APUSH 6.7 to 6.10 — APUSH Notes and Study Guides

In the last set of notes, we talked about innovation and economics from the years 1865 to 1898 and now, we’re going to be moving on to talking about the Gilded Age in full.

Introduction to the Gilded Age

Now, you might be asking, what was the Gilded Age? Well, the Gilded Age was the period after Reconstruction, defined by rapid economic growth and change. But at the same time, the Gilded Age was also defined by political corruption, the plight and terrible working conditions of laborers, and class division. And when something is gilded, it is thinly covered in gold. So for the Gilded Age, while it might initially sound like it was all glittery and prosperous on the outside, underneath that thin layer of gold, there was a lot of poverty and suffering. For one of the first times in American history, the gap between the rich and poor was rapidly growing and now, there truly was an impoverished lower class.

But let’s talk about the outer layer of gold that existed first! This new class of insanely wealthy business owners far exceeded the previous generation in terms of wealth and one of their most favorite pastimes was letting everyone know how rich they were. This practice, called “conspicuous consumption”, was common among these wealthy businessmen. For example, George Washington Vanderbilt II, the grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, had the Biltmore House constructed in 1895, a 175,000 square feet house containing 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, 4 floors, and 75 acres of formal gardens.

In the Homestead Strike of 1892, Henry Clay Frick, the manager of one of Carnegie’s steel mills, reduced workers’ wages and they striked. In response, he locked them out of the mill. After they surrounded it, Frick hired a small private army, the Pinkertons, to drive them off and this led to a gun battle that left roughly a dozen dead. In response, the Pennsylvania governor sent a militia to establish peace.

In Chicago, there was the Pullman Strike during the Panic of 1893, in which George Pullman, owner of a manufacturing company for sleeping cars, cut wages in order to save money. After he fired some of his workers, the rest went on strike and Eugene V. Debs, a union leader from another union, directed his members to not work on any of the trains that had Pullman cars. But because the owners of railroads and train cars worked closely together, they started hooking the Pullman cars to trains carrying federal mail, making it so that if they interfered with the cars, they were also interfering with federal mail. And so Debs and other union leaders were arrested for this, ending the strike.

Labor Unions

During this time, the working class suffered from low wages and dangerous working conditions, especially those in the mining or railroad industry. However, the workers couldn’t protest against these conditions because companies would just fire them and replace them with someone else. This led to the formation of labor unions. Labor unions allowed for thousands of workers to advocate together for workers’ rights and better working conditions. For example, the first labor union, the National Labor Union, was established in 1866 and sought to achieve an eight-hour workday, workplace equality, and the right to organize. In the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, unionized railroad workers went on strike after wages were cut during a recession, causing more than 60% of the nation's railroads to shut down. This strike ended up turning violent and killing over 100 people, but it also forced railroad employers to negotiate with the workers and give in to their demands.

One of the biggest labor unions during this time, the Knights of Labor, was established in 1869. This was a massive labor union that allowed anybody of any race or gender to join. They fought for an eight-hour workday, the right to organize, the destruction of trusts and monopolies, and the abolition of child labor. Child labor was a major issue because industries loved using in factories due to the fact that they could pay them lower wages and they were smaller, allowing them to do more dangerous work in tight places. By the end of the 19th century, children between 10 and 15 made up a sixth of all workers.

By 1886, the Knights of Labor had over 700,000 members but soon after, the entire organization fell apart. In May of 1886, the Knights of Labor gathered in Haymarket Square in Chicago to protest for an eight-hour workday. But then a bunch of anarchists unrelated to the Knights of Labor planted a bomb and it exploded. This event became known as the Haymarket Square Riot and caused many to believe that the Knights were radicals, even though they had nothing to do with the bomb. Soon after, the union fell apart and their role was taken over by a new union, the American Federation of Labor. This was an association of craft workers led by a man named Samuel Gompers. By 1901, the federation had surpassed the old Knights and had over a million members. And much like the Knights, they wanted to unionize for higher wages and better working conditions.

As a result of these labor unions, many companies started employing anti-union techniques to try and stop these unions from having power. For example, companies and factories would perform lockouts, closing down to break a labor movement before it could organize. Employers would share blacklists of pro-union workers, workers would have to sign yellow-dog contracts (which were agreements that they would not join a union), and companies would get court injunctions against strikes. Sometimes, companies would also call upon state militia to stop strikes as well.

Immigration

Now let’s talk about immigration and migration during the Gilded Age. During the late 19th century, the population of the United States grew significantly due to the sudden arrival of millions of immigrants to the country. Many of these immigrants came from Europe, especially the British Isles, Scandinavia, Germany, and western Europe. They mainly came to escape famine, poverty, joblessness, and overcrowding in Europe. Others came from eastern Europe, such as Jews, to escape religious persecution. Some others came from areas such as Russia, Italy, and the Balkans in order to escape poverty and conflict in the region. The arrival of all of these immigrants provided industries with a large source of labor, helping fuel the manufacturing industry and speedingup its growth. On the West Coast, many Asian immigrants, especially Chinese people, began arriving starting from the California Gold Rush in the late 1840s.

The sudden rise in immigrants caused cities to rapidly change. Immigrants mainly settled near the center of cities, living with much of the lower working class. The middle and upper classes, as a result, then migrated to live out in rural and suburban areas. This left behind all of the working class and urban poor in the cities. Soon, these cities became densely populated and filled with disease. Tenement apartments were hastily constructed to provide housing for everybody. These tenements forced people to live tightly together, and were poorly constructed and poorly ventilated. This led to many disease outbreaks such as cholera, typhus, and tuberculosis. Many of these tenements only had two toilets per floor, and only one set of stairs. This made them very vulnerable to fires that would spread from one story to the next, trapping everyone above. Some of these tenements would be built very close together and wouldn’t have windows to reduce construction costs, allowing over 3,000 people to be housed in a single city block. However, by 1870, New York City passed a law requiring bedrooms to have at least one window.

Despite these challenges, cities also became the location for the rise of new cultures. Immigrants established ethnic enclaves. These were neighborhoods where people from the same country would live together. This allowed them to keep their cultures and traditions alive around each other. Irish immigrants built Catholic churches and Jews built synagogues for their religions. Many immigrants fought for immigrant rights, or opened banks and grocery stores to deposit money and sell food from their homeland. Many enclaves kept their music alive and celebrated holidays from their former home.

Cities, despite the disease and the dense population, thrived during the Gilded Age for many reasons. Some of these include better forms of transportation, an increase in steel production, and the rise of supermarkets. Transportation also led to rapid suburban development around cities because now, people could live outside cities and then quickly travel in for work.

In the Western part of the country, Chinese immigrants faced a lot of hostility from anti-immigrant groups. By 1870, there were already more than 50,000 Chinese immigrants in the U.S. Nativists disliked the immigrants because the immigrants often took jobs that many didn’t want to do, such as helping build the transcontinental railroad. During the Panic of 1873, Californians blamed the Chinese for their economic troubles. They argued that because the immigrants were willing to work for low wages, that was making everybody else’s wages lower as a result. This led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which prohibited Chinese immigration to the U.S.

However, some people treated immigrants with kindness. In Chicago, Jane Addams established settlement houses like the Hull House in 1889. These settlement houses aided new immigrants arriving in the city by providing resources such as education, English language instruction, healthcare, and job assistance.

On the other hand, many Americans, especially in the cities, lived in poverty. They were earning wages that were nearly unlivable and constantly suffered from economic panics such as the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1893. But while they were all poor and earning very little, the rise of mass production allowed for a lot of goods to be made cheaper. The expansion of industry during this period also opened up new job opportunities, leading to many immigrants arriving looking for a new life. So while there was a lot of poverty, there was also population growth and a general rise in living standards.

How did Americans respond to all of the new immigrants in the Gilded Age? As millions of immigrants arrived, many Americans feared that they would be a threat to American culture and would ruin the country. Many also feared that they would take their jobs. For the immigrants, they were faced with a difficult choice. Immigrants had to choose whether or not they wanted to hold onto their own culture, or assimilate into American society and adopt American culture. While some would try to do both, this wouldn’t be enough for many Americans, especially Nativists. Nativists wanted to protect the interests of Americans over that of immigrants. Protestant ministers such as Henry Cabot Lodge argued that the country was committing "race suicide" by allowing so many "inferior races" to enter. Nativists also formed the American Protective Association, an anti-Catholic organization. This was created because the majority of Irish immigrants were Catholic.

But it wasn’t just the Nativists that disliked immigrants. Labor unions did as well, because immigrants were seen as desperate for work and therefore they were willing to work for very low wages and in dangerous conditions. This made arguing for rights and better wages more difficult for labor unions because now, the workers would just be replaced with immigrants if the unions decided to strike.

Philosophers, businessmen, and politicians who believed in Social Darwinism also disliked immigrants, claiming that they were weak and inferior compared to "real" Americans. They believed that Irish and German people did not measure up to the standards of Anglo-Saxon whiteness, and that allowing immigrants to live in America would harm the gene pool.

Migration

As for migration, one of the biggest migration movements during this period was the Exoduster Movement. This was a migration of black Southerners to the West. This movement occurred because, after Reconstruction ended in the South, discrimination and segregation had returned. Sharecropping had also been created in the South as a replacement for slavery. Black people in the South also had to face the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow Laws. As a result, starting from the late 1870s, around 40,000 black southerners migrated westward to states such as Kansas, Oklahoma, and Colorado. Organizations such as the Colored Relief Board and the Kansas Freedmen’s Aid Society aided this migration by providing food, shelter, and medical aid to migrants. Some migrants settled in urban areas, taking up jobs as servants or trade workers. Others became farmers and established homesteads in the remaining land that had not already been claimed by railroads. Despite the migration however, there were still difficulties to be faced in the West.

The Middle Class

Now let’s move on to talking about the middle class. During the Gilded Age, a new hierarchy formed in larger businesses and corporations. At the top were the executives who owned the corporation. At the bottom were the laborers who worked in factories. In the middle, a new layer emerged made up of people who didn’t do manual labor but didn’t own businesses either. They were people such as managers, accountants, secretaries, and lawyers. Instead of doing physical work, their jobs involved handling information. These jobs became known as white-collar jobs because the people who worked these jobs often wore white collars. There was also an increase in women in the workforce during this time. After the invention of the typewriter, many women learned to type and got jobs because of this skill. Many women also started being employed as school teachers during this period.

This new middle layer in businesses resulted in the creation of a middle class in society. The middle class was made up of people who made enough money to live comfortable lives and to be able to save their money for the future. They often worked less hours and fewer days than factory workers. As a result, they were able to engage in leisure culture and buy items that they wanted instead of needed. Leisure culture involved enjoying entertainment such as attending opera houses, going to parks, playing sports, watching sports, and going to social events. Many were able to watch vaudeville shows, go shopping for pleasure, travel for fun, and go on vacations. During the Gilded Age, Coney Island was constructed in New York, which was the largest amusement park in the country at the time. Many people also began going to circuses. In 1893, the Chicago World's Fair was held, attracting millions of tourists, including foreigners. This was an event held in Chicago to display American culture, inventions, and achievements. This fair marked the debut of the first Ferris wheel, Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis, and the murders of the first serial killer in America, H. H. Holmes.

In urban areas, newspapers became very popular. Newspaper owners such as Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst heavily promoted journalism and the publication of papers. Their actions led to news becoming easily accessible to the public.

The Gospel of Wealth

During the Gilded Age, Carnegie, head of the American steel industry, developed the idea of the Gospel of Wealth. This was the belief that it was the responsibility of the upper class and the wealthy to use their money to assist those who were less fortunate and help them achieve a better life. He followed this idea by investing his money into building things such as schools, libraries, universities, and concert halls for the middle class and poor. Other individuals such as Phoebe Hearst used their money to establish schools and to help educate children. This philanthropy helped some working-class people climb to the middle class.

To Unit 6

6.7, 6.8, 6.9, & 6.10: Society of the Gilded Age