches, so the issue was how to give individual natives land owned by the
tribe. To assimilate the natives into American society, reformers set up
training programs and schools, such as the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in
Carlisle, Pennsylvania, that produced many prominent Native American leaders.
however, anti-assimilation traditionalists on the reservations resisted
integration and the resulting loss of their traditional life.
In 1887,
the Dawes Act proposed to divide tribal land and parcel out
160 acres (0.65 km²) of land to each head of family. Such allotments were
to be held in trust by the government for 25 years, then given to owners with
full title, so they could sell it or mortgage it. As individual natives sold
their land, the total held by the native community shrank by almost half. The
individualized system undermined the traditional communal tribal organization.
Furthermore, a majority of natives responded to intense missionary activity by
converting to Christianity. The long-term goal of Dawes Act was to integrate
natives into the mainstream; the majority accepted integration and were
absorbed into American society, leaving a trace of native ancestry in millions
of American families. Those who refused to assimilate remained in poverty on
reservations, supported until now by Federal food, medicine and schooling. In
1934, national policy was reversed again by the Indian Reorganization Act which
tried to protect tribal and communal life on reservations.
9. Family life
Few single men
attempted to operate a farm; farmers clearly understood the need for a
hard-working wife, and numerous children, to handle the many chores, including
child-rearing, feeding and clothing the family, managing the housework, and
feeding the hired hands. During the early years of settlement, farm women
played an integral role in assuring family survival by working outdoors. After
a generation or so, women increasingly left the fields, thus redefining their
roles within the family. New conveniences such as sewing and washing machines
encouraged women to turn to domestic roles. The scientific housekeeping
movement was promoted across the land by the media and government extension
agents, as well as county fairs which featured achievements in home cookery and
canning, advice columns for women in the farm papers, and home economics
courses in schools.
Although the
eastern image of farm life on the prairies emphasizes the isolation of the
lonely farmer and the bleakness of farm life, in reality rural folk created a
rich social life for themselves. For example, many joined a local branch of the
Grange; a majority had ties to local churches. It was popular to organize
activities that combined practical work, abundant food, and simple
entertainment such as barn
raisings, corn huskings, and quilting bees. One could keep busy with scheduled
Grange meeting, church services, and school functions. Women organized shared
meals and potluck events, as well as extended visits between families.
Childhood on
western farms is contested territory. One group of scholars argues the rural
environment was salubrious because it allowed children to break loose from
urban hierarchies of age and gender, promoted family interdependence, and
produced children who were more self-reliant, mobile, adaptable, responsible,
independent and more in touch with nature than their urban or eastern
counterparts. However other historians offer a grim portrait of
loneliness, privation, abuse, and demanding physical labor from an early age.
10. Art
Some
well-known painters of the Gilded Age include: Winslow
Homer, Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, Mary
Cassatt, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Childe
Hassam, John Henry Twachtman and Maurice Prendergast.
The Chess Players, Thomas Eakins (1876)
The New York
Art world took a major turn during the Gilded age, seeing an outgrowth of
exhibitions and the establishment of major auction houses with a focus on
American Art. The Gilded Age was pivotal in establishing the New York Art
world in the international art market.
New York Art
Galleries, Clubs, and Associations During the Gilded Age
- American Art Association
- American Watercolor Society
- Ashcan School
- Brummer Gallery
- Century Association
- Colony Club
- Cottier Gallery
- Grand Central Art Galleries
- Lotos Club
- Montross Gallery
- National Association of Portrait Painters
- Salmagundi Club
- Union League Club of New York
11. Women's roles
A. Social activism - during the Gilded Age, many new social movements took
hold in the United States. Many women abolitionists who were disappointed that
the Fifteenth
Amendment did not extend voting rights to them, remained active in politics,
this time focusing on issues important to them. Reviving the temperance
movement from the Second Great Awakening, many women
joined the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)
in an attempt to bring morality back to America. Its chief leader was Frances Willard (1839-1898), who had a
national and international outreach from her base in Evanston, Illinois. Often
the WCTU women took up the issue of women's suffrage which had lain dormant
since the Seneca Falls Convention. With leaders
like Susan B. Anthony, the National
American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was formed in order to secure the right
of women to vote.
B. Employment - many young women worked as servants or in shops and factories until
marriage, then typically became full-time housewives. However, black, Irish and
Swedish adult women often worked as servants. In most large Northern cities,
the Irish Catholic women dominated the market for servants. Heavy industry was
a male domain, but in light industries such as textiles and food processing,
large numbers of young women were hired. Thousands of young unmarried Irish and
French Canadian women worked in Northeastern textile mills. Coming from poor
families these jobs meant upward social mobility, more money, and more social
prestige in their community that made them more attractive marriage partners.
In Cohoes, New York, mill women went on strike in 1882 to gain union
recognition. They fought off Swedish strike breakers in order to protect the
status they had achieved.
After 1860, as
the larger cities opened department
stores, middle-class women did most of the shopping; increasingly they were
served by young middle-class women clerks. Typically, most young women
quit their jobs when they married. In some ethnic groups, however, married
women were encouraged to work, especially among African-Americans, and Irish
Catholics. When the husband operated a small shop or restaurant, wives and
other family members could find employment there. Widows and deserted wives
often operated boarding houses.
Career women
were few. The teaching profession had once been heavily male, but as schooling
expanded many women took on teaching careers. If they remained unmarried
they could have a prestigious but poorly paid lifetime career in the middle
class. At the end of the period nursing schools opened up new opportunities for
women, but medical schools remained nearly all male.
Business
opportunities were very rare, unless it was a matter of a widow taking over her
late husband's small business. However the rapid acceptance of the sewing
machine made housewives more productive and opened up new careers for women
running their own small millinery and dressmaking shops. When her husband
died, Lydia Moss Bradley (1816 –
1908) inherited $500,000; shrewd investments doubled that sum and she later
became president of his old bank in Peoria, Illinois. She worked from home to
handle banking business. In an age when philanthropists such as Johns Hopkins,
Cornell, Purdue, Vanderbilt, Stanford, Rice and Duke were perpetuating their
names by founding universities, she lifted her aspirations from the original
idea of an orphanage to the loftier goal and in 1897 founded Bradley
University in Peoria.
12. Social thought
Science also
played an important part in social thought as the work of Charles
Darwin became popular. Following Darwin's idea of natural selection, English
philosopher Herbert Spencer proposed
the idea of social Darwinism. This new
concept justified the stratification of the wealthy and poor, and it was in
this proposal that Spencer coined the term "survival of the fittest."
Joining
Spencer was Yale University professor William Graham Sumner whose
book What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1884) argued that assistance to
the poor actually weakens their ability to survive in society. Sumner argued
for a laissez-faire and free-market economy.
Few people, however, agreed with the social Darwinists, because they ridiculed
religion and denounced philanthropy.
Henry
George proposed a "single tax" in his book Progress and Poverty. The tax
would be leveled on the rich and poor alike, with the excess money collected
used to equalize wealth and level out society.
The Norwegian
American economist Thorstein
Veblen argued in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)
that the "conspicuous consumption and conspicuous
leisure" of the wealthy had become the basis of social status in America.
In Looking Backward: 2000-1887 (1887),
the reformer Edward Bellamy envisioned
a future America set in the year 2000 in which a socialist paradise has been
established. The works of authors such as George and Bellamy became popular,
and soon clubs were created across America to discuss their ideas, although
these organizations rarely made any real social change.
13. Religion
The Third Great Awakening which
began before the Civil War returned and made a significant change in religious
attitudes toward social progress. Followers of the new Awakening promoted the
idea of the Social Gospel which gave rise to organizations such as
the YMCA, the American
branch of the Salvation Army, and settlement
houses such as Hull House, founded by Jane
Addams in Chicago in 1889.
The Third
Great Awakening was a period of religious activism in American history from the
late 1850s to the 20th century. It affected pietistic Protestant denominations
and had a strong sense of social activism. It gathered strength from the postmillennial theology that the Second
Coming of Christ would come after mankind had reformed the entire earth. The
Social Gospel movement gained its force from the Awakening, as did the
worldwide missionary movement. New groupings emerged, such as the Holiness
movement and Nazarene movements, and Christian
Science.
The Protestant
mainline denominations (especially the Methodist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, and
Congregational churches) grew rapidly in numbers, wealth and educational
levels, throwing off their frontier beginnings and becoming centered in towns
and cities. Leaders such as Josiah
Strong advocated a muscular Christianity with
systematic outreach to the unchurched in
America and around the globe. Others built colleges and universities to train
the next generation. Each denomination supported active missionary societies,
and made the role of missionary one of high prestige. The great majority of
pietistic mainline Protestants (in the North) supported the Republican Party, and urged it
to endorse prohibition and social reforms. (see Third
Party System)
The Awakening
in numerous cities in 1858 was interrupted by the American
Civil War. In the South; on the other hand, the Civil War stimulated revivals and
strengthened the Baptists, especially. After the war, Dwight
L. Moody made revivalism the centerpiece of his activities in Chicago by
founding the Moody Bible Institute. The hymns
of Ira Sankey were especially influential.
Across the
nation, "drys" crusaded, in the name of religion, for the prohibition of
alcohol. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union mobilized
Protestant women for social crusades against not only liquor, but also
pornography and prostitution, and sparked the demand for women's suffrage.
The Gilded Age
plutocracy came under harsh attack from the Social Gospel preachers and with
reformers in the Progressive
Era who became involved with issues of child
labor, compulsory elementary education and the protection of women from
exploitation in factories.
14. Ambivalent empire
A. Causes - the last decades of the 19th century were a period of imperial expansion for the United States, as it extended its influence, and at times its domain, over widely scattered areas in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and into Central America. The United States took a different course than its European rivals, however, because of its own history of struggle against European empires and its unique democratic development.
The sources of American expansionism in the late 19th century were varied.
Internationally, it was a period of imperialist frenzy, as European powers
raced to carve up Africa and competed for influence and trade in Asia along
with a new rival, Japan. Many Americans, including such influential figures as
Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge and Elihu Root, felt that to safeguard
its own interests, the United States had to stake out spheres of economic
influence as well. That view was seconded by a powerful naval lobby, which
called for an expanded fleet and network of overseas ports as essential to the
economic and political security of the nation. More generally, the doctrine of
"manifest destiny," first used to justify America's continental
expansion, was now revived to assert that the United States had a right and
duty to extend its influence and civilization in the Western Hemisphere and the
Caribbean, as well as across the Pacific.
At the same time, the voices of anti-imperialism from diverse coalitions of
Northern Democrats and reform-minded Republicans remained loud and constant. As
a result, the acquisition of an American empire was piecemeal and ambivalent,
and colonial administrations were often more concerned with trade and economic
issues than political control.
America's first venture beyond her continental borders was the purchase of
Alaska sparsely populated by Inuit and other native peoples from Russia
in 1867. Most Americans were either indifferent to or indignant at this action
by Secretary of State William Seward, and Alaska was widely referred to as
"Seward's Folly" and "Seward's Icebox." But 30 years later,
when gold was discovered on Alaska's Klondike River, thousands of Americans
headed north, and many of them settled in Alaska permanently. When Alaska
became the 49th state in 1959, it replaced Texas as the largest state in the
Union.
B. The Spanish-American War - which was fought in 1898, marked a turning point
in American history. Within a few years after the war ended, the United States
was exercising control or influence over islands in the Caribbean Sea, the
mid-Pacific and close to the Asian mainland.
By the 1890s, Cuba and Puerto Rico were the only remnants of Spain's once
vast empire in the New World, while the Philippine Islands comprised the core
of Spanish power in the Pacific. The outbreak of war had three principal
sources: popular hostility to autocratic Spanish rule; American sympathy with
demands for independence; and a new spirit of national assertiveness in the
United States, stimulated in part by a "jingoistic" or nationalistic
and sensationalist press.
In 1895 Cuba's growing wrath against the tyranny of the mother country
burst into a war of independence. The United States watched the course of the
uprising with mounting concern. Most Americans were sympathetic with the
Cubans, but President Cleveland was determined to preserve neutrality. Three
years later, however, during the McKinley administration, the U.S. warship
Maine was destroyed while lying at anchor in Havana harbor, under circumstances
that are still unclear. More than 250 men were killed, and an outburst of
indignation, intensified by sensationalized press coverage, swept across the country.
Although for a time McKinley tried to preserve the peace, within a few months,
believing delay futile, he recommended armed intervention.
The war with Spain was swift and decisive. During the four months it
lasted, not a single American reverse of any importance occurred. A week after
the declaration of war, Commodore George Dewey, then at Hong Kong, proceeded
with his squadron of six vessels to the Philippines. His orders were to prevent
the Spanish fleet based there from operating in American waters. He caught the
entire Spanish fleet at anchor and destroyed it without losing an American
life.
Meanwhile, in Cuba, troops landed near Santiago, where, after winning a
rapid series of engagements, they fired on the port. Four armored Spanish
cruisers steamed out of Santiago Bay and a few hours later were reduced to
ruined hulks.
From Boston to San Francisco, whistles blew and flags waved when word came
that Santiago had fallen. Newspapers dispatched correspondents to Cuba and the
Philippines, who trumpeted the renown of the nation's new heroes. Chief among
them were George Dewey of Manila fame and Theodore Roosevelt, who resigned as
assistant secretary of the navy to lead the "Rough Riders," a
volunteer regiment he recruited for service in Cuba. Spain soon sued for peace,
and in the treaty signed on December 10, 1898, transferred Cuba to the United
States for temporary occupation preliminary to the island's independence. In
addition, Spain ceded Puerto Rico and Guam in lieu of war indemnity, and the Philippines
on payment of $20 million.
Having overseas possessions was a new experience for the United States.
Consequently, the new territories were encouraged to move toward democratic
self-government, a political system with which none of them had any previous
experience.
Nevertheless, the United States found itself in a familiar colonial role
when it suppressed an armed independence movement in the Philippines in the
first decade of its occupation. The Philippines gained the right to elect both
houses of its legislature in 1916, and in 1936 a largely autonomous Philippine
Commonwealth was established. In 1946, after World War II, the islands attained
full independence.
American involvement in the Pacific area was not limited to the
Philippines, however. The year of the Spanish-American War also saw the
beginning of a new relationship with the Hawaiian Islands. Earlier contact with
Hawaii had been mainly through missionaries and casual traders. After 1865,
however, Americans began to develop the islands' resources - chiefly sugar
cane and pineapples. When the royal government announced its intention to end
foreign influence in 1893, American businessmen joined with influential
Hawaiians to install a new government, which then asked to be annexed to the United
States.
Widespread protests in the United States against the use of American
soldiers and the idea of colonial rule persuaded President Grover Cleveland and
Congress to reject annexation at first. But, responding to the surge of
nationalism generated by the Spanish-American War, Congress voted
overwhelmingly in July 1898 to annex the islands, thus also acquiring an
important naval base at Pearl Harbor. In 1959 Hawaii became the 50th state in
the Union.
Cuba acquired nominal independence when American troops departed in 1902.
But the United States retained the right to intervene to preserve civil order,
which it did on three occasions before renouncing that right in 1934. Even with
full Cuban independence, however, American economic and political influence
remained strong until 1959, when Fidel Castro overthrew the government in
power, establishing a Marxist regime with close ties to the Soviet Union.
Puerto Rico, the island lying east of Cuba, followed an apprenticeship
similar to that of Cuba and the Philippines. In 1917 the U.S. Congress granted
Puerto Ricans the right to elect all of their legislators. But the same law
created a different path for the island, making it officially a U.S. territory
and, more importantly, giving its people American citizenship. In 1950 Congress
granted Puerto Rico complete freedom to decide its future. In the referendum of
1952, the citizens voted to reject either statehood or total independence, and
chose instead a commonwealth status. Large numbers of Puerto Ricans have
settled on the mainland, to which they have free access and where they acquire
all the political and civil rights of any other citizen of the United States.
C. The canal and the Americas - the war with Spain revived American interest in building a canal across the
isthmus of Panama, uniting the two great oceans. The usefulness of such a canal
for sea trade had long been recognized by the major commercial nations of the
world; indeed the French had begun digging one in the late 19th century only to
abandon their efforts due to the difficulties involved. Now that the United
States was a power in both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, it saw the
military necessity of a canal to provide, when needed, speedier transfer of
warships from one ocean to the other.
At the turn of the century, what is now Panama was a northern province of
Colombia. When the Colombian legislature in 1903 refused to ratify a draft
treaty giving the United States the right to build and manage a canal, a group
of impatient Panamanians, with the support of U.S. Marines, rose in rebellion
and declared Panama's independence from Colombia. The breakaway country was
immediately recognized by President Theodore Roosevelt. Under the terms of the
treaty signed in November of that year, Panama granted the United States a
perpetual lease to a 16-kilometer-wide strip of land between the Atlantic and
the Pacific, in return for $10 million and a yearly fee of $250,000. Colombia
later received $25 million as partial compensation. (Under the Panama Canal
treaty negotiated by the two countries 75 years later, the Canal will revert to
Panamanian sovereignty by the year 2000.)
The completion of the Canal in 1914 was a major triumph of engineering
directed by Colonel George W. Goethals, while the conquest of malaria and
yellow fever in a tropical jungle proved to be an outstanding achievement of
preventive medicine.
Elsewhere in Latin America, the United States fell into a pattern of fitful
intervention. Between 1900 and 1920, for example, the United States intervened
in six Western Hemispheric nations, establishing protectorates in Haiti and the
Dominican Republic, and periodically stationing U.S. Marines in Nicaragua. In
1867 the United States pressured the French into removing troops supporting the
Emperor Maximillian in Mexico. Half a century later, however, as part of an
ill-starred campaign to influence the Mexican revolution, the United States
found itself sending an army of 11,000 troops into the northern part of the
country in a futile effort to capture the elusive rebel and outlaw Francisco
"Pancho" Villa.
At the same time, the United States also played an important role in
establishing an institutional basis for cooperation among the nations of the
Americas. In 1889 Secretary of State James G. Blaine proposed that the 21
independent nations of the Western Hemisphere join in an organization dedicated
to the peaceful settlement of disputes and to closer economic bonds. Emerging
from the first Pan-American conference in 1890 was a permanent body known in
its early years as the Pan-American Union and today as the Organization of
American States (OAS).
Moreover, the later administrations of Herbert Hoover and Franklin D.
Roosevelt repudiated the right of U.S. intervention in Latin America. In
particular, the Roosevelt Good Neighbor Policy of the 1930s, though by no means
ending tensions between the United States and Latin America, helped dissipate
much of the ill-will engendered by earlier U.S. intervention and unilateral
actions.
D. US AND Asia - newly established in the Philippines and firmly entrenched in Hawaii, the
United States at the turn of the century, had high hopes of a vigorous trade
with China. Since China's defeat by Japan (1894-1895), however, various
European nations had acquired naval bases, leased territories and established
spheres of influence. They had also secured monopolistic trade rights as well
as exclusive concessions for investing in railway construction and mining
development.
In its own earlier diplomatic relations with Asia, the American government
had always insisted upon equality of commercial privileges for all nations.
However, idealism in American foreign policy was at odds with the desire to compete
with Europe's imperial powers in the Far East. In September 1899 Secretary of
State John Hay addressed a note to the powers concerned, resulting in the
doctrine of the "Open Door" for all nations in China -- that is,
equality of trading opportunities (including equal tariffs, harbor duties and
railway rates) in the areas they controlled. Despite its idealistic component,
the "Open Door," in essence, became a diplomatic maneuver to gain the
advantages of a colony without the necessity of wresting one from the Chinese.
With the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, the Chinese struck out against the
foreigners. In June, insurgents seized Peiping (Beijing) and attacked the
foreign legations there. Hay promptly announced to the European powers and
Japan that the United States would oppose any disturbance of Chinese
territorial or administrative rights or of the Open Door policy. Once the
rebellion was quelled, it required all Hay's skill to carry out the American
program and to protect China from crushing indemnities. In October, however,
Great Britain and Germany once more signaled their adherence to the Open Door
policy and the preservation of Chinese independence, albeit under foreign
domination, and other nations soon followed.
In 1907 President Theodore Roosevelt responded to
American labor's fears of competition by persuading the Japanese government
temporarily to suspend emigration of laborers to the United States. Otherwise,
American dealings with Japan during the latter half of the 19th century and
well into the 20th century were mainly cordial and uneventful. One unusual
encounter involved President Roosevelt's mediation of the Russo-Japanese War of
1904-1905, during which he warned Germany and France not to intervene on
Russia's side against Japan. As a result of his efforts in working out a
settlement, Roosevelt received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906.
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