“All the Market Will Bear”
Monopolies, Wobblies & War
Monopoly™ – A Basic Glossary
Robber Barons
 Graft
 Kickbacks
 Trusts
 Union-busting
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• Strikebreaking
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Tammany Hall
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• Boss Tweed
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Bull Moose
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Socialism
Organizing
Molly Maguires
Wobblies
Communism
Anarchism
Populism
Jim Crow
Tenements
1865-1900: Industrial Expansion
& National Development
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“Loan from Bill Gates
saves US government
from bankruptcy” (?)
Opening of West draws
“men of unlimited capital”
Railroads, land, mining,
oil, steel, armaments
Effect of $$$ on politics
Dodging taxes with
“trusts”
“tramps & millionaires”
Price-Fixing: Business as Usual?
Consolidation of railroads under banker J.P.
Morgan (1837-1913)
 . . . of steelmaking under Scotch immigrant
Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)
 . . . of oil extraction & refining under John D.
Rockefeller (1839-1937) (“Esso”)
 Charged “all market would bear”
 Hated & feared by “ordinary” Americans
 Compare to __________ in 2002
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Labor Unions
Legitimate Association or Communist Conspiracies?
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Worker safety unknown – child labor common
Immigration kept wages low, race tension high
Strikes broken by hired guards, “scabs,” and
sometimes state militias & U.S. Army
 “national security” (& 14th Amendment?)
 Morgan, Carnegie & Co.’s friends in high places
 Owners played on fears of Bolshevism – called labor
organizing communistic & “Un-American”
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Some labor organizations genuinely radical,
violent, e.g. Molly Maguires, anarchists
 Others like IWW, Knights of Labor, so tainted
Urban Working Class Meets
Downtrodden Farmers
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Farm Belt revolts – old Anti-Fed agrarian tensions
surface again
 The Grange movement
 At first, a Producers’ union of black & white farmers
 Populist Party – working-class embraces
Marxism?
 Never succeeded on national level
 Huey Long, the “Kingfish” (Louisiana governor 1928-32)
 Urban workers & immigrants part of Democratic
machine, traditional labor vote
 William Jennings “Cross of Gold” Bryan vs.
William McKinley (1896 Presidential election)
“Honest Graft” – Think Locally
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Thomas Nast cartoon
attacking Boss Tweed (c.
1870)
Tammany Hall
New York City political
machine
As openly corrupt as it
ever got in the US
Tweed dies in jail
• Only one convicted
Plenty of money to be made
Supplying the Army with its tools of trade
– Country Joe McDonald (1960s)
War good for politics, good for business
 “A splendid little war” against Spain
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• Then against the Filipinos, then the Columbians
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TR, war hero, “Rough Rider,” “Bull Moose”
• Took own correspondents along
• Rode against the “dagos” and the meatpackers
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Child of privilege, but . . .
• Irony – had power to bust trusts
• First govt. regulation of food industry
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First “Progressive” (“centrist”) Republican?
• Compare to John McCain