Course Project

Gilded Age

Read Chapter 7 Introduction and the Following Chapter Selections: Parkman, Lodge, Cleveland, Washington,

Sumner (What Social Classes Owe...), Carnegie

The Gilded Age: 1877-1900 - Period of rapid economic and social change, spurred by the Industrial Revolution

- Growth of railroads, finance, manufacturing, mining - Rapid expansion of wealth - Large waves of immigration, where workers were seeking higher wages in the United States - Vast income inequality in this period, as well

- Visible concentration of wealth and ostentatious behavior on the part of the rich - Age of the Robber Barons (e.g. Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan) - Shaped industries like steel, finance, and oil

- Ideas like Social Darwinism were popular - Applied Darwinian concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to human beings and

societies that they lived in - Idea that the strong become rich while the weak do not

The Gilded Age: 1877-1900 - Rampant corruption in government

- Party machines and patronage - Crisis of legitimacy in elections and democratic institutions

- Elite wariness over the power of the masses - Period of divided government, with the power of both parties being roughly equal

- Compromise of 1877 (Rutherford B. Hayes) effectively ended Reconstruction and left African Americans unsupported in the South

- Rise of Populist Party, which eventually took over control of Democratic Party for a time - “The Populist Party, the most successful third party in the period, borrowed from some of

the earlier movements but also emphasized the adoption of a graduated income tax, term limits, initiatives and referenda, and additional labor laws. In the midst of one of the worst depressions in American history, the Populists managed to capture the Democratic Party in 1896 and incorporate its candidates and platforms under the Democratic banner. In the process, the postbellum pattern of closely contested elections was broken and the Republican Party established a dominance that would last until the Great Depression” (364)

Francis Parkman (1823-1893)

FRANCIS PARKMAN

- Harvard educated historian from Boston - Son of a prominent minister - Came from a wealthy family - Studied the western frontier and was an advocate of Manifest Destiny - Elite outlook; skeptical of democracy

PARKMAN: THE FAILURE OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE (1878)

- Claims that monarchical tyranny is no longer the threat, but popular tyranny is - “the present danger is not above but be- neath, and where the real tyrant is organized

ignorance, led by unscrupulous craft, and marching, amid the applause of fools, under the flag of equal rights. . . .” (368)

- Believes popular sovereignty is problematic and not the solution to social ills that it was once touted to be

- The people can be unruly and used for ill purpose - “We speak, of course, of our own country, where no royalty is left to fear, except the

many-headed one that bears the name of Demos, and its portentous concourse of courtiers, sycophants, and panders. . . “ (368)

- Tension between liberty and equality - “Liberty was the watchword of our fathers, and so it is of ourselves. But, in their hearts, the

masses of the nation cherish desires not only different from it, but inconsistent with it. They want equality more than they want liberty” (368)

PARKMAN: THE FAILURE OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE (1878)

- On inequality: - “Now, there is a facetious inequality and a real and intrinsic one. Rank, titles, privileges, and

wealth, make up the first; and character, ability, and culture, the second. Excepting only distinctions of wealth, we have abolished the artificial inequality, and now we are doing what we can to abolish the real one. Vaguely and half unconsciously, but every day more and more, the masses hug the flattering illusion that one man is essentially about as good as another. . . .” (368)

- “The highest must be repressed and the lowest stimulated in order to produce a level average. In such an attempt no political or social system can completely succeed; but in so far as it tends this way it is false and pernicious. If it could succeed, or approach to success, it would be an outrage upon humanity. . . . A society where liberty was complete, and where all men had equal opportunities of development, according to their several qualities, would show immense diversities of all kinds. . . .” (368-369)

PARKMAN: THE FAILURE OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE (1878)

- Doubts the people can be capable of good governance or the promotion of wise ideas

- “In his vague way, [Demos] fancies that aggregated ignorance and weakness will bear the fruits of wisdom. He begins to think that science, thought, and study, are old-time illusions; that everybody has a right to form his own opinion as to whether the world is round or flat, and that the votes of the majority ought to settle the question” (368)

- “Shall we look for an ideal society in that which tends to a barren average and a weary uniformity, treats men like cattle, counts them by the head, and gives them a vote apiece without asking whether or not they have the sense to use it; or in that which recognizes the inherent differences between man and man, gives the preponderance of power to character and intelligence, yet removes artificial barriers, keeps circulation free through all its parts, and rewards merit whenever it appears with added influence?” (369)

- Does not think universal suffrage has achieved the ends of good government - “There is an illusion, or a superstition, among us respecting the ballot. The means are confounded

with the end. Good government is the end, and the ballot is worthless except so far as it helps to reach this end. Any reasonable man would willingly renounce his privilege of dropping a piece of paper into a box, provided that good government were assured to him and his descendants” (369)

William Graham Sumner (1840-1910)

WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER

- Minister and professor at Yale - Proponent of laissez-faire and free trade - Promoted the scientific study of human behavior - Leader of social movements (anti-imperialism) and professional societies

SUMNER: WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES OWE TO EACH OTHER (1883)

- Remarks on the competing concerns of different classes, especially in regard to social problems (as he conceives of this)

- “So far as I can find out what the classes are who are respectively endowed with the rights and duties of posing and solving social problems, they are as follows: Those who are bound to solve the problems are the rich, comfortable, prosperous, virtuous, respectable, educated, and healthy; those whose right it is to set the problems are those who have been less fortunate or less successful in the struggle for existence. The problem itself seems to be, How shall the latter be made as comfortable as the former? To solve this problem, and make us all equally well off, is assumed to be the duty of the former class; the penalty, if they fail of this, is to be bloodshed and destruction. If they cannot make everybody else as well off as themselves, they are to be brought down to the same misery as others” (399)

- Posits that some can benefit from state action, but not all, and this frames how he poses the question:

- “What ought Some-of-us to do for Others-of-us? or, What do social classes owe to each other?“ (399)

SUMNER: WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES OWE TO EACH OTHER (1883)

- Asks whether any class is under the obligation to solve problems of another, and whether any class has the right to demand this

- Asks what the state owes to people - “whether there is anything but a fallacy and a superstition in the notion that ‘the State’ owes anything to anybody

except peace, order, and the guarantees of rights” (399) - He claims that some think they have not only the right to pursue happiness but to obtain it,

and when they don’t, that they have the right to demand the aid of others in obtaining it - Differentiates between two types of grievances: struggles arising from nature and struggles

arising from other people or civil institutions - “The former class of ills is to be met only by manly effort and energy; the latter may be corrected by associated

effort. The former class of ills is constantly grouped and generalized, and made the object of social schemes. We shall see, as we go on, what that means. The second class of ills may fall on certain social classes, and reform will take the form of interference by other classes in favor of that one. The last fact is, no doubt, the reason why people have been led, not noticing distinctions, to believe that the same method was applicable to the other class of ills. The distinction here made between the ills which belong to the struggle for existence and those which are due to the faults of human institutions is of prime importance” (400)

SUMNER: WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES OWE TO EACH OTHER (1883)

- How does he characterize those who are less fortunate? - He says philanthropists “eagerly set about the attempt to account for what they see, and to

devise schemes for remedying what they do not like. In their eagerness to recommend the less fortunate classes to pity and consideration they forget all about the rights of other classes; they gloss over all the faults of the classes in question, and they exaggerate their misfortunes and their virtues. . . . The man who by his own effort raises himself above poverty appears, in these discussions, to be of no account. The man who has done nothing to raise himself above poverty finds that the social doctors flock about him, bringing the capital which they have collected from the other class, and promising him the aid of the state to give him what the other had to work for” (400)

- “Here it may suffice to observe that, on the theories of the social philosophers to whom I have referred, we should get a new maxim of judicious living: poverty is the best policy. If you get wealth, you will have to support other people; if you do not get wealth, it will be the duty of other people to support you” (400)

SUMNER: WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES OWE TO EACH OTHER (1883)

- He claims that in a society based upon a social contract, where interactions are free and voluntary, one cannot make claims upon another

- “It follows, however, that one man, in a free state, cannot claim help from, and cannot be charged to give help to, another” (400)

- Society is there to protect liberty, in his estimation - “The notion of civil liberty which we have inherited is that of a status created for the individual

by laws and institutions, the effect of which is that each man is guaranteed the use of all his own powers exclusively for his own welfare. It is not at all a matter of elections, or universal suffrage, or democracy. All institutions are to be tested by the degree to which they guarantee liberty” (401)

- Claims liberty should not be sacrificed for other social ends - States that vast inequalities in income and wealth are not undesirable

SUMNER: WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES OWE TO EACH OTHER (1883)

- States that one’s only duty to is oneself - “Every man and woman in society has one big duty. That is, to take care of his or her own self. This

is a social duty” (401)

- People like to make others live according to their own conceptions of the good - “Yet we are constantly annoyed, and the legislatures are kept constantly busy, by the people who

have made up their minds that it is wise and conducive to happiness to live in a certain way, and who want to compel everybody else to live in their way. Some people have decided to spend Sunday in a certain way, and they want laws passed to make other people spend Sunday in the same way. Some people have resolved to be teetotalers, and they want a law passed to make everybody else a teetotaler. Some people have resolved to eschew luxury, and they want taxes laid to make others eschew luxury” (402)

- “Society needs first of all to be freed from these meddlers—that is, to be let alone. Here we are, then, once more back at the old doctrine—laissez faire. Let us translate it into blunt English, and it will read, Mind your own business. It is nothing but the doctrine of liberty. Let every man be happy in his own way” (402)

SUMNER: WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES OWE TO EACH OTHER (1883)

- Discusses the progress of humanity as a struggle of the whole, where individuals sometimes fail

- “The rights, advantages, capital, knowledge, and all other goods which we inherit from past generations have been won by the struggles and sufferings of past generations; and the fact that the race lives, though men die, and that the race can by heredity accumulate within some cycle its victories over nature, is one of the facts which make civilization possible. The struggles of the race as a whole produce the possessions of the race as a whole” (402)

- He claims that what the classes owe to each other is guaranteeing rights: - “Rights do not pertain to results, but only to chances. They pertain to the conditions of the struggle

for existence, not to any of the results of it; to the pursuit of happiness, not to the possession of happiness” (403)

- Redistribution of resources is not the key to this, but expanding opportunities: - “Instead of endeavoring to redistribute the acquisitions which have been made between the existing

classes, our aim should be to increase, multiply, and extend the chances. Such is the work of civilization” (403)

Booker T. Washington

(1856-1915)

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

- Born into slavery before the Civil War, but grew up free - Led the new Tuskegee Institute - Built a network of African American advisors and white donors to help

promote his workforce training programs - Argued for unification between the different sides in the post-war setting - Acceptant of segregation if it could be exchanged for jobs for African

Americans

WASHINGTON: ATLANTA EXPOSITION ADDRESS (1895)

- Notes that after the war, many African Americans sought public office rather than positions like real estate, farming, industry

- Gives the metaphor of the people on a ship who need water: “Cast down your bucket where you are” (390)

- “To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say: “Cast down your bucket where you are”—cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded” (390)

- “Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions“ (390)

WASHINGTON: ATLANTA EXPOSITION ADDRESS (1895)

- Notes the need to cultivate the post-war workforce - “Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the

masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor, and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life” (391)

- “No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem” (391) - “It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to

overshadow our opportunities” (391) - Speaks to the white population, as well, and asks them to depend on African American

workers instead of foreign immigrants for the their labor needs - Claims that the education and cultivation of African American talents will benefit all

involved, including the economy - He believes this type of reconciliation is the key to social progress

- “The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing” (391)

Henry Cabot Lodge

(1850-1924)

HENRY CABOT LODGE

- Republican from Massachusetts - PhD in political science from Harvard - Served in U.S. House and Senate - Supported military intervention abroad - Supported limiting immigration and endorsed literacy tests for immigrants

to United States - These tests were ways of restricting immigration - Proposed a bill on literacy tests that was vetoed by Cleveland but later used

in other immigration bills

LODGE: SPEECH TO THE SENATE ON LITERACY TESTS (1896)

- Who does he wish to prevent from coming to the United States? - “Paupers, diseased persons, convicts, and contract laborers are now excluded. By this bill it is

proposed to make a new class of excluded immigrants and add to those which have just been named the totally ignorant. The bill is of the simplest kind. The first section excludes from the country all immigrants who cannot read and write either their own or some other language. . . .” (382)

- “It is found, in the first place, that the illiteracy test will bear most heavily upon the Italians, Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Greeks, and Asiatics, and very lightly, or not at all, upon English-speaking emigrants or Germans, Scandinavians, and French. In other words, the races most affected by the illiteracy test are those whose emigration to this country has begun within the last twenty years and swelled rapidly to enormous proportions, races with which the English-speaking people have never hitherto assimilated, and who are most alien to the great body of the people of the United States. On the other hand, immigrants from the United Kingdom and of those races which are most closely related to the English-speaking people, and who with the English-speaking people themselves founded the American colonies and built up the United States, are affected but little by the proposed test” (382)

LODGE: SPEECH TO THE SENATE ON LITERACY TESTS (1896)

- He claims that the tests will keep the number of “desirable” groups coming in at their current levels (and that these are the groups that settle the new frontiers)

- The tests will limit those who stay on the Eastern seaboard “where immigration is not needed and where their presence is most injurious and undesirable” (382)

- Claims that the illiterate bring the least money and are the most needy (burdens on society)

- Claims that allowing the poorer class of immigrants damages the American workers and economy

- “There is no one thing which does so much to bring about a reduction of wages and to injure the American wage earner as the unlimited introduction of cheap foreign labor through unrestricted immigration” (383)

- Claims it affects citizenship too by bringing in outside people with different backgrounds - “It involves, in a word, nothing less than the possibility of a great and perilous change in the very fabric of our

race. . . . The additions in this country until the present time have been from kindred people or from those with whom we have been long allied and who speak the same language” (383)

- What does this culminate in a discussion of? Race and white supremacy

Grover Cleveland (1837-1908)

GROVER CLEVELAND

- Democratic President of the United States (22nd and 24th)

- Took the Democratic stance of pro-immigration

- Economic conservative who emphasized fiscal responsibility and free trade

- Vetoed Lodge’s literacy test bill

CLEVELAND: LITERACY TEST VETO (1897) - Notes that the proposed bill would be radical policy shift on immigration from

the nation’s previous stance - Until now, the United States was a nation that welcomed others

- “Heretofore we have welcomed all who came to us from other lands except those whose moral or physical condition or history threatened danger to our national welfare and safety. Relying upon the zealous watchfulness of our people to prevent injury to our political and social fabric, we have encouraged those coming from foreign countries to cast their lot with us and join in the development of our vast domain, securing in return a share in the blessings of American citizenship.” (384)

- He attributes much of the tremendous growth over the past century to this welcoming attitude

- “A century’s stupendous growth, largely due to the assimilation and thrift of millions of sturdy and patriotic adopted citizens, attests the success of this generous and free-handed policy which, while guarding the people’s interests, exacts from our immigrants only physical and moral soundness and a willingness and ability to work.” (384)

CLEVELAND: LITERACY TEST VETO (1897) - He challenges the notion that the new immigrants are of poorer quality than

previous ones - “It is said, however, that the quality of recent immigration is undesirable. The time is quite within

recent memory when the same thing was said of immigrants who, with their descendants, are now numbered among our best citizens” (384)

- Challenges Lodge’s other claims (e.g. settling in cities, stealing jobs) - “The best reason that could be given for this radical restriction of immigration is the necessity of

protecting our population against degeneration and saving our national peace and quiet from imported turbulence and disorder. I cannot believe that we would be protected against these evils by limiting immigration to those who can read and write in any language twenty-five words of our Constitution. In my opinion, it is infinitely more safe to admit a hundred thousand immigrants who, though unable to read and write, seek among us only a home and opportunity to work than to admit one of those unruly agitators and enemies of governmental control who can not only read and write, but delights in arousing by inflammatory speech the illiterate and peacefully inclined to discontent and tumult. Violence and disorder do not originate with illiterate laborers. They are, rather, the victims of the educated agitator” (385)

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)

ANDREW CARNEGIE - Wealthy industrialist, born in Scotland - His family, in poverty, came to the U.S. in 1848 - Began working at 13 in a mill and invested in stocks - Founded a steel company and made his fortune there - Thought people should focus on acquiring wealth first then focus on

charitable causes later

CARNEGIE: THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH (1889) - Asks what the proper use of wealth is - Notes a recent revolution in human conditions, where vast inequalities in wealth

now exist - “In former days there was little difference between the dwelling, dress, food, and environment of the

chief and those of his retainers... The contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the laborer with us today measures the change which has come with civilization” (405)

- Claims that this change is beneficial to human progress - What the poor can afford today was what the rich once could not

- “Today the world obtains commodities of excellent quality at prices which even the generation preceding this would have deemed incredible. In the commercial world similar causes have produced similar results, and the race is benefited thereby. The poor enjoy what the rich could not before afford. What were the luxuries have become the necessaries of life. The laborer has now more comforts than the landlord had a few generations ago” (405)

- This change occurred due to the factory, the industrial revolution and economies of scale

CARNEGIE: THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH (1889) - In factory work, the owner no longer knows the thousands of employees - Castes (classes) are made where they do not know each other, and class conflict

results - “We assemble thousands of operatives in the factory, in the mine, and in the counting-house, of

whom the employer can know little or nothing and to whom the employer is little better than a myth. All intercourse between them is at an end. Rigid Castes are formed, and, as usual, mutual ignorance breeds mutual distrust. Each Caste is without sympathy for the other, and ready to credit anything disparaging in regard to it” (405-406)

- In this type of economy, employers must find the most efficient way to exploit their labor

- “Under the law of competition, the employer of thousands is forced into the strictest economies, among which the rates paid to labor figure prominently, and often there is friction between the employer and the employed, between capital and labor, between rich and poor… The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries, is also great; but the advantage of this law are also greater still, for it is to this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train” (406)

CARNEGIE: THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH (1889) - Claims this sort of competition and the progress it brings are beneficial for society

- “while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department.” (406)

- Consolidation of wealth and vast inequalities are the necessary outcome of this law of competition and not blameworthy, he states

- Lauds the taxation of wealth when a rich person passes away (estate tax) rather than when they are taxed during their lives (income tax, etc.)

- “Of all forms of taxation, this seems the wisest. Men who continue hoarding great sums all their lives, the proper use of which for public ends would work good to the community, should be made to feel that the community, in the form of the state, cannot thus be deprived of its proper share. By taxing estates heavily at death the state marks its condemnation of the selfish millionaire’s unworthy life” (406)

- Estate tax would encourage the wealthy to make good use of their wealth before they pass

CARNEGIE: THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH (1889) - How, then, must the wealthy behave?

- “This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of Wealth: First, to set an example of modest, unostentatious living, shunning display or extravagance; to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and after doing so to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer, and strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community—the man of wealth thus becoming the mere agent and trustee for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience and ability to administer, doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves” (407)

- After wealth is accumulated, commit themselves to philanthropic acts