P O L I T I C S A N D C U LT U R E

GILDED AGE

MARK TWAIN

RAILROADS: AMERICA’S FIRST BIG BUSINESS

• By 1900, the US had built the greatest railroad network in the world.

JAY GOULD

• The ‘most hated man in America.’• Through the stock

market, he seized control of railroads and Western Union telegraph

ANDREW CARNEGIE

CARNEGIE’S GOSPEL OF WEALTH

SECOND HALF OF 19TH CENTURY ‘AGE OF INVENTION’

• Alexander Graham Bell invented telephone, soon Americans could communicate both locally and at a long distance

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER

A TRUST

• A corporate system in which corporations give shares of their stock to trustees, who coordinate the industry to ensure profits and limit competition• For example, Standard Oil under Rockefeller and

his ‘horizontal integration’• The term ‘trust’ is sometimes used to describe

large business combinations

MONOPOLY

• Exclusive control by a single business of an entire industry.

IDA TARBELL

RAILROAD SLEEPING CAR

EDISON

• Thomas Alva Edison pioneered the use of electricity as an energy source

TYPEWRITER

ZIPPER

TELEGRAPH

• A revolution in communication, replacing Pony Express mail carriers. Served as America’s ‘nervous system.’

STOCK MARKET

• The stock market began to play a key role in the American economy as capital could now be represented by stocks and not just by tangibles such as land or machinery.

MASS MARKETING, ADVERTISING, AND CONSUMER CULTURE

• Railroad allowed for a national market so large-scale consumer businesses flourished

• Advertising stimulated a new consumer culture enticing people to buy things they did not need

SWIFT

• Gustavus Swift built a ‘vertically integrated’ meat packing business in Chicago that stimulated cattle ranching in the West

HEINZ

• John Henry Heinz applied these methods to processed foods, others like Quaker Oats and Campbell Soup followed, producing consumer goods for national markets

LAISSEZ-FAIRE AND THE SUPREME COURT

• Laissez faire held the government should not meddle in economic affairs, except to protect private property• Conservative Supreme Court supported laissez-

faire and used its power to build business interests• Court reinterpreted 14th amendment and defined

‘corporations’ as ‘persons’ in order to protect businesses from taxation, regulation, labor organizations, and antitrust legislation

J.P. MORGAN

JP MORGAN AND FINANCE CAPITALISM

• Morgan dominated American banking and acted as a power broker in the creation of industrial giants like General Electric and US Steel

• His overcapitalization [issuing more stock that the company had value] and stress on short term gain took a toll on the railroad industry

• 1898 turned to the steel industry, in a direct challenge to Carnegie

FINANCE CAPITALISM

• Investment sponsored by banks and profits from the sale of stocks and bonds• In finance capitalism, financial institutions have

the ability to control the economy by reorganizing industries and stabilizing markets• For example, J.P. Morgan’s take-over of Carnegie

Steel

NEW CORPORATE WORLD ORDER

• Morgan’s acquisition of Carnegie Steel signaled the passing of one age and the coming of another; • Carnegie represented the old

entrepreneurial order, Morgan the new corporate world• Morgan, more than the others, left his

stamp on 20th century business economy

SOCIAL DARWINISM

• According to Rockefeller’s son, the elimination of smaller, ineffective units, was “merely the working out of a law of nature and a law of God.”• Social Darwinism is the theory, based on the

scientific work of Charles Darwin, that social progress comes about as a result of relentless competition in which the strong survived and the weak died out.

FROM BUSINESS TO POLITICS AND CULTURE

GENDER RACE POLITICS

• Gender began to influence politics• Democrats fought against cross-racial alliances• Lynching of black men by white mobs

1892 IDA B. WELLS LAUNCHED AN ANTI-LYNCHING MOVEMENT

• The myth of black attacks on white southern women masked the reality that mob violence had more to do with economics and the shifting social structure of the South than with rape

• She met with reprisal, but spurred the creation of the National Association of Colored Women in 1896

• Her voice brought the issue to national prominence

WOMEN’S ACTIVISM

• National Woman Suffrage Association founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in 1869, the first independent women’s rights organization in the US• Women’s clubs proliferated between 1860s and

1890s, civic usefulness• Reform-minded women got involved in the

temperance movement, forming the Woman’s Crusade, and turned to political action to end the sale of alcohol

WOMEN’S RIGHTS LEADERS

Susan B. Anthony Elizabeth Cady Stanton

WCTU

• The Woman’s Crusade brought the issue of temperance back to the national spotlight and led to the formation of the WCTU, Woman’s Christian Temperance Union 1874

GENERAL FEDERATION OF WOMEN’S CLUBS

• Would not admit black women’s clubs• Jane Cunningham

Croly authored “The History of the Woman’s Club Movement in America”

PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

• Corruption and party strife, and in the Grant Administration 1880s• Reformers v. spoilsmen• Rutherford B. Hayes, contested election 1876• Party bosses dominated national politics

PRESIDENTS OF THE GILDED AGE

• Rutherford B. Hayes (1876)• James Garfield (1880)• Chester Arthur (1881)• Grover Cleveland (1884 and 1892)• Benjamin Harrison (1888)• William McKinley (1896)

PRESIDENT RUTHERFORD B. HAYES (R)

PRESIDENT JAMES GARFIELD (R)

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM

• Garfield’s assassination led the press to condemn Republican factionalism; • attacks on the spoils system increased; • the public soon joined the chorus demanding

reform, which came with the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Act in 1883; • brought some fourteen thousand jobs under a

merit system that required examinations for office and made it impossible to remove jobholders for political reasons.

PRESIDENT GROVER CLEVELAND (D)

• Ma, Ma, where’s my pa?• Going to the White

House, ha, ha, ha!

• Against the tariff

RAILROADS, TRUSTS, AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

• Regulation of railroads (spear headed by Midwestern farmers) and federal legislation against trusts

• Supreme Court hostile to states’ efforts, so Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act (1887) creating the first federal regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)

PRESIDENT BENJAMIN HARRISON (R)

• Grandson of President William Henry Harrison

• Supported the tariff

TARIFF

• A tax on imported goods• Protects American

products from foreign competition

• The South relied on foreign markets to sell agricultural crops, but had to purchase foreign goods at higher prices• They opposed the

tariff

TARIFF

• Republican Harrison enacted the McKinley tariff, the highest to date

• Harrison lost the next election, and Grover Cleveland was re-elected President

SHERMAN ANTI-TRUST ACT

• Sherman Anti-trust Act 1890 outlawed pools and trusts, ruling that businesses could no longer enter into agreements to restrict competition

• Supreme Court gutted the act

• Both the ICC and Sherman Antitrust demonstrate a growing concern about corporate abuses of power and a growing willingness to use federal measures to intervene on behalf of the public interest

FIGHT FOR FREE SILVER

• Biggest issue of the day• One side: those who believed gold constituted the

only honest money• Other side: a coalition of western silver barons

and poor farmers from the West and South who hoped that increasing the money supply with silver dollars, thus causing inflation, would give them relief by enabling them to pay off debts with cheaper dollars

CRIME OF ‘73

•1873 Congress voted to stop buying and minting silver, silver advocates called it the ‘crime of ’73’

SILVER ACT REPEALED

• 1878 and 1890 Congress took steps to appease silver advocates and passed legislation requiring the government to buy silver and issue silver certificates• Did little to promote inflation or help debtors, so

farmers continued to call for the free and unlimited coinage of silver• Despite his party’s support for it, Democratic

President Grover Cleveland’s repeal of the 1890 Silver Purchase Act in 1893 dangerously divided the country.