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