THE GILDED AGE

1
THE GILDED AGE
2
THE GILDED AGE

• The era from 1870 to 1890 is the only period in
  American history commonly known by a derogatory
  name the Gilded Age, after a title of an 1873
  novel by mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warren.
• Gilded means covered with a layer of gold, but
  also suggests that the glittering surface covers
  a core of little real value and is therefore
  deceptive.

3
THE GILDED AGE

• Twain and Warner were referring not only to the
  remarkable expansion of the economy in this
  period but also to the corruption caused by
  corporate dominance of politics and to the
  oppressive treatment of those left behind in the
  scramble for wealth.
• Get rich, dishonestly if we can, honestly if we
  must. was the eras slogan, according to The
  Gilded Age.

4
POLITICS IN THE GILDED AGE
5
POLITICS IN THE GILDED AGE

• To modern eyes, the nature of the American
  political system in the late 19th century appears
  in many ways paradoxical.
• The two political parties enjoyed strength and
  stability during those years that neither was
  ever to know again.
• Yet the federal govt was doing relatively little
  of importance.

• Most Americans engaged in political activity less
  because of their interest in national issues than
  because of broad regional, ethnic, or religious
  sentiments.
• Party loyalty had less to do with positions on
  public policy than the way Americans defined
  themselves culturally.

6
THE PARTY SYSTEM

• The most striking feature of the late 19th
  century party system was its remarkable
  stability.
• From 1877 until the late 1890s, the electorate
  was divided almost precisely evenly between the
  Republicans and Democrats.

• 16 states were solidly and consistently
  Republican.
• 14 states (most of them in the South) were
  solidly and consistently Democrat.
• Only 5 states were usually in doubt, and it was
  there that national elections were commonly
  decided, often on the basis of voter turnout.

7
THE PARTY SYSTEM

• The Republican Party captured the presidency in
  all but two of the elections in the era, but the
  party was not really as dominant as that
  suggests.
• In the five presidential elections beginning in
  1876, the average popular-vote margin separating
  the Democratic and Republican candidates was 1.5.

8
THE PARTY SYSTEM

• The congressional balance was similarly stable.
• Between 1875 and 1895, the Republicans generally
  controlled the Senate and the Democrats
  controlled the House of Representatives.
• In any given election, the number of seats that
  shifted from one party to the other was very
  small.

9
THE PARTY SYSTEM

• As striking as the balance between parties was
  the intensity of public loyalty to them.
• Voter turnout in presidential elections between
  1860 and 1900 averaged over 78 of all eligible
  voters.
• Even in non-presidential years, from 60 to 80 of
  voters turned out for congressional and local
  candidates.

10
THE PARTY SYSTEM

• Large groups of potential voters were
  disenfranchised during the era
• Women in most states
• Almost all blacks and many poor whites in the
  South.

• But for all adult white males outside the South,
  there were few franchise restrictions.
• The remarkable turnout represented a genuinely
  mass-based politics.

11
THE PARTY SYSTEM

• Party politics in the Gilded Age occupied a
  central position in American culture.
• Political campaigns were often the most important
  public events in the lives of communities.
• Political organizations served important social
  and cultural functions.

12
THE PARTY SYSTEM

• Political identification was almost as important
  to most individuals as identification with a
  church or ethnic group.
• Partisanship was an intense, emotional force,
  widely admired and often identified with
  patriotism.

13
THE PARTY SYSTEM

• WHAT EXPLAINS THIS REMARKABLE LOYALTY TO THE TWO
  POLITICAL PARTIES?
• It was not that the parties took distinct
  positions on important public issues.
• Both were solidly committed to the growth of the
  corporate industrial economy.
• Both were hostile to all forms of economic and
  social radicalism.
• Both were committed (at least until the 1890s) to
  a sound currency and to the existing structure
  of the financial system.

14
THE PARTY SYSTEM

• What determined party loyalties was less concrete
  issues than other factors.
• REGION was perhaps the most important.
• To white Southerners, loyalty to the Democratic
  Party was a matter of unquestioned faith.

• For white Southerners, the Democratic Party was
  the vehicle by which they had triumphed over
  Reconstruction.
• For them, the Democratic Party was the vehicle
  for the preservation of white supremacy.

15
THE PARTY SYSTEM

• To many old-stock northerners, white and black,
  Republican loyalties were equally intense for
  opposite reasons.
• The party of Lincoln had freed the slaves.

• For them, the party of Lincoln had preserved the
  Union.
• For them, the Republican Party was a bulwark
  against slavery and treason.

16
THE PARTY SYSTEM

• RELIGIOUS AND ETHNIC DIFFERENCES also shaped
  party loyalties.
• The Dem. Party attracted most Catholic voters,
  most recent immigrants, and most of the poorer
  workers.
• These three groups often overlapped.

17
THE PARTY SYSTEM

• The Republican Party appealed to northern
  Protestants and citizens of old stock.

18
THE PARTY SYSTEM

• Among the few substantive issues on which the
  parties took clearly different stands were
  matters concerning immigrants.
• Republicans tended to be more nativist and to
  support measures restricting immigration.
• They also tended to favor temperance legislation.

• Catholics and immigrants viewed such proposals as
  an assault on their culture and lifestyle and
  opposed them.
• The Democrats followed their lead.

19
THE PARTY SYSTEM

• For many Americans party identification was
  usually more a reflection of vague cultural
  inclinations than a calculation of economic
  interest.
• Individuals might affiliate with a party because
  their parents had done so, or because it was the
  party of their region, church, or their ethnic
  group.
• Most clung to their party loyalties with
  persistence and passion.

20
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
21
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT

• One reason the two parties managed to avoid
  substantive issues was that the federal
  government (and for the most part state and local
  govts as well) did relatively little.

• The govt in Washington was responsible for
• Delivering the mails
• Maintaining a national military
• Conducting foreign policy
• Collecting taxes and tariffs.

22
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT

• The federal government had few other
  responsibilities.
• And it had few institutions with which to engage
  in additional responsibilities even if it chose
  to do so.

23
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT

• The USA in the Gilded Age was a society without a
  modern, national state.
• The most powerful national institutions were
• The two political parties
• The federal courts

• In a very real sense the American govt of the era
  was a state of courts and political parties.
• The national leaders of both parties were
  primarily concerned with winning elections and
  controlling patronage not policy.

24
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT

• Both parties were dominated by powerful bosses
  and machines chiefly concerned with controlling
  and dispensing jobs.
• The Democrats relied on big city organizations
  such as Boss Tweeds Tammany Hall in NYC.
• These machines helped them to mobilize the voting
  power of immigrants.

25
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT

• The Republicans tended to depend on strong
  statewide organizations such as those of Senator
  Roscoe Conkling in New York.

26
THE GILDED AGE PRESIDENTS
27
THE GILDED AGE PRESIDENTS

• The power of the party bosses had an significant
  effect on the power of the presidency.
• The office had great symbolic importance, but its
  occupants were unable to do very much except
  distribute government appointments.
• A new president had to make almost 100,000
  appointments most of them in the post office,
  the only large government agency at the time.

• Even in making appointments, the president had
  very little latitude, since they had to avoid
  offending the various factions within their own
  parties.
• The administrations of Hayes, Garfield, and
  Arthur reflected the political stalemate and
  patronage problems of the Gilded Age.
• All in all, it was an age of forgettable
  presidents.

28
THE PRESIDENCY OF RUTHERFORD B. HAYES

• The issue of patronage played a big role during
  the Hayes presidency.
• Hayes was the winner of the disputed Election of
  1876.
• He was harried by angry Democrats who called
  him His Fraudulency from the beginning of his
  term to the moment he left.
• He was crippled as well by his own party the
  Republicans.

29
THE PRESIDENCY OF RUTHERFORD B. HAYES

• By the end of his term two groups the
  Stalwarts led by Roscoe Conkling of NY and the
  Half-Breeds, led by James G. Blaine of ME. were
  competing for control of the Republican Party and
  threatening to split it.
• The dispute between these two groups was
  characteristic of the political battles of the
  era.

30
THE PRESIDENCY OF RUTHERFORD B. HAYES

• The dispute had virtually no substantive
  foundation.
• Rhetorically, the Stalwarts favored traditional,
  professional machine politics.
• The Half-Breeds favored reform.

• Neither group was much interested in political
  change.
• Each wanted a larger share of the patronage pie.
• Hayes tried to satisfy both and ended up
  satisfying neither.

31
THE PRESIDENCY OF RUTHERFORD B. HAYES

• The battle over patronage overshadowed all else
  during Hayes unhappy presidency.
• His one important substantive initiative an
  effort to create a civil service system
  attracted no support from either party.
• His early announcement not to seek re-election
  only weakened him further.

32
THE PRESIDENCY OF RUTHERFORD B. HAYES

• Hayes had no power in Congress.
• The Dems. Controlled the HoR throughout his
  presidency, and the Senate during the last two
  years of his term.

• Senate Republicans, led by Conkling, opposed his
  efforts to defy the machines in making
  appointments.
• Hayess presidency was a study in frustration.

33
THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES GARFIELD

• The Republicans retained the presidency in 1880
  in part because they managed to agree on a ticket
  that made it possible for the two factions to
  briefly paper-over their differences.
• The nominated James A. Garfield a Half-Breed
• His VP running mate was Chester A. Arthur - a
  Stalwart.

34
THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES A. GARFIELD

• Garfield won a decisive electoral victory.
• However his popular vote margin was very thin.
• The Republicans also captured both houses of
  Congress.

35
THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES A. GARFIELD

• Garfield soon found himself in an ugly public
  quarrel with Conkling.
• But before it could be resolved, Garfield was
  victimized by the spoils system in a more
  terrible sense.

• 7/2/1881 Only four months after his
  inauguration, Garfield was shot twice was
  standing in the DC railroad station by an
  apparently deranged gunman and unsuccessful
  office seeker.
• Garfield lingered for three months then died a
  victim as much of bungled medical treatment as of
  the wounds themselves.

36
THE PRESIDENCY OF JAMES A. GARFIELD
37
THE PRESIDENCY OF CHESTER A. ARTHUR

• Chester A. Arthur succeeded Garfield.
• Arthur had spent a political lifetime as a
  devoted, skilled, and open spoilsman and a close
  ally of Conkling.
• But as president, he tried to follow an
  independent course and even to promote reform.

38
THE PRESIDENCY OF CHESTER A. ARTHUR

• The terrible circumstances which brought him to
  the presidency had undoubtedly shaped his
  behavior.
• He realized that Garfields assassination had to
  some degree discredited the traditional spoils
  system.

• The new Arthur dismayed the party bosses.
• He kept most of Garfields appointees in office.
• He also supported civil service reform, aware
  that the legislation was likely to pass whether
  he supported it or not.

39
THE PRESIDENCY OF CHESTER A. ARTHUR

• 1883 Congress passed the Pendleton Act.
• The nations first national civil service
  measure.
• It identified a limited number of federal jobs to
  be filled by competitive written exams rather
  than by patronage.

• Relatively few offices fell under civil service
  at first.
• But its reach extended steadily so that by the
  mid-twentieth century most federal employees were
  civil servants.

40
THE ELECTION OF 1884 THE RETURN OF THE DEMOCRATS
41
THE ELECTION OF 1884 THE RETURN OF THE DEMOCRATS

• The unsavory election of 1884 was typical of
  national political contests in the late 19th
  century in its emphasis on personalities than
  policies.
• The Republican Party repudiated Arthur who was
  in any case already suffering from an illness
  that would kill him two years later.

42
THE ELECTION OF 1884 THE RETURN OF THE DEMOCRATS

• The Republicans instead chose their most popular
  and controversial figure, James G. Blaine of ME.
• To his adoring supporters he was known as the
  plumed knight.
• To thousands of Americans, he was a symbol of
  seamy party politics.

43
THE ELECTION OF 1884 THE RETURN OF THE DEMOCRATS

• An independent reform faction, known derisively
  by their critics as the mugwumps, announced
  they would bolt the party and support an honest
  Democrat.

44
THE ELECTION OF 1884 THE RETURN OF THE DEMOCRATS

• Raising to the bait, the Democrats nominated
  Grover Cleveland, the reform governor of NY.
• He differed from Blaine on no substantive issues
  but had acquired a reputation as an enemy of
  corruption.

45
THE ELECTION OF 1884 THE RETURN OF THE DEMOCRATS

• The campaign of 1884 was filled with personal
  invective.
• What may have decided the election was the last
  minute introduction of a religious controversy.

• Shortly before the election, a delegation of
  Protestants ministers called on Blaine.
• Their spokesman, Dr. Samuel Burchard, referred to
  the Democrats as the party of rum, Romanism, and
  rebellion.
• Blaine was slow to repudiate Burchards
  indiscretion.

46
THE ELECTION OF 1884 THE RETURN OF THE DEMOCRATS

• Democrats quickly spread the news that Blaine had
  tolerated a slander on the Catholic church.
• Clevelands narrow victory may well have been the
  result of a heavy Catholic vote for Democrats in
  NY.
• Cleveland won 219 electoral votes to Blaines
  182 his popular vote margin was only 23,000
  votes.

47
(No Transcript)
48
THE PRESIDENCY OF GROVER CLEVELAND

• Cleveland was the embodiment of an era in which
  few Americans believed the federal govt could,
  should, or do very much.
• Cleveland believed in frugal and limited
  government in the Jeffersonian tradition.
• No one should forget, he explained, that though
  the people support the Government, the Government
  should not support the people.

49
THE PRESIDENCY OF GROVER CLEVELAND

• Cleveland did grapple with one major economic
  issue protective tariffs.
• He doubted the wisdom of protective tariffs.
• He concluded that the existing high rates were
  responsible for the annual surplus in federal
  revenues, which was tempting Congress to pass the
  reckless and extravagant legislation he
  frequently vetoed.

• 12/1887 He asked Congress to reduce the tariff
  rates.
• Democrats in the HoR approved a tariff reduction.
• But Senate Republicans defiantly passed a bill of
  their own actually raising the rates.
• The resulting deadlock made the tariff an issue
  in the election of 1888.

50
THE ELECTION OF 1888
51
THE ELECTION OF 1888

• The Democrats renominated Cleveland and supported
  tariff reductions.
• The Republicans settled on Benjamin Harrison of
  ID.
• Harrison was obscure but respectable and the
  grandson of President William Henry Harrison.

• The campaign was the first since the Civil War to
  involve a clear questions of economic difference
  between the parties.
• It was also on of the most corrupt and closet
  elections in American history.

52
THE ELECTION OF 1888

• Harrison won an electoral majority of 233 to 168.
• But Cleveland won the popular vote by 100,000
  votes making this one of only three
  presidential elections in American history (1876
  and 2000) in which the loser in the popular vote
  was the victor in the electoral vote.

53
THE PRESIDENCY OF BENJAMIN HARRISON

• Harrisons record as president was little more
  substantial than that of his grandfather, who
  died a month after taking office.
• One reason for his failure was the intellectual
  drabness of the members of his Admin beginning
  with the president himself and extending through
  his cabinet.

54
THE PRESIDENCY OF BENJAMIN HARRISON

• Another reason for failure was Harrisons
  unwillingness to make any effort to influence
  Congress.
• And yet during his dreary term, public opinion
  was beginning to force the govt to confront some
  of the pressing social and economic issues of the
  day.

• Most notably, perhaps, sentiment was rising in
  favor of legislation to curb the power of trusts.
• Mid-1880s 15 western and southern states had
  adopted laws prohibiting combinations that
  restrained competition.
• But corporations found it easy to escape
  limitations by incorporating in states like NJ
  and DL that offered them special privileges.

55
THE PRESIDENCY OF BENJAMIN HARRISON

• If antitrust legislation was to be effective, it
  would have to come from the federal govt.
• 1890 Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act,
  almost without dissent.

• The Act prohibited any contract, combination, in
  the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy in
  restraint in trade or commerce.
• Most members of Congress saw the Act as largely
  symbolic to help deflect public criticism, not
  likely to have any real effect on corporate power.

56
THE PRESIDENCY OF BENJAMIN HARRISON

• For over a decade after its passage, the Sherman
  Act had virtually no impact.
• 1901 The Justice Department had instituted only
  14 suits under the law against business
  combinations and had obtained few convictions.
• It used the law much more frequently against
  labor union.

57
THE PRESIDENCY OF BENJAMIN HARRISON

• The courts weakened the act considerably.
• 1895 United States v. E.C. Knight Co.
• The govt. charged that a sugar trust controlled
  98 of refined sugar mfg.
• The Supreme Court rejected the govts case.
• It ruled that the sugar trust was engaged in mfg,
  not in interstate commerce.
• Thus the Court ruled that the Act applied to
  commerce not to mfg.

58
THE PRESIDENCY OF BENJAMIN HARRISON

• The Republicans were more interested in the
  issue, they believed had won them the Election of
  1888 the tariff.
• Rep. William McKinley (OH) and Nelson Aldrich
  (RI) drafted the highest protective measure ever
  proposed in Congress.

59
THE PRESIDENCY OF BENJAMIN HARRSION

• 10/1890 The McKinley Tariff became law.
• It raised the tax on foreign imports over 48.
• Politically, it hurt the Republican Party.

• They misinterpreted public sentiment.
• The party suffered a stunning reversal in the
  1890 congressional election.
• Their majority in the Senate was slashed to 8.
• In the HoR, they retained only 88 of the 323
  seats.

60
THE ELECTION OF 1892
61
THE ELECTION OF 1892

• The Republicans were unable to recover from the
  political fallout over the McKinley Tariff.
• Benjamin Harrison once again supported
  protection, and Grover Cleveland, renominated by
  the Democrats, once again supported it.
• Only a new third party, the Peoples Party, which
  James B. Weaver as its candidate, advocated any
  serious economic reform.

62
THE ELECTION OF 1892

• RESULTS
• Cleveland 277 electoral votes
• Harrison 145 electoral votes
• Weaver 22 electoral votes
• Cleveland won the popular vote by 380,000 votes.
• For the first time since 1878, the Democrats won
  a majority of both houses of Congress.

63
(No Transcript)
64
CLEVELANDS SECOND TERM

• The policies of Clevelands second term were much
  like the first term
• Devoted to limited govt
• Hostile to active state measures to deal with
  social or economic problems.

65
CLEVELANDS SECOND TERM

• But this time, a major economic crisis (the Panic
  of 1893) created popular demands for a more
  active government.
• For the most part, Cleveland resisted those
  pressures.

• Again, he supported a tariff reduction, which the
  HoR approved but the Senate rejected.
• Cleveland denounced the result but allowed it to
  become law as the Wilson-Gorman Tariff.

66
CLEVELANDS SECOND TERM

• The bill also included a 2 income tax on incomes
  of over 4,000.
• But the Supreme Court declared it
  unconstitutional.
• Only after approval of the Sixteenth Amendment in
  1913 was the federal govt able to tax incomes.

• Pressure was also growing for regulation of the
  railroads.
• The Courts limited the powers of the states to
  regulate commerce even within their own
  boundaries.
• Railroad regulation had to come from the federal
  government.

67
CLEVELANDS SECOND TERM

• 188 Congress responded with the Interstate
  Commerce Act
• It banned discrimination in rates between long
  and short hauls.
• Required railroads to publish their rate
  schedules and file them with the govt.
• Declared that all interstate rail rates must be
  reasonable and just although the bill did not
  define what this meant.

68
CLEVELANDS SECOND TERM

• The Act established the Interstate Commerce
  Commission (ICC)
• A five-person agency
• Purpose to administer the Interstate Commerce
  Act
• But it had to rely on the courts to enforce its
  rulings
• The Act was haphazardly enforced and narrowly
  interpreted by the courts thus rendering the
  Act and ICC useless.

69
(No Transcript)
70
THE GILDED AGE

• The controversies over the tariff, the trusts,
  and the railroads were signs that dramatic
  changes in the American economy were creating
  problems that much of the public considered too
  important and dangerous to ignore.
• But the govts response to that agitation
  reflected the continuing weakness of the American
  state.

• The govt lacked institutions adequate to perform
  any significant role in American economic life.
• And not enough Americans had yet embraced a
  political ideology that would justify any major
  expansion of govt responsibilities.

71
THE GILDED AGE

• The effort to create such institutions and to
  promote such an ideology would occupy much of
  American public life in the coming decades.

• Among the first signs of that effort was a
  dramatic dissident movement that shattered the
  political equilibrium the nation had experienced
  for the previous twenty years.