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4.
The Gilded Age
i. Purpose: Students will be learn about the huge industrial boom of the late 19 th
century, the mass accumulation of wealth by certain individuals that followed,
and the concentration of power by the great corporations. Special emphasis will
be placed on the Gospel of Wealth preached by those who advanced and used by
the same people as a justification for the ever-increasing divide between rich and
poor that occurred during this time period. In the lecture and with the aid of the
primary documents, attention will also be paid to the growing public mistrust of
the power of the corporations and the subsequent efforts of the Supreme Court
to check that power.
ii. Background Websites:
1.
2.
3.
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/subtitles.cfm?titleID=34
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/subtitles.cfm?titleID=60
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/subtitles.cfm?titleID=29
iii. Key terms:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
h.
i.
j.
Andrew Carnegie
John D. Rockefeller
The “Trusts”
Corporations and the 14th Amendment
J. P. Morgan
Social Darwinism
The Gospel of Wealth
Wabash, St. Louis, and Pacific Railway Co. v. Illinois (1886)
The Free Silver Issue
The Gilded Age
iv. Documents on Antitrust legislation. Look them up on the search engine at
http://www.oyez.org/oyez/frontpage
1.
2.
3.
4.
Munn vs. Illinois (1877)
Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railway Co. v. Illinois (1886)
Interstate Commerce Commission Act (1887)
Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)
v. Assignment:
Using the textbook, your lecture notes (this includes notes from other units), and
the primary documents at your disposal, write about 2 pages (standard fonts,
margins, and format) on the Supreme Court, how and why it was founded, and
the role the Court played in the late 19th century. Make sure you include an
analysis of the 4 landmark cases listed above and related them to the history of
the Court. You may use any resource available to you on this assignment.
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The Gilded Age (1877-1895)
I.
Industrial Action!
“The rise of industrialism in the United States and the interplay of business and politics strike the key
themes in the Gilded Age, the period from the 1870s to the 1890s. Bound closer by a network of railroads
and telegraphs, with the fate of small towns linked as never before to the fortunes of big cities, America in
the late 19th century became united in fact as well as in name. Industrial development transformed the lives
of all Americans, from factory workers to farmers” (James L. Roark, The American Promise, 690).
a. Big Business: The Railroads
“The rise of the railroad played the key role in the transformation of the American economy in the postCivil War period. The railroads created a national market that enabled businesses to expand from a local
to a nationwide scale. Needing more and better rails to carry freight, the railroad radically changed the
iron industry by speeding the transition from iron to steel. Railroads also made possible innovations in
meatpacking and food processing. The railroad had what economists call a multiplier effect, speeding the
pace of growth in many segments of the economy” (James L. Roark, The American Promise, 691).
b. The Steel Man: Andrew Carnegie
“Andrew Carnegie dominated the steel industry for three decades, building Carnegie Steel into an
industrial giant, the largest steel producer in the world” (James L. Roark, The American Promise, 696).
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c. “Mass Marketing”
“By the 1880s, the railroads made possible a national mass market for consumer goods. Manufacturers
integrated methods of mass production with those of mass distribution to achieve the first big consumer
business” (James L. Roark, The American Promise, 697).
d. Trust in Me: John D. Rockefeller
“John D. Rockefeller served as a lightning rod for the nation’s fear of industrial consolidation. Americans
vilified him because they feared the vast power of the Standard Oil trust” (James L. Roark, The American
Promise, 699).
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e. Edison and Bell
“Although Americans frequently disliked industrial giants like Rockefeller, they admired inventors. At the
turn of the century, Thomas Alva Edison and Alexander Graham Bell became folk heroes. But no matter
how dramatic the inventors or the inventions themselves were, the new electric and telephone industries
they pioneered soon eclipsed their inventors and fell under the control of the bankers and the
industrialists” (James L. Roark, The American Promise, 702).
II.
The Free Market?
“Even as industrial giants like Rockefeller and Carnegie built their empires, their days were numbered.
Business increasingly developed into the anonymous corporate world of the twentieth century as the
corporation became the dominant form of business organization and as corporate mergers restructured
American industry, replacing the great business titans with faceless boards of directors” (James L. Roark,
The American Promise, 706).
a. Finance Capitalist Extraordinaire: J. P. Morgan
“The great business leaders of the era loathed competition and sought wherever possible to substitute
consolidation and central control. None had a greater passion for order, predictability, and profit than J.
P. Morgan, the banker who became the architect of business consolidation” (James L. Roark, The
American Promise, 706).
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b. Darwinism and Society
“In an age when men like Rockefeller and Carnegie amassed hundreds of millions of dollars while the
average worker earned $500 a year, social Darwinism justified economic inequality” (James L. Roark, The
American Promise, 709).
c. The Supreme Court gets Involved…
“Business found a strong ally in the U.S. Supreme Court. During the 1880s and 1890s, the Court
increasingly reinterpreted the Constitution to protect business from taxation, regulation, labor
organization, and antitrust legislation” (James L. Roark, The American Promise, 710).
III.
Politics and Economics
“By the 1880s, important economic issues such as the protective tariff, the currency, and federal regulation
of the trusts and the railroads moved to the forefront. The presidents, for their part, were competent though
not charismatic men who worked to bring the nation together after decades of sectional strife and to create
one nation with a unified political life” (James L. Roark, The American Promise, 711).
a. Politics and Culture
“Until the 1890s, few Americans seemed to think the president or the national government had any role in
addressing the problems accompanying the industrial transformation of the nation….The real action took
place elsewhere—in party politics on the local and state levels and in the centers of business and industry”
(James L. Roark, The American Promise, 711).
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b. Tariffs and Protectionism
“The concept of a protective tariff to raise the price of imported goods and stimulate American industry
dated back to Alexander Hamilton in the founding days of the Republic.
c. Big Business and the Federal Government
“American voters may have divided on the tariff, but increasingly they agreed on the need for federal
regulation of the railroads and federal legislation against the trusts” (James L. Roark, The American
Promise, 718).
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d. Free Silver?
“Although the trusts stirred up a good deal of public outrage, the most potent political issue to emerge in
the 1880s had to do with the currency” (James L. Roark, The American Promise, 719).
IV.
The Gilded Age
“Mark Twain, humorist, author, and one of the shrewdest critics of his era, called the period following
Reconstruction the ‘Gilded Age.’ He chose the title to ridicule the ugliness, crass materialism, and sham of
a time when glitter on the outside masked what lay beneath” (James L. Roark, The American Promise,
720).