GILDED AGE: Discussion and Notes

LABOR UNIONSIndustrialization

Political Machines

Urbanization

New Immigration

Monopolies

Railroads

Innovation

LABOR UNIONS JOURNAL• What was the difference between the

American Federation of Labor and the Knights of Labor? Who were their leaders?

• Why did the Knights of Labor fail? (Think… members and Haymarket Square)

• What did the Sherman Antitrust Act do to labor unions? What were they meant to do?

• Why were labor unions’ goals largely unsuccessful? (Think… Pinkertons, Pullman Strike…)

Gompers

Powderly

STRIKE!• Pullman Strike= 250, 000 railroad

workers in 27 states, members of American Railway Union (led by Eugene Debs); federal troops were sent in (citing the Sherman Antitrust Act)

**Pullman made railroad cars and required his workers to live in the community he built… they had to accept pay cuts, pay rent to use the library, and the clergy paid rent to use the church

Regulation of the Railroads…• Railroads often had rates that

benefited wealthy monopolies while hurting small businesses

• Interstate Commerce Act: targeted the railroads, said it was the federal government’s job to regulate the RR

**attempt to regulate corruption and RR monopolies

• Wabash: SC case that said it was unconstitutional for a state law to regulate a RR because of the Commerce Clause (Congress regulates commerce between states)

Populist Party • Populist Party, Election of 1892, William Jennings Bryan (Populist leader and presidential candidate)-WHO/WHY:

1.) primarily farmers (Grange Movement), but also laborers, socialists (mostly from West and South)

2.) dissatisfied with small business discrimination, monopolies, and lack of working class rights-GOALS: silver coinage v. gold, more $ in circulation, government ownership of railroads/telegraphs/telephones, 8 hour working day, tariff reduction…

Urbanization• Industrialization ->

Urbanization• America became an urban

country as thousands moved to cities for job opportunities and “modern” living (electricity, indoor plumbing, entertainment)

• Consumerism was on the rise: department stores and manufactured items

Urbanization• Rapid urban growth: skyscrapers

(Louis Sullivan), and tenement housing in slums for lower classes

• Sanitation problems arose in cities from waste disposal- disease and pests were rampant (especially in crowded slums!)

• Suburbs developed (especially for upper and middle classes) because of transportation improvements like the electric trolley.

• Races and ethnic groups lived in segregated neighborhoods.

New Immigration• Thousands of immigrants from

Eastern and Southern Europe- looking for job opportunities, religious freedom, and freedom from oppressive governments

• Problems: less educated than earlier immigrants, mostly Jewish and Orthodox Christians… fear of “threat” to Anglo society

• Lived in segregated neighborhoods with own countrymen, brought and preserved own culture

• Mainly worked as industrial laborers in major port cities

New Immigration

• Efforts to resist immigration:- American Protective Association - Trade unions (immig. Used as

“scabs”), took “starvation wages”- Laws limiting/regulating

immigration (1882, 1917)• Efforts to help immigrants adjust:- Hull House and Jane Addams:

education, family, and transitional help

- Political machines: jobs, housing, protection

Education• Tax supported elementary and

secondary schools increased in North and South (less rapidly in South)… helped limit child labor

• Morill Act 1862: federal grant of land to public schools; Hatch Act

• Women and blacks had increasing access to higher education though were restricted by gender and race from most public institutions.

• Millionaire donations: Rockefeller and Univeristy of Chicago, Vanderbilt, Central Pacific and Stanford

Vassar University

Religion• Darwinism caused split in

religious theory: “Modernists” and “Fundamentalists”

• Urban religious revivals occurred to address new issues (materialism, poverty, economic/political corruption, etc.)

• New groups: YMCA, Christian Science, Salvation Army

• Increase in diversity from immigration.

Blacks

• Booker T. Washington: equality through education and economic improvement; born in South

• WEB DuBois: immediate equality on all levels; born in North; helped found NAACP

Women• “White Collar” jobs to middle class

whites: typists, telephone operators, dept. stores

• Push for suffrage: serve society’s needs through gender (children, hospitals, education, city planning)- Carrie Chatt

• National American Woman Suffrage Association

• Resistance to roles through economic freedom: rise of “free love”, “Gibson” Girls, divorce

• Leading participants in Temperance Movement: Carrie Nation

• Yellow Journalism and Sensationalism, penny press

• Baseball as “America’s Pastime”, football and basketball develops

• Literature focuses on new issues like women’s roles, urbanization, corruption, racial inequality (Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson, Henry James)

• Minstrel shows, Vaudeville, opera, circus (Barnum and Bailey), Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show

America’s Pastimes and Press