The Gilded Age
Week 12
Roughly 1870-1900
• Modernity, opulence, poverty, corruption
• Industrialization, immigration, urbanization (by 1890
1/3 of all Americans lived in big cities
• 1869, transcontinental railroad cuts time to head
West from NYC to SF from 6 months to 6 days;
railroads soon link cities in every state
• Rise of trusts and corporations
• Rise of National Labour organizations
• Urban poor affected by new economies 1873 and
1893 panics
• Populists, Anarchists and Socialists
The Business of America
• After the Civil War the average business changes from
small, family run to the corporation
• Inventions and technology: Centennial Exhibition in 1876
showcases steam engines, telephone (patented AG Bell)
• Opening of Menlo Park lab/ 1879 markets incandescent
lamp which burns 13 hrs. 1882 service covers NY financial
district
• George Selden designs first internal combustion gasoline
powered auto but never built. Ford challenges his patent
in 1895. Mass production in 1902 (Ransom Olds)
• Assembly line developed in meat packing industry 1860s
• Cigaret marchine (1881) makes 7000 per hour whereas
one skilled worker made 3000 in a day
Post Civil War Industrialization,
Consolidation, Commodification
• New meaning of “union”—Transcontinental
railroad completed 1869; rise of railroad
industry; resistance to corporate oppression
through labor mov’t
• Mail-order houses Montgomery Ward and
Sears, Roebuck; chain stores A &P,
Woolworth’s; spread of urban to country
• Department stores like Marshall Field (Chi);
Filene’s (Boston)
• Advertising begins Francis W. Ayer (1869); 1860
revenue 8 million rises to $102 million in
revenue by 1900
Rise of Mass Consumer Culture
1872
Sears, Roebuck catalogue, 1902
Advertising Mass Culture
• Right: early Coca Cola ad ca
1886
• 1838-1900: First
Department Stores
Revolutionize Retail
Marketing
• 1872: Montgomery Ward
Establishes Mail-Order
Business
• 1893: Columbian Exposition
• 1894: Kellogg's Corn Flakes
Launch the Dry Cereal
Industry.
Impact
• Capital goods rise more than 7% year after Civil
War
• 1865 output of goods est 2 million; 1900 13
million; US moves from 4th to 1st in productivity.
US industry manf 1/3 world’s goods
• Markets become more volatile as competition
disappears– panics of 1873 and 1893 kill off
smaller competitors
• Standard Oil controls 90% of nation’s oil refining
in 1880; made a Trust in 1882
The Robber Barons
“God Gave Me My Money!”
Rockefeller and many of his peers
believed in strange combination of
American democracy and social
Darwinism to justify their rise
Railroad magnate Jay Gould took over
Erie Railroad by paying off NY
legislature to finance his business’
expansion
When newspapers covered his
manipulation of state election, he
bought the papers and paid off the
reporters with stock tips
1901 cartoon from Puck
Political cartoonists call for reform
Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)
Scottish immigrant, arrived in America
1848
Started as telegrapher before
developing investments in railroads, oil,
bonds, and Carnegie Steel
Sold company to JD Rockefeller in 1901
for 480 million (now 13.5 billion)
Philanthropist for rest of his life
1889 writes article, “Gospel of Wealth”
By 1889 US output of steel exceeds
Great Britain
His Steel helps make Easds bridge in St
Louis across Mississippi
Purchases Uk newspapers which
advocate abolition of monarchy
Anti-imperialist who offered Philippine
govt 20 million to buy their freedom
from US govt after Sp-Am War
Anti-monarchist, democrat, anti-imperialist,
Social Darwinist and believer that wealthy
must give their wealth to society–
philanthropy made life worthwhile
Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the
Leisure Class (1899)
• Economic life reflects tribal vestiges rather
than social and economic utility– barbarian
cultures of domination and exploitation
• Lords of the manor continue in modern life
and occupy themselves in useless occupations
of conspicuous consumption
• High Social Status derives from not having to
perform labour, not the other way around
• Trophy wives, sport, humanities education…
• Manners are everything because they define
the social landscape
• Palmer House, 1875
• Potter Palmer, resp.
for State St., Chicago
• Palmer House Hotel,
Chicago, 1875 (first one
burned down in
Chicago fire 13 days
after completion)–
cost 1.7. million dollars
Diamond Jim Brady and Lillian Russell, who could both eat enough for ten people at
Delmonico’s. Both belonged to an age where physical size was seen as a sign of success
International Exports
G.W. Vanderbilt’s Biltmore Estate, 188995
Cost $10 million 1895 currency
Immigration
• Between 1860 and
1890 10 million people
immigrated to USA
• 1870 census wage
workers 5mil with 3.5
in industry of the 13mil
employed overall
• By end of century 2/3
people worked for
wages
• Peak year 1882 with
1.2 million immigrants
Urban Poverty
• 1 in 4 babies died before the
age of 1
• NY’s lower East Side packed
700 people per acres into
tenement buildings
• 11 million of the US 12 mil
families earned less than
1200/year. Av was 380
• Tammany Hall political
organization helps NY Irish
immigrants through social
services, loans, and patronage
(even sets aside land for
Metropolitan Museum of Art)
New York City’s Lower East Side
Working in the Gilded Age
• 10-12 hour days; some workers locked in place
of employment
• It may have been gilded but there were 14
years of recession between 1866 and 1897–
outnumbering the good years
• 40% workers industrial workers lived below
poverty line (500 US dollars a year)
• Common laborers got 1.50 per day; highly
skilled laborers earned around 800
• Knights of Labor 1869 replaces NLU (1866)
only ever attracts 3% workers (110K by 1885):
worked for 8-hr day, abolition child labor,
grad income tax, worker-run co-ops
The Crisis of Labour
• 1876 Little Big Horn causes racial panic; focuses fears of
black South and working class tensions (Thompson Square
Riot,1874)
• Women working: in 1890s 600,000 saleswomen worked in
cities; by 1900 8.6 million women worked outside homes
• 300K Chinese workers emigrate 1850-1882
• Great Uprising of 1877 (spontaneous strikes against
railroads) calls for their deportation
• May Day, 1886: 80K march in support of 8-hr day
• AFL forms after Knights of L collapse; Gompers refuses to
include unskilled workers, African Americans and women
• Western Mining Federation Formed 1893; Pullman Strike
1894
• Founding of Socialist Party, 1898-1901
Haymarket Sq, Chicago, 1886
Bad press undercuts gains from major walkout where Packingtown workers win better hours
Anarchism
• Individualist anarchism has roots back to
Thoreau and Walden (Civil Disobedience,
1849)
• Anarcha-feminist writers oppose marriage as
legalized rape and slavery of women
(Voltairine de Cleyre)
• Anarcho-communism (Lucy Parsons and
Alarm)
• 8 anarchists arrested for Haymarket massacre
• Alexander Berkman’s attempted murder of
Frick in 1892
• Assassination of McKinley in 1901
Popular culture in the Gilded Age
• Germans immigrants create Tin Pan Alley and New York
music industry; promote Af-Am ragtime (1893)
• Blackface mistrelsy and vaudeville (1880s)
• Amusement parks like Coney Island (1895) and World’s
Fairs (Chi, 1893)
• Mass-produced dime novels (often about working girls,
penniless young men succeeding, or western outlaws)
• “women’s literature” dominates publishing industry
• Baseball (1845); first Nat’l League 1876
• Ethnic cultures and working-class amusements conflict
with increasing efforts to whiten and corporatize culture
Blackface
• Right: Coon song by black
song writer Ernest Hogan c
1890
• Early 19thC minstrel shows
focus on plantation life
• From 1890s focus is on
“olios,” which would
feature many popular songs
• Written by both black and
white songwriters
New Vaudeville Theatre, 1870
The New Empire