Business and Labor in
the Gilded Age
Innovation, Profits, and
Workers’ Rights
Major Issues
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Forms of business innovation in late 19th-c.
New technologies and processes
Social class in America
The Labor Question
Labor-Business conflicts
Forms of labor organization
Politics & trade unions
American Radicalism
Industrial Capitalism:
Different Perspectives on Success
Business/Managers
Workers
Pittsburgh & Steel
in the Gilded Age
Pushing Coke from
By-product Oven,
by Aaron Henry Gorson,
( n.d.) .
Gorson, River Embankment
Gorson, The Burn Off
Gorson, At the Riverhead
Gorson, Pittsburgh Steel Mill at Night
Steel Images: Attitudes
Towards Industry?
Late 19th-Century
Business Innovations
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Capitalism = dynamic system, always
changing
Capitalists always trying to find new ways to
achieve profits and control
Use of new technologies and methods of
production
New ways of getting the most value out of
employees
Cutting costs for labor, supplies, transport,
processing
J.M.W. Turner, “Rain, Steam, Speed, The Great Western Railway,” 1844
Capitalism =
new ways of
thinking about
time, space,
speed, self, and
society
Freedom & Power for some; exploitation and powerlessness for others
New ways of thinking about individual, society, one’s place in the world
Exciting & Troubling at the same time
J.M.W. Turner, “Rain, Steam, Speed, The Great Western Railway,” 1844
Role of Railroads
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Capital-intensive industry = needed a lot
of $ to pay for machinery and rails
Answer: Corporations and stocks
New transportation routes = new markets, a
national market for goods
A far-flung business = new management
structures = departments & white collar jobs
Railroad managers move on to other
industries – Carnegie and others
Great market for steel
Rise of Big Business
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Modeled on railroads
Looked to increase profits by cutting costs,
increasing output of goods, cutting down on
competition
Get Bigger - Vertical integration – swallow up
suppliers and sellers – Swift meatpacking
Monopoly – Rockefeller Oil – sweetheart
deals with railroads (also vertical int.)
Better marketing – advertising advantages
Crush competitors by lowering prices or
buying them out (horizontal integration)
Rise of the Corporation
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Link to clips from documentary The
Corporation
What is the corporation?
Benefits?
Problems?
New Industries = New Social
Classes in America
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Myth: America is class-less society (no classes)
Gilded Age saw creation of new classes and new
class conflicts
Nouveau-riche (New rich) elite – non-inherited
wealth, entrepreneurs, Carnegie, Rockefeller,
Vanderbilt
Middle-class – white collar managers, engineers,
office workers
Changes in working-class: growth of unskilled
manufacturing workforce
Different classes had different ideas of how
economy should work, who it should benefit most,
who should have power
Different Perspectives on
Social Class in America
The American Elite
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Elite Ideology – the elite’s perspective on the world
Way they viewed:
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Themselves
The society
The economy
The government’s role, politics
Work – who does what and why?
Wealth – who should get it and why?
Who should have power, who shouldn’t?
Gender roles (in family, society, politics, work, etc.)
Who should make decisions, who shouldn’t?
Was capitalism a good thing and for whom?
John D. Rockefeller
Painted by John Singer Sargent
Impressions of painting
Upper Class View of the World
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William Graham Sumner & Social Darwinism:
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Survival of the fittest
Fittest?: lifestyle, superior, heredity, race,
intelligence
Inequality is natural, normal, good
Process = progress
Charity? Or govt. action?
Impressions of Painting
John Singer Sargent
Video
J.S.S. Video #2
Abbott Thayer, “Winged
Figure,” 1889
Abbott Thayer, “The Virgin”
Abbott Thayer, “Angel,”
1889
Thomas Dewing, “Summer,” 1890
Upper Class Gender Roles:
Victorian Separate Spheres
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Men
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Women
Problems with Victorian Separate Spheres?:
Definition of Social Class
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How does class work in this time period?
American Labor:
Traditions & Challenges
Labor Songs of Gilded Age
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Mining Songs
The Labor Question
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End of Reconstruction, ignoring plight of southern
blacks; “end of frontier” – nation turned to growing
labor conflict and economic concerns
Labor Question: What share of the wealth, power,
and rights would workers have in the new modern
industrial economy?
What models of worker power were most effective in
opposing Capital/Big Business?
What forms of organization were most inclusive or
exclusive of all American workers?
What strategies did capital use to fight and control
workers?
What role did the government play in the Labor
Question?
Different Labor Visions:
The Change from Traditional Male
Labor to New Industrial Labor
Thomas Anschutz, Ironworkers – Noontime
Interpretation of Painting
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Impressions?
Traditional Labor Relations
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Related to Free Labor Ideology
Craft workers and skilled trades –
apprenticeships and training = dignity of work
Independence vs. “wage slavery”
Manly brotherhood and fraternity
Exclusivity = training (no women or minorities)
Control over workplace and work pace/output
Bargaining power with owners, some became
owners themselves
Basis for trade unions
The Veteran in a New Field, 1865
Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910)
Oil on canvas
Traditional Labor Hierarchy
Under Threat
Artisanal/Farm
Household Economy
Big Business - Unskilled or
semi-skilled industrial work
Power =
Power =Taken The Time and Effort To
Achieve a Leadership Role.
Male breadwinner,
Owners/stockholders
/\
Farmer or skilled worker
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Dependents:
Apprentices
Women
Children
Managers
White Collar workers
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Men—women—immigrants
(Low pay, little power)
Different Steps and Workers in
Iron-making process
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Iron Charger - Placed the iron ore into the smelting
furnace
Iron Founder - Founds or casts iron
Iron Moulder - Made molds for casting iron
Iron Puddler - Made wrought iron using the puddling
process
Iron Roller - Worked a machine that rolled iron to form
and shape it
Iron Turner - Used a lathe to turn items from iron
Ironmaster - Foundry owner / manager
Ironsmith - Blacksmith
Laborers - unskilled workers who moved materials
Big Business = Threat to Labor
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Why would changes in manufacturing be
a threat to workers?
Carnegie and the Homestead Strike, 1892
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Broke power of trade unions
Replaced skilled workers with unskilled
Steel industry non-union until 1930s
Frederick W. Taylor
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Scientific management –
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What does Taylor think about Schmidt?
Homestead Strike, 1892:
Burning Barges
Westinghouse Corporation
Films, 1904
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Skilled Male Work & Skilled Furnace Work
Less-Skilled Work
Women’s Work 1 & Women’s Work 2
The Time-Clock
Major Issues in Films?
The New Working Class
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“New immigrants” from southern and eastern
Europe
Traditional gender divisions, but rising # of women in
industry
Black workers used for dirtiest lowest-paid jobs
In south, 19th c. textile industry often reserved for
white families
Child labor
All of these groups formerly excluded from
manufacturing, but could now take unskilled or semiskilled jobs – threat to male domain
?
Options Available for the Worker?
Responses: Unions and Politics
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Trade Unions (Sam Gompers & AFL)– protect
traditional crafts and trades (mostly white males),
power in workplace, force employers to bargain –
“More” of the pie
Knights of Labor -- organize all “producers”, create
new society with respect for producers, education
Ind. Workers of the World (IWW) – organize all
workers into One Big Union, fight as a class, unions
will run economy and society (syndicalism)
American Railway Union (Debs) – all rail workers in
one union (model for other industries too)
Socialist Party (Debs) – along with unions, fight for
political power to change system
Knights of Labor:
Beliefs & Goals
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Stop child labor
Proper share of the wealth
Arbitration, rather than strikes
Equal pay for equal work, women’s rights
Appeal to #s, larger pool of workers who could join organization
Dealing with reality of changing workforce
Getting govt. involved on the side of workers – banking, land issues
8-hour day
Shifting power to workers
Weekly pay
Right to organize a union
Knights of Labor:
Beliefs & Goals
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Value knowledge, rather than wealth
Government involvement on the side of labor
Equal pay for equal work
Abolish child labor
8-hour day
Shifting power to workers
National money paid to workers
Reform justice system
Fair land distribution
Reform banking
Organize all workers, inclusive
Major Labor Conflicts and
Issues, 1877-1892
1877 Great Railroad Strike
Railworkers fought cuts in wages
during Panic of 1873
Shut down rail lines across country
After attacked, burned rail facilities in
Pittsburgh
Federal troops broke strike
Photos of Pittsburgh
destruction
•Eight-hour Movement – the fight for the eight-hour day
•Protests, strikes, and political action
•Led to Haymarket Massacre in 1886
Lead-up to Haymarket
Massacre:
A call for revenge against police
after strikers were shot at
McCormick Reaper Works
in Chicago on May 3rd, 1886
Haymarket Square,
May 4th, 1886:
•Anarchists protested slaying of strikers
•Police intervened and bomb was thrown, killing police
•Eight anarchist leaders arrested, unfair trial, four executed
•Effects: national hysteria; crackdown on anarchists, radicals, and unions; May
Day became international day of pro-worker and radical protest
Aftermath of Haymarket
Immigrants = Anarchists:
Go back to Europe (choice on left) or Receive American Justice (on right)
Lasting Effects of Haymarket
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Crackdown on unions, radicals, anarchists
Employers, police, and govt. united
Trade union idea won greatest support = the
most conservative option, protecting skilled
male white workers, left the rest out
Red Scare, red-baiting – can defeat most
protest movements by calling them anarchist
or communist
Connections –
Continuing Issues
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Industrialization = new international markets,
international engagement, imperialism
Industrialism
mass production/mass
consumption economy (Fordism)
Rising standard of living, but inequality, bad
working conditions, pollution
Immigration issues
Labor Question remained important
Boom and bust economy
depressions