Gilded Age

For the novel, see The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.

"The Breakers", a Gilded Age mansion in Newport, Rhode Island.

In United States history, Gilded Age refers to the period following the Civil War and Reconstruction, running from the late 1860s to 1896. The term "Gilded Age" was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their book The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, published in 1873. The term refers to the gilding of a cheaper metal with a thin layer of gold, with a hint of the "golden age" of a nation's glory. Many critics complained that the era was marked by ostentatious display, crass manners, corruption, and shoddy ethics.

Historians view the Gilded Age as a period of rapid economic, technological, political, and social transformation. This transformation forged a modern, national industrial society out of what had been regional "island communities." By the end of the Gilded Age, the United States was at the top end of the world's leading industrial nations. In the Progressive Era that followed the Gilded Age, it became a world power. In the process, there was much dislocation, including the destruction of the Plains Indians, hardening discrimination against African Americans, and environmental degradation. Two extended nationwide economic depressions followed the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1893.

The Gilded Age saw impressive economic growth and the unprecedented growth of major cities (Chicago's population increased tenfold from 1870 to 1900). Technological innovations including the telephone, steel production, skyscrapers, refrigerator car, linotype machine, chromolithography, electric light bulb, typewriter, electric motors, and many others provided the bases for modern consumerism and industrial productivity. Politically, the period saw the two major parties in very close parity, with occasional third-party political campaigns by farmers and labor unions, civil service reform, organized movements that enlisted many women working for prohibition and women's suffrage, the strengthening of big city machines, and the transition from party to modern interest group politics. Socially, the period was marked by large-scale immigration from Germany and Scandinavia to the industrial centers and to western farmlands, the deepening of religious organizations, the rapid growth of high schools, and the emergence of a managerial and professional middle class.

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 managerial revolution transformed business operations. By the beginning of the 20th century, per capita income and industrial production in the United States led the world, with per capita incomes double that of Germany or France, and 50% higher than Britain. 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. The super-rich industrialists and financiers such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew W. Mellon, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Flagler, Henry H. Rogers, J. P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt of the Vanderbilt family, and the prominent Astor family were labeled as "robber barons" by the public, who felt they cheated to get their money and lorded it over the common people. There was a small, growing labor union movement led especially by Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) after 1886.

Gilded Age politics, called the Third Party System, featured very close contests between the Republicans and Democrats, and, occasionally, third parties. Nearly all the eligible men were political partisans and voter turnout often exceeded 90% in some states.

The wealth of the period is highlighted by the American upper class' opulence, but also by the rise of American philanthropy (referred to by Andrew Carnegie as the "Gospel of Wealth") that used private money to endow thousands of colleges, hospitals, museums, academies, schools, opera houses, public libraries, symphony orchestras, and charities. John D. Rockefeller, for example, donated over $500 million to various charities, slightly over half his entire net worth.

The Beaux-Arts architectural idiom of the era clothed public buildings in Neo-Renaissance architecture.

The end of the Gilded Age coincided with the Panic of 1893, a deep depression, which lasted until 1897 and marked a major political realignment in the election of 1896. This productive but divisive era was followed by the Progressive Era.

Industrial and technological advances

Main article: Second Industrial Revolution

The Gilded Age was rooted in industrialization, especially heavy industry like factories, railroads, and coal mining. The First Transcontinental Railroad opened in 1869, providing six-day service between the East Coast and San Francisco. During the Gilded Age, the U.S. grew to world economic leadership. For example, American steel production surpassed the combined total of Britain, Germany, and France, and the U.S. led the world in many areas of technology. Railroad mileage tripled between 1860 and 1880, and tripled again by 1920, opening new areas to commercial farming, creating a truly national marketplace and inspiring a boom in coal mining and steel production. The voracious appetite for capital of the great trunk railroads facilitated the consolidation of the nation's financial market in Wall Street. By 1900, the process of economic concentration had extended into most branches of industry—a few large corporations, called "trusts", dominated in steel, oil, sugar, meatpacking, and the manufacture of agriculture machinery. Other major components of this infrastructure were the new methods for fabricating steel, especially the Bessemer process.

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 machines to make fewer motions in less time. His redesign increased the speed of factory machines and the productivity of factories while undercutting the need for skilled labor. This 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. 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 at age 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. Together with rapid growth of small business, a new middle class was rapidly growing, especially in northern cities.

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. Nikola Tesla invented a remarkable number of electrical devices, as well as the integrated power plant capable of lighting multiple buildings simultaneously; Thomas Edison, in addition to inventing hundreds of electrical devices, co-founded General Electric corporation. Oil became an important resource, beginning with the Pennsylvania oil fields. The U.S. dominated the industry into the 1950s. Kerosene replaced whale oil and candles for lighting. John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil Company to consolidate the oil industry—which mostly produced kerosene before the automobile created a demand for gasoline in the 20th century.

Economic growth

The Gilded Age saw the greatest period of economic growth in American history. Eventually, the United States produced over one third of certain international goods such as steel and oil. After the short-lived panic of 1873, the economy recovered with the advent of hard money policies and industrialization. The Second Industrial Revolution occurred from 1870 to 1920 and included innovations like the use of electricity in factories. In addition to technological innovations, the United States led the Second Industrial Revolution in great part due to its abundance of natural resources. Since capital and natural resources are complements, the US manufacturing economy became more capital intensive as more and more natural resources were extracted. From 1869 to 1879, the US 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. Real wages also increased greatly during the 1880s. 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."

Labor unions

Craft-oriented labor unions grew strong in the Northeast after 1870. These unions often used strikes as a method to attain higher wages, shorter hours, and union control over working conditions and hiring. One was the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, lasting 45 days and attended by violent attacks on railroad property until President Rutherford B. Hayes sent in federal troops. In 1886, the Knights of Labor tried to unite both unskilled and skilled workers, but grew so fast it could not manage its affairs. The failure of the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886 and popular revulsion against the killing of police in the Haymarket Square Riot caused the collapse of support for the Knights. In 1886, the Knights of Labor had as many as 700,000 members. By 1890, membership had plummeted to fewer than 100,000. The final major strike of the late 19th century was the Pullman Strike which was an effort to shut down the national railroad system in the face of federal court injunctions to desist. The strike was led by the upstart American Railway Union (a few months old) led by Eugene V. Debs, and collapsed totally. These failures left the union field to the established railroad brotherhoods and the new American Federation of Labor, headed by Samuel Gompers. Gompers wanted better deals for his members, not revolution, and his AFL unions gained strength steadily down to 1919.

Politics

A Group of Vultures Waiting for the Storm to "Blow Over"--"Let Us Prey." Cartoon of New York's Boss Tweed and other Tammany Hall figures, drawn in 1871 by Thomas Nast and published in Harper's Weekly.

Americans' sense of civic virtue was shocked by the scandals associated with the Reconstruction era: corrupt state governments, massive fraud in cities controlled by political machines, political payoffs to secure government contracts (especially the Crédit Mobilier of America scandal regarding the financing of the transcontinental railroad), and widespread evidence of government corruption during the Ulysses S. Grant Administration. 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. Accordingly there were widespread calls for reform, such as Civil Service Reform led by the Bourbon Democrats and Republican Mugwumps supporting Democratic reform candidates such as Grover Cleveland. There was a sense that government intervention in the economy inevitably led to favoritism, bribery, kickbacks, inefficiency, waste, and corruption. The Bourbon Democrats led the call for a free market, low tariffs, low taxes, less spending and, in general, a Laissez-Faire (hands-off) government. They specifically denounced imperialism and overseas expansion. Many business and professional people supported this approach, although—to encourage rapid growth of industry and protect America's high wages against the low wage system in Europe—most Republicans advocated a high protective tariff. Labor activists and agrarians expressed the same spirit but focused their attacks on monopolies and railroads as unfair to the little man. Many Republicans also complained that high tariffs, for instance on British steel, benefited industrialists like Carnegie more than his employees who even at the time were regarded by many as being pitifully exploited.

In politics, the two parties engaged in very elaborate get-out-the vote campaigns that succeeded in pushing turnout to 80%, 90%, and even higher. It was financed by the "spoils system" whereby the winning party distributed most local, state and national government jobs, and many government contracts, to its loyal supporters. Large cities were dominated by political machines, in which constituents supported a candidate in exchange for anticipated patronage—favors back from the government, once that candidate was elected—and candidates were selected based on their willingness to play along. The best known example of a political machine from this time period is Tammany Hall in New York City, led by Boss Tweed. Presidential elections between the two major parties (the Republicans and Democrats), were so closely contested that a slight nudge could tip the teeter-totter to the advantage of the opposition party, and Congress was marked by political stalemate. Mudslinging became an increasingly popular way of gaining advantage at the polls, and Republicans employed an election tactic known as "waving the bloody shirt". Candidates, especially when combating corruption charges, would remind voters that the Republican Party had saved the nation in the Civil War. During the 1870s, voters were repeatedly reminded that the Democrats had been responsible for the bloody upheaval, an appeal that attracted many Union veterans to the Republican camp. The Republicans consistently carried the North in presidential elections. The South, on the other hand, became the Solid South, nearly always voting Democratic. The political humiliations of Reconstruction were still fresh in many minds. Conversely, the Democrats invoked images of the "lost cause" and the glorious "stars and bars" in much the same way Republicans "waved the bloody shirt." The corruption of the Republican organization led to the defection of a group of reformers called the Mugwumps that supported Democrat Grover Cleveland in 1884. This victory gave Democrats control of the presidency for the first time since the Civil War (not counting the ascension of Andrew Johnson who was technically elected as part of the Union Party).

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 libertarian policies. The negativity and ambiguity of politics began a shift in the press to yellow journalism, in which sensationalism and sentimental stories took as prominent a role as factual news.

Immigration

Main article: History of immigration to the United States

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 looking for fresh lands, and many of them were impoverished peasants looking for the American Dream 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 people from Western and Northern Europe (Regents Prep U.S. History). Known for permanently staying in America after arriving, old immigration consisted of people who sought social, economic, and political prosperity.The new immigrants came from Southern and Eastern Europe, including, the Balkans, Italy, Poland, and Russia (Digital History). Depending on the ethnic group, new immigration was often seen as temporary because immigrants only came to take advantage of the economic opportunities that were provided by industries and then return home after prospering in America. Italians fulfilled this “new immigration” stigma, of one day returning home, the most. Many Italians desired to return one day to Italy, viewing their sojourn to America as temporary, whereas few Jews envisioned returning to the Pale of Settlement (McCune, Mary). The “American Dream” was not the only reason that people began to immigrate to America. Persecution in their home countries from the military played a large part in the decision to leave to America. What are now known as push and pull factors also played a large role in the immigration rate during the Gilded Age. The push factors were more general factors such as economic dislocation, war, persecution, or personal factors, which consisted of family crisis, trouble with authorities, or merely dissatisfaction with life. Pull factors on the other hand consisted of the sheer attraction to America and the hopes that immigrants had for traveling there (Daniels, Roger). Living conditions were not as ideal as anticipated by most immigrants feeding into the “American Dream.” Most immigrants, once in America, lived in ethnic enclaves that allowed for better communication between people who spoke the same language, but also allowed for the open expression of similar religions and worshipping. On the down side, the tenements that immigrants stayed in were very crowded apartments or small shoddy houses that were packed with multiple families few sanitary facilities, leading to an increase in the spread of disease (Daniels, Roger).

Chinese immigrants

The construction of the Central Pacific Railroad in California and Nevada was handled largely by Chinese laborers. In the 1870 census there were 63,254 Chinese men and women in the entire country; this number grew to 105,613 in the 1880 census. Labor unions such as the American Federation of Labor strongly opposed the presence of Chinese labor, by reason of both economic competition and race. 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. Subsequent to the act, 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 many areas, so they resettled in the "Chinatown" districts of large cities.

Urban life

Society itself underwent significant changes in the period following the Civil War. One of the most significant changes came in the further urbanization of the northern cities. As a result of increasing demand for factory workers as well as mass immigration from Europe, the population of cities began to swell. Major American cities such as New York, Philadelphia and Chicago even saw populations grow in excess of one million people. These rapid changes in cities brought about modern architectural and transportation features. Louis Sullivan became a noted architect using steel frames to construct skyscrapers for the first time while pioneering the idea of "form follows function". One of his earliest works was the Wainwright Building in St. Louis, Missouri. Elisha Otis’s introduction of safety measures on elevators also helped buildings reach newer heights.

American cities also expanded with the introduction of new transportation technology. From horse cars to elevated railway and later electric streetcars and subways, the cities constantly pushed outward. As immigration increased in cities, poverty rose as well. New immigrants were forced to live in the poorest urban areas including the Five Points and Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan. These areas were quickly overridden with crime gangs such as the Five Points Gang and the Bowery Boys rose to prominence. Families were forced into crowded living conditions in the so-called "dumbbell tenements".

Women's rights

The Gilded Cage painting

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. Other 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.

The development and fast acceptance of the sewing machine during this period changed the domestic lives of women. Often overlooked in discussions of the advent of rapid industrialization, this product did more than any other single development (until women's suffrage) to change the daily life of the average American woman.^{[citation needed]} The production of hand-sewn clothing and household linens chained all but the wealthiest of women to a life of toil which can hardly be understood today. Almost no domestic product, until the advent of the automobile, was accepted more quickly than this device.^{[citation needed]} By 1880, according to a Singer Corporation sponsored book entitled Genius Rewarded, the Story of the Sewing Machine (1889), by James Scott, over 3 million American homes had a sewing machine, which had been available for less than 30 years.

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 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 (which was first published in 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. Not everyone agreed with the social Darwinists, and soon a whole movement to help the poor arose. 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. In Chicago, noted attorney Clarence Darrow made vocal arguments that poverty and not biology created crime. Wisconsin-born author Thorstein Veblen argued in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class that the “conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure" of the wealthy had become the basis of social status in America. In Looking Backward: 2000-1887, author Edward Bellamy wrote of 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.

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.

See also

• American Old West
• Goût Rothschild
• History of the United States (1865–1918)
• Nadir of American race relations
• Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant
• Ventfort Hall (Gilded Age Museum)

References

• Archdeacon, Thomas J. Becoming American: An Ethnic History (1984) on immigration and ethnicity
• Argersinger; Peter H. Structure, Process, and Party: Essays in American Political History. (1992) online version
• Arnesen, Eric, ed. Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working-Class History (3 vol. 2006), essays by scholars
• Buenker, John D. and Joseph Buenker, eds. Encyclopedia of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. (2005). 1256 pp. in three volumes. ISBN 0-7656-8051-3; 900 essays by 200 scholars
• Calhoun, Charles W. ed. The Gilded Age: Perspectives on the Origins of Modern America (2nd ed. 2007) 402pp; essays by scholars
• Cherny, Robert W. American Politics in the Gilded Age, 1868–1900 (1997) online edition
• Cohen, Nancy; The Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865–1914 (2002) history of ideas online edition
• Edwards, Rebecca. New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age, 1865–1905 (2005); 304pp excerpt and text search
• Faulkner, Harold U.; Politics, Reform, and Expansion, 1890–1900 (1959), scholarly survey, strong on economic and political history online edition
• Fine, Sidney. Laissez Faire and the General-Welfare State: A Study of Conflict in American Thought, 1865–1901. University of Michigan Press, 1956. History of ideas
• Folsom, Burton W., and Forrest McDonald, The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America (1991), by leading conservative scholars
• Garraty, John A. The New Commonwealth, 1877–1890, 1968 scholarly survey, strong on economic and political history
• Jensen, Richard. "Democracy, Republicanism and Efficiency: The Values of American Politics, 1885–1930," in Byron Shafer and Anthony Badger, eds, Contesting Democracy: Substance and Structure in American Political History, 1775–2000 (U of Kansas Press, 2001) pp 149–180; online version
• Josephson, Matthew; The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861– 1901 (1934), business history from the Left
• Kirkland, Edward C. Industry Comes of Age, Business, Labor, and Public Policy 1860–1897 (1961), standard survey
• Kleppner; Paul. The Third Electoral System 1853–1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Cultures U of North Carolina Press, (1979) online version
• Morgan, H. Wayne. From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877–1896 (1969) online edition
• Morgan, H. Wayne ed. The Gilded Age: A Reappraisal Syracuse University Press 1970. interpretive essays
• Nevins, Allan. The Emergence of Modern America, 1865–1878 (1933) ISBN 0-403-01127-2, social history
• Rothbard, Murray A History of Money and banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to world War II(2002). The Ludwig Von Mises Institute.
• Schlesinger, Arthur M. The Rise of the City: 1877–1898 (1933), social history
• Shannon, Fred A. The Farmer's Last Frontier: 1860–1897 (1945) survey of economic history online edition
• Smythe, Ted Curtis; The Gilded Age Press, 1865–1900 (2003). online edition
• Stiles, E.J. The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (2009); Pulitzer prize.
• Wagner, David. Ordinary People: In and Out of Poverty in the Gilded Age (2008); traces people who were at one time in a poor house

Further reading

• Ashton, Susanna M. "The King's Men, or A Parable of Democratic Authorship." Chapter 2 of Collaborators in Literary America, 1870–1920. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
• Pratt, Sereno S. (December 1903). "Who Owns the United States?". The World's Work: A History of Our Time VII: 4259–4266. http://books.google.com/books?id=FoXNAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA4259. Retrieved 2009-07-10. 
• "The Monopoly of "Natural Products"". The World's Work: A History of Our Time VII: 4287–4290. January 1904. http://books.google.com/books?id=FoXNAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA4287. Retrieved 2009-07-10. 
• White, Richard. "Corporations, Corruption, and the Modern Lobby: A Gilded Age Story of the West and the South in Washington, D.C.", Southern Spaces, 16 April 2009.

External links

• Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, scholarly quarterly
• More general information to the Gilded Age on the Library of Congress
• New Spirits: A Web Site on Americans in the Gilded Age, 1865–1905 by Rebecca Edwards, Vassar College
• WWW-VL: History: United States: The Gilded Age, 1876–1900 by Robert Spencer, University of Southern Maine. An extensive collection of materials.
• America's Wealth in the Gilded Age accessed March 29, 2006
• Illinois During the Gilded Age, 1866–1896, Illinois Historical Digitization Projects at Northern Illinois University Libraries accessed March 28, 2008
• Harper's Weekly 150 cartoons on elections 1860–1912; Reconstruction topics; Chinese exclusion; plus American Political Prints from the Library of Congress, 1766–1876
  • Elections 1860–1912 as covered by Harper's Weekly; news, editorials, cartoons (many by Thomas Nast see also [1] [2] [3])
• "Graphic Witness" caricatures in history
• Gilded Age & Progressive Era Cartoons, industry, labor, politics, prohibition from Ohio State University
• Puck cartoons
• Keppler cartoons
• 1892 cartoons