CAMPAIGN FINANCE
“The Election of 1896”
Sample Lecture of “THE GILDED AGE”
The Gilded Age refers to the historical period between the Civil War and
Progressive era---approximately 1865 to 1900 --- when the American nation prospered in
an uneven process that shifted the economy from agriculture to urban-based industries. It
was an epoch where a few businessmen and politicians became captains of industry at the
expense of the vast majority of working-class citizens. Mark Twain and Charles Dudley
Warner first used the term in their 1873 novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. Later,
historians acquired the moniker to symbolically characterize the era’s economy as a thin
layer of speculative wealth (Gild) that covered up a deteriorating infrastructure laden with
poverty and human suffering (the base medal covered by the gild). Despite this negative
image, the era provides a simple lesson of how national periods of transition with
unbridled speculative prosperity create a disproportionate distribution of wealth that in
turn results in philanthropy and social, political, and economic reform. More
importantly, Gilded Age politicians, business people, and working-class citizens planted
the seeds for the twentieth century and what Henry Luce, Time Life Editor, in the 1950s
labeled the American Century.
Many Americans of the time period understood the greed of the era. After all,
that’s why Twain and Warner, responding to a dare from their wives, wrote The Gilded
Age. They satirized the American political and economic landscape as being dominated
by all-pervading greed and insidious corruption. Although, this caricature is somewhat
overstated if one remembers that this was a transition period for the American economy.
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“Gilded Age” Sample Lecture
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Nonetheless, many history books describe the period as being dominated by selfindulgent Robber Barons (men like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller) who built
monopolistic empires (U.S. Steel and Standard Oil) thorough unbridled capitalist
mechanisms like vertical and horizontal integration, holding companies, and trusts.
Politicians acted with the same greed as their business counterparts. With no regulations
on politicians or elections local political leaders became “bosses” and laid the
groundwork for the party machines of the 1920s and 1930s. These new bosses quickly
learned how to manipulate exploding immigrant populations and the working class for
their own wealth and power. Historian Alfred Steinberg, in the introduction to his book
The Bosses, describes this climb to absolute local power as a process whereby; “some
they beat; some they bought; all they swindled.”
The new industrialists crisscrossed the nation with railroads and factories while
creating employment opportunities for almost 12 million immigrants. These job seekers
flooded unprepared cities like New York, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco and
overwhelmed public services --- police, fire, water, trash, sewer, and health ---- into
subhuman conditions. Deepening the problem were unresponsive local, state, and federal
governments with Laissez-faire policies that promoted unregulated business growth. At
the same time, many wealthy citizens saw no need to publicly reform urban poverty and
unhealthy conditions because they thought that rugged individualism, Social Darwinism,
and the private philanthropy of Christian Capitalism would resolve urban problems.
Also adding to the burgeoning cities were migrants from a dwindling agricultural
service sector. As America transformed from a rural agricultural economy (52 percent of
the workforce worked on farms in 1870) to an industrial economy (27 percent worked on
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“Gilded Age” Sample Lecture
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farms in 1920) the nation transformed to large agribusiness farms (wheat, cattle, corn,
and cotton) that utilized new science and technology along with large tracks of cheap
western lands tied to railroads and urban centers. At first all farms successfully stepped
up production for growing urban populations. In fact they were so successful that they
overproduced and lowered farms prices to a point where many could not afford to farm.
This then forced farmers to act more like corporations and vertically and horizontally
integrate and market their products on a larger scale of operations. Worst hit were
southern farmers who never recuperated after depressions in the middle of each of the
Gilded Age decades after the Civil War. In a last ditch effort to change the movement
from family-farm to agribusiness small farmers formed the Populist Party to suppress
monopolistic railroads and other big businesses (railroad laws and anti-trust acts),
democratize politics (initiative, referendum, direct election of senators), and protect small
farms. While never totally successful for farmers the Populist movement laid the
groundwork for the turn of the century Progressive Party.
Despite these grim growth figures the nation also experienced a new rapidly
expanding middle-class and quest for highbrow culture in large urban centers. Shop
keepers, middle level and lower level business management positions and skilled labors
earned higher wages than ever and consumed vast amounts of industrial goods and
services. This is the era that gives birth to the department stores and catalog sales of
Montgomery Ward, J.C. Penney, and Sears Roebuck. This new democratization of
culture expanded as magazine and book publication grew and improved transportation
allowed Americans to travel to museums, libraries, parks and expositions. Wealthy
philanthropists built museums, concert halls, art galleries, and parks while citizens
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enjoyed the writing of Mark Twain and Stephen Crane, and the art of Mary Cassatt,
Winslow Homer, and Thomas Eakins. The era also produced great strides in public health
services, development of modern police and fire departments, public transportation
systems, land-grant universities, expanded education opportunities, and new labor laws.
During the Gilded Age America seemingly overnight transformed itself into a
modern industrial urban-based nation without public or private planning and regulation.
The national economy provided growth and wealth for a few wealthy businesspersons
and politicians, and opened the way for the twentieth century middle-class consumer. All
of this at the expense of marginal groups --- recently immigrated ethnic groups, AfricanAmericans, women, and indigenous peoples. From the era grew a national concern for
environmental, regional, resource, and city planning and the need for social reform to
insure access for more Americans to goods and services.
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“Gilded Age” Sample Lecture
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