Life in the Gilded Age

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Life in the Gilded Age
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Bellwork

• Why is the Gilded Age called the Gilded Age?
• What are inventors? Which inventions do you
  think have had the biggest impact on our lives?
  Why? How does technology affect our lives?

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Gilded Age

• Term is coined by Mark Twain
• Famous author of the time
• Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn

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End of the frontier

• Indians pushed into reservations
• Wild West is tamed and settled

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The Expansion of Industry

• Changes in technology
• Fuel
• Kerosene
• Oil
• Coal
• Iron and steel
• Bessemer process

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Steel

• Steel is used for
• Railroads
• Plows, reapers, farm tools
• Food cans

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Edison
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Thomas Edison

• Made power plant/light bulb
•   With electricity factories can work more hours
  and be anywhere.

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Other inventions

• Typewriter
• Telephone (1876) by Alexander Graham Bell

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"Mr. WatsonCome hereI want to see you"
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Bellwork-Answer these if you were not here on
Friday. The rest of you BE QUIET OR YOU WILL GET
BELLWORK!!!!

• Why do we have time zones?
• What is a union? What is the benefit of having
  unions? What are some negative effects of unions?

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The Age of Railroads

• 1890more than 200,000 miles of track
• 1888more than 2,000 railroad workers die and
  20,000 are injured.
• Built by immigrants (Asians in the West and Irish
  in the East) also African-Americans
• Earn very little

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Joining the nation

• Railroads link the nation together
• Travel and industry increases
• Time zones are created to keep railroad schedules.

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Industry grows

• Railroads cause industry to grow
• George Pullman invents a sleeping car known as a
  Pullman car

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Corruption

• Railroads were usually corrupt
• Charged high prices
• Bribed government officials
• Made millions through trickery

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Congress Acts

• Congress tries to combat corruption
• Supreme Court says they can regulate interstate
  trade
• Congress passes the Interstate Commerce Act to
  regulate trade
• Not strong enough to control the railroads

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Big Business Emerges

• Businesses consolidate into big industries
• These are run by businessmen who become very
  wealthy and become known as robber barons.

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Government practices

• Government supported laissez-faire economics
• Means hands off
• Government does very little regulation
• Resultvery wealthy businesses and lots of
  corruption and little competition

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Social Darwinism

• Idea that the best individuals will succeed
• The survival of the fittest
• Government should do very little

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Robber barons

• Andrew Carnegie
• Built a giant steel firm
• Bought out competition and provides of raw
  materials and transportation of his goods
• Known as vertical consolidation

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Vertical consolidation

• Buying out companies for every stage of the
  productive process from raw materials to
  marketing.

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John D. Rockefeller

• Another robber baron
• Controlled Standard Oil
• Bought other oil companies
• This is horizontal consolidationcontrolling
  competition at one step in the process of a
  product.

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Other robber barons

• Cornelius Vanderbilt RR monopolist
• J. P. Morgan banking monopolist
• Robber barons did philanthropy work

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Monopolies and trusts

• Robber barons created monopolies
• Where a firm controls all the competition
• Also created trusts
• Companies agree to work together

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Whats wrong with this?

• Whats wrong with having monopolies and no
  competition?

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Sherman Anti-trust Act

• Congress passed the Sherman anti-trust act to
  outlaw trusts and monopolies
• Difficult to enforce

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Working conditions

• Conditions were terrible
• Long hours
• Dangerous conditions
• Poor living conditions
• Child Labor
• To improve conditions formed labor unions

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Development of Labor unions

• Labor Movement unions illegal until 1840's for
  interfering in commerce, black lists Federal
  Government kept unions weak
•  

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Unions

• Knights of Labor unskilled/skilled workers
  demanded reforms in child labor, safety, hours (8
  hr day), equal pay for women
• American Federation of Labor skilled workers
  demanded higher pay, shorter work weeks.

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Strikes

• Strikes resulted and usually ended in violence.
  Government usually sent in troops against the
  unions

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Notable Strikes

• Great RR Strike of 1877 RR shut down, Hayes used
  army to end strike
• Haymarket Square Riot bomb killed 7 policeman,
  police fired on strikers
• Homestead Strike Carnegie hired Pinkertons to
  violently end strike
• Pullman Strike RR shut down, federal troops
  brought in and people get hurt and lose their
  jobs.

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Business leaders react

• Unions were prevented by
• Not hiring union workers
• Banning union meetings
• Using the courts and troops to stop unions

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Bellwork

• On a piece of paper, in 50 words, answer the
  following questions
• Why do people leave their homelands?
• Why do people immigrate to the US?
• What problems do immigrants face?

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Bellwork

• On a half sheet of paper answer the following
  question
• Is America a melting pot or a salad bowl?
  Explain your answer.

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Immigration

• Change from
• Western and Northern Europe
• Germany, Ireland, and Great Britain
• To Southern and Eastern Europe
• Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Russia

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Ellis Island

• Europeans enter through Ellis Island
• See Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island
• Usually stay 5 hrs
• Undergo mental and health tests
• Requirements to enter pass health tests,
  literacy test, prove they can work, and have at
  least 25
• 20 are detained for a day or more
• 98 allowed to stay in the US

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Asian Immigrants

• Chinese and Japanese come to the US
• Chinese come to California during gold rush and
  work on railroad.
• Japanese went to Hawaii to work and gradually
  went to the west coast (California).

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Angel Island

• Asian immigrants came through Angel Island
• Different from Ellis Island
• Harsh questioning
• Long detention
• Filthy, ramshackle buildings
• Confined like prisoners
• More sent back

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Problems for Immigrants

• Culture shock
• Confusion and anxiety from being in a new culture
  they didnt understand
• Jobs
• Housing

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Survival

• Settle in neighborhoods with people from their
  culture
• Little Italy, China, etc.
• Good makes transition easier
• Bad excluding themselves, slows down
  assimilation
• Americanization movement use schools and
  volunteers to teach immigrants English and how to
  be American.

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The Great Melting pot

• Melting pot theory that US is a mixture of
  people of different cultures and races who blend
  together to become American.
• Truth-many do not give up their customs
• Might be more like a salad bowl

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Nativism and xenophobia

• Anti-immigration feelings grow
• Nativism-idea that native-born Americans are
  better
• Xenophobia-fear of foreigners

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Nativism ideas

• Wanted immigration from the right countries
  Britain, Germany, Scandinavia
• Not wrong Slav, Latin, Asian
• Natives Anglo Saxon and Protestant
• New Immigrants Jewish, Catholic, and Slav and
  Asian

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Anti-Asian Sentiments

• Chinese look different physical features, hair,
  dress
• Feared they were taking jobs away from Native
  born Americans

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Limiting Immigration

• 1882 passed the Chinese Exclusion Act-banned all
  entry of Chinese except students, teachers,
  merchants, tourists, and government officials
• 1902-banned all Chinese immigration until 1943.
• Asians went to segregated schools
• 1907-08 Gentlemens Agreement-limits Japanese
  immigration

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Urbanization

• Immigrants moved to the cities this produced
  urbanization rapid growth of cities
• People also moving from the country to cities

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Urbanization problems

• Housing
• Row housing-houses built so that they are
  connected and share walls
• Dumbbell houses-housing that is shaped like a
  dumbbell (includes air vents in the middle)
• People use air vents to dump sewage
• Crime increases

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Dumbbell tenements
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Transportation

• Need public transportation for everyone
• Horses create a mess in the street
• 10lbs of manure per horse per day
• Create street cars and later subways for cities

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Sanitation

• Need clean drinking water
• Trash is in the street
• Not uncommon to see a dead horse in the street
• Children play in the street
• Start insisting on indoor plumbing

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Fires

• Water shortage, houses built together and of
  woodbig chance for a fire
• Both Chicago and San Francisco had huge
  devastating fires

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Reform movements

• Settlement houses-community centers in slums that
  provide assistance, especially to immigrants.
• Provided educational, cultural, and social
  services
• Jane Addams founded Hull house in Chicago
• An important settlement house.

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Social Movements

• Women's Movement worked for suffrage, temperance
  (no alcohol), insane, poor
•  E. C. Stanton/S. B. Anthony pushed for suffrage
  amendment
•  Lucy Stone pushed suffrage state by state
•  Wyoming 1st state to allow women's voting
•   West more democratic Colorado (1893),
  Idaho/Utah (1896)

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Racial Equality

• Booker T. Washington self-improvement before
  racial equality
• Racism will end if African Americans prove useful
  to society
•  WEB Dubois established NAACP for work for
  racial equality

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• Dubois Washington

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Racial Inequality

• Plessy v. Ferguson established separate but
  equal clause in 1896
• Made segregation legal
• Jim Crow laws develop-separates public and
  private facilities

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The Emergence of the Political Machine

• Political machine was an organized group that
  controlled the activities of a political party in
  a city and offered services to voters and
  businesses in exchange for political or financial
  support.

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Organization of the machine

• Machine was run by a boss
• It was like a pyramid
• At the top was the city boss who controlled jobs
  in police, fire, and sanitation, and controlled
  the city government.
• They tried to help immigrant problems and so won
  immigrant votes and loyalty.

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Corruption

• It was like the mob
• You had to go through the boss to get things in a
  city new businesses, licenses, inspections,
  money for schools, hospitals, etc.
• The machine then got paid for providing these
  governmental services

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More corruption

• To keep the machine running they falsified
  elections
• Put in names of dog, children, and dead people
• Had more votes than registered voters
• Used kickbacks
• Machine would chose a worker that contracted for
  a government job, the worker would charge more
  than necessary and kick back a fee to the
  political machine

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Boss Tweed

• William Boss Tweed became one of the most
  powerful bosses
• He headed Tammany Hall in New York
• Democratic party in New York

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William Boss Tweed

• Tweed-le-dee and Tilden-dumA Harper's Weekly
  cartoon depicts Tweed as a police officer saying
  to two boys, "If all the people want is to have
  somebody arrested, I'll have you plunderers
  convicted. You will be allowed to escape, nobody
  will be hurt, and then Tilden will go to the
  White House and I to Albany as Governor."

• Tweed ring pocket 200 million from the city in
  kickbacks and payoffs
• Newspapers and cartoonists attacked him
• Finally arrested and died in jail

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Politics in the Gilded Age

• Grant Administration (1869-1877) symbolizes
  Gilded Age corruption
•     
• Hayes Administration (1877-1881)
• end of Reconstruction allowed Jim Crow laws
  such as grandfather clauses, poll taxes, literacy
  tests to restore white dominance
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• Garfield Administration (1881)
•   shot by disappointed spoils system patron
  Charles Guiteau
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• Arthur Administration (1881-1885)
• Pendleton Act required competitive test to fill
  certain federal jobs and made it illegal to force
  current federal job holders to contribute to
  campaigns
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Politics in the Gilded Age

• Cleveland Administration (1885-1889)
•   only president elected to non-consecutive terms
  
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• Harrison Administration (1889-1893)
• great grandfather signed D of I, grandfather was
  President WH Harrison
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• Cleveland Administration (1893-1897)
•  Depression of 1893 severe financial crisis,
  government responded laissez faire