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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
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