The Gilded Age

The Gilded Age

The Era of Robber Barons and Labor Violence

Setting the Scene…

» In September of 1873, the nation experienced the largest economic crash in its history.

» The crash was the consequence of over-speculation in the railroad industry which, in turn, brought down many of the nation’s largest banks.

Panic!

» October 1873 Run on the Fourth National Bank, No. 20 Nassau Street in New York City

Depression» A five year

depression followed the crash - a depression that was especially devastating for the growing number of urban poor.

Making Money from the Crash

» But as ordinary Americans suffered, the super rich used the crisis as an opportunity to buy up foundering competitors.

» J.P. Morgan was one of these men who wanted to get rid of “wasteful competition.”

Robber Barons

Rockefeller

Vanderbilt

Mc Cormick

Carnegie

“Morganizing”» For the largest manufacturing

companies in the U.S. – those with guaranteed contracts and the ability to make rebate deals with the railroads – the panic years were golden.

» The nation’s wealthiest men had enough capital reserves to finance their own continuing growth.

» For smaller industrial firms that relied on seasonal demand and outside capital, the situation was dire. As capital reserves dried up, so did their industries.

» Led by the financial wizardry of Morgan, the Robber Barons attacked free market competition by buying out their smaller competitors at rock bottom prices.

» By 1890, over 1800 millionaires lived in the United States; half of them lived in New York City where their lives were marked by conspicuous consumption - thereby helping them to earn their label, the Robber Barons.

» In 1883, after the completion of their New York City mansion, the Vanderbilt’s threw a party that showcased their immense wealth, as well as the wealth of their millionaire friends.

» The picture is of Mrs. Vanderbilt as Electric Light. Her gown glitters with an unknown number of real diamonds.

» The Lucky Rich" by Charles Dana Gibson.» Gibson, creator of the "Gibson Girl," fondly

satirized the American rich, depicting elegant young men and women in courtship and warning of the perils of unhappiness in marriages based on monetary concerns.

» As the panic deepened, ordinary Americans suffered terribly. » Between 1873 and 1877, as many smaller factories and workshops

shuttered their doors, tens of thousands of workers – many former Civil War soldiers – became transients.

» The terms “tramp” and “bum” became commonplace American terms.

»

As both the wealth of robber barons and the unemployed soared, so did the resentment of the workers and their families.

Relief rolls exploded in major cities, with 25 percent unemployment (100,000 people)in New York City alone.

» Unemployed workers demonstrated in Boston, Chicago, and New York in the winter of 1873-74 demanding public work.

» In New York’s Tompkins Square in January 1874, police entered the crowd with clubs and beat up thousands of men and women.

» The most violent strikes in American history followed the panic, including by the secret labor group known as the Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania’s coal fields in 1875, when masked workmen exchanged gunfire with the “Coal and Iron Police,” a private force commissioned by the state.

Labor Violence

» A nationwide railroad strike followed in 1877, in which mobs destroyed railway hubs in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Cumberland, Maryland.

» This is a photo of the burning of the Union Railroad Depot in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in August, 1877 - a result of the railroad strike.

» .

» But when the Depression was over in 1880, conflict between the Robber Barons who were richer than ever, and the urban poor, who were poorer than ever, increased rather than diminished.

» Working conditions were horrendous during the Gilded Age. In 1889 alone, 22,000 railroad workers were killed or injured on the job according to the records of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Thousands of others died or were crippled in the nation’s mines, steel mills, and textile mills.

» Not only were workers angry about poor working conditions and mistreatment at the hand of industrial owners, they also loathed losing their jobs to local or imported strikebreakers and detested the efforts of management to destroy their unions.

» As many employers shut down their plants and attempted "to starve" their employees out of the union, violent outbreaks occurred in the North, South, and West, in small communities as well as in large metropolitan cities.

Haymarket Riot - Breaking the Union

» Perhaps the worse of the riots, as well as the most famous of all riots occurred in Chicago’s Haymarket Square in 1886.

» This is an engraving of the seven anarchists sentenced to die for the death of police officer Degan's. An eighth defendant, not shown here, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

» Four were put to death, one committed suicide in prison, and two had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment.

» While workers reacted against the denial of what they regarded as their rights to belong to labor unions and resorted to strikes if and when conditions were unbearable, the outcome of their violent behavior never changed the course of events - the owners won and the workers lost.

» Thus, America’s Gilded Age witnessed deep and sometimes violent divisions over the definition of freedom in a rapidly industrializing society.

» The battle continued into the 20th Century - a battle pitted the Robber Barons - proponents of Social Darwinism and laissez faire who saw freedom as the opportunity to pursue economic interests without outside restraints, against workers - those who believed freedom lay in collective efforts to create safe industrial opportunities for ordinary Americans.