1. Gilded Age
Period 6: 1877 – 1898

2. Gilded Age
Period after Reconstruction from 1870s to 1900, defined by gross materialism and political corruption. Characterized by a shallow display and worship of wealth.

3. Gilded Age Era of industrial expansion Gold-plated
Extreme rich & poor
Agrarian  Industrial
Growth of big businesses ran by “robber barons”

4. Reasons for Industrial Growth
Availability of cheap labor (immigrants)
Expansion of railroads led to other industries (steel & oil)
Lower-cost production (vertical integration)
Inventions (telephone & light bulb)
Improved communication
Factories can run 24 hours
Financial resources (investments)
Access to raw materials & energy

5. Big Business - Oil John D. Rockefeller Standard Oil
Horizontal integration – trust
Monopolized the industry

6. Big Business - Steel Andrew Carnegie Steel
Instrumental in the construction of RRs
Bessemer process (Henry Bessemer); replaced by the open-hearth process
Vertical integration – controlling all aspects of production
Philanthropist
Doesn’t have a monopoly

7. Big Business - Railroads
Cornelius Vanderbilt
Jay Gould

9. Work Force (Immigrants)
Change in origin of immigrants
English  Irish & Germans  Eastern & Southern Europe
Settled in ethnic communities
Immigrant stations
Ellis Island (NY) – 1892
Angel Island (CA) – 1910
Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

10. Regulation of Big Business
Regulation is strongly opposed
Laissez-faire  hands off approach
“De-skilling” of the work process; no more craftsmen
Labor Unions
Knights of Labor – welcomed all
American Federation of Labor – skilled workers only (Samuel Gompers)
Great Railroad Strike – 1877
Decline in wages
Violence erupts across the country
Military is sent to stop the strikes
Haymarket Incident – 1886
Striking workers attacked the “scabs”
Bomb explodes at a rally, killing police  police open fire on the crowd
KOL’s popularity declines
Govt typically supported the big businesses and not workers.
Scabs (strikebreaker) – not employed by the company before the strike but are brought on after or during the strike to keep the company going.

11. Regulation of Big Business
Pullman Strike – 1893
Company town – Pullman, Illinois
Better housing but more costly
Wages were cut, but not their rent
American Railway Union (ARU) – Eugene Debs
Workers strike & railroad traffic is halted
Pres. Cleveland sends troops
25 strikers are killed
Supreme Court decides the govt can stop strikes

12. Success & Obligation
Wealthy class justified their success with the idea of “Social Darwinism”
Survival of the fittest
Inequality of wealth is part of the process
Carnegie argued that the wealthy had an obligation to give back to communities
“The Gospel of Wealth”
Improved cities
Enhance educational opportunities

13. The “New South” Encouraged industrialization of the south
Henry Grady wanted mixed economy
Some textile factories
South is still dominated by tenant farming & sharecropping
Cycle of poverty for AAs & poor whites
Impact of mechanized farming
More production  falling prices
Hurt small-scale farmers
Unfair RR business practices
Expensive machinery
Tight money supply
High tariffs
Populist Party – 1892
AKA People’s Party

14. Populist Party Platform
Govt ownership of RRs (so prices could be regulated)
Free & unlimited coinage of money (increase $ supply)
Graduated income tax
Direct election of senators (17th Amendment)
Use of initiative & referendums
attempts to limit corruption & power of big businesses
Founded by William Jennings Bryan

15. Native Americans Decline in buffalo Boarding schools Reservations
Hunted by RR workers & frontiersmen for mostly sport
Undermines the Natives’ existence
Boarding schools
Carlisle Institute
Assimilate Native Americans
Cut their hair, no traditional clothes, & must practice Christianity
“Kill the Indian, save the man”
Reservations
Not good for farming
Dawes Severalty Act (1887)
End tribal ownership of land
Resistance
Ghost Dance
Battle of Little Big Horn (1876) – Custer’s Land Stand – US Army defeated by the Sioux tribe
Massacre at Wounded Knee (1890)
Last of the “Indian Wars”

16. Movement of People Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
Internal Migration
Rural  urban areas
Homestead Act
Transcontinental RR (Promontory Point, Utah – 1896) – Govt land grants
“Great Migration” of AAs out of the south – peaks during WWI & WWII
External Migration
New immigrants from southern & eastern Europe; and Chinese  Increased Nativism
Immigrant labor will construct the Transcontinental RR (Chinese west; Irish east)
Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
Suspended Chinese immigration
Limited civil rights of Chinese residents
Forbade Chinese naturalization
City living – tenement housing
Substandard living conditions
Crowded
Lacked running water, sewage & garbage removal
Jacob Riis “How the Other Half Lives”
Government encouraged migration

17. Urban Living

18. Challenges & Reforms Settlement houses Temperance Mann Act – 1910
Assisted immigrants & women
Jane Addams – Hull House in Chicago
Temperance
Anti-Saloon League
Women’s Christian Temperance Union
Complemented the nativist movement
Mann Act – 1910
Crack down on prostitution
Tammany Hall – “political machines” run by party “bosses”
William March Tweed – “Boss Tweed”
Provided benefits to immigrants - jobs
Exposed by Thomas Nast (cartoonist)

19. African Americans
Segregation worsens  AAs are treated like second-class citizens
Some argue the treatment is against the 14th Amendment
Slaughterhouse cases (1873)
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
“separate but equal”
Ida B. Wells
Active in women’s rights movement & anti-lynching campaign
Booker T. Washington
Tuskegee Institute
Advocated AAs acquire vocational skills to gain respect & economic security
Ideas will be challenged by W.E.B. DuBois

20. Recreation Circuses – Barnum & Bailey Coney Island – Brooklyn, NY
Central Park – NY
Baseball – “national pastime”
College Football