The Second Industrial Revolution:
“Gilded Age”
Becoming a Detective:
"What is the chief end of man?--to get rich. In what way?--dishonestly if we can; honestly if we must."
-- Mark Twain-1871
During the "Gilded Age," every man was a potential Andrew Carnegie, and Americans who achieved wealth celebrated it as never before. In New York, the opera, the theatre, and lavish parties consumed the ruling class' leisure hours. Sherry's Restaurant hosted formal horseback dinners for the New York Riding Club. Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish once threw a dinner party to honor her dog who arrived sporting a $15,000 diamond collar.
While the rich wore diamonds, many wore rags. In 1890, 11 million of the nation's 12 million families earned less than $1200 per year; of this group, the average annual income was $380, well below the poverty line. Rural Americans and new immigrants crowded into urban areas. Tenements spread across city landscapes, teeming with crime and filth. Americans had sewing machines, phonographs, skyscrapers, and even electric lights, yet most people labored in the shadow of poverty.
To those who worked in Carnegie's mills and in the nation's factories and sweatshops, the lives of the millionaires seemed immodest indeed. An economist in 1879 noted "a widespread feeling of unrest and brooding revolution." Violent strikes and riots wracked the nation through the turn of the century. The middle class whispered fearfully of "carnivals of revenge."
For immediate relief, the urban poor often turned to political machines. During the first years of the Gilded Age, Boss Tweed's Tammany Hall provided more services to the poor than any city government before it, although far more money went into Tweed's own pocket. Corruption extended to the highest levels of government. During Ulysses S. Grant's presidency, the president and his cabinet were implicated in the Credit Mobilier, the Gold Conspiracy, the Whiskey Ring, and the notorious Salary Grab.
Europeans were aghast. America may have had money and factories, they felt, but it lacked sophistication. When French prime minister Georges Clemenceau visited, he said the nation had gone from a stage of barbarism to one of decadence -- without achieving any civilization between the two.
As a historical detective, your job will be to explore the following primary and secondary source documents to determine why Mark Twain referred to this time in history as the Gilded Age.
Cracking the Case:
Based on your analysis of the documents and citing evidence from EACH document to support your answer, please write paper answering the question, “Why did Mark Twain refer to the time after Reconstruction as the Gilded Age?” Within your analysis, please have a paragraph for each of the following topics: political, economic, and social. Also address in your introduction whether you believe this time period was, in fact, gilded. Please indicate whether you were satisfied with the evidence and list any additional questions that have been left unanswered through your investigation.
Document A: Politics of the Gilded Age
The Gilded Age will be remembered for the accomplishments of thousands of American thinkers, inventors, entrepreneurs, writers, and promoters of social justice. Few politicians had an impact on the tremendous change transforming America. The Presidency was at an all-time low in power and influence, and the Congress was rife with corruption. State and city leaders shared in the graft, and the public was kept largely unaware. Much like in the colonial days, Americans were not taking their orders from the top; rather, they were building a new society from its foundation.
The American Presidents who resided in the White House from the end of the Civil War until the 1890s are sometimes called "the forgettable Presidents." A case-by-case study helps illustrates this point.
Andrew Johnson was so hated he was impeached and would have been removed from office were it not for a single Senate vote.
A Soldier in the White House
Ulysses S. Grant was a war hero but was unprepared for public office. He had not held a single elected office prior to the Presidency and was totally naive to the workings of Washington. He relied heavily on the advice of insiders who were stealing public money. His secretary of war sold Indian land to investors and pocketed public money. His private secretary worked with officials in the Treasury Department to steal money raised from the tax on whiskey.
Many members of his Administration were implicated in the CréditMobilier scandal, which defrauded the American public of common land. Grant himself seemed above these scandals, but lacked the political skill to control his staff or replace them with officers of integrity.
Electoral Woes
His successor was Rutherford B. Hayes. Hayes himself had tremendous integrity, but his Presidency was weakened by the means of his election. After the electoral votes were counted, his opponent, Samuel Tilden, already claimed a majority of the popular vote and needed just one electoral vote to win. Hayes needed twenty. Precisely twenty electoral votes were in dispute because the states submitted double returns — one proclaiming Hayes the victor, the other Tilden. A Republican-biased electoral commission awarded all 20 electoral votes to the Republican Hayes, and he won by just one electoral vote.
While he was able to claim the White House, many considered his election a fraud, and his power to rule was diminished.
Assassination
James Garfield succeeded Hayes to the Presidency. After only four months, his life was cut short by an assassin's bullet. Charles Guiteau, the killer, was so upset with Garfield for overlooking him for a political job that he shot the President in cold blood on the platform of the Baltimore and Potomac train station.
Vice-President Chester Arthur became the next leader. Although his political history was largely composed of appointments of friends, the tragedy that befell his predecessor led him to believe that the system had gone bad. He signed into law the Pendleton Civil Service Act, which opened many jobs to competitive exam rather than political connections. The Republican Party rewarded him by refusing his nomination for the Presidency in 1884.
One President impeached, one President drowning in corruption, one President elected by possible fraud, one President assassinated, and one disgraced by his own party for doing what he thought was right. Clearly this was not a good time in Presidential history.
Congressional Supremacy
This was an era of Congressional supremacy. The Republican party dominated the Presidency and the Congress for most of these years. Both houses of Congress were full of representatives owned by big business.
Laws regulating campaigns were minimal and big money bought a government that would not interfere. Similar conditions existed in the states. City governments were dominated by political machines. Members of a small network gained power and used the public treasury to stay in power — and grow fabulously rich in the process.
Not until the dawn of the 20th century would serious attempts be made to correct the abuses of Gilded Age government.
Document B: Black Friday
In June 1869, New York financiers Jay Gould and James Fisk devised a scheme to drive up the price of gold by convincing speculators that the US Treasury was withholding gold from sale. Ulysses S. Grant, although unaware of these intentions, badly compromised himself by meeting with the conspirators, who were partners with his brother-in-law. By manipulating gold from $132 to $163 per ounce within three months, Gould and Fisk aroused the suspicion of Grant, who ordered large sales of US gold on 24 September 1869 (“Black Friday”). The price of gold immediately plummeted, bankrupted many brokers, and caused a minor panic, although Gould had prior warning and saved himself by selling out (without warning his partner Fisk). The episode, along with several other scandals, tainted Grant's administration with the stigma of corruption.
Document C: Tweed Ring and Thomas Nast
William Marcy Tweed, aka "Boss Tweed," began as a New York City volunteer fireman but worked his way up the political ladder. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1853. In 1858, he rose to the head of Tammany Hall, the central organization of the Democratic Party in New York, and was later elected to the New York State Senate in 1867.
Tweed gathered around him a small ring of bigwigs who controlled New York City's finances. Tweed's Ring essentially controlled New York City until 1870, using embezzlement, bribery, and kickbacks to siphon massive chunks of New York's budget into their own pockets — anywhere from $40 million to $200 million (or $1.5 billion to $9 billion in 2009 dollars).
Companies under control of the Tweed Ring would bill the city for work not done or would overbill for work they did, and the kickbacks would filter back to Tweed and his cronies. Those companies, under city contracts, would also do substandard work that would soon require repair, which would then be done by other Tweed Ring-controlled companies. Also, because Boss Tweed had a large stake in New York's transportation system, he delayed the construction of the subway system for years.
Boss Tweed and his cronies were eventually taken down in large part because of investigative journalism by the New York Times and by the political cartoons of Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly. Tweed was tried and convicted of forgery and larceny in 1873 and given a 12-year sentence. He was released after only one year but was soon arrested again and sued by New York City in a $6 million civil suit. In 1875, he fled to Cuba and then to Spain, but authorities were waiting for him there, and he was extradited back to New York. He died in prison in 1878.
Although the Tweed Ring is a dark mark on our history that defined government corruption for an entire century, its destruction is also a testament to the success of the free press. Had it not been for the investigative journalism of New York Times reporters and Thomas Nast's political cartoons (which could be understood even by the illiterate), Tweed's corruption wouldn't have been brought to light, and Tweed might not have been brought to justice.
Document D: Credit Mobilier
The CréditMobilier scandal of 1872-1873 damaged the careers of several Gilded Age politicians. Major stockholders in the Union Pacific Railroad formed a company, the CréditMobilier of America, and gave it contracts to build the railroad. They sold or gave shares in this construction to influential congressmen.
It was a lucrative deal for the congressmen, because they helped themselves by approving federal subsidies for the cost of railroad construction without paying much attention to expenses, enabling railroad builders to make huge profits. When the New York Sun broke the story on the eve of the 1872 election, Speaker of the House James G. Blaine, a Maine Republican implicated in the scandal, set up a congressional committee to investigate.
The House censured two of its members who were involved in the scandal: Oakes Ames of Massachusetts and James Brooks of New York. But the affair also tarnished the careers of outgoing vice president Schuyler Colfax, incoming vice president Henry Wilson, and Representative James A. Garfield, all of whom were implicated (although Garfield denied the charges and was subsequently elected president).
The scandal also showed how corruption tainted Gilded Age politics, and the lengths railroads and other economic interests would go to assure and increase profits.
Document E: Panic of 1873 – American Pageant p. 508
Document F: Announcement of Wage Cuts on the B&O Railroad
Document G: Chinese Immigration and Exclusion
1848 Gold discovered at Sutter's Mill, California; many Chinese arrive to mine for gold.
1850 Foreign Miners’ tax mainly targets Chinese and Mexican miners.
1852 Approximately 25,000 Chinese in America.
1854 Court rules that Chinese cannot give testimony in court.
1862 Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association forms.
1865 Central Pacific Railroad recruits Chinese workers; ultimately employs about
15,000 Chinese workers.
1869 First transcontinental railroad completed.
1870 California passes a law against the importation of Chinese and Japanese women
for prostitution.
1871 Los Angeles: anti-Chinese violence; 18 Chinese killed.
1873 Panic of 1873; start of major economic downturn that last through the decade;
blamed on corrupt RR companies.
1877 Chico, CA: anti-Chinese violence.
1878 Court rules Chinese ineligible for naturalized citizenship.
1880 Approximately 106,000 Chinese in America; California passes anti
miscegenation law (no interracial marriage).
1882 Chinese Exclusion Act: prohibits Chinese immigration (in one year, Chinese
immigration drops from 40,000 to 23).
1885 Rock Springs Wyoming Anti-Chinese Violence
1892 Geary Act—extends Chinese Exclusion Act.
Document H: Anti-Chinese Play, 1879
Source: The page above comes from a play called “The Chinese Must Go:” A
Farce in Four Acts by Henry Grimm, published in San Francisco, 1879. In just the first page, you will be able to see many of the common stereotypes of Chinese immigrants in the 19th century.
Document I: Political Cartoon, 1871
Source: The cartoon was drawn by Thomas Nast for Harper’s Weekly, aNorthern magazine. In this cartoon, we see Columbia, the feminine symbol ofthe United States, protecting a Chinese man against a gang of Irish andGerman thugs. At the bottom it says "Hands off-Gentlemen! Americameans fair play for all men."
Document J: Workingmen of San Francisco
We have met here in San Francisco tonight to raise ourvoice to you in warning of a great danger that seems to usimminent, and threatens our almost utter destruction as aprosperous community.
The danger is, that while we have been sleeping in fanciedsecurity, believing that the tide of Chinese immigration to ourState had been checked and was in a fair way to be entirelystopped, our opponents, the pro-China wealthy men of theland, have been wide-awake and have succeeded in revivingthe importation of this Chinese slave-labor. So that now,hundreds and thousands of Chinese are every week flockinginto our State.
Today, every avenue to labor, of every sort, is crowded withChinese slave labor worse than it was eight years ago. Theboot, shoe and cigar industries are almost entirely in theirhands. In the manufacture of men’s overalls and women’sand children’s underwear they run over three thousandsewing machines night and day. They monopolize nearly allthe farming done to supply the market with all sorts ofvegetables. This state of things brings about a terriblecompetition between our own people, who must live ascivilized Americans, and the Chinese, who live like degradedslaves. We should all understand that this state of thingscannot be much longer endured.
Vocabulary
Source: The document above is a speech to the workingmen of San Franciscoon August 16, 1888.
Document K: Autobiography of a Chinese Immigrant
The treatment of the Chinese in this country is all wrong and mean. . .There is no reason for the prejudice against the Chinese.
The cheaplabor cry was always a falsehood. Their labor was never cheap, andis not cheap now. It has always commanded the highest market price.But the trouble is that the Chinese are such excellent and faithfulworkers that bosses will have no others when they can get them. Ifyou look at men working on the street you will find a supervisor forevery four or five of them. That watching is not necessary forChinese. They work as well when left to themselves as they do when someone is looking at them.
It was the jealousy of laboring men of other nationalities — especiallythe Irish—that raised the outcry against the Chinese. No one wouldhire an Irishman, German, Englishman or Italian when he could get aChinese, because our countrymen are so much more honest,industrious, steady, sober and painstaking. Chinese were persecuted,not for their vices [sins], but for their virtues [good qualities].
There are few Chinamen in jails and none in the poor houses. Thereare no Chinese tramps or drunkards. Many Chinese here havebecome sincere Christians, in spite of the persecution which theyhave to endure from their heathen countrymen. More than half theChinese in this country would become citizens if allowed to do so,and would be patriotic Americans. But how can they make thiscountry their home as matters now are! They are not allowed to bringwives here from China, and if they marry American women there is agreat outcry.
Under the circumstances, how can I call this my home, and how can anyone blame me if I take my money and go back to my village inChina?
Source: The passage above is from Lee Chew, “The Biography of aChinaman,” Independent, 15 (19 February 1903), 417–423.
Document L: Pendleton Act (1883)
Following the assassination of President James A. Garfield by a disgruntled job seeker, Congress passed the Pendleton Act in January of 1883. The act was steered through Congress by long-time reformer Senator George Hunt Pendleton of Ohio. The act was signed into law by President Chester A. Arthur, who had become an ardent reformer after Garfield’s assassination. The Pendleton Act provided that Federal Government jobs be awarded on the basis of merit and that Government employees be selected through competitive exams. The act also made it unlawful to fire or demote for political reasons employees who were covered by the law. The law further forbids requiring employees to give political service or contributions. The Civil Service Commission was established to enforce this act.