GILDED AGE
POLITICS AND CULTURE
MARK TWAIN
SECOND HALF OF 19TH CENTURY
‘AGE OF INVENTION’
• Alexander Graham
Bell invented
telephone, soon
Americans could
communicate both
locally and at a
long distance
RAILROAD
SLEEPING CAR
EDISON
• Thomas Alva Edison
pioneered the use
of electricity as an
energy source
TYPEWRITER
ZIPPER
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
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.
ANDREW CARNEGIE
MASS MARKETING, ADVERTISING, AND
CONSUMER CULTURE
• Railroad allowed for a national market so largescale 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
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.
CARNEGIE’S GOSPEL OF WEALTH
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
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
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
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
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)
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)
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.