The Gilded AgeDr. John Holmes

US History, 1865 to present

Sample Powerpoint, EDT 02,

Merritt College, Fall 2009

Transformation of America 1865-1920:

Population increases 300% Manufacturing 1000% GNP per capita more than 300%

America before 1877

The First Industrial Revolution Iron railroads in North Small factories, individual owners Railroad companies, state help Millionaires and big businesses

few and far between By WWI, U.S. Steel biggest

company in world

The Corporation

Sale of stocks means: Separation of ownership and

control Stockholders vs. management Key role of banks as financiers

From free competition to monopoly Henry Demarest Lloyd

Railroads: the first big corporations

The Robber Barons

Symbols of Gilded Age Widely hated:

By laborers By farmers By small businessmen

Jay Gould

Most hated man in America Grant Administration scandals Robert Ingersoll on Gould Sayings:

I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.

The effect of this policy will be to anni-hilate the Indians & so greatly benefit us.

Andrew Carnegie

Richest man in world. Gould’s opposite Brilliant businessman

Price of steel: $126 a ton in 1864, less than 20 in 1890s

Steel empire founded on rails for railroads

Gave it all away. Carnegie Institute.

Corruption of Gilded Age

Government favoritism to business Railroads and Homestead Act The lobbyist: free rail passes Where to draw the line? The bank bailout

Government before the Civil War Federal Government barely existed

The army, the mails Tariffs on imports

Half of all government revenue Northern business: high tariffs for

“improvements” Southern plantation owners

opposed Great political issue of 19th

Century

After the Civil War

First federal income tax Homestead Act in 1862 The great land giveaway

1850: 63% of all land federal 1912: half that

Thin line between economic development and corruption

Politics after 1877

Party differences mostly rhetorical Huge corruption in government at all

levels Hardly any social welfare spending Intense political life. Spoils system.

Plunkett, doc. 19-5. Urban social services through

parties Ward heelers and the poor

Labor Unions arise after Civil War 1865-1900: wages of skilled

workers double, unskilled decline Craft and industrial unionism National Labor Union

Founded in 1866 Based on local craft unions Votes to admit women and blacks.

In practice, usually doesn’t. Attempt to establish labor party Collapses in Depression of 1870s

The Knights of Labor Industrial unionism: skilled and

unskilled, men and women, white and black

Exclusion of Chinese: story of George Speed

“Producerism”: cooperatives as alternative to capitalism. Alliance with farmers.

Manufacturers can join, as fellow “producers.”

Labor politics

Terence Powderly, mayor of Scranton and leader of Knights of Labor

Henry George and the New York Labor Party

The Great Upheaval of 1886

1885: Knights of Labor defeat Jay Gould in rail strike

K of L grows like wildfire 8 hour day and Mayday Haymarket and Albert Parsons Powderly comes out against

strikes; K of L collapses

The Haymarket Affair

The monument

The American Federation of Labor

Samuel Gompers National craft unionism “Pure and Simple”

Skilled workers, high dues Unskilled, immigrants, blacks and

women excluded No more involvement with politics

Ideology of Gilded Age Economic individualism, free

market, Adam Smith No land redistribution in South

Protestant Work Ethic and Puritans Democrats and Republicans Social Darwinism

Darwin, Spencer and Sumner Carnegie and Gould

Next week The Crisis of the 1890s: Populism,

Depression; War and Jim Crow Discussion Exercise on Spanish-

American War? Readings:

Foner, Chapter 17 Johnson, Chapters 19 and 20;

docs. 21-5 and 21-6 Get started on Levinsky!