“Labor is prior to and independent of capital.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could
never have existed if labor had not first
existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and
deserves much the higher consideration.
Abraham Lincoln
“The most improper job of any man, even
Saints, is bossing other men. Not one in
a million is fit for it, and least of all those
who seek the opportunity.”
J.R.R. Tolkein
Economic terms and conditions:
Laissez Faire
Caveat Emptor
Horatio Alger
Social Darwinism
Social Gospel
Socialism
Progressive
Populist
Capitalist
Marxist
Robber Baron
Yellow Dog
Credit Mobilier Scandal
Credit Mobilier Company
Gave Congressmen stock for
Agreement to fund railroad
Charged 10x cost
For labor and supplies
Board of Directors
The same group of
individuals
Asked for more
Money for building the RR
Paid U.P. to build
RR
Union Pacific
Congress
“If the machine seemed the prime cause of the
abundance of new products changing the
Character of daily life, it also seemed responsible
for newly visible poverty, slums, and the unexpected wretchedness of industrial conditions.”
Alan Trachtenberg
The Incorporation of America
• Alan Tractenberg
– Counter to Turner Thesis; It was the Urbanization
and Industrialization of the post Bellum period
that best defines America.
• By 1929 200 of the largest corporations owned
60% of the property
• By 1962 100 of the largest corporations owned
60% of the property
• By 1974 of the top 100 economic units 49 were
nations, 51 were corporations “As General Motors
goes so goes America (the world)
What Industrialization of Incorporation of
America Meant
•
•
•
•
Urbanization
Growth of Transportation
Growth of Communication
Growth of Professionalization
– Impact on all phases of life; family, work, education, politics, art,
and literature
– The original assumption was incorporation would serve the public
good (roads, canals, schools, railoads) it came to serve individual
self interests for the most part (banks, steel factories)
– Death of the Yeoman Farmer and development of the corporate
farm and Corporate America; Hamilton won
“The Guilded Age”
I. American Expansion
A. Railroads
1. Route for Transcontinental RR
2. Gadsden Purchase
3. How to Pay for RR
a. Credit Mobilier
6. Creation of Central Pacific – railhead in Sacramento, most early workers left for Gold Fields until
Chinese immigrants were recruited.
Birds of passage 98.5% male
7. Union Pacific – workers mainly Irish Immigrants and
ex-Union Soldiers. Getting locomotives to the west
side of the Mississippi
8. Companies selected, stocks sold
A. Credit Moblier’
B. European investment
C. Graft, corruption, bribery
9. Purchase of Alaska 1867 “Seward’s Folly” or “Icebox”
A. Relations with Britain, Canada
B. $7 Million
C. Fear again of American
designs on Canada
Advantages of RR
- creation of time zones
- expanded industrialization
- moved commodities faster, farther;
- created “mail order” Sears and Roebuck
- allowed for transportation virtually year
around
-increased personal mobility
- new cities “Hell on Wheels”
- RR’s were also required to install Telegraph lines along rail lines.
- led to growth of tourism (Taos and G.C.)
- ameliorated “isolation” on the frontier
End of the Native Americans
• Use of guns- Made Natives dependent on white
settlers/traders- Had guns but couldn’t repair them or had
difficulty gathering ammunition.
• Diseases continued- Small Pox and Measles
• Sherman wanted to destroy the Indian way of life by
destroying their ability to eat- Kill the buffalo. Professional
hunters like Bill Cody could kill over 100 animals a day.
• 1864 Sand Creek Massacre- Kit Carson “the foulest and
most unjustifiable crime in the annals of America, no one
but a coward or a dog would take part in it”
-Bozeman Trail; Red Cloud attacked a group of
soldiers gathering wood to close the trail. 77
soldiers died in what was called the Fetterman
massacre. 1866
-- Custer released information about gold in the
Black Hills, led to whites “jumping” the reservation
in 1874
-Battle of Little Big Horn 1876- Sitting Bull puts
together a coalition of Sioux and others and
attacks Custer killing all 200 soldiers.
-Indians and soldiers did not usually fight during
the winter, all that changed in 1876.
Quote Pg 50 Great Courses
-Nez Pierce are tracked down and put on
reservation - 1877
-Geronimo captured 1886
-Dawes Severalty Act 1887
-Gave Natives individual land holdings in the
hope they would begin farming and assimilating into American culture. Many sold their land
holdings and became destitute quickly.
"...the real aim of [the Dawes Act] is to get at the Indians land and
open it up for resettlement." - Senator Henry M. Teller, 1881
- Development of
Ghost Dance and
the Battle of
Wounded Knee
1890
“The rights and interests of the laboring man
will be protected and cared for not by the labor
agitators, but by the Christian men to whom
God, in His infinite wisdom, has given the
control of the property interests of the country.”
George Baer
AKA “Divine Right Baer”
“These men don’t suffer. Why, hell, half
of them don’t even speak English”
George Bear speaking to the Anthracite Coal
Commission about the coal strike.
(Baer was President of the Reading Railroad)
•SOCIAL DARWINISTS IN CHRISTIANITY
Dwight Moody in the Chicago Slums; the Bible and
bread, soon only the Bible- individuals needed to
be responsible.
Henry Ward Beecher; people need to be responsible
for their survival- God helps them who help…
“If somebody is poor it is their own fault”- it is
usually found in his sin”
Social Gospel “Sermon on the Mount”
SOCIAL GOSPEL ADVOCATES
Walter Rauchenbusch and
Washington Gladden argued for the
“good of all”
“The Christian Moralist is bound to admonish
the Christian employer, but the wage system
when it rests on competition as its sole basis
is anti-social and anti-christian. .. It has been
bringing hell to earth in large installments. –
Washington Gladden
Industrial Expansion
1. Oil, Steel, Textile, Agribusiness
2. Standard Oil, U.S. Steel Monopolies
A. Vertical Integration
B. Horizontal Integration
3. Rockefellers, Oil; $50m (1.5b in today’s
dollars)
4. Competition v. Monopoly; Carnegie v.
Morgan; Small enterprise v. 5 major
corporations
5. When finished steel fabricators threatened
Carnegie with making their own steel
he threatened to make fabricated steel.
STANDARD OIL
Rockefeller started by
controlling oil refining
– then moved to
vertical integration of
whole industry
Carnegie Steel
“Every act of business is done at the
command of some ascertainable person or
group of persons. These should be held
individually responsible, and the punish—
ment should fall upon them, not upon the
business organization of which they make
illegal use.”---Woodrow Wilson
Religion in Victorian America
• Women’s literature- concept of Heaven
– Elizabeth Phelps The Gates Ajar (Story of boy
who died and the glory of heaven and desire to
obtain the final rest in Paradise), The Story of
Jesus Christ (Jesus’ father was God, Mother was
Mary; therefore he was destined to have an
“understanding side”)
• Focus on forgiveness rather than punishment- i.e.
Vengeful father vs. forgiving son.
– Charles Sheldon “In His Steps”; WWJD
Primary Industrial Advancements
• Pope – Interchangeable
Parts; Bicycle
• Singer – Sewing
Machine; Installment
Credit
• Frederick Winslow
Taylor – Engineering,
Time and Motion
Studies, Efficiency in
Business
• Standard Columbia
ordinary bicycle
From the Smithsonian
Collection
The Standard Columbia,
built by the Pope
Manufacturing Co., of
Hartford Connecticut, and
was available in models
with front-wheel
diameters ranging from 42
to 58 inches.
Urban Environments
• Up and out
Across the River
New York World Building 1890
Skyscrapers emerged in larger
Cities – New York, Birmingham,
Chicago, San Francisco. At the same
time the wealthy moved to more rural
settings.New suspension bridges removed many of the geographical
barriers to the suburbs as well.
Some people say a man is made out of mud
A poor man is made out of muscle and blood
Muscle and blood, skin and bones
A mind that is weak and a back that’s strong
You load 16 tons and what do ya get
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter don’t sha call me cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store.
Song, Sixteen Tons
Life in the Tenements, Life in the Slums
• Skid Road
• Wealth become mobile,
create suburbs
• Poor adjust to what is
left, they become the
tenements of the
working classes
• Jacob Riis
Politics
The
Thomas
Nast
Editorial
Cartoon
To
Linclon
Steffens
The Shame
Of the
Cities
The New South
• The Atlanta Constitution editor Henry Grady coined
the term “New South” in a speech in the North
(1886)
– Forward looking
– Industrialized; James Bonsack- cigarette rolling
machine, Birmingham, AL, Tennessee Iron and
Coal
– Productive; Duke Family
– Integrationist
A bit of an overstatement
Jim Crow
– Verse 1
Come listen all you galls and boys I's jist from
Tuckyhoe,
I'm going to sing a little song, my name's Jim
Crow,
Weel about and turn about and do jis so,
Eb'ry time I weel about and jump Jim Crow.
– Verse 2
Oh I'm a roarer on de fiddle, and down in old
Virginny,
They say I play de skyentific like Massa
Pagannini.
Weel about and turn about and do jis so,
Eb'ry time I weel about and jump Jim Crow.
POLITICS
•
•
•
•
Tammany Hall in New York
Grant Administration
His Fraudulency Ruthefraud B. Hayes
Caretaker Presidents
– Chester Arthur
– Grover Cleveland
– Benjamin Harrison
– Grover Cleveland
Religion and the Family
• Institutional Church in the Community
– Salvation Army
– YMCA
• Social Gospel
– Washington Gladden; leader of movement
– Pope Leo XIII decries abuses of Capitalism
– Based on sermon on Mount- appealing to oppressed
Work and Professionalization
• New Colleges in the East
– Graduate programs (PhD)- MIT, Case, Carnegie Mellon University,
Worchester, Rensellauer,
• Time and motion studies, the new industrializationEngineering becomes a dominant new field of study.
Founding of American Society of Civil Engineers.
• Cost accounting- quotas and output- bottom line driving
business and profits- cost/benefit analysis. All led to
development of piece/rate method of payment.
• Womens Colleges; Mt. Holyoake, Smith, Vassar
Labor
• Sherman Anti-Trust Act
• Growth of Labor Unions
– Knights of Labor
– Railroad Workers
– American Federation of Labor
• Union Unrest
– Railroad Strike (1877)
– Haymarket Square (1886)
– Homestead Strike (1892)
– Pullman Strike (1894)
• Socialism/Communism- whatever
you want to call it
Major issues: 8 hour day, 5 day week, living wage
Life Style
• Farming; Homestead Act and Railroad Act put
more land in the hands of corporations than
Farmers
• City Dwellers- The tenement
• Hull House- Jane Addams
• Wealthy- movement of outlying areas,
extreme opulence
Art
• Hudson River School
Landscape
Art
• John Gast “American Progress”
This painting (circa 1872) by John Gast called American
Progress is an allegorical representation of Manifest Destiny.
In the scene, an angelic woman (sometimes identified as
Columbia, a 19th century personification of the United States)
carries the light of "civilization" westward with American
settlers, stringing telegraph wire as she travels. American
Indians and wild animals flee into the darkness before them
Literature
• Naturalists
– Jack London, Stephen Crane,
Frank Norris
• Jules Verne
– Exploration into places
never touched by man
• Mark Twain
– Aunt Sally seeks to “sivilize”
Huck; Huck runs away
New Folktales and Ballads
•
•
•
•
Paul Bunyan
Casey Jones
John Henry
The Mighty Casey
Stories of
Strength and
Skill versus the
Machine- the
Machine usually
Won!!!
Before that steam drill could beat
Him down, he’d hammered his fool
Self to death
Other Changes
• Photography
– William Henry Jackson
Timothy O’Sullivan
• Science
– Clarence King; Mountaineering in the High Sierras,
developed geological basis of tectonic evolution of Rocky
Mountains
Early Muckrakers
•
•
•
•
•
•
Ignatius Donnelly
Ida Tarbull
Thorstein Veblin
Henry Demerest Lloyd
Henry George
Lincoln Steffens
Environment
• New Methods of Mining put pressure on
preservation of natural resources and pristine
wildernesses. Creation of Yosemite and Yellowstone
National Parks
• John Wesley Powell and John Muir (Sierra Club)
Minorities
• Women’s employment and Suffrage
– Some western states give women right to vote
– Creation of the National Women’s Suffrage Association
(Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Carrie
Chapman Catt)
– Creation of American Suffrage Association (Lucy Burns,
Alice Paul,
– Most women employed in domestic industry and sweat
shops; others in teaching and nursing
• African Americans
– Growth of KKK
– Nadir Period
Progressive Political Magazines
WCTU
• Established the
Women’s Christian
Temperance Union
1874
Frances Willard
Women's’ Suffrage
Carrie Chapman Catt
National American Women’s
Suffrage Association
Alice Paul
National Women’s Party
American Imperialism and Colonialism
End of the Indian Wars
•Spanish American War
•War of Philippine Insurrection
Annexation of Hawaii
•Panama Canal
•The Great White Fleet
•Sino – Russian War
•Open Door Policy
•Japanese Imperialism
Neighborly Diplomacy
•Roosevelt’s Big Stick
•Taft’s $$$ Diplomacy
•Wilson’s
Moral
Diplomacy
“We have witnessed for more than a
quarter of a century the struggles of
the two great political parties for
power and plunder, which grievous
wrongs have been inflicted upon the
suffering people…we seek to restore
the government of the Republic to
the hands of “the plain people”.
Populist Platform 1892
“Competitive commerce…makes men who are
the gentlest and kindliest friends and neighbors
relentless taskmasters in their shops and stores.
Who will drain the strength of their men and
pay their female employees wages on which no
girl can live without supplementing them
in some way.”
Walter Rauschenbusch – Christianity and the Social Crisis
“One day, at the end of track, a supply train came up. It carried
no rails, only ties. Crocker went to the forwarding station to
confront the man responsible. As soon as he saw Crocker,
McWade called out “Mr. Crocker…I know it was all wrong and
I am sorry…Crocker replied, “Mac a mistake is a crime now.
You know what we have been trying to do…Now take your
bundle and go. I cannot overlook it.
McWade burst out crying…”Well it is pretty hard on me. I
have been a good faithful man.”
“I know you have…but there has got to be discipline…I cannot
overlook anything of this kind. You must go. Send your assistant to me.” “It put everybody on the alert, kept them right up to
their work. It did good because everybody was afraid.”
Discussing the incident years later, Crocker added “It got so I
was really ashamed of myself.” -Stephen Ambrose, Nothing like it in the World
Nearly all problems which vex society
have their sources above or below the
middle class man. From above come
the problems of prosperity and predatory wealth…from below the
problems of poverty and pigheaded
brutish criminality.
California Weekly, 1908
“The Christian Moralist is bound to admonish
the Christian employer, but the wage system
when it rests on competition as its sole basis
is anti-social and anti-Christian. .. It has been
bringing hell to earth in large installments. –
Washington Gladden