THE GILDED AGE
THE GILDED AGE
 The era from 1870 to 1890 is the only period in
American history commonly known by a
derogatory name – the Gilded Age, after a title of
an 1873 novel by mark Twain and Charles
Dudley Warren.
 “Gilded” means covered with a layer of gold, but
also suggests that the glittering surface covers a
core of little real value and is therefore
deceptive.
THE GILDED AGE
 Twain and Warner were
referring not only to the
remarkable expansion of the
economy in this period but also
to the corruption caused by
corporate dominance of
politics and to the oppressive
treatment of those left behind
in the scramble for wealth.
 “Get rich, dishonestly if we
can, honestly if we must.” was
the era’s slogan, according to
The Gilded Age.
POLITICS IN THE GILDED AGE
POLITICS IN THE GILDED AGE
 To modern eyes, the
nature of the American
political system in the late
19th century appears in
many ways paradoxical.
 The two political parties
enjoyed strength and
stability during those
years that neither was
ever to know again.
 Yet the federal govt was
doing relatively little of
importance.
 Most Americans engaged
in political activity less
because of their interest
in national issues than
because of broad
regional, ethnic, or
religious sentiments.
 Party loyalty had less to
do with positions on
public policy than the way
Americans defined
themselves culturally.
THE PARTY SYSTEM
 The most striking feature
of the late 19th century
party system was its
remarkable stability.
 From 1877 until the late
1890s, the electorate was
divided almost precisely
evenly between the
Republicans and
Democrats.
 16 states were solidly and
consistently Republican.
 14 states (most of them in
the South) were solidly
and consistently
Democrat.
 Only 5 states were
usually in doubt, and it
was there that national
elections were commonly
decided, often on the
basis of voter turnout.
THE PARTY SYSTEM
 The Republican Party captured
the presidency in all but two of
the elections in the era, but the
party was not really as
dominant as that suggests.
 In the five presidential
elections beginning in 1876,
the average popular-vote
margin separating the
Democratic and Republican
candidates was 1.5%.
THE PARTY SYSTEM
 The congressional balance was similarly stable.
 Between 1875 and 1895, the Republicans
generally controlled the Senate and the
Democrats controlled the House of
Representatives.
 In any given election, the number of seats that
shifted from one party to the other was very
small.
THE PARTY SYSTEM
 As striking as the balance
between parties was the
intensity of public loyalty to
them.
 Voter turnout in presidential
elections between 1860 and
1900 averaged over 78% of all
eligible voters.
 Even in non-presidential years,
from 60 to 80% of voters
turned out for congressional
and local candidates.
THE PARTY SYSTEM
 Large groups of
potential voters were
disenfranchised
during the era:
Women in most states
Almost all blacks and
many poor whites in the
South.
 But for all adult white
males outside the
South, there were few
franchise restrictions.
 The remarkable
turnout represented a
genuinely massbased politics.
THE PARTY SYSTEM
 Party politics in the
Gilded Age occupied a
central position in
American culture.
 Political campaigns were
often the most important
public events in the lives
of communities.
 Political organizations
served important social
and cultural functions.
THE PARTY SYSTEM
 Political identification was
almost as important to
most individuals as
identification with a
church or ethnic group.
 Partisanship was an
intense, emotional force,
widely admired and often
identified with patriotism.
THE PARTY SYSTEM
 WHAT EXPLAINS THIS REMARKABLE
LOYALTY TO THE TWO POLITICAL PARTIES?
It was not that the parties took distinct positions on
important public issues.
Both were solidly committed to the growth of the
corporate industrial economy.
Both were hostile to all forms of economic and social
radicalism.
Both were committed (at least until the 1890s) to a
“sound currency” and to the existing structure of the
financial system.
THE PARTY SYSTEM
 What determined party
loyalties was less
concrete issues than
other factors.
 REGION was perhaps
the most important.
 To white Southerners,
loyalty to the Democratic
Party was a matter of
unquestioned faith.
 For white Southerners,
the Democratic Party was
the vehicle by which they
had triumphed over
Reconstruction.
 For them, the Democratic
Party was the vehicle for
the preservation of white
supremacy.
THE PARTY SYSTEM
 To many old-stock
 For them, the party of
northerners, white
Lincoln had preserved
and black, Republican
the Union.
loyalties were equally  For them, the
intense for opposite
Republican Party was
reasons.
a bulwark against
 The party of Lincoln
slavery and treason.
had freed the slaves.
THE PARTY SYSTEM
 RELIGIOUS AND
ETHNIC DIFFERENCES
also shaped party
loyalties.
 The Dem. Party attracted
most Catholic voters,
most recent immigrants,
and most of the poorer
workers.
 These three groups often
overlapped.
THE PARTY SYSTEM
 The Republican Party
appealed to northern
Protestants and
citizens of old stock.
THE PARTY SYSTEM
 Among the few
substantive issues on
which the parties took
clearly different stands
were matters concerning
immigrants.
 Republicans tended to be
more nativist and to
support measures
restricting immigration.
 They also tended to favor
temperance legislation.
 Catholics and immigrants
viewed such proposals as
an assault on their culture
and lifestyle and opposed
them.
 The Democrats followed
their lead.
THE PARTY SYSTEM
 For many Americans party identification was
usually more a reflection of vague cultural
inclinations than a calculation of economic
interest.
 Individuals might affiliate with a party because
their parents had done so, or because it was the
party of their region, church, or their ethnic
group.
 Most clung to their party loyalties with
persistence and passion.
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
 One reason the two
parties managed to
avoid substantive
issues was that the
federal government
(and for the most part
state and local govts
as well) did relatively
little.
 The govt in
Washington was
responsible for
Delivering the mails
Maintaining a national
military
Conducting foreign
policy
Collecting taxes and
tariffs.
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
The federal government had few other
responsibilities.
And it had few institutions with which to
engage in additional responsibilities even
if it chose to do so.
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
 The USA in the Gilded
Age was a society without
a modern, national state.
 The most powerful
national institutions were:
The two political parties
The federal courts
 In a very real sense the
American govt of the era
was a state of courts and
political parties.
 The national leaders of
both parties were
primarily concerned with
winning elections and
controlling patronage –
not policy.
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
 Both parties were dominated
by powerful bosses and
machines chiefly concerned
with controlling and dispensing
jobs.
 The Democrats relied on big
city organizations such as
Boss Tweed’s Tammany Hall in
NYC.
 These machines helped them
to mobilize the voting power of
immigrants.
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
 The Republicans
tended to depend on
strong statewide
organizations such as
those of Senator
Roscoe Conkling in
New York.
THE GILDED AGE PRESIDENTS
THE GILDED AGE PRESIDENTS
 The power of the party bosses
had an significant effect on the
power of the presidency.
 The office had great symbolic
importance, but its occupants
were unable to do very much
except distribute government
appointments.
 A new president had to make
almost 100,000 appointments
– most of them in the post
office, the only large
government agency at the
time.
 Even in making appointments,
the president had very little
latitude, since they had to
avoid offending the various
factions within their own
parties.
 The administrations of Hayes,
Garfield, and Arthur reflected
the political stalemate and
patronage problems of the
Gilded Age.
 All in all, it was an age of
forgettable presidents.
THE PRESIDENCY OF RUTHERFORD
B. HAYES
 The issue of patronage played
a big role during the Hayes
presidency.
 Hayes was the winner of the
disputed Election of 1876.
 He was harried by angry
Democrats – who called him
“His Fraudulency” – from the
beginning of his term to the
moment he left.
 He was crippled as well by his
own party – the Republicans.
THE PRESIDENCY OF RUTHERFORD
B. HAYES
 By the end of his term –
two groups – the
Stalwarts led by Roscoe
Conkling of NY and the
Half-Breeds, led by
James G. Blaine of ME. –
were competing for
control of the Republican
Party and threatening to
split it.
 The dispute between
these two groups was
characteristic of the
political battles of the era.
THE PRESIDENCY OF RUTHERFORD
B. HAYES
 The dispute had virtually
no substantive
foundation.
 Rhetorically, the Stalwarts
favored traditional,
professional machine
politics.
 The Half-Breeds favored
reform.
 Neither group was much
interested in political
change.
 Each wanted a larger
share of the patronage
pie.
 Hayes tried to satisfy both
and ended up satisfying
neither.
THE PRESIDENCY OF RUTHERFORD
B. HAYES
 The battle over patronage
overshadowed all else
during Hayes’ unhappy
presidency.
 His one important
substantive initiative – an
effort to create a civil
service system –
attracted no support from
either party.
 His early announcement
not to seek re-election
only weakened him
further.
THE PRESIDENCY OF RUTHERFORD
B. HAYES
 Hayes had no power
in Congress.
 The Dems. Controlled
the HoR throughout
his presidency, and
the Senate during the
last two years of his
term.
 Senate Republicans,
led by Conkling,
opposed his efforts to
defy the machines in
making appointments.
 Hayes’s presidency
was a study in
frustration.
THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES
GARFIELD
 The Republicans retained
the presidency in 1880 in
part because they
managed to agree on a
ticket that made it
possible for the two
factions to briefly paperover their differences.
 The nominated James A.
Garfield – a Half-Breed
 His VP running mate was
Chester A. Arthur - a
Stalwart.
THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES A.
GARFIELD
 Garfield won a
decisive electoral
victory.
 However his popular
vote margin was very
thin.
 The Republicans also
captured both houses
of Congress.
THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES A.
GARFIELD
 Garfield soon found himself in
an ugly public quarrel with
Conkling.
 But before it could be resolved,
Garfield was victimized by the
spoils system in a more terrible
sense.
 7/2/1881: Only four months
after his inauguration, Garfield
was shot twice was standing in
the DC railroad station by an
apparently deranged gunman
and unsuccessful office
seeker.
 Garfield lingered for three
months then died – a victim as
much of bungled medical
treatment as of the wounds
themselves.
THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES A.
GARFIELD
THE PRESIDENCY OF CHESTER A.
ARTHUR
 Chester A. Arthur
succeeded Garfield.
 Arthur had spent a
political lifetime as a
devoted, skilled, and
open spoilsman and a
close ally of Conkling.
 But as president, he tried
to follow an independent
course and even to
promote reform.
THE PRESIDENCY OF CHESTER A.
ARTHUR
 The terrible
circumstances which
brought him to the
presidency had
undoubtedly shaped his
behavior.
 He realized that Garfield’s
assassination had to
some degree discredited
the traditional spoils
system.
 The “new” Arthur
dismayed the party
bosses.
 He kept most of Garfield’s
appointees in office.
 He also supported civil
service reform, aware
that the legislation was
likely to pass whether he
supported it or not.
THE PRESIDENCY OF CHESTER A.
ARTHUR
 1883: Congress passed
the Pendleton Act.
 The nation’s first national
civil service measure.
 It identified a limited
number of federal jobs to
be filled by competitive
written exams rather than
by patronage.
 Relatively few offices fell
under civil service at first.
 But its reach extended
steadily so that by the
mid-twentieth century
most federal employees
were civil servants.
THE ELECTION OF 1884: THE RETURN
OF THE DEMOCRATS
THE ELECTION OF 1884: THE RETURN
OF THE DEMOCRATS
The unsavory election of 1884 was typical
of national political contests in the late 19th
century in its emphasis on personalities
than policies.
The Republican Party repudiated Arthur –
who was in any case already suffering
from an illness that would kill him two
years later.
THE ELECTION OF 1884: THE RETURN
OF THE DEMOCRATS
 The Republicans instead
chose their most popular
and controversial figure,
James G. Blaine of ME.
 To his adoring supporters
he was known as the
“plumed knight.”
 To thousands of
Americans, he was a
symbol of seamy party
politics.
THE ELECTION OF 1884: THE RETURN
OF THE DEMOCRATS
 An independent
reform faction, known
derisively by their
critics as the
“mugwumps,”
announced they
would bolt the party
and support an
honest Democrat.
THE ELECTION OF 1884: THE RETURN
OF THE DEMOCRATS
 Raising to the bait, the
Democrats nominated
Grover Cleveland, the
“reform” governor of NY.
 He differed from Blaine
on no substantive issues
but had acquired a
reputation as an enemy
of corruption.
THE ELECTION OF 1884: THE RETURN
OF THE DEMOCRATS
 The campaign of 1884
was filled with personal
invective.
 What may have decided
the election was the last
minute introduction of a
religious controversy.
 Shortly before the
election, a delegation of
Protestants ministers
called on Blaine.
 Their spokesman, Dr.
Samuel Burchard,
referred to the Democrats
as the party of “rum,
Romanism, and
rebellion.”
 Blaine was slow to
repudiate Burchard’s
indiscretion.
THE ELECTION OF 1884: THE RETURN
OF THE DEMOCRATS
 Democrats quickly spread the news that Blaine
had tolerated a slander on the Catholic church.
 Cleveland’s narrow victory may well have been
the result of a heavy Catholic vote for Democrats
in NY.
 Cleveland won 219 electoral votes to Blaine’s
182; his popular vote margin was only 23,000
votes.
THE PRESIDENCY OF GROVER
CLEVELAND
 Cleveland was the
embodiment of an era in which
few Americans believed the
federal govt could, should, or
do very much.
 Cleveland believed in frugal
and limited government in the
Jeffersonian tradition.
 No one should forget, he
explained, that “though the
people support the
Government, the Government
should not support the people.”
THE PRESIDENCY OF GROVER
CLEVELAND
 Cleveland did grapple with one
major economic issue:
protective tariffs.
 He doubted the wisdom of
protective tariffs.
 He concluded that the existing
high rates were responsible for
the annual surplus in federal
revenues, which was tempting
Congress to pass the
“reckless” and “extravagant”
legislation he frequently
vetoed.
 12/1887: He asked Congress
to reduce the tariff rates.
 Democrats in the HoR
approved a tariff reduction.
 But Senate Republicans
defiantly passed a bill of their
own actually raising the rates.
 The resulting deadlock made
the tariff an issue in the
election of 1888.
THE ELECTION OF 1888
THE ELECTION OF 1888
 The Democrats
renominated Cleveland
and supported tariff
reductions.
 The Republicans settled
on Benjamin Harrison of
ID.
 Harrison was obscure but
respectable and the
grandson of President
William Henry Harrison.
 The campaign was the
first since the Civil War to
involve a clear questions
of economic difference
between the parties.
 It was also on of the most
corrupt and closet
elections in American
history.
THE ELECTION OF 1888
Harrison won an electoral majority of 233
to 168.
But Cleveland won the popular vote by
100,000 votes – making this one of only
three presidential elections in American
history (1876 and 2000) in which the loser
in the popular vote was the victor in the
electoral vote.
THE PRESIDENCY OF BENJAMIN
HARRISON
 Harrison’s record as
president was little more
substantial than that of
his grandfather, who died
a month after taking
office.
 One reason for his failure
was the intellectual
drabness of the members
of his Admin – beginning
with the president himself
and extending through his
cabinet.
THE PRESIDENCY OF BENJAMIN
HARRISON
 Another reason for failure was
Harrison’s unwillingness to
make any effort to influence
Congress.
 And yet during his dreary term,
public opinion was beginning
to force the govt to confront
some of the pressing social
and economic issues of the
day.
 Most notably, perhaps,
sentiment was rising in favor of
legislation to curb the power of
trusts.
 Mid-1880s: 15 western and
southern states had adopted
laws prohibiting combinations
that restrained competition.
 But corporations found it easy
to escape limitations by
incorporating in states like NJ
and DL that offered them
special privileges.
THE PRESIDENCY OF BENJAMIN
HARRISON
 If antitrust legislation was
to be effective, it would
have to come from the
federal govt.
 1890: Congress passed
the Sherman Antitrust
Act, almost without
dissent.
 The Act prohibited any
“contract, combination, in
the form of trust or
otherwise, or conspiracy
in restraint in trade or
commerce.”
 Most members of
Congress saw the Act as
largely symbolic to help
deflect public criticism,
not likely to have any real
effect on corporate
power.
THE PRESIDENCY OF BENJAMIN
HARRISON
 For over a decade after its passage, the
Sherman Act had virtually no impact.
 1901: The Justice Department had instituted
only 14 suits under the law against business
combinations and had obtained few convictions.
 It used the law much more frequently against
labor union.
THE PRESIDENCY OF BENJAMIN
HARRISON
The courts weakened the act considerably.
1895: United States v. E.C. Knight Co.:
The govt. charged that a sugar trust controlled
98% of refined sugar mfg.
The Supreme Court rejected the govt’s case.
It ruled that the sugar trust was engaged in mfg,
not in interstate commerce.
Thus the Court ruled that the Act applied to
commerce not to mfg.
THE PRESIDENCY OF BENJAMIN
HARRISON
 The Republicans were
more interested in the
issue, they believed had
won them the Election of
1888: the tariff.
 Rep. William McKinley
(OH) and Nelson Aldrich
(RI) drafted the highest
protective measure ever
proposed in Congress.
THE PRESIDENCY OF BENJAMIN
HARRSION
 10/1890: The McKinley
Tariff became law.
 It raised the tax on
foreign imports over 48%.
 Politically, it hurt the
Republican Party.
 They misinterpreted
public sentiment.
 The party suffered a
stunning reversal in the
1890 congressional
election.
 Their majority in the
Senate was slashed to 8.
 In the HoR, they retained
only 88 of the 323 seats.
THE ELECTION OF 1892
THE ELECTION OF 1892
 The Republicans were unable to recover from
the political fallout over the McKinley Tariff.
 Benjamin Harrison once again supported
protection, and Grover Cleveland, renominated
by the Democrats, once again supported it.
 Only a new third party, the People’s Party, which
James B. Weaver as its candidate, advocated
any serious economic reform.
THE ELECTION OF 1892
RESULTS:
Cleveland: 277 electoral votes
Harrison: 145 electoral votes
Weaver: 22 electoral votes
Cleveland won the popular vote by 380,000
votes.
For the first time since 1878, the Democrats
won a majority of both houses of Congress.
CLEVELAND’S SECOND TERM
 The policies of
Cleveland’s second
term were much like
the first term:
Devoted to limited govt
Hostile to active state
measures to deal with
social or economic
problems.
CLEVELAND’S SECOND TERM
 But this time, a major
economic crisis (the
Panic of 1893)
created popular
demands for a more
active government.
 For the most part,
Cleveland resisted
those pressures.
 Again, he supported a
tariff reduction, which
the HoR approved but
the Senate rejected.
 Cleveland denounced
the result but allowed
it to become law as
the Wilson-Gorman
Tariff.
CLEVELAND’S SECOND TERM
 The bill also included a
2% income tax on
incomes of over $4,000.
 But the Supreme Court
declared it
unconstitutional.
 Only after approval of the
Sixteenth Amendment in
1913 was the federal govt
able to tax incomes.
 Pressure was also
growing for regulation of
the railroads.
 The Courts limited the
powers of the states to
regulate commerce even
within their own
boundaries.
 Railroad regulation had to
come from the federal
government.
CLEVELAND’S SECOND TERM
188&: Congress responded with the
Interstate Commerce Act:
It banned discrimination in rates between long
and short hauls.
Required railroads to publish their rate
schedules and file them with the govt.
Declared that all interstate rail rates must be
“reasonable and just” – although the bill did not
define what this meant.
CLEVELAND’S SECOND TERM
 The Act established the Interstate Commerce
Commission (ICC):
A five-person agency
Purpose: to administer the Interstate Commerce Act
But it had to rely on the courts to enforce its rulings
The Act was haphazardly enforced and narrowly
interpreted by the courts – thus rendering the Act and
ICC useless.
THE GILDED AGE
 The controversies over
the tariff, the trusts, and
the railroads were signs
that dramatic changes in
the American economy
were creating problems
that much of the public
considered too important
and dangerous to ignore.
 But the govt’s response
to that agitation reflected
the continuing weakness
of the American state.
 The govt lacked
institutions adequate to
perform any significant
role in American
economic life.
 And not enough
Americans had yet
embraced a political
ideology that would justify
any major expansion of
govt responsibilities.
THE GILDED AGE
 The effort to create
such institutions and
to promote such an
ideology would
occupy much of
American public life in
the coming decades.
 Among the first signs
of that effort was a
dramatic dissident
movement that
shattered the political
equilibrium the nation
had experienced for
the previous twenty
years.