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THE GILDED AGE

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Title: THE GILDED AGE


1
THE GILDED AGE
2
THE GILDED AGE
  • The era from 1870 to 1890 is the only period in
    American history commonly known by a derogatory
    name the Gilded Age, after a title of an 1873
    novel by mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warren.
  • Gilded means covered with a layer of gold, but
    also suggests that the glittering surface covers
    a core of little real value and is therefore
    deceptive.

3
THE GILDED AGE
  • Twain and Warner were referring not only to the
    remarkable expansion of the economy in this
    period but also to the corruption caused by
    corporate dominance of politics and to the
    oppressive treatment of those left behind in the
    scramble for wealth.
  • Get rich, dishonestly if we can, honestly if we
    must. was the eras slogan, according to The
    Gilded Age.

4
POLITICS IN THE GILDED AGE
5
POLITICS IN THE GILDED AGE
  • To modern eyes, the nature of the American
    political system in the late 19th century appears
    in many ways paradoxical.
  • The two political parties enjoyed strength and
    stability during those years that neither was
    ever to know again.
  • Yet the federal govt was doing relatively little
    of importance.
  • Most Americans engaged in political activity less
    because of their interest in national issues than
    because of broad regional, ethnic, or religious
    sentiments.
  • Party loyalty had less to do with positions on
    public policy than the way Americans defined
    themselves culturally.

6
THE PARTY SYSTEM
  • The most striking feature of the late 19th
    century party system was its remarkable
    stability.
  • From 1877 until the late 1890s, the electorate
    was divided almost precisely evenly between the
    Republicans and Democrats.
  • 16 states were solidly and consistently
    Republican.
  • 14 states (most of them in the South) were
    solidly and consistently Democrat.
  • Only 5 states were usually in doubt, and it was
    there that national elections were commonly
    decided, often on the basis of voter turnout.

7
THE PARTY SYSTEM
  • The Republican Party captured the presidency in
    all but two of the elections in the era, but the
    party was not really as dominant as that
    suggests.
  • In the five presidential elections beginning in
    1876, the average popular-vote margin separating
    the Democratic and Republican candidates was 1.5.

8
THE PARTY SYSTEM
  • The congressional balance was similarly stable.
  • Between 1875 and 1895, the Republicans generally
    controlled the Senate and the Democrats
    controlled the House of Representatives.
  • In any given election, the number of seats that
    shifted from one party to the other was very
    small.

9
THE PARTY SYSTEM
  • As striking as the balance between parties was
    the intensity of public loyalty to them.
  • Voter turnout in presidential elections between
    1860 and 1900 averaged over 78 of all eligible
    voters.
  • Even in non-presidential years, from 60 to 80 of
    voters turned out for congressional and local
    candidates.

10
THE PARTY SYSTEM
  • Large groups of potential voters were
    disenfranchised during the era
  • Women in most states
  • Almost all blacks and many poor whites in the
    South.
  • But for all adult white males outside the South,
    there were few franchise restrictions.
  • The remarkable turnout represented a genuinely
    mass-based politics.

11
THE PARTY SYSTEM
  • Party politics in the Gilded Age occupied a
    central position in American culture.
  • Political campaigns were often the most important
    public events in the lives of communities.
  • Political organizations served important social
    and cultural functions.

12
THE PARTY SYSTEM
  • Political identification was almost as important
    to most individuals as identification with a
    church or ethnic group.
  • Partisanship was an intense, emotional force,
    widely admired and often identified with
    patriotism.

13
THE PARTY SYSTEM
  • WHAT EXPLAINS THIS REMARKABLE LOYALTY TO THE TWO
    POLITICAL PARTIES?
  • It was not that the parties took distinct
    positions on important public issues.
  • Both were solidly committed to the growth of the
    corporate industrial economy.
  • Both were hostile to all forms of economic and
    social radicalism.
  • Both were committed (at least until the 1890s) to
    a sound currency and to the existing structure
    of the financial system.

14
THE PARTY SYSTEM
  • What determined party loyalties was less concrete
    issues than other factors.
  • REGION was perhaps the most important.
  • To white Southerners, loyalty to the Democratic
    Party was a matter of unquestioned faith.
  • For white Southerners, the Democratic Party was
    the vehicle by which they had triumphed over
    Reconstruction.
  • For them, the Democratic Party was the vehicle
    for the preservation of white supremacy.

15
THE PARTY SYSTEM
  • To many old-stock northerners, white and black,
    Republican loyalties were equally intense for
    opposite reasons.
  • The party of Lincoln had freed the slaves.
  • For them, the party of Lincoln had preserved the
    Union.
  • For them, the Republican Party was a bulwark
    against slavery and treason.

16
THE PARTY SYSTEM
  • RELIGIOUS AND ETHNIC DIFFERENCES also shaped
    party loyalties.
  • The Dem. Party attracted most Catholic voters,
    most recent immigrants, and most of the poorer
    workers.
  • These three groups often overlapped.

17
THE PARTY SYSTEM
  • The Republican Party appealed to northern
    Protestants and citizens of old stock.

18
THE PARTY SYSTEM
  • Among the few substantive issues on which the
    parties took clearly different stands were
    matters concerning immigrants.
  • Republicans tended to be more nativist and to
    support measures restricting immigration.
  • They also tended to favor temperance legislation.
  • Catholics and immigrants viewed such proposals as
    an assault on their culture and lifestyle and
    opposed them.
  • The Democrats followed their lead.

19
THE PARTY SYSTEM
  • For many Americans party identification was
    usually more a reflection of vague cultural
    inclinations than a calculation of economic
    interest.
  • Individuals might affiliate with a party because
    their parents had done so, or because it was the
    party of their region, church, or their ethnic
    group.
  • Most clung to their party loyalties with
    persistence and passion.

20
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
21
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
  • One reason the two parties managed to avoid
    substantive issues was that the federal
    government (and for the most part state and local
    govts as well) did relatively little.
  • The govt in Washington was responsible for
  • Delivering the mails
  • Maintaining a national military
  • Conducting foreign policy
  • Collecting taxes and tariffs.

22
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
  • The federal government had few other
    responsibilities.
  • And it had few institutions with which to engage
    in additional responsibilities even if it chose
    to do so.

23
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
  • The USA in the Gilded Age was a society without a
    modern, national state.
  • The most powerful national institutions were
  • The two political parties
  • The federal courts
  • In a very real sense the American govt of the era
    was a state of courts and political parties.
  • The national leaders of both parties were
    primarily concerned with winning elections and
    controlling patronage not policy.

24
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
  • Both parties were dominated by powerful bosses
    and machines chiefly concerned with controlling
    and dispensing jobs.
  • The Democrats relied on big city organizations
    such as Boss Tweeds Tammany Hall in NYC.
  • These machines helped them to mobilize the voting
    power of immigrants.

25
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
  • The Republicans tended to depend on strong
    statewide organizations such as those of Senator
    Roscoe Conkling in New York.

26
THE GILDED AGE PRESIDENTS
27
THE GILDED AGE PRESIDENTS
  • The power of the party bosses had an significant
    effect on the power of the presidency.
  • The office had great symbolic importance, but its
    occupants were unable to do very much except
    distribute government appointments.
  • A new president had to make almost 100,000
    appointments most of them in the post office,
    the only large government agency at the time.
  • Even in making appointments, the president had
    very little latitude, since they had to avoid
    offending the various factions within their own
    parties.
  • The administrations of Hayes, Garfield, and
    Arthur reflected the political stalemate and
    patronage problems of the Gilded Age.
  • All in all, it was an age of forgettable
    presidents.

28
THE PRESIDENCY OF RUTHERFORD B. HAYES
  • The issue of patronage played a big role during
    the Hayes presidency.
  • Hayes was the winner of the disputed Election of
    1876.
  • He was harried by angry Democrats who called
    him His Fraudulency from the beginning of his
    term to the moment he left.
  • He was crippled as well by his own party the
    Republicans.

29
THE PRESIDENCY OF RUTHERFORD B. HAYES
  • By the end of his term two groups the
    Stalwarts led by Roscoe Conkling of NY and the
    Half-Breeds, led by James G. Blaine of ME. were
    competing for control of the Republican Party and
    threatening to split it.
  • The dispute between these two groups was
    characteristic of the political battles of the
    era.

30
THE PRESIDENCY OF RUTHERFORD B. HAYES
  • The dispute had virtually no substantive
    foundation.
  • Rhetorically, the Stalwarts favored traditional,
    professional machine politics.
  • The Half-Breeds favored reform.
  • Neither group was much interested in political
    change.
  • Each wanted a larger share of the patronage pie.
  • Hayes tried to satisfy both and ended up
    satisfying neither.

31
THE PRESIDENCY OF RUTHERFORD B. HAYES
  • The battle over patronage overshadowed all else
    during Hayes unhappy presidency.
  • His one important substantive initiative an
    effort to create a civil service system
    attracted no support from either party.
  • His early announcement not to seek re-election
    only weakened him further.

32
THE PRESIDENCY OF RUTHERFORD B. HAYES
  • Hayes had no power in Congress.
  • The Dems. Controlled the HoR throughout his
    presidency, and the Senate during the last two
    years of his term.
  • Senate Republicans, led by Conkling, opposed his
    efforts to defy the machines in making
    appointments.
  • Hayess presidency was a study in frustration.

33
THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES GARFIELD
  • The Republicans retained the presidency in 1880
    in part because they managed to agree on a ticket
    that made it possible for the two factions to
    briefly paper-over their differences.
  • The nominated James A. Garfield a Half-Breed
  • His VP running mate was Chester A. Arthur - a
    Stalwart.

34
THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES A. GARFIELD
  • Garfield won a decisive electoral victory.
  • However his popular vote margin was very thin.
  • The Republicans also captured both houses of
    Congress.

35
THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES A. GARFIELD
  • Garfield soon found himself in an ugly public
    quarrel with Conkling.
  • But before it could be resolved, Garfield was
    victimized by the spoils system in a more
    terrible sense.
  • 7/2/1881 Only four months after his
    inauguration, Garfield was shot twice was
    standing in the DC railroad station by an
    apparently deranged gunman and unsuccessful
    office seeker.
  • Garfield lingered for three months then died a
    victim as much of bungled medical treatment as of
    the wounds themselves.

36
THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES A. GARFIELD
37
THE PRESIDENCY OF CHESTER A. ARTHUR
  • Chester A. Arthur succeeded Garfield.
  • Arthur had spent a political lifetime as a
    devoted, skilled, and open spoilsman and a close
    ally of Conkling.
  • But as president, he tried to follow an
    independent course and even to promote reform.

38
THE PRESIDENCY OF CHESTER A. ARTHUR
  • The terrible circumstances which brought him to
    the presidency had undoubtedly shaped his
    behavior.
  • He realized that Garfields assassination had to
    some degree discredited the traditional spoils
    system.
  • The new Arthur dismayed the party bosses.
  • He kept most of Garfields appointees in office.
  • He also supported civil service reform, aware
    that the legislation was likely to pass whether
    he supported it or not.

39
THE PRESIDENCY OF CHESTER A. ARTHUR
  • 1883 Congress passed the Pendleton Act.
  • The nations first national civil service
    measure.
  • It identified a limited number of federal jobs to
    be filled by competitive written exams rather
    than by patronage.
  • Relatively few offices fell under civil service
    at first.
  • But its reach extended steadily so that by the
    mid-twentieth century most federal employees were
    civil servants.

40
THE ELECTION OF 1884 THE RETURN OF THE DEMOCRATS
41
THE ELECTION OF 1884 THE RETURN OF THE DEMOCRATS
  • The unsavory election of 1884 was typical of
    national political contests in the late 19th
    century in its emphasis on personalities than
    policies.
  • The Republican Party repudiated Arthur who was
    in any case already suffering from an illness
    that would kill him two years later.

42
THE ELECTION OF 1884 THE RETURN OF THE DEMOCRATS
  • The Republicans instead chose their most popular
    and controversial figure, James G. Blaine of ME.
  • To his adoring supporters he was known as the
    plumed knight.
  • To thousands of Americans, he was a symbol of
    seamy party politics.

43
THE ELECTION OF 1884 THE RETURN OF THE DEMOCRATS
  • An independent reform faction, known derisively
    by their critics as the mugwumps, announced
    they would bolt the party and support an honest
    Democrat.

44
THE ELECTION OF 1884 THE RETURN OF THE DEMOCRATS
  • Raising to the bait, the Democrats nominated
    Grover Cleveland, the reform governor of NY.
  • He differed from Blaine on no substantive issues
    but had acquired a reputation as an enemy of
    corruption.

45
THE ELECTION OF 1884 THE RETURN OF THE DEMOCRATS
  • The campaign of 1884 was filled with personal
    invective.
  • What may have decided the election was the last
    minute introduction of a religious controversy.
  • Shortly before the election, a delegation of
    Protestants ministers called on Blaine.
  • Their spokesman, Dr. Samuel Burchard, referred to
    the Democrats as the party of rum, Romanism, and
    rebellion.
  • Blaine was slow to repudiate Burchards
    indiscretion.

46
THE ELECTION OF 1884 THE RETURN OF THE DEMOCRATS
  • Democrats quickly spread the news that Blaine had
    tolerated a slander on the Catholic church.
  • Clevelands narrow victory may well have been the
    result of a heavy Catholic vote for Democrats in
    NY.
  • Cleveland won 219 electoral votes to Blaines
    182 his popular vote margin was only 23,000
    votes.

47
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48
THE PRESIDENCY OF GROVER CLEVELAND
  • Cleveland was the embodiment of an era in which
    few Americans believed the federal govt could,
    should, or do very much.
  • Cleveland believed in frugal and limited
    government in the Jeffersonian tradition.
  • No one should forget, he explained, that though
    the people support the Government, the Government
    should not support the people.

49
THE PRESIDENCY OF GROVER CLEVELAND
  • Cleveland did grapple with one major economic
    issue protective tariffs.
  • He doubted the wisdom of protective tariffs.
  • He concluded that the existing high rates were
    responsible for the annual surplus in federal
    revenues, which was tempting Congress to pass the
    reckless and extravagant legislation he
    frequently vetoed.
  • 12/1887 He asked Congress to reduce the tariff
    rates.
  • Democrats in the HoR approved a tariff reduction.
  • But Senate Republicans defiantly passed a bill of
    their own actually raising the rates.
  • The resulting deadlock made the tariff an issue
    in the election of 1888.

50
THE ELECTION OF 1888
51
THE ELECTION OF 1888
  • The Democrats renominated Cleveland and supported
    tariff reductions.
  • The Republicans settled on Benjamin Harrison of
    ID.
  • Harrison was obscure but respectable and the
    grandson of President William Henry Harrison.
  • The campaign was the first since the Civil War to
    involve a clear questions of economic difference
    between the parties.
  • It was also on of the most corrupt and closet
    elections in American history.

52
THE ELECTION OF 1888
  • Harrison won an electoral majority of 233 to 168.
  • But Cleveland won the popular vote by 100,000
    votes making this one of only three
    presidential elections in American history (1876
    and 2000) in which the loser in the popular vote
    was the victor in the electoral vote.

53
THE PRESIDENCY OF BENJAMIN HARRISON
  • Harrisons record as president was little more
    substantial than that of his grandfather, who
    died a month after taking office.
  • One reason for his failure was the intellectual
    drabness of the members of his Admin beginning
    with the president himself and extending through
    his cabinet.

54
THE PRESIDENCY OF BENJAMIN HARRISON
  • Another reason for failure was Harrisons
    unwillingness to make any effort to influence
    Congress.
  • And yet during his dreary term, public opinion
    was beginning to force the govt to confront some
    of the pressing social and economic issues of the
    day.
  • Most notably, perhaps, sentiment was rising in
    favor of legislation to curb the power of trusts.
  • Mid-1880s 15 western and southern states had
    adopted laws prohibiting combinations that
    restrained competition.
  • But corporations found it easy to escape
    limitations by incorporating in states like NJ
    and DL that offered them special privileges.

55
THE PRESIDENCY OF BENJAMIN HARRISON
  • If antitrust legislation was to be effective, it
    would have to come from the federal govt.
  • 1890 Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act,
    almost without dissent.
  • The Act prohibited any contract, combination, in
    the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy in
    restraint in trade or commerce.
  • Most members of Congress saw the Act as largely
    symbolic to help deflect public criticism, not
    likely to have any real effect on corporate power.

56
THE PRESIDENCY OF BENJAMIN HARRISON
  • For over a decade after its passage, the Sherman
    Act had virtually no impact.
  • 1901 The Justice Department had instituted only
    14 suits under the law against business
    combinations and had obtained few convictions.
  • It used the law much more frequently against
    labor union.

57
THE PRESIDENCY OF BENJAMIN HARRISON
  • The courts weakened the act considerably.
  • 1895 United States v. E.C. Knight Co.
  • The govt. charged that a sugar trust controlled
    98 of refined sugar mfg.
  • The Supreme Court rejected the govts case.
  • It ruled that the sugar trust was engaged in mfg,
    not in interstate commerce.
  • Thus the Court ruled that the Act applied to
    commerce not to mfg.

58
THE PRESIDENCY OF BENJAMIN HARRISON
  • The Republicans were more interested in the
    issue, they believed had won them the Election of
    1888 the tariff.
  • Rep. William McKinley (OH) and Nelson Aldrich
    (RI) drafted the highest protective measure ever
    proposed in Congress.

59
THE PRESIDENCY OF BENJAMIN HARRSION
  • 10/1890 The McKinley Tariff became law.
  • It raised the tax on foreign imports over 48.
  • Politically, it hurt the Republican Party.
  • They misinterpreted public sentiment.
  • The party suffered a stunning reversal in the
    1890 congressional election.
  • Their majority in the Senate was slashed to 8.
  • In the HoR, they retained only 88 of the 323
    seats.

60
THE ELECTION OF 1892
61
THE ELECTION OF 1892
  • The Republicans were unable to recover from the
    political fallout over the McKinley Tariff.
  • Benjamin Harrison once again supported
    protection, and Grover Cleveland, renominated by
    the Democrats, once again supported it.
  • Only a new third party, the Peoples Party, which
    James B. Weaver as its candidate, advocated any
    serious economic reform.

62
THE ELECTION OF 1892
  • RESULTS
  • Cleveland 277 electoral votes
  • Harrison 145 electoral votes
  • Weaver 22 electoral votes
  • Cleveland won the popular vote by 380,000 votes.
  • For the first time since 1878, the Democrats won
    a majority of both houses of Congress.

63
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64
CLEVELANDS SECOND TERM
  • The policies of Clevelands second term were much
    like the first term
  • Devoted to limited govt
  • Hostile to active state measures to deal with
    social or economic problems.

65
CLEVELANDS SECOND TERM
  • But this time, a major economic crisis (the Panic
    of 1893) created popular demands for a more
    active government.
  • For the most part, Cleveland resisted those
    pressures.
  • Again, he supported a tariff reduction, which the
    HoR approved but the Senate rejected.
  • Cleveland denounced the result but allowed it to
    become law as the Wilson-Gorman Tariff.

66
CLEVELANDS SECOND TERM
  • The bill also included a 2 income tax on incomes
    of over 4,000.
  • But the Supreme Court declared it
    unconstitutional.
  • Only after approval of the Sixteenth Amendment in
    1913 was the federal govt able to tax incomes.
  • Pressure was also growing for regulation of the
    railroads.
  • The Courts limited the powers of the states to
    regulate commerce even within their own
    boundaries.
  • Railroad regulation had to come from the federal
    government.

67
CLEVELANDS SECOND TERM
  • 188 Congress responded with the Interstate
    Commerce Act
  • It banned discrimination in rates between long
    and short hauls.
  • Required railroads to publish their rate
    schedules and file them with the govt.
  • Declared that all interstate rail rates must be
    reasonable and just although the bill did not
    define what this meant.

68
CLEVELANDS SECOND TERM
  • The Act established the Interstate Commerce
    Commission (ICC)
  • A five-person agency
  • Purpose to administer the Interstate Commerce
    Act
  • But it had to rely on the courts to enforce its
    rulings
  • The Act was haphazardly enforced and narrowly
    interpreted by the courts thus rendering the
    Act and ICC useless.

69
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70
THE GILDED AGE
  • The controversies over the tariff, the trusts,
    and the railroads were signs that dramatic
    changes in the American economy were creating
    problems that much of the public considered too
    important and dangerous to ignore.
  • But the govts response to that agitation
    reflected the continuing weakness of the American
    state.
  • The govt lacked institutions adequate to perform
    any significant role in American economic life.
  • And not enough Americans had yet embraced a
    political ideology that would justify any major
    expansion of govt responsibilities.

71
THE GILDED AGE
  • The effort to create such institutions and to
    promote such an ideology would occupy much of
    American public life in the coming decades.
  • Among the first signs of that effort was a
    dramatic dissident movement that shattered the
    political equilibrium the nation had experienced
    for the previous twenty years.
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