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CHAPTER 16 America’s Gilded Age, 1870–1890
This chapter concentrates on the history of America’s Gilded Age, industrial revolution, and settlement of the West
in the late nineteenth century. The chapter emphasizes that as the majority of Americans became wageworkers, the
traditional dream of economic independence became obsolete. During the Gilded Age, it became difficult, if not
impossible, for Americans to view wage labor as a temporary stop on the road to becoming an independent
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction: The Statue of Liberty
A. Although the Civil War was over, the country in the late 1800s was racked by violence, not only by
white supremacists in the South, but widespread labor conflict, warfare against Native Americans in the
West, and political assassinations.
II. The Second Industrial Revolution
A. The Industrial Economy
1. By 1913, the United States produced one-third of the world’s industrial output.
2. The 1880 census showed for the first time that a majority of the workforce engaged in nonfarming jobs.
3. Growth of cities was vital for financing industrialization.
B. Railroads and the National Market
1. The railroad made possible what is sometimes called the second industrial revolution.
2. The growing population formed an ever-expanding market for the mass production, mass distribution,
and mass marketing of goods.
C. The Spirit of Innovation
1. Scientific breakthroughs and technological innovation spurred growth.
D. Competition and Consolidation
2. Businesses engaged in ruthless competition.
3. To avoid cutthroat competition, more and more corporations battled to control entire industries.
a. Between 1897 and 1904, 4,000 firms vanished into larger corporations.
E. The Rise of Andrew Carnegie
2. Andrew Carnegie worked for Scott at Pennsylvania Railroad.
4. Carnegie’s life reflected his desire to succeed and his desire to give back to society.
F. The Triumph of John D. Rockefeller
2. Captains of industry versus robber barons
G. Workers’ Freedom in an Industrial Age
2. For most workers, economic insecurity remained a basic fact of life.
4. Women were part of the working class.
H. Sunshine and Shadow: Increasing Wealth and Poverty
3. The working class lived in desperate conditions.
II. Freedom in the Gilded Age
A. The Social Problem
2. Many Americans sensed that something had gone wrong in the nation’s social development.
B. Freedom, Inequality, and Democracy
2. Gilded Age reformers feared that with lower-class groups seeking to use government to advance their
own interests, democracy was becoming a threat to individual liberty and to the rights of property.
C. Social Darwinism in America
1. Charles Darwin put forth the theory of evolution, whereby plant and animal species best suited to their
environments took the place of those less able to adapt.
3. Failure to advance in society was widely thought to indicate a lack of character.
4. The Social Darwinist William G. Sumner believed that freedom required frank acceptance of inequality.
D. Liberty of Contract
1. Labor contracts reconciled freedom and authority in the workplace.
2. The demands by workers that government should help them struck liberals as an example of how the
misuse of political power posed a threat to liberty.
E. The Courts and Freedom
1. The courts viewed state regulation of business as an insult to free labor.
III. Labor and the Republic
A. “The Overwhelming Labor Question”
1. The 1877 Great Railroad Strike demonstrated that there was an overwhelming labor question.
B. The Knights of Labor and the “Conditions Essential to Liberty”
inequality.
C. Middle-Class Reformers
1. Alarmed by fear of class warfare and the growing power of concentrated capital, social thinkers offered
numerous plans for change.
D. Progress and Poverty
2. George rejected the traditional equation of liberty with ownership of land.
E. The Cooperative Commonwealth
2. It explained socialist concepts in easy-to-understand prose.
F. Bellamy’s Utopia
2. Bellamy held out the hope of retaining the material abundance made possible by industrial capitalism
while eliminating inequality.
G. Protestants and Moral Reform
1. A “Christian lobby” of mainstream Protestants sought political answers to the moral dilemmas they
observed as a result of labor strife and urbanization.
3. Prostitution, gambling, birth control, and polygamy were other behaviors these moral reformers fought.
4. Protestants of a new “Bible Belt” joined the campaign for federal regulation of individual morality,
breaking with the white southern states’ rights tradition.
H. A Social Gospel
2. Social Gospel adherents established mission and relief programs in urban areas.
I. The Haymarket Affair
1. On May 1, 1886, some 350,000 workers in cities across the country demonstrated for an eight-hour day.
2. A riot ensued after a bomb killed a policeman on May 4.
4. Seven of the eight men accused of plotting the Haymarket bombing were foreign born.
J. Labor and Politics
2. The events of 1886 suggested that labor might be on the verge of establishing itself as a permanent
political force.
IV. The Transformation of the West
A. A Diverse Region
1. The political and economic incorporation of the American West was part of a global process.
3. Western territories took longer than eastern territories to achieve statehood.
B. Farming on the Middle Border
2. Farming was difficult and much of the burden fell to women.
C. Bonanza Farms
2. Small farmers became increasingly oriented to national and international markets.
4. The future of western farming ultimately lay with giant agricultural enterprises, as seen in California.
D. The Cowboy and the Corporate West
3. Many western industries fell under the sway of companies that mobilized eastern and European
investment in order to introduce advanced technology.
E. The Chinese Presence
1. After the Civil War, Chinese immigrants began to arrive in the American West as families.
2. Chinese immigrants worked in a variety of western industries including mining, agriculture, and
manufacturing.
F. Conflict on the Mormon Frontier
1. Western settlement eroded the isolation of the Mormon religious utopia in Utah.
3. This conflict reached a high point in the Mormon slaughter of over 100 settlers in the Mountain
Meadows Massacre.
4. With the Mormon ban on polygamy, Utah was able to acquire statehood and end its resistance against
the federal government.
G. The Subjugation of the Plains Indians
2. As settlers encroached on Indian lands, bloody conflict between the army and Plains tribes began in the
1850s and continued until 1890.
3. Numbering 30 million in 1800, buffalo were nearly extinct due to hunting and army campaigns by 1890.
H. “Let Me Be a Free Man”
1. The Nez Percé were chased over 1,700 miles before surrendering in 1877.
3. Defending their land, Sioux and Cheyenne warriors attacked Custer at the Little Bighorn.
5. Indian resistance only temporarily delayed the onward march of white soldiers, settlers, and prospectors.
I. Remaking Indian Life
1. In 1871, Congress eliminated the treaty system that dated back to the Revolutionary era.
a. Forced assimilation
J. The Dawes Act
1. The crucial step in attacking tribalism came in 1887 with the passage of the Dawes Act.
a. The policy was a disaster for the Indians.
K. Indian Citizenship
1. Many nineteenth-century laws offered citizenship to Indians if they gave up tribal identity and
assimilated into American society, but not many Indians were willing to do so.
2. Elk v. Wilkins (1884) agreed with lower court rulings that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments did
not apply to Indians.
L. The Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee
1. Some Indians sought solace in the Ghost Dance, a religious revitalization campaign.
2. On December 29, 1890, soldiers opened fire on Ghost Dancers encamped on Wounded Knee Creek in
South Dakota, killing between 150 and 200 Indians, mostly women and children.
M. Settler Societies and Global Wests
3. In settler societies such as Australia, native peoples were subjected to cultural reconstruction similar to
policies in the United States.
N. Myth, Reality, and the Wild West
1. Despite the presence of farms, mines, and cities, a new image of the West emerged after the Civil
War—one of a lawless “Wild” ruled by cowboys and Indians.
3. Popular entertainment imagined the West as a place of adventure, uncorrupted by civilization.
4. The real West included farm families, labor conflict, the federal government, and racial and ethnic
diversity.
V. Politics in a Gilded Age
A. The Corruption of Politics
1. The era from 1870 to 1890 is the only period of American history commonly known by a derogatory
name: the Gilded Age.
3. Political corruption was rife.
5. Corruption existed at the national level, too.
a. Crédit Mobilier
B. The Politics of Dead Center
1. Every Republican candidate for president from 1868 to 1900 had fought in the Union army.
a. Union soldiers’ pensions
3. The parties were closely divided and national elections very close.
5. In some ways, American democracy in the Gilded Age seemed remarkably healthy.
C. Government and the Economy
1. The nation’s political structure proved ill-equipped to deal with the problems created by the economy’s
2. Republican economic policies strongly favored the interests of eastern industrialists and bankers.
D. Reform Legislation
1. The Civil Service Act of 1883 created a merit system for federal employees.
3. Passed in 1890, the Sherman Antitrust Act banned practices that restrained free trade, but it was also
used to prohibit unions.
E. Political Conflict in the States
1. State governments expanded their responsibilities to the public.
3. Farmers responded to railroad policies by organizing the Grange.
4. Some states passed eight-hour-day laws.
SUGGESTED DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
• What were the causes of the depression in the United States between 1873 to 1897. How did labor respond?
• How does the emergence of the Ghost Dance reflect the experiences of the Indians? What was the significance
of Wounded Knee?
• Explain the reasoning behind the Supreme Court’s rulings in regard to industry. How was the Court defining
freedom?
• How did the nature of work and the composition of the workforce change during the Gilded Age?
• What factors contributed to the rise of the labor movement in the nineteenth century?
• How did agriculture change in the late nineteenth century?
• Considering the experiences of Mormons and of the Ghost Dancers at Wounded Knee, how did America, as a
nation, handle religious freedom in this time period?
• Compare Native Americans with the Chinese-American experience of citizenship over time. What differences
and similarities appear?
• In what ways does Chief Joseph symbolize Native American struggles of the era? See Voices of Freedom
(Primary Source document feature) for further information.
• Compare the utopian/socialist movement of the late nineteenth century to the utopian movement of the 1840s,
when societies sprang up attempting to create a perfect community. To what was each responding?
• During the Gilded Age, the nature of work and the composition of the workforce changed in dramatic ways.
How did American workers respond to these changes? How did they seek to change and gain some control over
their working lives?
SUPPLEMENTAL WEB AND VISUAL RESOURCES
Andrew Carnegie
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/carnegie/
The PBS series The American Experience, “The Richest Man in the World: Andrew Carnegie” chronicles the life of one of the
most infamous of America’s captains of industry. The site provides time lines and articles.
Chief Joseph
www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/chiefjoseph.htm
The West, an eight-part documentary series from PBS, has a companion site with valuable resources. It includes a biography of
Chief Joseph and cites a variety of his speeches.
Encyclopedia of the Great Plains—Bonanza Farms
http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.ag.013
This page provides more information on the phenomenon of bonanza farming and connects this practice with other important
concepts of Great Plains history.
The Gilded and the Gritty: America, 1870–1912
www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/pds/gilded/gilded.htm
The National Humanities Center, Toolbox Library, has recently added this era to its collection. You can find documents, art,
essays, teacher resources, seminar questions, online resources, and more.
History of the American West, 1860–1920
http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/photographs/
This website displays over 30,000 photographs from the holdings of the Western History and Genealogy Department at the
Denver Public Library, illuminating aspects of the history of the American West.
Indian Peoples of the Northern Great Plains
www.lib.montana.edu/digital/nadb/
This site offers primary source material on the Plains Indian cultures, drawn from a range of libraries and institutions.
John D. Rockefeller
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/rockefellers/
The American Experience film The Rockefellers covers the entire span of generations, but Volume 1 has useful information on
the patriarch and his wife. The site also has a helpful teacher resource guide, as well as articles and primary sources.
SUPPLEMENTAL PRINT RESOURCES
Bachin, Robin F. Building the South Side: Urban Space and Civic Culture in Chicago, 1890–1919. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2004.
Blackhawk, Ned. Violence over the Lands: Indians and Empires in the Early American West. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2006.
Calhoun, Charles W. “Benjamin Harrison.” American Presidents series. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 2005.
Campbell, Ballard, ed. The Human Tradition in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2000.
Chandler, Alfred D. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1993.
Cronon, William. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992.
Foster, Gaines. Moral Reconstruction: Christian Lobbyists and the Federal Legislation of Morality, 1865–1920. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
Gilfoyle, Timothy. A Pickpocket’s Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York. New York: W. W. Norton &
Company, 2006.
Green, James. Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age
America. New York: Random House, 2007.
Hamalainen, Pekka. The Comanche Empire. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.
Huhndorf, Shari. Going Native: Indians in the American Cultural Imagination. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001.
Igler, David. Industrial Cowboys: Miller & Lux and the Transformation of the Far West, 1850–1920. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2001.
Isenberg, Andrew C. The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750–1920. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2000.
Wilson, R. Jackson. “Experience and Utopia: The Making of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward.” Journal of American
Studies 11, no. 1 (1977): 45–60.
Woodward, Mary Dodge. Checkered Years: A Bonanza Farm Diary: 1884–1888. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1989.
Young, David. The Iron Horse and the Windy City: How Railroads Shaped Chicago. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press,
2005.
INTERACTIVE INSTRUCTOR ACTIVITIES
1. Group Discussion Activity: The Business of Innovation, Thomas A. Edison
Inventor Thomas A. Edison combined his scientific competence and engineering capabilities with a particular aptitude for
business. In the end, it was not the incandescent lightbulb, the phonograph, or the movies that were Edison’s most important
inventions, but rather the modern process of research and development.
Over his lifetime, Thomas Edison accumulated almost 1,100 patents in his name. Students can research these patents
through a take-home assignment. Ask students to research different categories of patents at
http://edison.rutgers.edu/patents.htm and invite them to discuss at the next class session (based on written summaries) how
Edison used patents to spur innovation and development.
During class, ask students to divide into groups of four or five and list five to ten new products they would like to see
developed—just as Edison did on scraps of paper back in his day. Ask them to discuss whether their ideas consist mainly of
innovations or original inventions. Do they think we live in a world with opportunities for innovators similar to Edison’s time?
Or have most imaginable inventions and innovations already been invented? Is there room for more Edisons today?
2. Group Research and Debate Activity
Russell Sage, “A Grave Danger to the Community” (From the North American Review 534, May 1901).
At the height of the merger wave in American industry, three tycoons of American finance and former robber barons
argued vigorously in the pages of the North American Review about the significance of the unprecedented increase in new
holding companies that controlled extraordinary amounts of capital. A sharp criticism of this new business organization
railroad tycoon James Hill, whose own financial empire, the Northern Securities Company, was ordered to dissolve by the
administration of Theodore Roosevelt, and by Charles R. Flint, who founded the Computing-Tabulating-Recording
Company that later became IBM, and who earned the nickname “Father of Trusts.”
Russell Sage’s Criticism
wave change as a result? Ask them to speculate why a robber baron of such notoriety might take such a stand in opposition to
the financial empires.
In class, ask the following discussion questions:
1. According to Sage, what determined the market value of any company traded on the stock market? What did he think
should be the basis for valuation? What do the students think?
2. Why did Russell Sage think the Standard Oil Company was problematic, even if it did not break the law or betray its
customers?
3. What impact did Sage fear the merger wave might have on the nation’s financial system?
4. What were the biggest dangers Sage associated with industrial mergers?
Group Debate:
Divide the class into three groups and assign each group essays by Russell Sage, James Hill, or Charles Flint. Then stage a debate
among the three. Allow the groups time to form a perspective regarding the individual. Which group has the best economic
strategy? Which group can recruit the most from its rivals? What dominant opinion emerges in the class?
