America at the Turn of the
Century
Gilded Age
•
This time period in history, from 1870-1900, has
often been referred to as the Gilded Age.
•
A Gilded Age might appear to sparkle, but critics
pointed to corruption, poverty, crime, and great
disparities in wealth between the rich and the
poor.
•
At the same time, or maybe despite the time,
American society was altered by the effects of
Ef fe c t s o f I n d
u s t r i a l i z a t i o n
Black City
• Economic
– Laissez-Faire
– Limits on competition – Robber barons
– Credit Mobilier Scandal – Working Conditions – Strikes
• Political
– Political machines
• Social
– Social Darwinism – Living Conditions – Unions
– Nativism
– Consumer Protection
White City
• Economic Clean Up
– Sherman Anti-Trust Act – Interstate Commerce
Commission
• Political Clean Up
– Civil Service
– Expansion of Democracy
• Social Clean Up
ECONOMIC
L a i s s e z
- Fa i r e
Black City
• Belief that the government
should not interfere in the economy other than to protect private property rights and maintain peace
• Relied on supply and
demand to regulate prices and wages
• In the late 1800s, few
regulations on commerce or immigration played a role in the country’s economic
growth.
R i s e o f B i
g B u s i n e s s
Black City
• General incorporation laws
in the 1830s led to an increase in corporations
• Corporations could produce
goods more efficiently, operate in poor economic times, and negotiate
rebates from railroads.
C o n s o l i d a t i
n g I n d u s t r y
Black City
• Vertical Integration
(Carnegie)
C o n s o l i d a t i
n g I n d u s t r y
Black City
• Horizontal Integration
(Rockefeller)
C o n s o l i d a t i
n g I n d u s t r y
Black City
• Other forms of
consolidation:
– Pools – an agreement to keep
prices at a certain level
– Trusts – a legal arrangement
that allows one person to manage another person’s property
– Holding Companies – owns
the stock of companies that produce goods; manages the companies it owns, merging into one large enterprise
Ro b b e r
B a r o n s
Black City
• People who loot and
industry and give nothing back
• Example – Jay Gould,
railroad entrepreneur who manipulated stock to amass great wealth
C r e d i t M o b i
l i e r S c a n d a l
Black City
• Credit Mobilier was a
construction company set up by stockholders of the Union Pacific Railroad , including Oakes Ames, a member of Congress
• Investors signed contracts with themselves
• Railroad pays over-inflated bills = $$$ for investors and verge of bankruptcy for the railroad
• Ames sold shares below market value to others in
Wo r k i n g C
o n d i t i o n s
Black City
• Low wages • Long hours
• Difficult/dangerous
U n i o n s :
S t r i ke s
Black City
• The Great Railroad Strike
– 1873: severe recession that
forced companies to cut wages
– 80,000 railroad workers
walked off the job affected 2/3rds of the nation’s railways
– Met with federal troops, state
militia, and local police in a 12 day pull for order
– 100 people died; $10 mil. in
property destroyed
U n i o n s :
S t r i ke s
Black City
• Haymarket Riot, 1886
– Supporters of an 8-hour work
U n i o n s :
S t r i ke s
Black City
• Homestead Steel Strike,
1892
– Carnegie Steel Company
rejects wage increase and proposes a 20% wage cut
– Workers surrounded factory
with pickets and armed
workers to keep it shut down and strikebreakers out
– State government sends in
militia to end violence between strikers and replacements
U n i o n s :
S t r i ke s
Black City
• Pullman Railroad Strike,
1894
– Wage cuts without cuts in
rent/food prices
– Workers refused to handle
railcars built by Pullman; tied up railroads nationwide
– Federal government gets
court injunction direct the ARU to halt the boycott and troops end the strike
May 11, 1894, two thousand Pullman workers went on strike with the support of Deb’s American Railway
POLITICAL
P o l i t i c a l
M a c h i n e s
Black City
• Political machines were an informal political group designed to gain and keep power.
• In exchange for votes, political machines (party bosses)
provided new city dwellers with jobs, housing, police protection, etc…
• Party bosses also controlled the city finances and the city services… took bribes and gave contracts to friends, robbing the cities.
If there’s a family in my district in want I know it before the charitable societies do, and me and my men are first on the ground. I have a special corps to look up such
cases. The consequence is that the poor look up to
George W. Plunkitt as a father, come to him in trouble – and don’t forget him on election day.
~ quoted in William L. Riordan, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall
…that political machines operated on a first principle of power: If you worked to advance the interests of the machine, the machine paid you back…once elected, Prendergast believed, Harrison would offer him an
SOCIAL
I n d i v i d u a l i s m
a n d S o c i a l
D
D a r w
i n i s m
Black City
• Individualism – no matter
how humble your origins, you can rise in society: rags-to-riches
• Social Darwinism – society
L i v i n g C o
n d i t i o n s
Black City
• Urban society with
separation by class
• Tenement housing
…so did the city. It got bigger, taller, and richer; but it also grew dirtier, darker, and more dangerous…smoke blackened its streets…ceaseless passage of
trains…produced a constant thunder…garbage mounded in alleys…billions of flies…corpses of dogs, cats, and
U n i
o n s
Black City
• Fought for better hours,
better pay, better conditions
• Not recognized; seen as
Un-American and in the way of industrialization
• Could be blacklisted for
membership
White City
Union leaders threatened to organize unions worldwide…
The Inland Architect, a prominent Chicago journal,
reported: “That un-American institution, the trades union, has developed its un-American principle of curtailing…the personal freedom of the individual in a new direction, that of seeking, as far as possible, to cripple the World’s Fair.” Such behavior… “would be called treason in countries less enlightened…” (DWC 121)
U n i
o n s
Black City
American Federation of Labor: Samuel Gompers
• Promoted the interest of
skilled workers
• “pure and simple unionism”
by focusing on the “bread and butter” issues of better wages, hours, conditions
• Willing to use strikes but
U n i
o n s
Black City
American Railway Union: Eugene Debs
• Tried to organize all railroad
employees into one union
• Arrested during the Pullman
N a t i
v i s m
Black City
• An extreme dislike of
immigrants by native-born Americans
• In the late 1800s, nativism
focused mainly on those who were from
southern/eastern Europe.
• Feared they would
undermine American labor union movement and take jobs.
…fifty Italian immigrants…began digging a ditch…five hundred union men stormed the park and drove the workers off…six hundred men gathered at the park to protest McArthur’s use of what they alleged were
C o n s u m e r
P r o t e c t i o n
Black City
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
“There would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was [moldy] and white-it would be dosed with borax and glycerin, and dumped into the hoppers and made all over again for home consumption…There would be meat stored in great piles in
rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and
thousands of rats would race about [upon] it.”
Enter Progressivism
The fair taught men and women steeped only in the
Protecting social welfare Promoting moral improvement
Creating economic
reform Fostering efficiency
Who Were the Progressives?
U pt on Si ncl air • The Jungle
• Originally meant to expose the challenges of immigrant life; it instead exposed the horrors of the meat-packaging industry Ja co b Ri
is • How the Other Half Lives • Published photographs and descriptions of poverty, disease, and crime in immigrant neighborho ods Li nc ol n S te ffe
ns • Reported on vote stealing and the corrupt practices of urban political machines Id a T ar be
ll • Published
a series of articles critical of the big business practices of the Standard Oil Company
Ef fe c t s o f I n d
u s t r i a l i z a t i o n
Black City
• Economic
– Laissez-Faire
– Limits on competition – Robber barons
– Credit Mobilier Scandal – Working Conditions – Strikes
• Political
– Political machines
• Social
– Social Darwinism – Living Conditions – Unions
– Nativism
– Consumer Protection
White City
• Economic Clean Up
– Sherman Anti-Trust Act – Interstate Commerce
Commission
• Political Clean Up
– Civil Service
– Expansion of Democracy
• Social Clean Up
ECONOMIC
L a i s s e z
- Fa i r e
Black City
• Belief that the government
should not interfere in the economy other than to protect private property rights and maintain peace
• Relied on supply and
demand to regulate prices and wages
• In the late 1800s, few
regulations on commerce or immigration played a role in the country’s economic
growth.
White City
• Muckraker: Ida Tarbell
• Increased regulation of big
business
– Interstate Commerce
Commission
– Sherman Anti-Trust Act • Trust-busters: Roosevelt,
Taft, and Wilson
"It looked more and more to the outsider as if henceforth Mr. Rockefeller was going to have things his own way, for who was there to interfere with him, to dispute his
position? No one, [except] back in Northwestern
Pennsylvania, in scrubby little oil towns, around greasy
derricks, in dingy shanties, by rusty deserted oil stills, men still talked of the iniquity of the railroad rebate, the
injustice of restraint of trade, the dangers of monopoly.“
Early Economic Reforms:
Interstate Commerce Commission
•
Result of Supreme Court ruling in
Wabash v.
Illinois
•
First federal law to regulate interstate
commerce
– Limited railroad rebates to what was “reasonable” – Forbade rebates to high volume users
– Made it illegal to charge higher rates for shorter
hauls
•
Not effective as it required the courts to
Early Economic Reforms:
Sherman Anti-Trust Act
•
In response to the power of large business
combinations known as trusts
•
Prohibited any “combination… or conspiracy,
in restraint of trade or commerce among the
several States.”
Economic Reforms:
Theodore Roosevelt
•
Believed trusts contributed to America’s
prosperity but was concerned that the
monopoly power of some trusts hurt the
public interest
•
Northern Securities v. US
: suit against a
Economic Reforms:
Theodore Roosevelt
•
Formation of the Department of Commerce
and Labor to keep big business from abusing
its power by keeping the pubic informed
•
“gentleman’s agreement” – if there were
problems businesses had a chance to privately
fix before making public
•
Hepburn Act
– passed to strengthen the ICC
Economic Reforms:
William Howard Taft
•
Lost favor with the passage of the
Payne-Aldrich Tariff
, which cut tariffs hardly at all
and actually raised them on some goods.
•
Brought twice as many anti-trust cases against
big business
– Angered Roosevelt causing Roosevelt to challenge
Economic Reforms:
Roosevelt vs. Wilson
New Nationalism (Roosevelt)
• Increase regulation of trusts • Legislation to protect
women and children
• Support workers
compensation for injuries on the job
New Freedom (Wilson)
• Against trusts
• Favored competition of free
enterprise
“Combination in industry
[trusts] are the result of an imperative economic law
which cannot be repealed by political legislation… The way out lies, not in attempting to prevent such combinations, but in completely controlling them in the interest of the public welfare…
“I am perfectly willing that [a business] should beat any
competitor by fair means… All the fair competition you choose, but no unfair competition of any kind… A trust is an arrangement to get rid of competition… a
trust does not bring efficiency… it buys efficiency out of
Economic Reforms:
Woodrow Wilson
•
Underwood Tariff
– reduced the average tariff
on imported goods by about 30% of the value
of the goods, or about half the tariff rate of
the 1890s.
•
16th Amendment
(1913) – federal income tax
•
Federal Reserve Act
(1913) – created the
Federal Reserve
•
Controls the money supply
•
Regulates interest rates
– Raise during times of plenty to control spending – Lower during recessions to access credit
•
Supervises
Economic Reforms:
Woodrow Wilson
•
Federal Trade Commission
– Advise business people on the
legality of their actions
– Protect consumers from false
advertising
– Investigate unfair trade
Economic Reforms:
Woodrow Wilson
•
Clayton Anti Trust Act
– Outlawed unfair trade practices
– Made it illegal for one company to hold the stock of
another if by doing so it would limit competition
– Guilty of violating anti-trust laws = criminally liable
– Allowed suits to collect damages for those injured by
trusts
– Banned use of injunctions against strikes
– Farm and labor organizations no longer considered
Wo r k i n g C o n d
i t i o n s / U n i o n s
Black City
• Low wages • Long hours
• Difficult/dangerous
working conditions
White City
• Unions given the right to
bargain with the Clayton Anti-Trust Act
• (Wilson) Adamson Act:
POLITICAL
P o l i t i c a l
M a c h i n e s
Black City
• Political machines were an informal political group designed to gain and keep power.
• In exchange for votes, political machines (party bosses)
provided new city dwellers with jobs, housing, police protection, etc…
• Party bosses also controlled the city finances and the city services… took bribes and gave contracts to friends, robbing the cities.
White City
• Make government more
efficient
• Expand democracy
• Limit/reduce corruption and
Political Reforms
Commission Plan
• Divide city government into
several departments, each one under an expert
commissioner’s control
Council-Manager System
• City council would hire a
city manager to run the city instead of the mayor
Political Reforms
Initiative Referendum
Direct
Primary Recall
GOAL: Expand Democracy
Permitted a group of citizens to introduce legislation Allowed citizens to vote on proposed laws directly without
going to the legislature
All party members can
vote for a candidate to run
in a general election
Provided voters an option to
demand a special election
to remove an elected official
from office
“It was clear to me that the only way to beat boss and ring rule was to keep the people thoroughly informed.
Machine control is based upon misrepresentation and ignorance. Democracy is based upon knowledge. It is of first importance that the people shall know about their government and the work of their public servants.
Political Reforms
Notable
Women:
Alice Paul Carrie
Chapman Catt
GOAL: Expand Democracy: Women’s Suffrage
"Woman suffrage is inevitable ... The suffrage for women already established in the United States makes women suffrage for the nation inevitable. ...our nation cannot long continue ... a condition which permits women in some states to share in the election of the president, senators, and representatives and denies them that privilege in others.“
Political Reform
Pre-17th Amendment
• Each state legislature
elected two senators to Congress
Post-17th Amendment
• Allowed for the direct
election of senators by the people
GOAL: Limit/reduce corruption and influence of big business
"Treason is a strong word, but not too strong to
characterize the situation in which the Senate is the agent of interests as hostile to the American people as any
invading army could be, and vastly more dangerous ... The Senators are not elected by the people; they are elected by the interests.“
Political Reform
•
Pendleton Act
– Provided that Federal Government jobs be
awarded on the basis of merit and that
Government employees be selected through competitive exams.
– The Civil Service Commission was established to
enforce this act.
GOAL: Limit/reduce corruption and influence of big business
…First, for open, competitive examinations for testing the fitness of applicants for the public service now classified or to be classified here- under… Second, that all the
offices, places, and employments so arranged or to be arranged in classes shall be filled by selections according to grade from among those graded highest as the results of such competitive examinations…
SOCIAL
I n d i v i d u a l i s m
a n d S o c i a l
D
D a r w
i n i s m
Black City
• Individualism – no matter
how humble your origins, you can rise in society: rags-to-riches
• Social Darwinism – society
progresses and becomes better only because the fittest survive
White City
• Gospel of Wealth – wealthy
Americans should engage in
philanthropy and use their great fortunes to create conditions to help people better themselves
• Social Gospel – movement
to better conditions in cities according to the biblical
ideas of charity and justice
“In bestowing charity, the main consideration should be to help those who will help themselves; to provide part of
the means by which those who desire to improve may do so; to give those who desire to rise the aids by which they may rise…”
L i v i n g C o
n d i t i o n s
Black City
• Urban society with
separation by class
• Tenement housing
White City
• Muckraker: Jacob Riis
• Published How the Other Half Lives
– Used photography and stories
to expose ills
• Increase in public
education: instill discipline and hard work as well as vocational skills
“Look into any of these houses, everywhere the same piles of rags, of
malodorous bones and musty paper, all of which the sanitary police flatter themselves they have banished to the dumps and the warehouses. Here is a "flat" of "parlor" and two pitch-dark coops called bedrooms. Truly, the bed is all there is room for. The family teakettle is on the stove, doing duty for the time being as a wash-boiler. By night it will have returned to its proper use again, a practical illustration of how poverty in "the Bend" makes both ends meet. One, two, three beds are there, if the old boxes and heaps of foul straw can be called by that name; a broken stove with crazy pipe from which the smoke leaks at every joint, a table of rough boards propped up on boxes, piles of rubbish in the corner.”
Social Reforms
•
Jane Addams: Hull
House
– Settlement house – Community
center that
offered child care, recreational
programs, medical care, etc…
"Hull House was opened in the belief that the mere
foothold of a [settlement] house, easily accessible, ample in space, hospitable and tolerant in spirit, situated in the midst of the large [immigrant communities] which so
easily isolate themselves in American cities, would be in itself a serviceable thing for Chicago ... Many of the
people living there are very poor."
U n i
o n s
Black City
• Fought for better hours,
better pay, better conditions
• Not recognized; seen as
Un-American and in the way of industrialization
• Could be blacklisted for
membership
White City
• 1902 Coal Strike: Roosevelt
urges arbitration as a first step toward establishing the federal government as an honest broker between
powerful groups in society
• Gained the right to bargain
collectively through the
N a t i
v i s m
Black City
• An extreme dislike of
immigrants by native-born Americans
• In the late 1800s, nativism
focused mainly on those who were from
southern/eastern Europe.
• Feared they would
undermine American labor union movement and take jobs.
White City
• Muckrakers: Jacob Riis and
Upton Sinclair
• Settlement house
movement
• Focus on Americanization
C o n s u m e r
P r o t e c t i o n
Black City
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
“There would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was [moldy] and white-it would be dosed with borax and glycerin, and dumped into the hoppers and made all over again for home consumption…There would be meat stored in great piles in
rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and
thousands of rats would race about [upon] it.”
White City
• Muckraker: Upton Sinclair • Published The Jungle
• Passage of Meat Inspection
Consumer Protection
Meat Inspection Act
• Required federal inspection
of meat sold through interstate commerce
• Agriculture Department set
standards for cleanliness in meat packaging plants
Pure Food and Drug Act
• Prohibited the manufacture,
Social Reforms: Conservation
(Roosevelt)
•
Cautioned against unregulated exploitation of
public lands and believed in conservation to
manage the nation’s resources
•
1902: Newlands Reclamation Act – authorized
the use of federal funds from public land sales to
pay for irrigation and land development projects;
helped transform the West’s landscape
•
Backed efforts to save the nation’s forests
Social Reforms: Conservation
(Taft)
•
Established the Bureau of Mines to monitor
the activities of mining companies
•
Expanded the national forests
•
Protected waterpower sites from private
Social Reforms: Child Labor Laws
•
(Taft)
Children’s Bureau
– an agency that
investigated and publicized the problems of
child labor
•
(Wilson)
Keating-Owen Child Labor Act
–
prohibited the employment of children under
the age of 14 in factories producing goods for
interstate commerce; declared
Progressivism
Legacy
• Increasingly Americans
expected the government to play a more active role in regulating the economy and in solving social problems
Limits
• Failure to address racial
discrimination
• Western farmers were
