GILDED AGE

MECHANIZATION

• Railroads create national market
• 2nd Ind Rev = applying new tech to production methods; increases productivity and volume
• 1900- US produces 1/3 of global industrial goods
• Continuous machine production, esp with assembly line begins (meat-packing)
• Industrialization concentrated in NE and Midwest, w/raw materials produced elsewhere

Marketing 101

• With increase in production comes new methods of advertising and distribution
• Ex: Free rural delivery puts Sears and Montgomery Ward on the map
• Chain stores & department stores develop
• Advertising firms appear - become major part of newspaper

Shopping in style

Organizing Your Business

• Owners expand empires & attempt to control economy
• Economic crises had wiped out small competitors, setting the survivors up for domination -corporations
• Vertical Integration- control every step of production
• Horizontal Integration- control market for product (monopolies)
• Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890)- intended to limit consolidation, but in practice restricted unionization

Standard oil company

The gospel of wealth

• Success = moral virtue
• Used to justify ruthless business practices (Jay Gould)
• Andrew Carnegie (steel industry) also presented model that encouraged more philanthropy
• Aligned with Darwinist theory (survival of the fittest) and became part of what was known as social darwinism
• "Captains of industry" or "robber barons"?  http://youtu.be/r6tRp-zRUJs

bessemer Process

Labor

Wage system

• Labor force has shifted primarily to wage earning
• Immigrants filled demand for unskilled workers
• Mechinization changed relationship between owner and worker (hello Marxism!)
• Some trades maintained craft traditions but added industrial methods
• Women filled clerical and retail positions + traditional factory work (textiles)

Labor Unions

• Unions increase in # and membership in response to terrible conditions
• Knights of Labor - worker cooperation as alternative to wage system
• KoL-Open to groups typically excluded from unions: women, unskilled workers, racial minorities
• American Federation of Labor = union for skilled workers/gained more respect, only open to white males
• AFL (created by Samuel Gompers) - worked towards short term goals (higher pay, shorter hours, etc.) in WS

Knights of Labor members in Richmond, Va

Strikes

• Valuable tool for workers and unions
• Great Uprising of 1887, Couer d'Alene, Homestead and Pullman
• Sparked by wage cuts
• Increasingly met with violence and broken by federal troops
• Pullman ended w/arrest of Eugene Debs (but more on him later)

Anarchy & socialism

• Radical resistance to capitalistic society grew concurrent to Gilded growth
• Some anarchists advocated the violent end of corrupt political systems
• Socialists sought to end the inequality they saw as inevitable result of capitalism
• Both were associated with unions and immigrants, turning opinions against them
• Socialist Labor Party of America and the IWW or Wobblies were tied to these movements

Immigration

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Immigration

• 20th C. = growth in working class, most of which was foreign-born
• Push Factor = collapse of peasant agriculture (serfs in Russia) & persecution
• Working conditions & living conditions were poor (long hours, low pay)
• Non-Europeans = French-Canadians, Mexicans in SW as seasonal farm workers, 
• Entry points = Ellis Island, NY & Angel Island, CA

Urban Ghettos

• Many immigrants settled in enclaves in large cities (NYC)
• NYC especially was center for Jewish immigrants
• Garment District & Meatpacking districts employed many immigrants
• Immigrants maintained own cultures, while Americanizing thanks to public ed
• Music, art, entertainment were areas where cultures blended

Education

• Public education from elementary to high school expanded.
• Vocational, Higher Education, A&M schools, and education for women expanded.
• Ex. Tuskegee Institute by Booker T. Washington (Vocational), Clark College 

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Cities and class

• "Conspicuous consumption"
• Upper class - arts, symphonies, mansions, wealth, formed distinct enclaves
• Middle Class- moved into suburbs, impacted by technology, focused on culture
• Working Class- home was 2nd workplace, imitated middle-class dress/society
• Leisure activities grew popular and brought classes together (esp. baseball

Urbanization

• Led by manufacturing shift from rural to urban
• Workers followed jobs from within & without
• Vast majority of workers packed into tenements
• Architecture & city-planning key (streetcars, subways)
• Cities not always prepared for rapid growth (infrastructure)

Health impact

• Pollution became major problem for cities
• Overcrowding & poor sanitation led to massive outbreaks of disease
• Attempts were made to clean city water, but led to river pollution, garbage dumps and sewage
• Air pollution from coal and noise pollution also became perennial urban problems

Nativism

• With increase in immigration came an increase in nativism
• Free immigration began to be restricted by National Origin quotas
• Immigrants from Asia were targeted (Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Gentleman's Agreement of 1907)
• Foreign born workers were blamed for any hard times

The New South

• Henry Grady: South would control natural resources & become manufacturer
• Instead became almost "internal colony" with northern investors controlling
• Attempts made to create cotton mills & control textiles - North took over
• Factories generally white only or segregated, wages low (child & convict labor)
• Low wage work for African Americans (railroad or domestic service)

Jim Crow

• White supremacy established as political norm, approved by SCOTUS -Plessy v Ferguson Civil Rights Cases 1883
• African American representation drastically decreased after Reconstruction
• Racial violence escalated; between 1882-1900 more than 100 lynchings a year
• Lynchings were announced in newspapers & RRs offered special rates to watch
• Reformers were divided on how to solve this acceptance of inequality