From c77f55c53d1ae62e65e0dd230980c2f41b097584 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Holden Rohrer Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2020 00:52:42 -0400 Subject: have notes --- smith/03_gilded_age | 138 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 138 insertions(+) create mode 100644 smith/03_gilded_age (limited to 'smith/03_gilded_age') diff --git a/smith/03_gilded_age b/smith/03_gilded_age new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d61e2d1 --- /dev/null +++ b/smith/03_gilded_age @@ -0,0 +1,138 @@ +The Gilded Age: 1870-1900 + +The war grew Northern industry +- Wars require more resources + - Food, railroads, clothes + - Favoured large-scale businesses + - Built a national economy + - Huge growth, 6x indus. growth, twice as many indus. companies, + join NYSE, increased agr. growth + +Women started working as clerks, typists, secretaries. +Most workers worked in unskilled, low-wage jobs. +Big business used a lag in legislation to exploit workers, environment, +and contracts to build fortunes. + Wealth gap --> social instability + +Why is it called The Gilded Age? + America is not yet a wealthy world power + Not a cultural center, ethnically homogenous + Both change near end of 19th century. + Coined by Mark Twain in book of same name (1873) + Gild: A thin layer of gold (in this case, over a rotten core) + Surface full of prosperity and promise, but much corruption and + scandal + American idealism fading, lassez-faire (unregulated) business polit. + Agrarian --> urban-industrial + Urbanization + Immigration + Industrialization + +The rise of cities + Packed streets, new resources and shipping + Tenements + Foul, unsanitary + Noisy, nauseating, cholic, and sickly + Much populated of immigration + +What caused migration patterns, incl. natural Americans' response? + +Immigration waves: +17th-18th century: white anglo-saxon protestants from N, W europe. + mostly homogenous, coming from constitutional gov'ts +18th-19th century: similar makeup, but now Scots-Irish, slave trade +1840s+: >1/2 Irish-Catholics flee potato famine. +Gilded age: "New Immigrants" from S,E Europe (unskilled, poor, autocrat) + Europeans look different, diff relig (+jew). And Asian immigrants + Came in search of economic opportunity, sometimes fleeing economic + disruptions at home or religious persecution (jews). Ethnic enclaves + Seasonal immigrants + +Nativism: + - First wave immigrants (WASPs) + - Xenophobic movement + - Viewed new immigrants as an economic, political, power threat + - Claimed new immigrants couldn't self-govern and undermined + "moral fiber" of US. + - Republican party feared that they would undermine democracy by + voting with Democrats. +Social Darwinism: + - Anglo-Saxons believed they were intrinsically superior + - And that society had a natural racial/ethnic order that progressed + society by rewarding a small "deserving" group and eliminating + weak + - Anti-immigrant legislation + - Chinese banned from entry + - President can arbitrarily block entry to migrant "threats" + (radicals like members of unions blocked) + - Women marrying foreigners could be stripped of citizenship +Dillingham Commision +- 41 vol report on immigration +- Denounced "new immigrants" as less "fit" phys., intellect., and cult. +- Literacy Law (1917) requires migrant literacy + +What stimulated industrial growth? + +Industrialization +- Immigration +- Abundance of natural resources (coal, iron, lumber) +- Gov't supported businesses directly (land, grants, loans) +- Bessamer steel process = cheap steel = better buildings, ships, + bridges + Pitsburgh, Birmingham become centers of steel production and US + produces more steel than Germany and UK combined. +- Railroads helped nationalize the US + Steel, coal, iron, glass dev + +Era of Carnegie, Rockefeller + Huge lobbies (even bribery) + Corporations separate owners from management + Shareholders in jointly-held companies + Limited liability: if company goes under, debt disappears + Religious leaders! encouraged: + Russel Conwell, baptist minister: "Money is power. Any good man + or woman should seek power to do good with it when obtained" + Carnegie, Rockefeller used all means (incl unethical) to + obtain money but used it for "moral" means + 4k millionaires, >$20mm families controlled politics + Families typically English anglo-sax, in NE (esp NY) + Glorified individual freedom and will + Philosophy of wealth: + Believed that those who could acquire wealth should + Richest men became philanthropists + Why could they become so rich? (laissez-faire) + Deregulated businesses and practices + Government unprotective of laborers and consumers + +Working conditions for blue-collar laborers + Young people migrated agri --> urban/factory + Skilled workers >> Unskilled + Difficult, long hours (59 = 6x10 hours) + No safety regulations (like respirator, ventilation, machine stops) + US top in on-the-job injuries, which were uninsured + Women+children worked because they were cheap + Unions were weak, because Americans perceived them as Unamerican and + full of aliens + In early 1900s, labor unions grew. + Companies' management discouraged unions (firing) + Frequent worker striking + "Neuresthania": disease of the mind caused by poor work conditions + John Pemberton introduces Coca-Cola (in long line of other + attempts to cure neuresthenia). + He was addicted to morphine from days as soldier. + Coca-Cola = opium-free reliever + Dies of stomach cancer, continuing to be addicted to + morphine + The "nerve tonic" formula gets passed to new business owner Asa + Candler + It did not actually cure neuresthania +Amusement parks as urban/commercial entertainment provides a "release" +for modern life (like Coney Island) + Self-fulfillment prioritised over Victorian self-restraint + Assimilation for immigrants + Men and women together + Escape from tenements and factory life + Contrasts with slow, bucolic Central Park + Phase transition in urban life + + -- cgit