America’s Gilded Age

1. America’s Gilded Age 1870-1890

2. Statue of Liberty

3. The Second Industrial Revolution

4. Industrial Economy • America produced 1/3rd of world’s industrial output • By 1880: most jobs were nonfarming • Growth of Great Lakes Region

5. Railroads and the National Market Made 2nd Industrial Revolution possible

6. Standard Gauge Time Zones

7. Technological Innovations Thomas Edison

8. Competition and Consolidation • Economic depressions 1873-1897 • Market flooded w/ goods • Reduction of $ in economy • Businesses established pools to divide market between competing firms and fixed prices • Established trusts to cut competition

9. The Rise of Andrew Carnegie Vertical Integration: control of every phase of business from raw material to transportation, manufacturing & distribution

10. Triumph of Rockefeller Horizontal Integration: bought out competing firms

11. Captains of Industry or Robber Barons? THE BOSSES OF THE SENATE Joseph Keppler Puck, January 23, 1889 In the late 1800s there was the perception that big business monopolies controlled the United States Congress. Joseph Keppler presents monopolies as huge moneybags looming over the U. S. Senate while ordinary citizens are barred access. Political cartoonists of the era were generally pro-business, but they drew the line at the creation of monopolies.

12. Worker’s Freedom in an Industrial Age • Economic independence: technical skill • Economic insecurity: lost jobs or reduction in pay • America had highest on the job death rate • America offered highest paid jobs • Women part of the working class

13. Sunshine & Shadow • Class divisions • Wealthy Americans had aristocratic lifestyle while working class lived in desperate conditions 1897 Martin Bradley Ball

14. The Transformation of the West

15. Frederick Jackson Turner Significance of Frontier in American History • 1890: US Census declared the end to American frontier

16. Farming on the Middle Border

17. Bonanza Farms

18. The Day of Cowboy and Corporate West

19. Subjugation of Plains Indians • Doomed • Bloody conflict between army and Plains tribes 1850-1890 • Buffalo nearing extinction REPEATING RIFLES and ON THE STOOL OF REPENTANCE E. S. Bisbee Puck, October 10, 1879 On September 29, 1879 Ute Indians attacked the White River Indian Agency in Colorado because of frustration with the reservation system. The Utes did not want to be farmers, nor did they wish to send their children to schools. They killed Indian Agent Nathan Meeker and nine of his employees. The uprising was quickly put down, but fears of more Indian violence gripped the West. Cartoons such as this added to the image of Indians as violent savages.

20. Let Me Be a Free Man Chief Joseph of the Nez Pierce Tribe

21. Custer’s Last Stand NOT MUCH! Unattributed Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, November 10, 1877 After defeating General Custer and the Seventh Cavalry at the Little Big Horn in June 1876, Sitting Bull led the Sioux into Canada. In 1877 the American government offered to forgive the Sioux if they would come back to their reservations in Indian Territory. Sitting Bull refused to return because many treaties had been broken in the past. In 1881 the Sioux returned to the reservations because the Canadian government was unwilling to aid them.

22. Forced assimilation Dawes Act of 1887 Elk v. Wilkins Ghost Dance at Wounded Knee Remaking Indian Life

23. Politics in the Gilded Age

24. Corruption of Politics Boss Tweed & Credit Mobilier

25. Politics at Dead Center • Republicans represented: Industrial North & MidWest, Agrarian West, Protestant Immigrants, Blacks & Revivalist Church • Democrats represented: South & Catholic • Elections: close, party loyalty, intense voter turnout

26. Government and the Economy • Republicans favored high tariff to protect American industry, Reduce federal spending, repay debt, & withdraw greenbacks from circulation • Civil Service Act • Interstate Commerce Commission • Sherman Anti-trust Act THE OPENING OF THE CONGRESSIONAL SESSION Joseph Keppler Puck, December 7, 1887 By 1887 the federal government accumulated a huge surplus of funds. The major source of federal revenue was import duties. There was intense pressure on Congress from the southern and western states to cut the tariffs and reduce the surplus. In Keppler’s cartoon the surplus is the dragon in the room. A CIVIL SERVICE REFORM VERSION OF AN OLD FABLE Bernhard Gillam Puck, January 14, 1885 Bernhard Gillam’s cartoon is based on Aesop’s fable “The Wolf and the Shepherd.” The moral of the story is “there is more danger from a pretended friend than from an open enemy.” Here, reform-minded Democratic president-elect Grover Cleveland is protecting government patronage jobs from corrupt elements of his own party.

27. Freedom in the Gilded Age

28. The Social Problem • Americans wanted to investigate cases between capitol & labor

29. Social Darwinism

30. Liberty of Contract • Demands by workers were considered misuse of political power • Ex. 8 hr workday ALWAYS KILLING THE GOOSE THAT LAYS THE GOLDEN EGG Thomas Nast Harper’s Weekly Labor unrest increased in the United States as workers felt that they were being exploited by big business. Thomas Nast felt that the workingman was being misled by communist agitators. Here the laborer kills the golden goose of capital, putting his job in jeopardy.

31. Courts and Freedom • Lochner v. New York • Struck down state laws requiring payment of coal miners in $ rather than paper used only at company owned store

32. Labor and the Republic

33. 1877 Great Railroad Strike

34. Knights of Labor

35. Middle-Class Reformers • Progress and Poverty by Henry George: single tax • Cooperative Commonwealth by Lawrence Gronlund: introduced socialist ideas • Utopia by Edward Bellamy: freedom social condition resting on interdependence • Social Gospel, Walter Rauschenbusch: unbridled competition mocked Christian ideal of brotherhood

36. Haymarket Affair