Gilded Age

1
Gilded Age

• Pulling it all together

2
Gilded Age and Race/Ethnic Conflict

• African-Americans
• Civil Rights Cases (1883)
• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
• Lynchings
• Booker T. Washingtons Atlanta Compromise
• Anti-Chinese Agitation in West
• Dennis Kearny
• Chinese Exclusion Act
• Nativism in the East
• New immigrants
• Restrictions 1882 Immigration Law 1885
  Contract Labor Law
• American Protective Association wants a
  literacy test
• Labor unions seen as foreign / un-American

3
Reform

• Political
• Civil Service Reform Pendleton Act
• City Bosses / Corruption exposed
• Municipal services begin
• Beginning of regulation of businesses
• Interstate Commerce Act / ICC
• Sherman Anti-Trust Act
• Social
• Social Gospel YMCA Salvation Army
• WCTU Carrie Nation
• Philanthropy

4
Politics

• Major trends
• Close elections consensus on most major issues
• Big issues that divide
• Tariffs Surplus
• High tariffs McKinley Tariff (1890)
• Cleveland fights for a lower tariff, but fails.
  Wilson-Gorman Tariff includes an income tax
  (struck down)
• Civil Service Reform
• Stalwarts and Halfbreeds
• Garfield assassination
• Pendleton Act
• Monetary Policy
• Inflationary aka soft money (paper money or
  bimetalism)
• Deflationary aka hard money (gold standard)
• Major issue in the 1896 election

5
Organized Labor

• Organizes in response to conditions in workplace
• NLU first union one big union for all
  workers 8 hour day crushed by Panic of 1873
• Knights of Labor broadly organized Terrence
  Powderly women, men, African-Ams
  skilled/unskilled gets into bigger economic
  issues safety concerns cooperatives etc.
  Hurt by 1886 Haymarket Riot
• AFL federation of smaller craft-based unions
  skilled workers only bread and butter issues
  (hours, wages, conditions)

6
Strikes

• Great Strike 1877
• Homestead Strike 1893
• Pullman Strike 1894

7
Debtors Organize

• Coxeys Army (1894)
• Reaction to the Panic
• Called for government action (jobs creation) to
  help unemployed
• Coxeys Army marches to Washington, D.C.
  arrested
• Populist Party (1892)
• Political party formed to address concerns of
  farmers.
• Roots in the Grange and Farmers Alliance
  movements.
• Platform calls for free silver (bimetallism)
  to spark inflation graduated income tax
  government loans to farmers regulation of RRs
  and Australian (secret) ballot.
• Runs a presidential candidate in 1892 gains
  seats in western state legislatures and
  governerships.
• 1896 fusion with Democratic Party ? both PP and
  DP endorse William Jennings Bryan free silver
  is the major issue fails to draw in
  urban/industrial workers.