Learn About The Gilded Age

In this episode of the I Can't Sleep Podcast, fall asleep learning about the Gilded Age. I must admit, the phrase caught my ear years ago, yet its significance eluded me. It encapsulates a period of remarkable corruption and explosive growth in the United States, coinciding with the railroad era. I hope that, despite its intriguing nature, it doesn't fuel any resentment towards me strong enough to disturb your peace tonight. Happy sleeping!

Transcript

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast,

Where I read random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice.

I'm your host,

Benjamin Boster.

Today's episode is from a Wikipedia article titled,

Gilded Age.

In United States history,

The Gilded Age is roughly the period from about the 1870s to the late 1890s,

Which occurred between the Reconstruction era and the Progressive era.

It was named after an 1873 Mark Twain novel by historians in the 1920s,

Who saw this interval of economic expansion as an era of materialistic excesses combined with political corruption.

It was a time of rapid economic growth,

Especially in the northern and western United States.

As American wages grew much higher than those in Europe,

Especially for skilled workers,

And industrialization demanded an increasing unskilled labor force,

The period saw an influx of millions of European immigrants.

The rapid expansion of industrialization led to real wage growth of 40 percent from 1860 to 1890,

And spread across the increasing labor force.

The average annual wage per industrial worker,

Including men,

Women,

And children,

Rose from $380 in 1880,

About $11,

523 in 2022,

To $584 in 1890,

$18,

370 in 2022,

A gain of 59 percent.

The Gilded Age was also an era of poverty,

Especially in the South,

And growing inequality as millions of immigrants poured into the United States,

And the high concentration of wealth became more visible and contentious.

Railroads,

Where the major growth industry was the factory system,

Mining,

And finance increasing in importance.

Immigration from Europe and the eastern United States led to the rapid growth of the West based on farming,

Ranching,

And mining.

Labor unions became increasingly important in the rapidly growing industrial cities.

Two major nationwide depressions,

The Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1893,

Interrupted growth and caused social and political upheavals.

The South remained economically devastated after the American Civil War.

The region's economy became increasingly tied to commodities,

Cotton,

And tobacco production,

Which suffered from low prices.

With the end of the Reconstruction Era in 1877,

And the rise of Jim Crow laws,

African-American people in the South were stripped of political power and voting rights,

And were left economically disadvantaged.

The political landscape was notable in that despite rampant corruption,

Election turnout was comparatively high among all classes,

Though the extent of the franchise was generally limited to men,

And national elections saw two evenly matched parties.

The dominant issues were cultural,

Especially regarding prohibition,

Education,

And ethnic or racial groups,

And economic,

Tariffs,

And money supply.

With the rapid growth of cities,

Political machines increasingly took control of urban politics.

In business,

Powerful nationwide trusts formed in some industries.

Unions crusaded for the eight-hour workday and the abolition of child labor.

Middle-class reformers demanded civil service reform,

Prohibition of liquor and beer,

And women's suffrage.

Local governments across the North and West built public schools chiefly at the elementary level.

Public high schools started to emerge.

The numerous religious denominations were growing in membership and wealth,

With Catholicism becoming the largest.

They all expanded their missionary activity to the world arena.

Catholics,

Lutherans,

And Episcopalians set up religious schools,

And the largest of those schools set up numerous colleges,

Hospitals,

And charities.

Many of the problems faced by society,

Especially the poor,

Gave rise to attempted reforms in the subsequent Progressive Era.

The term Gilded Age was applied to the era by 1920s historians,

Who took the term from one of Mark Twain's lesser-known novels,

A Gilded Age,

A Tale of Today,

1873.

The book,

Co-written with Charles Dudley Warner,

Satirized the promised Golden Age after the Civil War,

Portrayed as an era of serious social problems,

Masked by a thin gold gilding of economic expansion.

In the 1920s and 1930s,

The metaphor Gilded Age began to be applied to a designated period in American history.

The term was adopted by literary and cultural critics as well as historians,

Including Van Wyck Brooks,

Lewis Mumford,

Charles Austin Beard,

Mary Ritter Beard,

Vernon Lewis Parrington,

And Matthew Josephson.

For them,

Gilded Age was a pejorative term for a time of materialistic excesses and widespread political corruption.

The early half of the Gilded Age roughly coincided with the middle portion of the Victorian era in Britain and the Bell Epoch in France.

With respect to eras of American history,

Historical views vary as to when the Gilded Age began,

Ranging from starting right after the Civil War ended in 1865,

Or 1873,

Or as the Reconstruction era ended in 1877.

The date marking the end of the Gilded Age also varies.

The ending is generally given as the beginning of the Progressive Era in the 1890s,

Sometimes the United States presidential election of 1896.

The Gilded Age was a period of economic growth as the United States jumped the lead in industrialization ahead of Britain.

The nation was rapidly expanding its economy into new areas,

Especially heavy industry like factories,

Railroads,

And coal mining.

In 1869,

The first transcontinental railroad opened up the far west mining and ranching regions.

Travel from New York to San Francisco then took six days instead of six months.

Railroad track mileage tripled from 1860 to 1880 and then doubled again by 1920.

The new track linked formerly isolated areas with larger markets and allowed for the rise of commercial farming,

Ranching,

And mining,

Creating a truly national marketplace.

American steel production rose to surpass the combined totals of Britain,

Germany,

And France.

Investors in London and Paris poured money into the railroads through the American financial market centered in Wall Street.

By 1900,

The process of economic concentration had extended into most branches of industry.

A few large corporations called trusts dominated in steel,

Oil,

Sugar,

Meat,

And farm machinery.

Through vertical integration,

These trusts were able to control each aspect of the production of a specific good,

Ensuring that the profits made on the finished product were maximized and prices minimized,

And by controlling access to the raw materials,

Prevented other companies from being able to compete in the marketplace.

Several monopolies,

Most famously Standard Oil,

Came to dominate their markets by keeping prices low when competitors appeared.

They grew at a rate four times faster than that of the competitive sectors.

Increased mechanization of industry is a major mark of the Gilded Age's search for cheaper ways to create more product.

Frederick Winslow Taylor observed that worker efficiency and steel could be improved through the use of very close observations,

With a stopwatch to eliminate wasted effort.

Mechanization made some factories an assemblage of unskilled laborers performing simple and repetitive tasks under the direction of skilled foremen and engineers.

Machine shops grew rapidly,

And they comprised highly skilled workers and engineers.

Both the number of unskilled and skilled workers increased as their wage rates grew.

Engineering colleges were established to feed the enormous demand for expertise.

Many through the federal government-sponsored Morrill Land-Grant Acts passed to stimulate public education,

Particularly in the agricultural and technical ag and tech fields.

Railroads,

Which had previously invented railroad time to standardize time zones,

Production,

And lifestyles,

Created modern management with clear chains of command,

Statistical reporting,

And complex bureaucratic systems.

They systematized the roles of middle managers and set up explicit career tracks for both skilled blue-collar jobs and for white-collar managers.

They also created a system for the management of the labor market.

And these advances spread from railroads into finance,

Manufacturing,

And trade.

Together with rapid growth of small business,

A new middle class was rapidly growing,

Especially in northern cities.

The nation became a world leader in applied technology.

From 1860 to 1890,

500,

000 patents were issued for new inventions,

Over 10 times the number granted in the previous 70 years.

George Westinghouse invented air brakes for trains,

Making them both safer and faster.

Theodore Vail established the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and built a great communications network.

Alicia Otis developed the elevator,

Allowing the construction of skyscrapers and the concentration of even greater populations in urban centers.

Thomas Edison,

In addition to inventing hundreds of devices,

Established the first electrical lighting utility,

Based it on direct current and an efficient incandescent lamp.

Electric power deliveries spread rapidly across Gilded Age cities.

The streets were lighted at night,

And electric streetcars allowed for faster commuting to work and easier shopping.

Petroleum launched a new industry beginning with the Pennsylvania oil fields in the 1860s.

The United States dominated the global industry into the 1950s.

Kerosene replaced whale oil and candles for lighting homes.

John D.

Rockefeller founded Standard Oil Company and monopolized the oil industry.

It mostly produced kerosene before the automobile created a demand for gasoline in the 20th century.

According to historian Henry Adams,

The system of railroads needed the engineers of a generation,

For it required all the new machinery to be created.

Capital,

Banks,

Mines,

Furnaces,

Shops,

Powerhouses,

Technical knowledge,

Mechanical population,

Together with a steady remodeling of social and political habits,

Ideas,

And institutions to fit the new scale and suit the new conditions.

The generation from 1865 to 1895 was already mortgaged to the railways,

And no one knew it better than the generation itself.

The impact can be examined through five aspects.

Shipping,

Finance,

Management,

Careers,

And popular reaction.

Shipping,

Freight,

And passengers.

Railroads provided a highly efficient network for shipping,

Freight,

And passengers throughout the U.

S.

,

Spurring the evolution of a large national market.

This had a transformative impact on most sectors of the economy,

Including manufacturing,

Retail,

And wholesale,

Agriculture,

And finance.

The result was an integrated market practically the size of Europe's,

With no internal barriers,

Tariffs,

Or language barriers to hamper it,

And a common financial and legal system to support it.

Basis of the private financial system.

Railroad financing provided the basis for a dramatic expansion of the private financial system.

Construction of railroads was far more expensive than factories.

In 1860,

The combined total of railroad stocks and bonds was $1.

8 billion.

1897,

It reached $10.

6 billion,

Compared to a total national debt of $1.

2 billion.

Funding came primarily from private finance throughout the Northeast,

And from Europe,

Especially Britain,

With about 10% coming from the federal government,

Especially in the form of land grants that could be realized when a certain amount of trackage was opened.

The emerging American financial system was based on railroad bonds.

By 1860,

New York was the dominant financial market.

The British invested heavily in railroads around the world,

But nowhere more so than the United States.

The total came to about $3 billion by 1914.

In 1914 to 1917,

They liquidated their American assets to pay for war supplies.

Inventing modern management.

Railroad management designed complex systems that could handle far more complicated simultaneous relationships than could be dreamed of by the local factory owner,

Who could patrol every part of his own factory in a matter of hours.

Civil engineers became the senior management of railroads.

The leading innovators were the Western Railroad of Massachusetts and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the 1840s,

The Erie in the 1850s,

And the Pennsylvania in the 1860s.

Career paths.

The railroads invented the career path in the private sector for both blue and white-collar workers.

Railroading became a lifetime career for young men.

Women were rarely hired.

A typical career path would see a young man hired at age 18 as a shop laborer and promoted to skilled mechanic at age 24,

Brakeman at 25,

Freight conductor at 27,

And passenger conductor at age 57.

White-collar career paths likewise were delineated.

Educated young men started in clerical or statistical work and moved up to station agents or bureaucrats at the divisional or central headquarters.

At each level,

They had more and more knowledge,

Experience,

And human capital.

They were very hard to replace and were virtually guaranteed permanent jobs and provided with insurance and medical care.

Hiring,

Firing,

And wage rates were set not by foremen but by central administrators to minimize favoritism and personality conflicts.

Everything was done by the book,

Whereby an increasingly complex set of rules dictated to everyone exactly what should be done in every circumstance and exactly what their rank and pay would be.

By the 1880s,

The career railroaders were retiring and pension systems were invented to provide for them.

Railroad Controversy.

America developed a love-hate relationship with railroads.

Boosters in every city worked feverishly to make sure the railroad came through,

Knowing their urban dreams depended upon it.

The mechanical size,

Scope,

And efficiency of the railroads made a profound impression.

People dressed in their Sunday best to go down to the terminal to watch the train come in.

Travel became much easier,

Cheaper,

And more common.

Shoppers from small towns could make day trips to big city stores.

Hotels,

Resorts,

And tourist attractions were built to accommodate the demand.

The realization that anyone could buy a ticket for a thousand-mile trip was empowering.

Historians Gary Cross and Rick Shostak argue,

With the freedom to travel came a greater sense of national identity and a reduction in regional cultural diversity.

Farm children could more easily acquaint themselves with the big city,

And Easterners could readily visit the West.

It is hard to imagine a United States of continental proportions without the railroad.

The civil and mechanical engineers became model citizens,

Bringing their can-do spirit and their systematic work effort to all phases of the economy,

As well as local and national government.

By 1910,

Major cities were building magnificent palatial railroad stations,

Such as the Pennsylvania Station in New York City and the Union Station in Washington,

D.

C.

But there was also a dark side.

By the 1870s,

Railroads were vilified by Western farmers who absorbed the Granger movement theme that monopolistic carriers controlled too much pricing power,

And that the state legislatures had to regulate maximum prices.

Local merchants and shippers supported the demand and got some Granger laws passed.

Anti-railroad complaints were loudly repeated in the late 19th century political rhetoric.

One of the most hated railroad men in the country was Collis P.

Huntington 1821 to 1900,

The president of the Southern Pacific Railroad,

Who dominated California's economy and politics.

One textbook argues,

Huntington came to symbolize the greed and corruption of late 19th century business.

Business rivals and political reformers accused him of every conceivable evil.

Journalists and cartoonists made their reputations by pilloring him.

Historians have cast Huntington as the state's most despicable villain.

However,

Huntington defended himself.

The motives back of my actions have been honest ones,

And the results have redounded far more to the benefit of California than they have to my own.

Impact on farming The growth of railroads from the 1850s to 1880s made commercial farming much more feasible and profitable.

Millions of acres were opened to settlement once the railroad was nearby,

And provided a long-distance outlet for wheat,

Cattle,

And hogs that reached all the way to Europe.

Rural America became one giant marketplace as wholesalers bought the consumer products produced by the factories in the East and shipped them to local merchants and small stores nationwide.

Shipping live animals was slow and expensive.

It was more efficient to slaughter them in major packing centers such as Chicago,

Kansas City,

St.

Louis,

Milwaukee,

And Cincinnati,

And then ship dressed meat out in refrigerator freight cars.

The cars were cooled by slabs of ice that had been harvested from the northern lakes in wintertime and stored for summer and fall usage.

Chicago,

The main railroad center,

Benefited enormously,

With Kansas City a distant second.

Historian William Cronin concludes,

Because of the Chicago packers,

Ranchers in Wyoming and feedlot farmers in Iowa regularly found a reliable market for their animals,

And on average received better prices for the animals they sold there.

At the same time,

And for the same reason,

Americans of all classes found a greater variety of more and better meats on their tables,

Purchased on average at lower prices than ever before.

Seen in this slide,

The packers' rigid system of economy seemed a very good thing indeed.

During the 1870s and 1880s,

The U.

S.

Economy rose at the fastest rate in its history,

With real wages,

Wealth,

GDP,

And capital formation all increasing rapidly.

For example,

From 1865 to 1898,

The output of wheat increased by 256 percent,

Corn by 222 percent,

Coal by 800 percent,

And miles of railway track by 567 percent.

Thick national networks for transportation and communication were created,

The corruption became the dominant form of business organization,

And a scientific management revolution transformed business operations.

By the beginning of the 20th century,

Gross domestic product and industrial production in the United States led the world.

Kennedy reports that U.

S.

National income in absolute figures in per capita was so far above everybody else's by 1914.

Per capita income in the United States was $377 in 1914,

Compared to Britain in second place at $244,

Germany at $184,

France at $153,

And Italy at $108,

While Russia and Japan trailed far behind at $41 and $36.

London remained the financial center of the world until 1914,

Yet the United States' growth caused foreigners to ask,

As British author W.

T.

Steed wrote in 1901,

What is the secret of American success?

The businessmen of the Second Industrial Revolution created industrial towns and cities in the Northeast with the new factories and hired an ethnically diverse industrial working class,

Many of them new immigrants from Europe.

Wealthy industrialists and financiers such as John D.

Rockefeller,

Jay Gould,

Henry Clay Frick,

Andrew Mellon,

Andrew Carnegie,

Henry Flagler,

Henry Huddleston Rogers,

J.

P.

Morgan,

Leland Stanford,

Meyer Guggenheim,

Jacob Schiff,

Charles Crocker,

And Cornelius Vanderbilt would sometimes be labeled robber barons by their critics,

Who argued their fortunes were made at the expense of the working class by chicanery and a betrayal of democracy.

Their admirers argued that they were captains of industry who built the core American industrial economy and also the non-profit sector through acts of philanthropy.

For instance,

Andrew Carnegie donated over 90 percent of his wealth and said that philanthropy was their duty,

The gospel of wealth.

Private money endowed thousands of colleges,

Hospitals,

Museums,

Academies,

Schools,

Opera houses,

Public libraries,

And charities.

John D.

Rockefeller donated over 500 million dollars to various charities,

Slightly over half his entire net worth.

Reflecting this,

Many business leaders were influenced by Herbert Spencer's theory of social Darwinism,

Which justified laissez-faire capitalism,

Competition,

And social stratification.

This emerging industrial economy quickly expanded to meet the new market demands.

From 1869 to 1879,

The U.

S.

Economy grew at a rate of 6.

8 percent for NNP,

GDP minus capital depreciation,

And 4.

5 percent for NNP per capita.

The economy repeated this period of growth in the 1880s,

In which the wealth of the nation grew at an annual rate of 3.

8 percent,

While the GDP was also doubled.

Libertarian economist Milton Friedman states that for the 1880s,

The highest decadal rate of growth of real,

Reproducible,

Tangible wealth per head,

From 1805 to 1950,

For periods of about 10 years,

Was apparently reached in the 80s with approximately 3.

8 percent.

The rapid expansion of industrialization led to real wage growth of 60 percent from 1860 to 1890,

Spread across the increasing labor force.

Real wages adjusting for inflation rose steadily,

With the exact percentage increase depending on the dates and the specific workforce.

The Census Bureau reported in 1892 that the average annual wage per industrial worker,

Including men,

Women,

And children,

Rose from $380 in 1880 to $564 in 1890,

A gain of 48 percent.

Economic historian Clarence D.

Long estimates that in terms of constant 1914 dollars,

Average annual incomes of all American non-farm employees rose from $375 in 1870 to $395 in 1880,

$519 in 1890,

And $573 in 1900,

A gain of 53 percent in 30 years.

Australian historian Peter Shergold found that the standard of living for industrial workers was higher than in Europe.

He compared wages and the standard of living in Pittsburgh with Birmingham,

England,

One of the richest industrial cities of Europe.

After taking account of the cost of living,

Which was 65 percent higher in the U.

S.

,

He found the standard of living of unskilled workers of living of unskilled workers was about the same in the two cities,

While skilled workers in Pittsburgh had about 50 percent to 100 percent higher standard of living as those in Birmingham,

England.

Warren B.

Catlin proposed that the natural resources and virgin lands that were available in America acted as a safety valve for poor workers.

Hence,

Employees had to pay higher wages to hire labor.

According to Shergold,

The American advantage grew over time from 1890 to 1914,

And the perceived higher American wage led to a heavy,

Steady flow of skilled workers from Britain to industrial America.

According to historian Steve Fraser,

Workers generally earned less than $800 a year,

Which kept them mired in poverty.

Workers had to put in roughly 60 hours a week to earn this much.

Wage labor was widely condemned as wage slavery in the working-class press,

And labor leaders almost always used the phrase in their speeches.

As the shift towards wage labor gained momentum,

Working-class organizations became more militant in their efforts to strike down the whole system of wages for labor.

In 1886,

Economist and New York mayoral candidate Henry George,

Author of Progress and Poverty,

Stated,

Chattel slavery is dead,

But industrial slavery remains.

The unequal distribution of wealth remained high during this period.

From 1860 to 1900,

The wealthiest 2 percent of American households owned more than a third of the nation's wealth,

While the top 10 percent owned roughly three-quarters of it.

The bottom 40 percent had no wealth at all.

In terms of poverty,

The wealthiest 1 percent owned 51 percent,

While the bottom 44 percent claimed 1.

1 percent.

Historian Howard Zinn argues that this disparity,

Along with precarious working and living conditions for the working classes,

Prompted the rise of populist,

Anarchist,

And socialist movements.

French economist Thomas Piketty notes that economists during this time,

Such as Wilford I.

King,

Were concerned that the United States was becoming increasingly inegalitarian to the point of becoming like old Europe and further and further away from its original pioneering ideal.

According to economist Richard Such,

In an alternative view of the era,

The bottom 25 percent owned 0.

32 percent of the wealth,

While the top 0.

1 percent owned 9.

4 percent,

Which would mean the period had the lowest wealth gap in record history.

He attributes this to the lack of government interference.

There was a significant human cost attached to this period of economic growth,

As American industry had the highest rate of accidents in the world.

In 1889,

Railroads employed 704,

000 men,

Of whom 20,

000 were injured and 1,

972 were killed on the job.

The U.

S.

Was also the only industrial power to have no workman's compensation program in place to support injured workers.

Craft-oriented labor unions,

Such as carpenters,

Printers,

Shoemakers,

And cigar makers,

Grew steadily in the industrial cities after 1870.

These unions used frequent short strikes as a method to attain control over the labor market and fight off competing unions.

They generally blocked women,

Blacks,

And Chinese from union membership,

But welcomed most European immigrants.

The railroads had their own separate unions,

An especially large episode of unrest estimated at 80,

000 railroad workers and several hundred thousand other Americans,

Both employed and unemployed,

Broke out during the economic depression of the 1870s and became known as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877,

Which was,

According to historian Jack Beatty,

The largest strike anywhere in the world in the 19th century.

This strike did not involve labor unions,

But rather uncoordinated outbursts in numerous cities.

The strike and associated riots lasted 45 days and resulted in the deaths of several hundred participants,

No police or soldiers were killed,

Several hundred more injuries,

And millions in damages to railroad property.

The unrest was deemed severe enough by the government that President Rutherford B.

Hayes intervened with federal troops.

Starting in the mid-1880s,

A new group,

The Knights of Labor,

Grew too rapidly and had spun out of control and failed to handle the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886.

The Knights avoided violence,

But their reputation collapsed in the wake of the Haymarket Square Riot in Chicago in 1886,

When anarchists allegedly bombed a policeman dispersing a meeting.

Police then randomly fired into the crowd,

Killing a wounded number of people,

Including other police,

And arbitrarily rounded up anarchists,

Including leaders of the movement.

Seven anarchists went on trial.

Four were hanged,

Even though no evidence directly linked them to the bombing.

One had in his possession a Knights of Labor membership card.

At its peak,

The Knights claimed 700,

000 members.

By 1890,

Membership had plummeted to fewer than 100,

000 and faded away.

Strikes organized by labor unions became routine events by the 1880s,

As the gap between the rich and the poor widened.

There were 37,

000 strikes from 1881 to 1905.

By far the largest number were in the building trades,

Followed far behind by coal miners.

The main goal was control of working conditions and settling,

Which rival union was in control.

Most were of very short duration.

In times of depression,

Strikes were more violent but less successful,

Because the company was losing money anyway.

They were successful in times of prosperity when the company was losing profits and wanted to settle quickly.

The largest and most dramatic strike was the 1894 Pullman strike,

A coordinated effort to shut down the national railroad system.

The strike was led by the upstart American Railway Union,

Led by Eugene V.

Debs,

And was not supported by the established brotherhoods.

The union defied federal court orders to stop blocking the mail trains,

So President Cleveland used the U.

S.

Army to get the trains moving again.

The ARU vanished and the traditional railroad brotherhood survived but avoided strikes.

The new American Federation of Labor,

Headed by Samuel Gompers,

Found the solution.

The AFL was a coalition of unions,

Each based on strong local chapters.

The AFL coordinated their work in cities and prevented jurisdictional battles.

Gompers repudiated socialism and abandoned the violent nature of the earlier unions.

The AFL worked to control the local labor market,

Thereby empowering its locals to obtain higher wages and more control over hiring.

As a result,

The AFL union spread to most cities,

Reaching a peak membership in 1919.

This period saw several financial crises and economic recessions,

Called panics,

Notably the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1893.

They lasted several years with high urban unemployment,

Low incomes for farmers,

Low profits for business,

Slow overall growth,

And reduced immigration.

They generated political unrest.

Gilded Age politics,

Called the Third Party System,

Featured intense competition between two major parties,

With minor parties coming and going,

Especially on issues of concern to prohibitionists,

To labor unions,

And to farmers.

The Democrats and Republicans,

The latter nicknamed the Grand Old Party,

GOP,

Fought over control of offices,

Which were the rewards for party activists,

As well as over major economic issues.

Very high voter turnout typically exceeded 80% or even 90% in some northern states,

As the parties drilled their loyal members,

Much as an army drills its soldiers.

Turnout in the South was lower.

Average presidential turnout,

1872 to 1900,

Was 83% in the North and 62% in the South.

Competition was intense,

And elections were very close.

In the southern states,

Lingering resentment over the Civil War remained and meant that much of the South would vote Democratic.

After the end of the Reconstruction in 1877,

Competition in the South took place mainly inside the Democratic Party.

Nationwide,

Turnout fell sharply after 1900.

The major metropolitan centers underwent rapid population growth,

And as a result had many lucrative contracts and jobs to award.

To take advantage of the new economic opportunity,

Both parties built so-called political machines to manage elections,

To reward supporters,

And to pay off potential opponents.

Financed by the spoils system,

The winning party distributed most local,

State,

And national government jobs and many government contracts to its loyal supporters.

Large cities became dominated by political machines in which constituents supported a candidate in exchange for anticipated patronage.

These votes would be repaid with favors back from the government once the appropriate candidate was elected,

And very often candidates were selected based on their willingness to play along with the spoils system.

The largest and most notorious political machine was Tammany Hall in New York City,

Led by Democrat Bostweed.

Political corruption was rampant as business leaders spent significant amounts of money ensuring that government did not regulate the activities of big businesses,

And they more often than not got what they wanted.

Such corruption was so commonplace that in 1868 the New York State Legislature legalized such bribery.

Historian Howard Zinn Historian Howard Zinn argues that the U.

S.

Government was acting exactly as Karl Marx described capitalist states,

Pretending neutrality to maintain order but serving the interests of the rich.

Historian Mark Walgren Summers calls it the era of good stealings,

Noting how machine politicians used padded expenses,

Lucrative contracts,

Outright embezzlements,

And illegal bond issues.

He concludes,

".

.

.

Corruption gave the age a distinctive flavor.

It marred the planning and development of the cities,

Infected lobbyists' dealings,

And disgraced even the cleanest of the reconstructed states.

For many reasons,

However,

Its effect on policy was less overwhelming than once imagined.

Corruption influenced a few substantive decisions.

It rarely determined one.

" Numerous swindlers were active,

Especially before the Panic of 1873 exposed the falsification and caused a wave of bankruptcies.

Former President Ulysses S.

Grant was the most famous victim of scoundrels and conmen,

Of whom he most trusted Ferdinand Ward.

Grant was cheated out of all his money,

Although some genuine friends bought Grant's personal assets and allowed him to keep their use.

Interpreting the phenomena,

Historian Alan Nevins deplored the moral collapse in government and business,

1865 to 1873.

He argued that at war's end society showed confusion and unsettlement,

As well as a hurried aggressive growth on the other.

They united to give birth to an alarming public and private corruption.

Obviously,

Much of the shocking improbity was due to the heavy wartime expenditures.

Speculators and jobbers waxed fat on government money.

The collection of federal revenues offered large opportunities for graft.

Under the stimulus of greenback inflation,

Business ran into excesses and lost sight of elementary cannons of prudence.

Meanwhile,

It became clear that thievery had found a better opportunity to grow,

Because the conscience of the nation aroused against slavery had neglected what seemed minor evils.

The thousands who had rushed into speculations,

Which they had no moral right to risk,

The pushing hardened men brought to the front by the turmoil,

Observed a coarser,

Lower standard of conduct.

Much of the trouble lay in the immense growth of national wealth,

Unaccompanied by any corresponding growth in civic responsibility.

Major scandals reached into Congress with the credit mobiliar scandal of 1872,

And disgraced the White House during the Grant administration.

This corruption divided the Republican Party into two different factions,

The stalwarts led by Roscoe Conkling and the half-breeds led by James G.

Blaine.

There was a sense that government-enabled political machines intervened in the economy,

And that the resulting favoritism,

Bribery,

Inefficiency,

Waste,

And corruption were having negative consequences.

Accordingly,

There were widespread calls for reform,

Such as civil service reform led by the Bourbon Democrats and Republican mugwumps.

In 1884,

Their support elected Democrat Grover Cleveland to the White House,

And in doing so gave the Democrats their first national victory since 1856.

The Bourbon Democrats supported a free-market policy,

With low tariffs,

Low taxes,

Less spending,

And,

In general,

A laissez-faire,

Hands-off government.

They argued that tariffs made most goods more expensive for the consumer and subsidized the trusts' monopolies.

They also denounced imperialism and overseas expansion.

By contrast,

Republicans insisted the national prosperity depended on industry that paid high wages,

And warned that lowering the tariff would bring disaster because goods from low-wage European factories would flood American markets.

Presidential elections between the two major parties were so closely contested that a slight nudge could tip the election in the advantage of either party,

And Congress was marked by political stalemate.

With support from union veterans,

Businessmen,

Professionals,

Craftsmen,

And larger farmers,

The Republicans consistently carried the North in presidential elections.

The Democrats,

Often led by Irish Catholics,

Had a base among Catholics,

Poor farmers,

And traditional party members.

The nation elected a string of relatively weak presidents,

Collectively referred to as the Forgettable Presidents—Johnson,

Grant,

Hayes,

Garfield,

Arthur,

And Harrison,

With the exception of Cleveland,

Who served in the White House during this period.

What little political vitality existed in Gilded Age America was to be found in local settings or in Congress,

Which overshadowed the White House for most of this period.

Overall,

Republican and Democratic political platforms remained remarkably constant during the years before 1900.

Both favored business interests.

Republicans called for high tariffs,

While Democrats wanted hard money and free trade.

Regulation was rarely an issue.

From 1860 to the early 20th century,

The Republicans took advantage of the association of the Democrats with Rum,

Romanism,

And Rebellion.

Rum stood for the liquor interests and the tavern keepers,

In contrast to the GOP,

Which had a strong dry element.

Romanism meant Roman Catholics,

Especially Irish Americans,

Who ran the Democratic Party in most cities,

And whom the Reformers denounced for political corruption and their separate parochial school system.

Rebellion harked back to the Democrats of the Confederacy,

Who had tried to break the Union in 1861,

As well as to their northern allies called Copperheads.

Demographic trends boosted the Democratic totals as the German and Irish Catholic immigrants became Democrats and outnumbered the English and Scandinavian Republicans.

The new immigrants who arrived after 1890 seldom voted at this time.

During the 1880s and 1890s,

The Republicans struggled against the Democrats' efforts,

Winning several close elections and losing two to Grover Cleveland in 1884 and 1892.

Religious lines were sharply drawn.

In the North,

About 50% of the voters were pietistic Protestants,

Especially Methodists,

Scandinavian Lutherans,

Presbyterians,

Congregationalists,

And Disciples of Christ,

Who believed in using the government to reduce social sins such as drinking.

They strongly supported the GOP.

In sharp contrast,

Liturgical groups,

Especially the Catholics,

Episcopalians,

And German Lutherans,

Voted for the Democrats.

They saw the Democratic Party as their best protection from the moralism of the pietists and especially from the threat of prohibition.

Both parties cut across the class structure,

With the Democrats more bottom-heavy and the GOP better represented among businessmen and professionals in the North.

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