The Gilded Age: Politics, Parties, Patronage, and Presidents

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The Gilded Age Politics, Parties, Patronage,
and Presidents

• Americans in the nineteenth century mistrusted
  hierarchical power and believed that everyone
  could benefit form an economy free of government
  interference
• After the gigantic splits after the Civil War,
  the two political parties each drifted back to
  center and avoided controversy
• None of the gilded age presidents served two
  terms or distinguished themselves in any huge way

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Politics in the Pivotal 1890s Important Issues

• Civil War veterans pensions easily approved by
  Congress with little debate
• Trusts the Sherman Anti-Trust Act passed with
  only one nay vote
• Tariffs after many amendments and debate,
  American protective tariffs were raised higher
  than ever
• Money after much debate, the gold standard
  remained secure.

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Depression and Election

• 1893 saw the worst national economic depression
  up until that time.
• Wall Street crashed as the small gold supply was
  demanded by thousands of depositors in exchange
  for their paper money.
• The election of 1896 boiled down to the single
  issue of free and unlimited coinage of silver,
  which many believed would solve all the problems
  of the country in short order.

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Middle-Class Reform Wealth and Social Darwinism

• For most Gilded Age Americans, Christianity as
  well as science supported the notions of class
  divisions and the moral superiority of the
  wealthy.
• Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth (1889)
• Carnegies ideas were drawn from social
  Darwinism, based in turn on the scientific works
  of Charles Darwin and the natural laws of
  selection.

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Settlements and Social Gospel

• Jane Adams founded Hull House in Chicago in 1889
  to aid in the solution of the social and
  industrial problems which are engendered by the
  modern conditions of life in a great city.
• She committed her life to reduce the suffering of
  the poor.
• The settlement house movement blended the idioms
  of idealism and practicality

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Reforming the City

• Urban government was the structure most in need
  of reform in the nineteenth century.
• Disease, waste, pollution, cholera, filth and
  inefficiency were everywhere in the large cities.
• Beautification was one solution parks and
  public spaces

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The Struggle for Womens Suffrage

• Womens rights advanced very slowly after the
  Seneca Falls Convention of 1848.
• Before 1890 only the territory of Wyoming allowed
  women full political equity.
• Three central arguments emerged
• Women needed the vote to pass self-protection
  laws
• Womens role as social housekeepers could only be
  enhanced by political participation
• Protestant, white women needed the vote to
  counterbalance the hordes of immigrants coming
  into America.