The Gilded Age

1
The Gilded Age

• The Era of Robber Barons and Labor Violence

2
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 nations largest banks.

3
Panic!

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

4
Depression

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

5
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.

6
Robber Barons

Vanderbilt
Carnegie
Mc Cormick
Rockefeller
7
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 nations 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.

8

• 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.

9

• In 1883, after the completion of their New York
  City mansion, the Vanderbilts 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.

10

• 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.

11

• 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.

12
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.
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14

• Unemployed workers demonstrated in Boston,
  Chicago, and New York in the winter of 1873-74
  demanding public work.
• In New Yorks Tompkins Square in January 1874,
  police entered the crowd with clubs and beat up
  thousands of men and women.

15
Labor Violence

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

16

• 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.
• .

17

• 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 nations mines, steel mills,
  and textile mills.

18

• 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.

19
Haymarket Riot - Breaking the Union

• Perhaps the worse of the riots, as well as the
  most famous of all riots occurred in Chicagos
  Haymarket Square in 1886.

20

• 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.

21

• 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, Americas 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.