The Gilded Age Class Notes

THE GILDED AGE

Class Notes - Studies in Contemporary History

Dr. Juan R. Céspedes, Ph.D.

"What is the chief end of man?--to get rich. In what way?--dishonestly if we can; honestly if we
must." ~ Mark Twain-1871

Photograph: Marines in relief party, Peiping, China. 1900

1. The Gilded Age encompasses the years from the 1870s to 1900.

2. Named after an 1873 social satire by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner,

3. Scholars tend to see the legacies of the

3.1. Civil War and

3.2. Reconstruction as important contributors to the transformations that took place in

the last three decades of the nineteenth century.

1
The Gilded Age Class Notes

4. Congressional laws helped lay the groundwork for change.

4.1. Whereas the Homestead Act (1862) opened the West for settlement by individual
farmers, other laws, such as the

4.2. Railroad Enabling Act (1866),

4.3. the Desert Land Grant Act (1877), and the

4.4. Stone and Timber Land Act (1878),

4.5. All transferred millions of acres of land and the resources and raw materials below
ground into the hands of cattlemen, railroads, and mining and land development
companies.

4.6. Breaking of Native American resistance on the Plains in the 1870s and 1880s

4.6.1. Railroad expansion, and telegraph, in combination with government land

policies and the opened up the trans-Mississippi West for settlement and
economic usage.

5. Constitutional change, too, contributed to this process.

5.1. Between 1875 and 1900 the Supreme Court removed many state laws restricting
interstate commerce but also blocked federal attempts at regulation.

5.2. The Interstate Commerce Commission was created in 1887, but its limited powers
were further circumscribed by Court decisions. Legal change helped to create a
political environment in which forces of social change could unfold.

6. Innovations in manufacturing and communication joined by demographic changes led to

a fusion of

6.1. population growth, urbanization, and industrialization.

6.2. Technological changes, such as the introduction of the Bessemer converter in

steelmaking;

6.3. the telegraph and the telephone, the latter invented in 1875 by Alexander Graham
Bell

6.4. electricity as an energy source by Thomas A. Edison

6.5. developments in transportation and mass transit made possible the concentration of
manufacturing and consumption in cities.

6.6. After 1880, the so called "new immigration" from southern and southeastern Europe
along with rural-urban migration within the United States provided workers and
consumers for burgeoning urban marketplaces.

2
The Gilded Age Class Notes

6.7. Mass marketing companies like I. M. Singer, mail-order houses like Sears, Roebuck,
and department stores like Wanamaker's catered to American consumer needs.

6.7.1. By 1900, participation in national and urban markets was no longer a matter
of choice.

7. Giant entrepreneurs: John D. Rockefeller (in oil) and Andrew Carnegie (in steel), etc.
(Robber Barons)

8. Rapidly advancing industrialization led to the emergence of economies of scale.

8.1. In 1850, the average capital investment in a company amounted to $700,000.

8.2. In 1900, average investment had risen to $1. 9 million.

8.3. To remain competitive and to satisfy investors and shareholders, companies

needed to increase the return on investments.

8.3.1. Manufacturers began to replace craft techniques with routinized and

segmented work processes aided by new production technologies.

8.3.2. New technologies enabling manufacturers to produce goods and to provide

services at an unprecedented scale accelerated the swings in the boom-
and-bust cycle of the U. S. economy.

9. A cycle of global capitalist expansion begun in the 1820s came to a halt in the 1870s and
crashed in the 1890s.

10. In 1873, the Credit Mobilier scandal and the collapse of Jay Cooke's Northern Pacific
Railroad resulted in a recession from which the country only recovered four years later in
1877.

11. In May 1893, the collapse of the Pennsylvania and Reading Railroad and of the
National Cordage Company led to a stock market crash and a prolonged recession.

11.1. Before the year was over, five hundred banks and sixteen thousand businesses
had failed. At the height of the depression four million workers lost their jobs.

11.2. What happened?

11.2.1. New technologies of mass production and mass distribution had consistently
driven down prices.

11.2.2. Between 1873 and the late 1890s, commodity prices had dropped by 80
percent. At the same time, "sound money" politics had kept the currency
supply tight, putting the squeeze on workers and farmers especially.

11.2.3. Banking and monetary policies contributed to this problem.

3
The Gilded Age Class Notes

11.2.4. The National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864 introduced order into banking
through a federally chartered banking system but also kept the money
supply tight.

11.2.5. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, which enabled the government to
buy silver in proportion to gold, was designed to increase the money supply, but
it was repealed at the most inappropriate moment, the onset of the depression
in 1893.

11.2.6. 10.3 The economic policies of the presidencies from Ulysses S. Grant to
William McKinley were grounded in fiscal conservatism, economic
individualism, and market liberalism, which neither anticipated such
problems nor adequately solved them.

11.2.6.1. Workers and farmers met such policies with some resistance.

11.2.6.2. Mostly unsuccessfully, workingmen challenged railroads and

manufacturers in the Great Strike of 1877

11.2.6.3. the 1886 railroad strike, the 1892 Homestead Strike, and the 1894
Pullman Strike.

11.2.6.4. Workers organized in the Knights of Labor and after 1889 in the newly
founded American Federation of Labor, which advocated a more
cautious business unionism.

11.2.6.5. Agrarian resistance gained momentum with the People's, or Populist,

Party, founded in 1890. The Populists experienced a meteoric rise in
political fortunes at the ballot boxes in several southern and western
states.

11.2.6.5.1. Although the Populists were successful in several state and

gubernatorial elections, their attempt to take control of the
presidency through a "fusion ticket" with the Democrats failed in
1896, and the party disappeared thereafter.

12. Economic changes may have helped undermine support for such a third party as they
aided in the recovery.

13. In the late 1890s, poor European harvests increased demand for grain and cereals, and
new gold discoveries in Alaska, Colorado, South Africa, and Australia created enough
inflation to raise prices out of the doldrums.

14. This era that experienced social and economic change on a massive scale was marked
by many contradictions.

14.1. Along with the beginning of the modern American labor movement and a resurgence
of the movement for women's rights,

4
The Gilded Age Class Notes

14.2. the age saw the implementation of rigid race segregation in the South through so-
called Jim Crow laws,

14.2.1. sanctioned by the Supreme Court's 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson.

14.3. The Gilded Age also witnessed the emergence of the United States as an imperialist
foreign power. Desire for greatness on the seas, partially spawned by Alfred Thayer
Mahan's The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890),

14.3.1. led the United States into war with Spain in 1898 to free Cuba and into a
subsequent war in the Philippines from 1899 to 1902.

14.3.2. Americans overthrow Hawaiian monarchy (1893)

14.3.3. Boxer Rebellion: By May 1900, the Boxer Rebellion (started in the
countryside) was being waged in the capital of Peking (now Beijing). American,
British, Russian, French, Italian, and Japanese soldiers were sent to subdue
the "rebellion."

14.4. The Gilded Age saw the birth pangs of the United States as a global power, an
urban, industrial society, and a modern, democratic corporatist state.

14.5. Many problems remained unsolved, however, for the Progressive Era and New Deal
reform policies to address.

--------------------------------------------

BOOKS ESPECIALLY FOR THE IB AND AP HISTORY STUDENT

5
The Gilded Age Class Notes

The IB Extended Essay: An "A+" in 6 Easy Steps! by Dr. Juan R. Céspedes Ph.D. (Jul 15,
2013)

The IB History Internal Assessment: An "A+" in 6 Easy Steps by Dr. Juan R. Céspedes
Ph.D. (Jul 26, 2013)

IB History Exam Study Guide: International Contemporary History 1848-2008 by Dr. Juan
R. Céspedes Ph.D. (Mar 28, 2012)

6
The Gilded Age Class Notes

The Myopic Vision: The Causes of Totalitarianism, Authoritarianism, & Statism by Dr.
Juan R. Céspedes Ph.D. (Jul 24, 2013)

101 IB History Exam-related Questions: ...and their answers! by Dr. Juan R. Cespedes
Ph.D. (Mar 28, 2013)

7
The Gilded Age Class Notes

Collapse of the Soviet Empire: A Preparation for the International Baccalaureate History
Examination by Dr. Juan R. Céspedes Ph.D. (Dec 18, 2010)

War Interminable: The Origins, Causes, Practices and Effects of International Conflict by
Dr. Juan R. Céspedes Ph.D. (Dec 2, 2011)

--------------------------------------------

Sources

8
The Gilded Age Class Notes

Cashman, Sean Dennis (1993). America in the Gilded Age: From the Death of Lincoln to the
Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. 3d ed. New York: New York University Press.

Céspedes, Juan R. (2012). Contemporary History Lectures. Unpublished manuscripts. Florida

International University.

Cherny, Robert W. (1997). American Politics in the Gilded Age, 1868– 1900. Wheeling, Ill. :
Harlan Davidson.

Edwards, Rebecca (2006). New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age, 1865–1905. New York:
Oxford University Press.

Faulkner, Harold Underwood (1959). Politics, Reform, and Expansion, 1890–1900. New York:
Harper.

Garraty, John A. (1968). The New Commonwealth, 1877–1890. New York: Harper and Row.

Josephson, Matthew (1934). The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861–1901.
New York: Harcourt, Brace.

Summers, Mark Wahlgren (1997). The Gilded Age, or, the Hazard of New Functions. Upper
Saddle River, N. J. : Prentice Hall.

Trachtenberg, Alan (1982). The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age.
New York: Hill and Wang.

VandeCreek, Drew E. (2008). "Gilded Age." International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences.
2008. Retrieved 2 December, 2013 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/
1G2-3045300926.html.

Winter, Thomas. "Gilded Age." Dictionary of American History. 2003. Retrieved 2 December,
2013 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3401801716.html.

Photpgraph: Marines in relief party, Peiping, China. 1900. Author unknown or not provided.
Department of Defense. Department of the Navy. U.S. Marine Corps. (09/18/1947 - ). Date:
1900. Still Picture Records Section, Special Media Archives Services Division (NWCS-S) (Use
War and Conflict Number 327 when ordering a reproduction or requesting information about this
image). This media is available in the holdings of the National Archives and Records
Administration, cataloged under the ARC Identifier (National Archives Identifier) 532580. This
work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work prepared by an officer or
employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties under the
terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code.

9
The Gilded Age Class Notes

10