AmPageantEtext23-32

PART FOUR

FORGING AN
INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY

ᇻᇾᇻ

1865–1899

A nation of farmers fought the Civil War in the authority was invoked to regulate the use of natural
1860s. By the time the Spanish-American War resources. The rise of powerful monopolies called into
broke out in 1898, America was an industrial nation. question the government’s traditional hands-off pol-
For generations Americans had plunged into the icy toward business, and a growing band of reformers
wilderness and plowed their fields. Now they settled increasingly clamored for government regulation of
in cities and toiled in factories. Between the Civil private enterprise. The mushrooming cities, with their
War and the century’s end, economic and techno- needs for transport systems, schools, hospitals, sani-
logical change came so swiftly and massively that it tation, and fire and police protection, required bigger
seemed to many Americans that a whole new civi- governments and budgets than an earlier generation
lization had emerged. could have imagined. As never before, Americans
struggled to adapt old ideals of private autonomy to
In some ways it had. The sheer scale of the new the new realities of industrial civilization.
industrial civilization was dazzling. Transcontinen-
tal railroads knit the country together from sea to With economic change came social and politi-
sea. New industries like oil and steel grew to stag- cal turmoil. Labor violence brought bloodshed to
gering size—and made megamillionaires out of places such as Chicago and Homestead, Pennsylva-
entrepreneurs like oilman John D. Rockefeller and nia. Small farmers, squeezed by debt and foreign
steel maker Andrew Carnegie. competition, rallied behind the People’s, or “Pop-
ulist,” party, a radical movement of the 1880s and
Drawn by the allure of industrial employment, 1890s that attacked the power of Wall Street, big
Americans moved to the city. In 1860 only about 20 business, and the banks. Anti-immigrant sentiment
percent of the population were city dwellers. By swelled. Bitter disputes over tariffs and monetary
1900 that proportion doubled, as rural Americans policy deeply divided the country, setting debtors
and European immigrants alike flocked to mill town against lenders, farmers against manufacturers, the
and metropolis in search of steady jobs. West and South against the Northeast. And in this
unfamiliar era of big money and expanding govern-
These sweeping changes challenged the spirit of ment, corruption flourished, from town hall to Con-
individualism that Americans had celebrated since gress, fueling loud cries for political reform.
the seventeenth century. Even on the western frontier,
that historic bastion of rugged loners, the hand of gov- The bloodiest conflict of all pitted Plains Indi-
ernment was increasingly felt, as large armies were ans against the relentless push of westward expan-
dispatched to subdue the Plains Indians and federal

500

sion. As railroads drove their iron arrows through cal rights, including the right to vote. Segregation of
the heart of the West, the Indians lost their land and schools, housing, and all kinds of public facilities
life-sustaining buffalo herds. By the 1890s, after made a mockery of African-Americans’ Reconstruc-
three decades of fierce fighting with the U.S. Army, tion-era hopes for equality before the law.
the Indians who had once roamed across the vast
rolling prairies were struggling to preserve their shat- The new wealth and power of industrial America
tered cultures within the confinement of reservations. nurtured a growing sense of national self-confi-
dence. Literature flowered, and a golden age of phil-
The South remained the one region largely anthropy dawned. The reform spirit spread. So did a
untouched by the Industrial Revolution sweeping restless appetite for overseas expansion. In a brief
the rest of America. A few sleepy southern hamlets war against Spain in 1898, the United States, born in
did become boomtowns, but for the most part, the a revolutionary war of independence and long the
South’s rural way of life and its peculiar system of champion of colonial peoples yearning to breathe
race relations were largely unperturbed by the free, seized control of the Philippines and itself
changes happening elsewhere. On African-Ameri- became an imperial power. Uncle Sam’s venture into
cans, the vast majority of whom continued to live in empire touched off a bitter national debate about
the Old South, the post-emancipation era inflicted America’s role in the world and ushered in a long
new forms of racial injustice. State legislatures sys- period of argument over the responsibilities, at
tematically deprived black Americans of their politi- home as well as abroad, of a modern industrial state.

501

23

Political Paralysis
in the Gilded Age

ᇻᇾᇻ

1869–1896

Grant . . . had no right to exist. He should have been extinct for ages.
. . . That, two thousand years after Alexander the Great and Julius
Caesar, a man like Grant should be called—and should actually and
truly be—the highest product of the most advanced evolution, made
evolution ludicrous. . . . The progress of evolution, from President
Washington to President Grant, was alone evidence enough to upset
Darwin. . . . Grant . . . should have lived in a cave and worn skins.

HENRY ADAMS, THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS, 1907

The population of the post–Civil War Republic con- corruption and political stalemate—beginning with
tinued to vault upward by vigorous leaps, despite Ulysses S. Grant, a great soldier but an utterly inept
the awful bloodletting in both Union and Confederate politician.
ranks. Census takers reported over 39 million people
in 1870, a gain of 26.6 percent over the preceding The “Bloody Shirt” Elects Grant
decade, as the immigrant tide surged again. The
United States was now the third largest nation in the Wrangling between Congress and President Andrew
Western world, ranking behind Russia and France. Johnson had soured the people on professional
politicians in the Reconstruction era, and the notion
But the civic health of the United States did not still prevailed that a good general would make a
keep pace with its physical growth. The Civil War good president. Stubbily bearded General Grant was
and its aftermath spawned waste, extravagance, by far the most popular Northern hero to emerge
speculation, and graft. Disillusionment ran deep from the war. Grateful citizens of Philadelphia,
among idealistic Americans in the postwar era. They Washington, and his hometown of Galena, Illinois,
had spilled their blood for the Union, emancipation,
and Abraham Lincoln, who had promised “a new
birth of freedom.” Instead they got a bitter dose of

502

The Stain of Corruption 503

passed the hat around and in each place presented Grant won, with 214 electoral votes to 80 for
him with a house. New Yorkers tendered him a Seymour. But despite his great popularity, the for-
check for $105,000. The general, silently puffing on mer general scored a majority of only 300,000 in the
his cigar, unapologetically accepted these gifts as popular vote (3,013,421 to 2,706,829). Most white
his just deserts for having rescued the Union. voters apparently supported Seymour, and the bal-
lots of three still-unreconstructed southern states
Grant was a hapless greenhorn in the political (Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia) were not counted
arena. His one presidential vote had been cast for at all. An estimated 500,000 former slaves gave
the Democratic ticket in 1856. A better judge of Grant his margin of victory. To remain in power, the
horseflesh than of humans, his cultural background Republican party somehow had to continue to con-
was breathtakingly narrow. He once reportedly trol the South—and to keep the ballot in the hands
remarked that Venice (Italy) would be a fine city if of the grateful freedmen. Republicans could not
only it were drained. take future victories “for Granted.”

The Republicans, freed from the Union party The Era of Good Stealings
coalition of war days, enthusiastically nominated
Grant for the presidency in 1868. The party’s platform A few skunks can pollute a large area. Although the
sounded a clarion call for continued Reconstruction great majority of businesspeople and government
of the South under the glinting steel of federal bayo- officials continued to conduct their affairs with
nets. Yet Grant, always a man of few words, struck a decency and honor, the whole postwar atmosphere
highly popular note in his letter of acceptance when was fetid. The Man in the Moon, it was said, had to
he said, “Let us have peace.” This noble sentiment hold his nose when passing over America. Free-
became a leading campaign slogan and was later wheeling railroad promoters sometimes left gullible
engraved on his tomb beside the Hudson River. bond buyers with only “two streaks of rust and a
right of way.” Unscrupulous stock-market manipu-
Expectant Democrats, meeting in their own lators were a cinder in the public eye. Too many
nominating convention, denounced military Re- judges and legislators put their power up for hire.
construction but could agree on little else. Wealthy Cynics defined an honest politician as one who,
eastern delegates demanded a plank promising that when bought, would stay bought.
federal war bonds be redeemed in gold—even
though many of the bonds had been purchased with Notorious in the financial world were two mil-
badly depreciated paper greenbacks. Poorer mid- lionaire partners, “Jubilee Jim” Fisk and Jay Gould.
western delegates answered with the “Ohio Idea,” The corpulent and unscrupulous Fisk provided the
which called for redemption in greenbacks. Debt- “brass,” while the undersized and cunning Gould
burdened agrarian Democrats thus hoped to keep provided the brains. The crafty pair concocted a plot
more money in circulation and keep interest rates in 1869 to corner the gold market. Their slippery
lower. This dispute introduced a bitter contest over game would work only if the federal Treasury
monetary policy that continued to convulse the refrained from selling gold. The conspirators
Republic until the century’s end. worked on President Grant directly and also
through his brother-in-law, who received $25,000
Midwestern delegates got the platform but not for his complicity. On “Black Friday” (September 24,
the candidate. The nominee, former New York gover- 1869), Fisk and Gould madly bid the price of gold
nor Horatio Seymour, scuttled the Democrats’ faint skyward, while scores of honest businesspeople
hope for success by repudiating the Ohio Idea. were driven to the wall. The bubble finally broke
Republicans whipped up enthusiasm for Grant by when the Treasury, contrary to Grant’s supposed
energetically “waving the bloody shirt”—that is, reviv- assurances, was compelled to release gold. A con-
ing gory memories of the Civil War—which became gressional probe concluded that Grant had done
for the first time a prominent feature of a presidential nothing crooked, though he had acted stupidly and
campaign.* “Vote as You Shot” was a powerful Repub- indiscreetly.
lican slogan aimed at Union army veterans.

*The expression is said to have derived from a speech by
Representative Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts, who
allegedly waved before the House the bloodstained nightshirt
of a Klan-flogged carpetbagger.

504 CHAPTER 23 Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age, 1869–1896

The infamous Tweed Ring in New York City headed the prosecution, gaining fame that later
vividly displayed the ethics (or lack of ethics) typical paved the path to his presidential nomination.
of the age. Burly “Boss” Tweed—240 pounds of ras- Unbailed and unwept, Tweed died behind bars.
cality—employed bribery, graft, and fraudulent
elections to milk the metropolis of as much as $200 A Carnival of Corruption
million. Honest citizens were cowed into silence.
Protesters found their tax assessments raised. More serious than Boss Tweed’s peccadilloes were
the misdeeds of the federal government. President
Tweed’s luck finally ran out. The New York Times Grant’s cabinet was a rodent’s nest of grafters and
secured damning evidence in 1871 and coura- incompetents. Favor seekers haunted the White
geously published it, though offered $5 million not House, plying Grant himself with cigars, wines, and
to do so. Gifted cartoonist Thomas Nast pilloried horses. His election was a godsend to his in-laws of
Tweed mercilessly, after spurning a heavy bribe to the Dent family, several dozen of whom attached
desist. The portly thief reportedly complained that themselves to the public payroll.
his illiterate followers could not help seeing “them
damn pictures.” New York attorney Samuel J. Tilden The easygoing Grant was first tarred by the
Crédit Mobilier scandal, which erupted in 1872.
Union Pacific Railroad insiders had formed the
Crédit Mobilier construction company and then
cleverly hired themselves at inflated prices to build
the railroad line, earning dividends as high as 348
percent. Fearing that Congress might blow the
whistle, the company furtively distributed shares
of its valuable stock to key congressmen. A news-
paper exposé and congressional investigation of
the scandal led to the formal censure of two con-
gressmen and the revelation that the vice president
of the United States had accepted payments from
Crédit Mobilier.

The breath of scandal in Washington also
reeked of alcohol. In 1874–1875 the sprawling
Whiskey Ring robbed the Treasury of millions in
excise-tax revenues. “Let no guilty man escape,”
declared President Grant. But when his own private
secretary turned up among the culprits, he volun-
teered a written statement to the jury that helped
exonerate the thief. Further rottenness in the Grant
administration came to light in 1876, forcing Secre-
tary of War William Belknap to resign after pocket-
ing bribes from suppliers to the Indian reservations.
Grant, ever loyal to his crooked cronies, accepted
Belknap’s resignation “with great regret.”

The Liberal Republican Revolt of 1872

By 1872 a powerful wave of disgust with Grantism
was beginning to build up throughout the nation,
even before some of the worst scandals had been

In a famous series of newspaper interviews in The Stirrings of Reform 505
1905, George Washington Plunkitt
(1842–1924), a political “boss” in the same The Liberal Republicans muffed their chance
Tammany Hall Democratic political when their Cincinnati nominating convention
“machine” that had spawned William Marcy astounded the country by nominating the brilliant
(“Boss”) Tweed, candidly described his ethical but erratic Horace Greeley for the presidency.
and political principles: Although Greeley was the fearless editor of the New
York Tribune, he was dogmatic, emotional, petulant,
“Everybody is talkin’ these days about Tam- and notoriously unsound in his political judgments.
many men growin’ rich on graft, but nobody
thinks of drawin’ the distinction between More astonishing still was the action of the
honest graft and dishonest graft. There’s all office-hungry Democrats, who foolishly proceeded
the difference in the world between the two. to endorse Greeley’s candidacy. In swallowing Gree-
Yes, many of our men have grown rich in ley the Democrats “ate crow” in large gulps, for the
politics. I have myself. I’ve made a big fortune eccentric editor had long blasted them as traitors,
out of the game, and I’m gettin’ richer every slave shippers, saloon keepers, horse thieves, and
day, but I’ve not gone in for dishonest graft— idiots. Yet Greeley pleased the Democrats, North
blackmailin’ gamblers, saloonkeepers, and South, when he pleaded for clasping hands
disorderly people, etc.—and neither has any of across “the bloody chasm.” The Republicans duti-
the men who have made big fortunes in fully renominated Grant. The voters were thus pre-
politics. sented with a choice between two candidates who
had made their careers in fields other than politics
“There’s an honest graft, and I’m an ex- and who were both eminently unqualified, by tem-
ample of how it works. I might sum up the perament and lifelong training, for high political
whole thing by sayin’: ‘I seen my opportunities office.
and I took ’em.’

“Just let me explain by examples. My
party’s in power in the city, and it’s goin’ to
undertake a lot of public improvements. Well,
I’m tipped off, say, that they’re going to lay
out a new park at a certain place.

“I see my opportunity and I take it. I go to
that place and I buy up all the land I can in
the neighborhood. Then the board of this or
that makes its plan public, and there is a rush
to get my land, which nobody cared particular
for before.

“Ain’t it perfectly honest to charge a good
price and make a profit on my investment and
foresight? Of course, it is. Well, that’s honest
graft.”

exposed. Reform-minded citizens banded together
to form the Liberal Republican party. Voicing the
slogan “Turn the Rascals Out,” they urged purifica-
tion of the Washington administration as well as an
end to military Reconstruction.

506 CHAPTER 23 Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age, 1869–1896

In the mud-spattered campaign that followed, life into the issue of greenbacks. During the war
regular Republicans denounced Greeley as an athe- $450 million of the “folding money” had been
ist, a communist, a free-lover, a vegetarian, a brown- issued, but it had depreciated under a cloud of pop-
bread eater, and a cosigner of Jefferson Davis’s bail ular mistrust and dubious legality.* By 1868 the
bond. Democrats derided Grant as an ignoramus, a Treasury had already withdrawn $100 million of the
drunkard, and a swindler. But the regular Republi- “battle-born currency” from circulation, and “hard-
cans, chanting “Grant us another term,” pulled the money” people everywhere looked forward to its
president through. The count in the electoral col- complete disappearance. But now afflicted agrarian
umn was 286 to 66, in the popular column 3,596,745 and debtor groups—“cheap-money” supporters—
to 2,843,446. clamored for a reissuance of the greenbacks. With a
crude but essentially accurate grasp of monetary
Liberal Republican agitation frightened the reg- theory, they reasoned that more money meant
ular Republicans into cleaning their own house cheaper money and, hence, rising prices and easier-
before they were thrown out of it. The Republican to-pay debts. Creditors, of course, reasoning from
Congress in 1872 passed a general amnesty act, the same premises, advocated precisely the oppo-
removing political disabilities from all but some site policy. They had no desire to see the money they
five hundred former Confederate leaders. Congress had loaned repaid in depreciated dollars. They
also moved to reduce high Civil War tariffs and to wanted deflation, not inflation.
fumigate the Grant administration with mild civil-
service reform. Like many American third parties, The “hard-money” advocates carried the day. In
the Liberal Republicans left some enduring foot- 1874 they persuaded a confused Grant to veto a bill
prints, even in defeat. to print more paper money. They scored another
victory in the Resumption Act of 1875, which
Depression, Deflation, and Inflation pledged the government to the further withdrawal
of greenbacks from circulation and to the redemp-
Grant’s woes deepened in the paralyzing economic tion of all paper currency in gold at face value,
panic that broke in 1873. Bursting with startling beginning in 1879.
rapidity, the crash was one of those periodic plum-
mets that roller-coastered the economy in this age Down but not out, debtors now looked for relief
of unbridled capitalist expansion. Overreaching to another precious metal, silver. The “sacred white
promoters had laid more railroad track, sunk more metal,” they claimed, had received a raw deal. In the
mines, erected more factories, and sowed more early 1870s, the Treasury stubbornly and unrealisti-
grainfields than existing markets could bear. cally maintained that an ounce of silver was worth
Bankers, in turn, had made too many imprudent only one-sixteenth as much as an ounce of gold,
loans to finance those enterprises. When profits though open-market prices for silver were higher.
failed to materialize, loans went unpaid, and the Silver miners thus stopped offering their shiny
whole credit-based house of cards fluttered down. product for sale to the federal mints. With no silver
flowing into the federal coffers, Congress formally
Boom times became gloom times as more than dropped the coinage of silver dollars in 1873. Fate
fifteen thousand businesses went bankrupt. In New then played a sly joke when new silver discoveries
York City, an army of unemployed riotously battled later in the 1870s shot production up and forced sil-
police. Black Americans were hard hit. The Freed- ver prices down. Westerners from silver-mining
man’s Savings and Trust Company had made unse- states joined with debtors in assailing the “Crime of
cured loans to several companies that went under. ’73,” demanding a return to the “Dollar of Our Dad-
Black depositors who had entrusted over $7 million dies.” Like the demand for more greenbacks, the
to the bank lost their savings, and black economic demand for the coinage of more silver was nothing
development and black confidence in savings insti-
tutions went down with it. *The Supreme Court in 1870 declared the Civil War Legal Tender
Act unconstitutional. With the concurrence of the Senate,
Hard times inflicted the worst punishment on Grant thereupon added to the bench two justices who could
debtors, who intensified their clamor for inflation- be counted on to help reverse that decision, which happened
ary policies. Proponents of inflation breathed new in 1871. This is how the Court grew to its current size of nine
justices.

The Demand for Inflation 507

more nor less than another scheme to promote commanded fierce loyalty from their members.
inflation. Voter turnouts reached heights unmatched before or
since. Nearly 80 percent of eligible voters cast their
Hard-money Republicans resisted this scheme ballots in presidential elections in the three decades
and counted on Grant to hold the line against it. He after the Civil War. On election days droves of the
did not disappoint them. The Treasury began to party faithful tramped behind marching bands to
accumulate gold stocks against the appointed day the polling places, and “ticket splitting,” or failing to
for resumption of metallic-money payments. Cou- vote the straight party line, was as rare as a silver
pled with the reduction of greenbacks, this policy dollar.
was called “contraction.” It had a noticeable defla-
tionary effect—the amount of money per capita in How can this apparent paradox of political con-
circulation actually decreased between 1870 and sensus and partisan fervor be explained? The
1880, from $19.42 to $19.37. Contraction probably answer lies in the sharp ethnic and cultural differ-
worsened the impact of the depression. But the new ences in the membership of the two parties—in
policy did restore the government’s credit rating, distinctions of style and tone, and especially of reli-
and it brought the embattled greenbacks up to their gious sentiment. Republican voters tended to
full face value. When Redemption Day came in 1879, adhere to those creeds that traced their lineage to
few greenback holders bothered to exchange the Puritanism. They stressed strict codes of personal
lighter and more convenient bills for gold. morality and believed that government should play
a role in regulating both the economic and the
Republican hard-money policy had a political moral affairs of society. Democrats, among whom
backlash. It helped elect a Democratic House of immigrant Lutherans and Roman Catholics figured
Representatives in 1874, and in 1878 it spawned the heavily, were more likely to adhere to faiths that
Greenback Labor party, which polled over a million took a less stern view of human weakness. Their reli-
votes and elected fourteen members of Congress. gions professed toleration of differences in an
The contest over monetary policy was far from over. imperfect world, and they spurned government
efforts to impose a single moral standard on the
Pallid Politics in the Gilded Age entire society. These differences in temperament
and religious values often produced raucous politi-
The political seesaw was delicately balanced cal contests at the local level, where issues like pro-
throughout most of the Gilded Age (a sarcastic hibition and education loomed large.
name given to the three-decade-long post–Civil War
era by Mark Twain in 1873). Even a slight nudge Democrats had a solid electoral base in the
could tip the teeter-totter to the advantage of the South and in the northern industrial cities, teeming
opposition party. Every presidential election was with immigrants and controlled by well-oiled politi-
a squeaker, and the majority party in the House of cal machines. Republican strength lay largely in the
Representatives switched six times in the eleven Midwest and the rural and small-town Northeast.
sessions between 1869 and 1891. In only three ses- Grateful freedmen in the South continued to vote
sions did the same party control the House, the Sen- Republican in significant numbers. Another impor-
ate, and the White House. Wobbling in such shaky tant bloc of Republican ballots came from the mem-
equilibrium, politicians tiptoed timidly, producing a bers of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR)—a
political record that was often trivial and petty. politically potent fraternal organization of several
hundred thousand Union veterans of the Civil War.
Few significant economic issues separated the
major parties. Democrats and Republicans saw very The lifeblood of both parties was patronage—
nearly eye-to-eye on questions like the tariff and disbursing jobs by the bucketful in return for votes,
civil-service reform, and majorities in both parties kickbacks, and party service. Boisterous infighting
substantially agreed even on the much-debated over patronage beset the Republican party in the
currency question. Yet despite their rough agree- 1870s and 1880s. A “Stalwart” faction, led by the
ment on these national matters, the two parties handsome and imperious Roscoe (“Lord Roscoe”)
were ferociously competitive with each other. They Conkling, U.S. senator from New York, unblushingly
were tightly and efficiently organized, and they embraced the time-honored system of swapping
civil-service jobs for votes. Opposed to the Conk-
lingites were the so-called Half-Breeds, who flirted

508 CHAPTER 23 Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age, 1869–1896

coyly with civil-service reform, but whose real quar- more than its share of presidential candidates. A

rel with the Stalwarts was over who should grasp the political saying of the 1870s paraphrased Shake-

ladle that dished out the spoils. The champion of speare:

the Half-Breeds was James G. Blaine of Maine, a Some are born great,
radiantly personable congressman with an elastic Some achieve greatness,
conscience. But despite the color of their person- And some are born in Ohio.
alities, Conkling and Blaine succeeded only in

stalemating each other and deadlocking their party. Pitted against the humdrum Hayes was the

Democratic nominee, Samuel J. Tilden, who had

risen to fame as the man who bagged Boss Tweed in

The Hayes-Tilden Standoff, 1876 New York. Campaigning against Republican scan-

dal, Tilden racked up 184 electoral votes of the

needed 185, with 20 votes in four states—three of

Hangers-on around Grant, like fleas urging their ail- them in the South—doubtful because of irregular

ing dog to live, begged the “Old Man” to try for a returns (see the map below). Surely Tilden could

third term in 1876. The general, blind to his own pick up at least one of these, especially in view of the

ineptitudes, showed a disquieting willingness. But fact that he had polled 247,448 more popular votes

the House, by a lopsided bipartisan vote of 233 to than Hayes, 4,284,020 to 4,036,572.

18, derailed the third-term bandwagon. It passed a Both parties scurried to send “visiting states-

resolution that sternly reminded the country—and men” to the contested southern states of Louisiana,

Grant—of the antidictator implications of the two- South Carolina, and Florida. All three disputed

term tradition. states submitted two sets of returns, one Demo-

With Grant out of the running and with the cratic and one Republican. As the weeks drifted by,

Conklingites and Blaineites neutralizing each other, the paralysis tightened, generating a dramatic con-

the Republicans turned to a compromise candidate, stitutional crisis. The Constitution merely specifies

Rutherford B. Hayes, who was obscure enough to be that the electoral returns from the states shall be

dubbed “The Great Unknown.” His foremost qualifi- sent to Congress, and in the presence of the House

cation was the fact that he hailed from the elec- and Senate, they shall be opened by the president of

torally doubtful but potent state of Ohio, where he the Senate (see the Twelfth Amendment). But who

had served three terms as governor. So crucial were should count them? On this point the Constitution
ORE.
the “swing” votes of Ohio in the cliffhanging presi- was silent. If counted by the president of the Senate
dential contests of the day that the state produced;2 1 (a Republican), the Republican returns would be

WASH. ME.
TERR.
; ;;ARIZONA NEWMEXICO VT. 7
5
MONTANA DAKOTA MINN. N.H.
TERR. TERR. 5 N.Y. 5 MASS.
35
WYOMING WISC. 13
TERR. 10
IDAHO MICH. R.I. 4
TERR. 11
PA. CONN. 6

NEBR. IOWA 29 N.J. 9
3 11
NEV. ILL. IND. OHIO DEL. 3
3 KANSAS MO. 21 15 MD. 8
UTAH COLO. 22 W.VA. VA.
CALIF. TERR. 3 KY 5 11 Hayes-Tilden Disputed Election of 1876
6
Hayes—Republican 5 15 12 N.C. (with electoral vote by state) Nineteen

; ;;;Tiden—DemocraticTERR. TERR. INDIAN ARK. TENN. 12 10 of the twenty disputed votes composed
TERR. 6 the total electoral count of Louisiana,
ALA. S.C. South Carolina, and Florida. The twentieth
TEXAS LA. MISS. 10 7 was one of Oregon’s three votes, cast by
8 8 an elector who turned out to be ineligible
8 GA.
11

FLA. because he was a federal officeholder (a
4

postmaster), contrary to the Constitution

Disputed (see Art. II, Sec. I, para. 2).

The Compromise of 1877 509

selected. If counted by the Speaker of the House (a reluctantly agreed that Hayes might take office in
Democrat), the Democratic returns would be chosen. return for his withdrawing intimidating federal
How could the impasse be resolved? troops from the two states in which they remained,
Louisiana and South Carolina. Among various con-
The Compromise of 1877 cessions, the Republicans assured the Democrats a
and the End of Reconstruction place at the presidential patronage trough and sup-
port for a bill subsidizing the Texas and Pacific Rail-
Clash or compromise was the stark choice. The dan- road’s construction of a southern transcontinental
ger loomed that there would be no president on line. Not all of these promises were kept in later
Inauguration Day, March 4, 1877. “Tilden or Blood!” years, including the Texas and Pacific subsidy. But
cried Democratic hotheads, and some of their the deal held together long enough to break the
“Minute Men” began to drill with arms. But behind dangerous electoral standoff. The Democrats per-
the scenes, frantically laboring statesmen gradually mitted Hayes to receive the remainder of the dis-
hammered out an agreement in the Henry Clay tra- puted returns—all by the partisan vote of 8 to 7. So
dition—the Compromise of 1877. close was the margin of safety that the explosive
issue was settled only three days before the new
The election deadlock itself was to be broken by president was officially sworn into office. The nation
the Electoral Count Act, which passed Congress breathed a collective sigh of relief.
early in 1877. It set up an electoral commission con-
sisting of fifteen men selected from the Senate, the The compromise bought peace at a price. Vio-
House, and the Supreme Court. lence was averted by sacrificing the black freedmen
in the South. With the Hayes-Tilden deal, the
In February 1877, about a month before Inau- Republican party quietly abandoned its commit-
guration Day, the Senate and House met together in ment to racial equality. That commitment had been
an electric atmosphere to settle the dispute. The roll weakening in any case. The Civil Rights Act of 1875
of the states was tolled off alphabetically. When was in a sense the last feeble gasp of the congres-
Florida was reached—the first of the three southern sional radical Republicans. The act supposedly
states with two sets of returns—the disputed docu- guaranteed equal accommodations in public places
ments were referred to the electoral commission, and prohibited racial discrimination in jury selec-
which sat in a nearby chamber. After prolonged dis- tion, but the law was born toothless and stayed that
cussion the members agreed, by the partisan vote of way for nearly a century. The Supreme Court pro-
eight Republicans to seven Democrats, to accept the nounced much of the act unconstitutional in the
Republican returns. Outraged Democrats in Con- Civil Rights Cases (1883). The Court declared that
gress, smelling defeat, undertook to launch a fili- the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited only govern-
buster “until hell froze over.” ment violations of civil rights, not the denial of civil
rights by individuals. Hayes clinched the bargain
Renewed deadlock was avoided by the rest of by withdrawing the last federal troops that were
the complex Compromise of 1877, already partially propping up carpetbag governments. The bayonet-
concluded behind closed doors. The Democrats backed Republican regimes collapsed as the blue-
clad soldiers departed.

Composition of the Electoral Commission, 1877 The Birth of Jim Crow in the
Post-Reconstruction South
Members Republicans Democrats
The Democratic South speedily solidified and
Senate (Republican 3 3 swiftly suppressed the now-friendless blacks.
majority) Reconstruction, for better or worse, was officially
2 3 ended. Shamelessly relying on fraud and intimi-
House (Democratic 3 2 dation, white Democrats (“Redeemers”) resumed
majority) 8 7 political power in the South and exercised it ruth-

Supreme Court

TOTAL

510 CHAPTER 23 Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age, 1869–1896

lessly. Blacks who tried to assert their rights faced farmers remained perpetually in debt to them. For
unemployment, eviction, and physical harm. generations to come, southern blacks were con-
demned to eke out a threadbare living under condi-
Blacks (as well as poor whites) were forced into tions scarcely better than slavery.
sharecropping and tenant farming. Former slaves
often found themselves at the mercy of former With white southerners back in the political
masters who were now their landlords and credi- saddle, daily discrimination against blacks grew
tors. Through the “crop-lien” system, storekeepers increasingly oppressive. What had started as the
extended credit to small farmers for food and sup- informal separation of blacks and whites in the
plies and in return took a lien on their harvests. immediate postwar years developed by the 1890s
Shrewd merchants manipulated the system so that into systematic state-level legal codes of segregation

The Emergence of Jim Crow 511

known as Jim Crow laws. Southern states also Class Conflicts and Ethnic Clashes
enacted literacy requirements, voter-registration
laws, and poll taxes to ensure full-scale disfran- The year 1877 marked more than the end of Recon-
chisement of the South’s black population. The struction. As the curtains officially closed on
Supreme Court validated the South’s segregationist regional warfare, they opened on scenes of class
social order in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). It warfare. The explosive atmosphere was largely a by-
ruled that “separate but equal” facilities were con- product of the long years of depression and defla-
stitutional under the “equal protection” clause of tion following the panic of 1873. Railroad workers
the Fourteenth Amendment. faced particularly hard times. When the presidents of
the nation’s four largest railroads collectively
But in reality the quality of African-American decided in 1877 to cut employees’ wages by 10 per-
life was grotesquely unequal to that of whites. Seg- cent, the workers struck back. President Hayes’s
regated in inferior schools and separated from decision to call in federal troops to quell the unrest
whites in virtually all public facilities, including rail- brought the striking laborers an outpouring of work-
road cars, theaters, and even restrooms, blacks were ing-class support. Work stoppages spread like wild-
assaulted daily by galling reminders of their second- fire in cities from Baltimore to St. Louis. When the
class citizenship. To ensure the stability of this polit- battling between workers and soldiers ended after
ical and economic “new order,” southern whites several weeks, over one hundred people were dead.
dealt harshly with any black who dared to violate
the South’s racial code of conduct. A record number The failure of the great railroad strike exposed
of blacks were lynched during the 1890s, most often the weakness of the labor movement. Racial and eth-
for the “crime” of asserting themselves as equals nic fissures among workers everywhere fractured
(see the table below). It would take a second Recon- labor unity and were particularly acute between the
struction, nearly a century later, to redress the racist Irish and the Chinese in California (see “Makers of
imbalance of southern society. America: The Chinese,” pp. 512–513). By 1880 the
Golden State counted seventy-five thousand Asian
Persons in United States Lynched [by race], newcomers, about 9 percent of its entire population.
1882–1970* Mostly poor, uneducated, single males, they derived
predominantly from the Taishan district of K’uang-
Year Whites Blacks Total t’ung (Guangdong) province in southern China. They
had originally come to America to dig in the gold-
1882 64 49 113 fields and to sledgehammer the tracks of the
1885 110 74 184 transcontinental railroads across the West. When the
1890 85 gold supply petered out and the tracks were laid,
1895 11 113 96 many—perhaps half of those who arrived before the
1900 66 106 179 1880s—returned home to China with their meager
1905 57 115 savings.
1910 9 67
1915 5 56 62 Those who remained in America faced extraor-
1920 9 53 76 dinary hardships. They worked at the most menial
1925 13 17 69 jobs, often as cooks, laundrymen, or domestic
1930 8 20 61 servants. Without women or families, they were
1935 0 18 17 marooned in a land where they neither were wanted
1940 1 21 nor wanted to be. They lived lonely lives, bereft of
1945 2 4 20 the children who in other immigrant communities
1950 1 1 eased their parents’ assimilation through their
1965 0 1 5 exposure to the English language and American
1 0 1 customs in school. The phrase “not a Chinaman’s
0 2 chance” emerged in this era to describe the daunt-
0 ing odds against which they struggled.

*There were no lynchings in 1965–1970. In every year from In San Francisco Irish-born demagogue Denis
1882 (when records were first kept) to 1964, the number of Kearney incited his followers to violent abuse of the
lynchings corresponded roughly to the figures given here.
The worst year was 1892, when 161 blacks and 69 whites were
lynched (total 230); the next worst was 1884, when 164 whites
and 51 blacks were lynched (total 215).

The Chinese

In the late nineteenth century, the burgeoning The California boom coincided with the culmi-
industries and booming frontier towns of the nation of years of tumult and suffering in China.
United States’ Pacific coast hungered for laborers to The once great Chinese Empire was disintegrating,
wrench minerals from stubborn rock, to lay down while a few ruthless landlords, like looters, grabbed
railroad track through untamed wastelands, and to control of nearly every acre of farmland. In destruc-
transform dry expanses into fertile fields of fruit and tive complement to this internal disarray, the Euro-
vegetables. In faraway Asia the Chinese answered pean imperial powers forced their way into the
the call. Contributing their muscle to the building of unstable country, seeking to unlock the riches of
the West, they dug in the gold mines and helped to a nation that had been closed to outsiders for
lay the transcontinental railroads that stitched centuries.
together the American nation.
Faced with economic hardship and political
The first Chinese had arrived in Spanish Amer- turmoil, more than 2 million Chinese left their
ica as early as 1565. But few followed those earliest homeland between 1840 and 1900, for destinations
pioneers until the 1848 discovery of gold in Califor- as diverse as Southeast Asia, Peru, Hawaii, and
nia attracted people from all over the world to Cuba, with more than 300,000 entering the United
America’s Pacific coast. Among them were many States. Although their numbers included a few mer-
fortune-hungry Chinese who sailed into San Fran- chants and artisans, most were unskilled country
cisco, which Chinese immigrants named the folk. In some cases families pooled their money to
“golden mountain.” send out a son, but most travelers, desperately poor,
obtained their passage through Chinese middle-
men, who advanced them ship fare in return for the
emigrants’ promise to work off their debts after they
landed. This contracting sometimes led to condi-
tions so cruel that the practice was ignominiously
called pig selling.

The Chinese-America of the late-nineteenth-
century West was overwhelmingly a bachelor soci-
ety. Women of good repute rarely made the passage.
Of the very few Chinese women who ventured to
California at this time, most became prostitutes.
Many of them had been deceived by the false
promise of honest jobs.

Although a stream of workers returned to their
homeland, many Chinese stayed. “Chinatowns”
sprang up wherever economic opportunities pre-
sented themselves—in railroad towns, farming vil-
lages, and cities. Chinese in these settlements spoke
their own language, enjoyed the fellowship of their
own compatriots, and sought safety from prejudice
and violence, never rare in American society. Many

512

immigrant clubs, American adaptations of Chinese long journey to America died or returned home.
traditions of loyalty to clan or region, were estab- Slowly, however, those men and the few women
lished in these communities. Rivaling such clubs who remained raised families and reared a new gen-
and associations were the secret societies known as eration of Chinese Americans. Like their immigrant
tongs. The word tong—literally, “meeting hall”— parents, this second generation suffered from dis-
acquired a sinister reputation among non-Chinese, crimination. They had to eke out a living in jobs
for the tongs counted the poorest and shadiest despised by Caucasian laborers or take daunting
immigrants among their members. These were peo- risks in small entrepreneurial ventures. Yet many
ple without ties to a clan, those individuals most hard-working Chinese did manage to open their
alienated from traditional Chinese organizations own restaurants, laundries, and other small busi-
and from American society as well. nesses. The enterprises formed a solid economic
foundation for their small community and remain a
After 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act barred source of livelihood for many Chinese-Americans
nearly all Chinese from the United States for six even today.
decades. Many of the bachelors who had made the

Chinese Population in the Continental United States, 1850–1900

Year Population Males per Percentage Total Chinese
One Female U.S.-Born Immigrants in
1850 4,018† Preceding Decade*
1860 34,933 — —
1870 63,199 19 — —
1880 105,465 13 1 41,397
1890 107,488 21 1 64,301
1900 89,863 27 3 123,201
19 10 61,711
14,799

*Includes Chinese immigrants in Hawaii after 1898.
†Estimated.

513

514 CHAPTER 23 Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age, 1869–1896

Supreme Court ruled in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark in
1898 that the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed
citizenship to all persons born in the United States.
This doctrine of “birthright citizenship” (or jus soli,
the “right of the soil,” as contrasted with jus sangui-
nis, the “right of blood-tie,” which based citizenship
on the parents’ nationality) provided important pro-
tections to Chinese-Americans as well as to other
immigrant communities.

Garfield and Arthur

hapless Chinese. The Kearneyites, many of whom As the presidential campaign of 1880 approached,
were recently arrived immigrants from Europe, “Rutherfraud” Hayes was a man without a party,
hotly resented the competition of cheap labor from denounced and repudiated by the Republican Old
the still more recently arrived Chinese. The beef- Guard. The Republican party sought a new standard-
eater, they claimed, had no chance against the rice- bearer for 1880 and finally settled on a “dark-horse”
eater in a life-and-death struggle for jobs and wages. candidate, James A. Garfield, from the electorally
The present tens of thousands of Chinese “coolies” powerful state of Ohio. His vice-presidential running
were regarded as a menace, the prospective millions mate was a notorious Stalwart henchman, Chester A.
as a calamity. Taking to the streets, gangs of Kear- Arthur of New York.
neyites terrorized the Chinese by shearing off their
precious pigtails. Some victims were murdered Energetically waving the bloody shirt, Garfield
outright. barely squeaked out a victory over the Democratic
candidate and Civil War hero, Winfield Scott Han-
Congress finally slammed the door on Chinese cock. He polled only 39,213 more votes than Han-
immigrant laborers when it passed the Chinese cock—4,453,295 to 4,414,082—but his margin in the
Exclusion Act in 1882, prohibiting all further immi- electoral column was a comfortable 214 to 155.
gration from China. The door stayed shut until 1943.
Some exclusionists even tried to strip native-born The new president was energetic and able, but
Chinese-Americans of their citizenship, but the he was immediately ensnared in a political conflict
between his secretary of state, James G. Blaine, and
Blaine’s Stalwart nemesis, Senator Roscoe Conkling.
Then, as the Republican factions dueled, tragedy
struck. A disappointed and mentally deranged
office seeker, Charles J. Guiteau, shot President
Garfield in the back in a Washington railroad sta-
tion. Garfield lingered in agony for eleven weeks
and died on September 19, 1881. Guiteau, when
seized, reportedly cried, “I am a Stalwart. Arthur is
now President of the United States.” The implication
was that now the Conklingites would all get good
jobs. Guiteau’s attorneys argued that he was not
guilty because of his incapacity to distinguish right
from wrong—an early instance of the “insanity
defense.” The defendant himself demonstrated his
weak grip on reality when he asked all those who
had benefited politically by the assassination to
contribute to his defense fund. These tactics availed
little. Guiteau was found guilty of murder and
hanged.

The Assassination of Garfield 515

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), an ardent
civil-service reformer, condemned the
patronage system as

“tending to degrade American politics. . . .
The men who are in office only for what they
can make out of it are thoroughly
unwholesome citizens, and their activity in
politics is simply noxious. . . . Decent private
citizens must inevitably be driven out of
politics if it is suffered to become a mere
selfish scramble for plunder, where victory
rests with the most greedy, the most
cunning, the most brazen. The whole
patronage system is inimical to American
institutions; it forms one of the gravest
problems with which democratic and
republican government has to grapple.’’

reform. It made compulsory campaign contribu-
tions from federal employees illegal, and it estab-
lished the Civil Service Commission to make
appointments to federal jobs on the basis of com-
petitive examinations rather than “pull.”

Although at first covering only about 10 percent
of federal jobs, civil-service reform did rein in the
most blatant abuses. Yet like many well-intentioned
reforms, it bred unintended problems of its own.
With the “plum” federal posts now beyond their

Garfield’s death had one positive outcome: it New York political “boss” Roscoe Conkling
shocked politicians into reforming the shameful (1829–1888) denounced the civil-service
spoils system. The unlikely instrument of reform reformers in the New York World (1877):
was Chester Arthur. Observers at first underesti-
mated him. His record of cronyism and his fondness “[The reformers’] vocation and ministry is to
for fine wines and elegant clothing (including eighty lament the sins of other people. Their stock
pairs of trousers) suggested that he was little more in trade is rancid, canting self-righteousness.
than a foppish dandy. But Arthur surprised his crit- They are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Their
ics by prosecuting several fraud cases and giving his real object is office and plunder. When Dr.
former Stalwart pals the cold shoulder. Johnson defined patriotism as the last
refuge of a scoundrel, he was unconscious of
Disgust with Garfield’s murder gave the Repub- the then undeveloped capabilities and uses
lican party itself a previously undetected taste for of the word ‘Reform.’”
reform. The medicine finally applied to the long-
suffering federal government was the Pendleton Act
of 1883—the so-called Magna Carta of civil-service

516 CHAPTER 23 Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age, 1869–1896

PRESIDENT ARTHUR 10% 13,780 offices Growth of Classified Civil Service
1884 out of 131,208 (subject to competitive requirements)
The most recent numbers reflect the
McKINLEY 41% 106,205 offices changes mandated by the Postal
1901 71% out of 256,000 Reorganization Act of 1971, which
72% moved U.S. Postal Service employees
WILSON 87% 497,603 offices from competitive to excepted service.
1920 90% out of 691,116

ROOSEVELT 57% 662,832 offices
1939 49% out of 920,310

TRUMAN 2,278,446 offices
1952 out of 2,603,267

NIXON 2,393,000 offices
1970 out of 2,645,000

BUSH 1,694,000 offices
1990 out of 2,940,000

CLINTON 1,351,072 offices
2000 out of 2,734,338

reach, politicians were forced to look elsewhere for damning documents ended with the furtive warn-
money, “the mother’s milk of politics.” Increasingly, ing “Burn this letter.” Some reformers, unable to
they turned to the bulging coffers of the big corpo- swallow Blaine, bolted to the Democrats. They were
rations. A new breed of “boss” emerged—less skilled sneeringly dubbed Mugwumps, a word of Indian
at mobilizing small armies of immigrants and other derivation meant to suggest that they were “sancti-
voters on election day, but more adept at milking monious” or “holier-than-thou.”*
dollars from manufacturers and lobbyists. The
Pendleton Act partially divorced politics from Victory-starved Democrats turned enthusiasti-
patronage, but it helped drive politicians into “mar- cally to a noted reformer, Grover Cleveland. A burly
riages of convenience” with big-business leaders. bachelor with a soup-straining mustache and a
taste for chewing tobacco, Cleveland was a solid but
President Arthur’s surprising display of integrity not brilliant lawyer of forty-seven. He had rocketed
offended too many powerful Republicans. His from the mayor’s office in Buffalo to the governor-
ungrateful party turned him out to pasture, and in ship of New York and the presidential nomination in
1886 he died of a cerebral hemorrhage. three short years. Known as “Grover the Good” he
enjoyed a well-deserved reputation for probity in
The Blaine-Cleveland office.
Mudslingers of 1884
But Cleveland’s admirers soon got a shock. Res-
James G. Blaine’s persistence in pursuit of his party’s olute Republicans, digging for dirt in the past of
presidential nomination finally paid off in 1884. The bachelor Cleveland, unearthed the report that he
dashing Maine politician, blessed with almost every had been involved in an amorous affair with a Buf-
political asset except a reputation for honesty, was falo widow. She had an illegitimate son, now eight
the clear choice of the Republican convention in years old, for whom Cleveland had made financial
Chicago. But many reform-minded Republicans provision. Democratic elders were demoralized.
gagged on Blaine’s candidacy. Blaine’s enemies pub- They hurried to Cleveland and urged him to lie like
licized the fishy-smelling “Mulligan letters,” written a gentleman, but their ruggedly honest candidate
by Blaine to a Boston businessman and linking the insisted, “Tell the truth.”
powerful politician to a corrupt deal involving fed-
eral favors to a southern railroad. At least one of the *Latter-day punsters gibed that the Mugwumps were priggish
politicians who sat on the fence with their “mugs” on one side
and their “wumps” on the other.

The Election of 1884 517

The campaign of 1884 sank to perhaps the low- camp helped account for Cleveland’s paper-thin
est level in American experience, as the two parties plurality of about a thousand votes in New York
grunted and shoved for the hog trough of office. Few State, enough to give him the presidency. Cleveland
fundamental differences separated them. Even the swept the solid South and squeaked into office with
bloody shirt had faded to a pale pink.* Personalities, 219 to 182 electoral votes and 4,879,507 to 4,850,93
not principles, claimed the headlines. Crowds of popular votes.
Democrats surged through city streets, chanting—
to the rhythm of left, left, left, right, left—“Burn,
burn, burn this letter!” Republicans taunted in
return, “Ma, ma, where’s my pa?” Defiant Demo-
crats shouted back, “Gone to the White House, ha,
ha, ha!”

The contest hinged on the state of New York,
where Blaine blundered badly in the closing days
of the campaign. A witless Republican clergyman
damned the Democrats in a speech as the party of
“Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion”—insulting with
one swift stroke the race, the faith, and the patrio-
tism of New York’s numerous Irish-American voters.
Blaine was present at the time but lacked the pres-
ence of mind to repudiate the statement immedi-
ately. The pungent phrase, shortened to “RRR,”
stung and stuck. Blaine’s silence seemed to give
assent, and the wavering Irishmen who deserted his

*Neither candidate had served in the Civil War. Cleveland had
hired a substitute to go in his stead while he supported his
widowed mother and two sisters. Blaine was the only Republi-
can presidential candidate from Grant through McKinley
(1868 to 1900) who had not been a Civil War officer.

518 CHAPTER 23 Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age, 1869–1896

WASH. ME.
TERR.
VT. 6
4
MONTANA MINN. N.H.
ORE. TERR. DAKOTA 7 4 MASS.
3 TERR. N.Y. 14
WYOMING WISC. 36 R.I. 4
IDAHO TERR. 11 MICH.
TERR.
13 PA. CONN. 6
NEBR. IOWA 30 N.J. 9
5 13
NEV. UTAH ILL. IND. OHIO VA. DEL. 3
3 TERR. KANSAS MO. 22 15 23 W.VA. 12 MD. 8
9 16 KY 6
CALIF. COLO.
8 3 13 N.C.

TENN. 12 11

ARIZONA NEW MEXICO INDIAN ARK. ALA. S.C.
TERR. TERR. 7 10 9
TERR. MISS.
TEXAS LA. 9 GA.
13 8 12

Cleveland—Democratic FLA.
Blaine—Republican 4

Presidential Election of 1884

(with electoral vote by state)

“Old Grover” Takes Over wumps, who had helped elect him, for reform.
Believing in the merit system, Cleveland at first
Bull-necked Cleveland in 1885 was the first Demo- favored the cause of the reformers, but he eventu-
crat to take the oath of presidential office since ally caved in to the carpings of Democratic bosses
Buchanan, twenty-eight years earlier. Huge question and fired almost two-thirds of the 120,000 federal
marks hung over his ample frame (5 feet 11 inches, employees, including 40,000 incumbent (Repub-
250 pounds). Could the “party of disunion” be trusted lican) postmasters, to make room for “deserving
to govern the Union? Would desperate Democrats, Democrats.”
ravenously hungry after twenty-four years of exile,
trample the frail sprouts of civil-service reform in a Military pensions gave Cleveland some of his
stampede to the patronage trough? Could Cleveland most painful political headaches. The politically
restore a measure of respect and power to the powerful Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) rou-
maligned and enfeebled presidency? tinely lobbied hundreds of private pension bills
through a compliant Congress. Benefits were
Cleveland was a man of principles, most of them granted to deserters, to bounty jumpers, to men
safely orthodox by the standards of his day. A who never served, and to former soldiers who in
staunch apostle of the hands-off creed of laissez- later years had incurred disabilities in no way con-
faire, the new president caused the hearts of busi- nected with war service. A Democrat and a nonvet-
nesspeople and bankers to throb with contentment. eran, Cleveland was in an awkward position when
He summed up his political philosophy in 1887 it came to fighting the pension-grabbers. But the
when he vetoed a bill to provide seeds for drought- conscience-driven president read each bill care-
ravaged Texas farmers. “Though the people support fully, vetoed several hundred of them, and then
the government,” he declared, “the government laboriously penned individual veto messages for
should not support the people.” As tactless as a mir- Congress.
ror and as direct as a bulldozer, he was outspoken,
unbending, and profanely hot-tempered. Cleveland Battles for a Lower Tariff

At the outset Cleveland narrowed the North- Cleveland also risked his political neck by prodding
South chasm by naming to his cabinet two former the hornet’s nest of the tariff issue. During the Civil
Confederates. As for the civil service, Cleveland was War, tariff schedules had been jacked up to new
whipsawed between the demands of the Demo-
cratic faithful for jobs and the demands of the Mug-

Cleveland and Tariff Reform 519

high levels, partly to raise revenues for the insatiable into the lap of Congress in late 1887. The response
military machine. American industry, which was was electric. Cleveland succeeded admirably in
preponderantly in Republican hands, had profited smoking the issue out into the open. Democrats
from this protection and hated to see the sheltering were deeply depressed at the obstinacy of their
benefits reduced in peacetime. But the high duties chief. Republicans rejoiced at his apparent reckless-
continued to pile up revenue at the customshouses, ness. The old warrior Blaine gloated, “There’s one
and by 1881 the Treasury was running an annual more President for us in [tariff] protection.” For the
surplus amounting to an embarrassing $145 mil- first time in years, a real issue divided the two par-
lion. Most of the government’s income, in those ties as the 1888 presidential election loomed.
pre–income tax days, came from the tariff.

Congress could reduce the vexatious surplus in
two ways. One was to squander it on pensions and
“pork-barrel” bills and thus curry favor with veter-
ans and other self-seeking groups. The other was to
lower the tariff—something the big industrialists
vehemently opposed. Grover Cleveland, the rustic
Buffalo attorney, had known little and cared less
about the tariff before entering the White House.
But as he studied the subject, he was much
impressed by the arguments for downward revision
of the tariff schedules. Lower barriers would mean
lower prices for consumers and less protection for
monopolies. Most important, they would mean an
end to the Treasury surplus, a standing mockery of
Cleveland’s professed belief in fiscal orthodoxy and
small-government frugality. After much hesitation
Cleveland saw his duty and overdid it.

With his characteristic bluntness, Cleveland
tossed an appeal for lower tariffs like a bombshell

520 CHAPTER 23 Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age, 1869–1896

On the night before the inauguration of party faithful the fat surpluses produced by the high
Harrison, a crowd of jubilant Republicans tariffs. But in the House of Representatives, they had
tauntingly serenaded the darkened White only three more votes than the necessary quorum of
House with a popular campaign ditty 163 members, and the Democrats were preparing to
directed at Grover Cleveland: obstruct all House business by refusing to answer
roll calls, demanding roll calls to determine the
Down in the cornfield presence of a quorum, and employing other delay-
Hear that mournful sound; ing tactics.
All the Democrats are weeping—
Grover’s in the cold, cold ground! Into this tense cockpit stepped the new Repub-
lican Speaker of the House, Thomas B. Reed of
But Grover was to rise again and serve as pres- Maine. A hulking figure who towered six feet three
ident for a second term of four more years. inches, he was renowned as a master debater. He
spoke with a harsh nasal drawl and wielded a verbal
Dismayed Democrats, seeing no alternative, harpoon of sarcasm. To one congressman who
somewhat dejectedly nominated Grover Cleveland quoted Henry Clay that he would “rather be right
in their St. Louis convention. Eager Republicans than be president,” Reed caustically retorted that he
turned to Benjamin Harrison, whose grandfather “would never be either.” Opponents cringed at the
was former president William Henry (“Tippecanoe”) crack of his quip.
Harrison. The tariff was the prime issue. The two
parties flooded the country with some 10 million Reed soon bent the intimidated House to his
pamphlets on the subject. imperious will. He counted as present Democrats
who had not answered the roll and who, rule book
The specter of a lowered tariff spurred the in hand, furiously denied that they were legally
Republicans to frantic action. In an impressive there. By such tactics “Czar” Reed utterly dominated
demonstration of the post–Pendleton Act politics of the “Billion-Dollar” Congress—the first in history to
alliances with big business, they raised a war chest
of some $3 million—the heftiest yet—largely by “fry-
ing the fat” out of nervous industrialists. The money
was widely used to line up corrupt “voting cattle”
known as “repeaters” and “floaters.” In Indiana,
always a crucial “swing” state, votes were shame-
lessly purchased for as much as $20 each.

On election day Harrison nosed out Cleveland,
233 to 168 electoral votes. A change of about 7,000
ballots in New York would have reversed the out-
come. Cleveland actually polled more popular
votes, 5,537,857 to 5,447,129, but he nevertheless
became the first sitting president to be voted out of
his chair since Martin Van Buren in 1840.

The Billion-Dollar Congress

After a four-year famine, the Republicans under
Harrison licked their lips hungrily for the bounty of
federal offices. They yearned to lavish upon the

Populist Protest 521

appropriate that sum. Congress showered pensions the Farmers’ Alliance, a militant organization of
on Civil War veterans and increased government southern and western farmers.
purchases of silver. To keep the revenues flowing
in—and to protect Republican industrialists from The Drumbeat of Discontent
foreign competition—the Billion-Dollar Congress
also passed the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890, boosting Politics was no longer “as usual” in 1892, when the
rates to their highest peacetime level ever (an aver- newly formed People’s Party, or “Populists,” burst
age of 48.4 percent on dutiable goods). upon the scene. Rooted in the Farmers’ Alliance of
frustrated farmers in the great agricultural belts of
Sponsored in the House by rising Republican the West and South, the Populists met in Omaha
star William McKinley of Ohio, the new tariff act and adopted a scorching platform that denounced
brought fresh woes to farmers. Debt-burdened “the prolific womb of governmental injustice.” They
farmers had no choice but to buy manufactured demanded inflation through free and unlimited
goods from high-priced protected American in- coinage of silver at the rate of sixteen ounces of sil-
dustrialists, but were compelled to sell their own ver to one ounce of gold. They further called for a
agricultural products into highly competitive, graduated income tax; government ownership of
unprotected world markets. Mounting discontent the railroads, telegraph, and telephone; the direct
against the McKinley Tariff caused many rural vot- election of U.S. senators; a one-term limit on the
ers to rise in wrath. In the congressional elections of presidency; the adoption of the initiative and refer-
1890, the Republicans lost their precarious majority endum to allow citizens to shape legislation more
and were reduced to just 88 seats, as compared with directly; a shorter workday; and immigration
235 Democrats. Even the much-touted McKinley
went down to defeat. Ominously for conservatives,
the new Congress also included nine members of

522 CHAPTER 23 Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age, 1869–1896

A popular protest song of the 1890s among could weld together a coalition of aggrieved work-
western farmers was titled “The Hayseed.” ers and indebted farmers in a revolutionary joint
One stanza ran, assault on the capitalist order. At Andrew Carnegie’s
I once was a tool of oppression, Homestead steel plant near Pittsburgh, company
And as green as a sucker could be, officials called in three hundred armed Pinkerton
And monopolies banded together detectives in July to crush a strike by steelworkers
To beat a poor hayseed like me. angry over pay cuts. Defiant strikers, armed with
rifles and dynamite, forced their assailants to sur-
restriction. As their presidential candidate, the Pop- render after a vicious battle that left ten people dead
ulists uproariously nominated the eloquent old and some sixty wounded. Troops were eventually
Greenbacker, General James B. Weaver. summoned, and both the strike and the union were
broken. That same month, federal troops bloodily
An epidemic of nationwide strikes in the sum- smashed a strike among silver miners in Idaho’s
mer of 1892 raised the prospect that the Populists fabled Coeur d’Alene district.

The Populists made a remarkable showing in the
1892 presidential election. Singing “Good-by, Party
Bosses,” they rolled up 1,029,846 popular votes and
22 electoral votes for General Weaver. They thus
became one of the few third parties in U.S. history to
break into the electoral column. But they fell far short
of an electoral majority. Industrial laborers, especially
in the urban East, did not rally to the Populist banner
in appreciable numbers. Populist electoral votes
came from only six midwestern and western states,
four of which (Kansas, Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada)
fell completely into the Populist basket.

The South, although a hotbed of agrarian agita-
tion, proved especially unwilling to throw in its lot
with the new party. Race was the reason. The more
than one million southern black farmers organized
in the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance shared a
host of complaints with poor white farmers, and for
a time their common economic goals promised to
overcome their racial differences. Recognizing the
crucial edge that black votes could give them in the
South, Populist leaders like Georgia’s Tom Watson
reached out to the black community. Watson was a
wiry redhead who could “talk like the thrust of a
Bowie knife.” He declared, “There is no reason why
the black man should not understand that the law
that hurts me, as a farmer, hurts him, as a farmer.”
Many blacks were disillusioned enough with the
Republican party to respond. Alarmed, the conserv-
ative white “Bourbon” elite in the South played cyni-
cally upon historic racial antagonisms to counter
the Populists’ appeal for interracial solidarity and
woo back poor whites.

Southern blacks were heavy losers. The Pop-
ulist-inspired reminder of potential black political
strength led to the near-total extinction of what little

The Election of 1892 523

Cleveland—Democratic Presidential Election of 1892
Harrison—Republican (showing vote by county)
Weaver—Populist Note the concentration of Populist
No returns, unsettled, etc. strength in the semiarid farming
regions of the western half of
the country. (Compare this with the
annual precipitation map on p. 606).

African-American suffrage remained in the South. had voted in 1860—when, of course, black slaves
White southerners more aggressively than ever used had not voted at all. More than half a century would
literacy tests and poll taxes to deny blacks the bal- pass before southern blacks could again vote in
lot. The notorious “grandfather clause” exempted considerable numbers. Accompanying this dis-
from those requirements anyone whose forebear franchisement were more severe Jim Crow laws,

524 CHAPTER 23 Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age, 1869–1896

increasingly into vile racism and staunchly advo-
cated black disfranchisement. Such were the bitterly
ironic fruits of the Populist campaign in the South.

Cleveland and Depression

designed to enforce racial segregation in public With the Populists divided and the Republicans dis-
places, including hotels and restaurants, and credited, Grover Cleveland took office once again in
backed up by atrocious lynchings and other forms 1893, the only president ever reelected after defeat.
of intimidation. He was the same old bull-necked and bull-headed
Cleveland, with a little more weight, polish, conser-
The conservative crusade to eliminate the black vatism, and self-assertiveness.
vote also had dire consequences for the Populist
party itself. Even Tom Watson abandoned his inter- But though it was the same old Cleveland, it was
racial appeals and, in time, became a vociferous not the same old country. Debtors were up in arms,
racist himself. After 1896 the Populist party lapsed workers were restless, and the advance shadows of
panic were falling. Hardly had Cleveland seated
himself in the presidential chair when the devastat-
ing depression of 1893 burst about his burly frame.
Lasting for about four years, it was the most punish-
ing economic downturn of the nineteenth century.
Contributing causes were the splurge of overbuild-
ing and speculation, labor disorders, and the ongo-
ing agricultural depression. Free-silver agitation
had also damaged American credit abroad, and the
usual pinch on American finances had come when
European banking houses began to call in loans
from the United States.

Distress ran deep and far. About eight thousand
American businesses collapsed in six months.
Dozens of railroad lines went into the hands of
receivers. Soup kitchens fed the unemployed, while
gangs of hoboes (“tramps”) wandered aimlessly
about the country. Local charities did their feeble
best, but the federal government, bound by the let-
nature-take-its-course philosophy of the times, saw
no legitimate way to relieve the suffering masses.

Cleveland, who had earlier been bothered by
a surplus, was now burdened with a deepening
deficit. The Treasury was required to issue legal ten-
der notes for the silver bullion that it bought. Own-
ers of the paper currency would then present it for
gold, and by law the notes had to be reissued. New
holders would repeat the process, thus draining
away precious gold in an “endless-chain” operation.

Alarmingly, the gold reserve in the Treasury
dropped below $100 million, which was popularly
regarded as the safe minimum for supporting about

The Return of Cleveland 525

$350 million in outstanding paper money. Cleve- Cleveland Breeds a Backlash
land saw no alternative but to halt the bleeding
away of gold by engineering a repeal of the Sherman The bond deal stirred up a storm. The Wall Street
Silver Purchase Act of 1890. For this purpose he ogre, especially in the eyes of the silverites and other
summoned Congress into an extra session in the debtors, symbolized all that was wicked and grasp-
summer of 1893. ing in American politics. President Cleveland’s
secretive dealings with the mighty “Jupiter” Morgan
Unknown to the country, complications threat- were savagely condemned as a “sellout” of the
ened from another quarter. A malignant growth had national government. But Cleveland was certain
developed on the roof of Cleveland’s mouth, and it that he had done no wrong. Sarcastically denying
had to be removed on a private yacht with extreme that he was “Morgan’s errand boy,” Cleveland
secrecy. If the president had died under the sur- asserted, “Without shame and without repentance I
geon’s knife, his place would have been taken by the confess my share of the guilt.”
“soft-money” vice president, Adlai E. Stevenson—
an eventuality that would have deepened the crisis. Cleveland suffered further embarrassment with
the passage of the Wilson-Gorman Tariff in 1894.
In Congress the debate over the repeal of the sil- The Democrats had pledged to lower tariffs, but by
ver act was meanwhile running its heated course. the time their tariff bill made it through Congress, it
A silver-tongued young Democratic congressman had been so loaded with special-interest protection
from Nebraska, thirty-three-year-old William Jen- that it made scarcely a dent in the high McKinley
nings Bryan, held the galleries spellbound for three Tariff rates. An outraged Cleveland grudgingly
hours as he championed the cause of free silver. The allowed the bill, which also contained a 2 percent
friends of silver announced that “hell would freeze tax on incomes over $4,000, to become law without
over” before Congress would pass the repeal mea- his signature. When the Supreme Court struck down
sure. But an angered Cleveland used his job- the income-tax provision in 1895,* the Populists and
granting power to break the filibuster in the Senate. other disaffected groups found proof that the courts
He thus alienated the Democratic silverites like were only the tools of the plutocrats.
Bryan and disrupted his party at the very outset of
his administration. Democratic political fortunes naturally suffered
in the face of these several setbacks. The tariff dyna-
Repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act only mite that had blasted the Republicans out of the
partially stopped the hemorrhaging of gold from the House in 1890 now dislodged the Democrats, with a
Treasury. In February 1894 the gold reserve sank to a strong helping hand from the depression. The revi-
dismaying $41 million. The United States was now talized Republicans, singing “Times Are Mighty
in grave danger of going off the gold standard—a Hard,” won the congressional elections of 1894 in a
move that would render the nation’s currency landslide—244 seats to 105 for the Democrats. The
volatile and unreliable as a measure of value and Republicans began to look forward to the presiden-
that would also mortally cripple America’s interna- tial race of 1896 with unconcealed glee.
tional trade. Cleveland floated two Treasury bond
issues in 1894, totaling over $100 million, but the Despite his gruff integrity and occasional
“endless-chain” operations continued relentlessly. courage, Grover Cleveland failed utterly to cope
with the serious economic crisis that befell the
Early in 1895 Cleveland turned in desperation country in 1893. He was tied down in office by the
to J. P. Morgan, “the bankers’ banker” and the head same threads that held all the politicians of the day
of a Wall Street syndicate. After tense negotiations at to Lilliputian levels. Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur,
the White House, the bankers agreed to lend the Harrison, and Cleveland are often referred to as the
government $65 million in gold. They were obvi-
ously in business for profit, so they charged a com- *It violated the “direct tax” clause. See Art. I, Sec. IX, para. 4 in
mission amounting to about $7 million. But they the Appendix. The Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution,
did make a significant concession when they agreed adopted in 1913, permitted an income tax.
to obtain one-half of the gold abroad and take the
necessary steps to dam it up in the leaky Treasury.
The loan, at least temporarily, helped restore confi-
dence in the nation’s finances.

526 CHAPTER 23 Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age, 1869–1896

“forgettable presidents.” Bewhiskered and bland in or in Congress, which overshadowed the White
person, they left mostly blanks—or blots—on the House for most of this period. But before the cen-
nation’s political record, as issues like the tariff, the tury ended, down-and-out debtors and disgruntled
money question, and the rights of labor continued workers would make one last titanic effort to wring
to fester. What little political vitality existed in reform out of the political system—in the momen-
Gilded Age America was to be found in local settings tous election of 1896.

Chronology 1884 Cleveland defeats Blaine for presidency

1868 Grant defeats Seymour for the presidency 1888 Harrison defeats Cleveland for presidency

1869 Fisk and Gould corner the gold market 1889 Thomas B. “Czar” Reed becomes Speaker of
the House of Representatives
1871 Tweed scandal in New York
1890 “Billion-Dollar” Congress
1872 Crédit Mobilier scandal exposed McKinley Tariff Act
Liberal Republicans break with Grant Sherman Silver Purchase Act (repealed 1893)
Grant defeats Greeley for the presidency
1892 Homestead steel strike
1873 Panic of 1873 Coeur d’Alene (Idaho) silver miners’ strike
People’s party candidate James B. Weaver wins
1875 Whiskey Ring scandal
Civil Rights Act of 1875 twenty-two electoral votes
Resumption Act passed Cleveland defeats Harrison and Weaver to

1876 Hayes-Tilden election standoff and crisis regain presidency

1877 Compromise of 1877 1893 Depression of 1893 begins
Reconstruction ends
Railroad strikes paralyze nation 1894 Wilson-Gorman Tariff (contains income-tax
provision, declared unconstitutional 1895)
1880 Garfield defeats Hancock for presidency
Republicans regain House of Representatives
1881 Garfield assassinated; Arthur assumes
presidency 1895 J. P. Morgan’s banking syndicate loans $65
million in gold to federal government
1882 Chinese Exclusion Act
1896 Plessy v. Ferguson legitimizes “separate but
1883 Civil Rights Cases equal” doctrine
Pendleton Act sets up Civil Service
Commission

Varying Viewpoints 527

VARYING VIEWPOINTS

The Populists: Radicals or Reactionaries?

Taking their cue from contemporary satirical the Populists, Hicks claimed, left a reforming legacy
commentaries like Mark Twain and Charles Dud- that flourished again in the progressive era and the
ley Warner’s The Gilded Age (1873), the first histori- New Deal.
ans who wrote about the post–Civil War era judged
it harshly. They condemned its politicians as petty Hicks’s point of view was the dominant one
and corrupt, lamented the emergence of a new plu- until the 1950s, when it was sharply criticized
tocratic class, and railed against the arrogance of by Richard Hofstadter in The Age of Reform (1955).
corporate power. Such a view is conspicuous in Hofstadter charged that the progressive historians
Charles and Mary Beard’s The Rise of American Civi- had romanticized the Populists, who were best
lization (4 vols., 1927–1942), perhaps the most influ- understood not as picturesque protesters, but as
ential American history textbook ever written. It is “harassed little country businessmen” bristling with
equally evident in Vernon Louis Parrington’s classic provincial prejudices. The city-born-and-bred Hof-
literary history, Main Currents of American Thought stadter argued that the Populist revolt was aimed
(3 vols., 1927–1930), in which the entire post–Civil not just at big business and the money power
War period is contemptuously dismissed as the time but also somewhat irrationally at urbanism, immi-
of “the great barbecue.” grants, the East, and modernity itself. Hofstadter
thus exposed a “dark side” of Populism, which con-
The Beards and Parrington were leaders of the tained elements of backwoods anti-intellectualism,
so-called progressive school of historical writing paranoia, and even anti-Semitism.
that flourished in the early years of the twentieth
century. Progressive historians, many of whom grew In the 1960s several scholars, inspired by the
up in the Gilded Age, shared in a widespread disillu- work of C. Vann Woodward, as well as by sympathy
sionment that the Civil War had failed to generate a with the protest movements of that turbulent
rebirth of American idealism. Their political sympa- decade, began to rehabilitate the Populists as
thies were chillingly antibusiness and warmly pro- authentic reformers with genuine grievances. Espe-
labor, pro-farmer, and pro-reform. cially notable in this vein was Lawrence Goodwyn’s
Democratic Promise: The Populist Movement in
Historians of the progressive persuasion identi- America (1976). Goodwyn depicted the Populists as
fied Populism as virtually the only organized oppo- reasonable radicals who were justifiably resentful of
sition to the social, economic, and political order their eclipse by urban industrialism and finance
that took shape in the last decades of the nineteenth capitalism. He also portrayed Populism as the last
century. The Populists thus became heroes to sev- gasp of popular political participation, a democratic
eral generations of writers who bemoaned that “moment” in American history that expired with the
order and looked back longingly at Americans’ Populists’ absorption into the Democratic party.
agrarian past. John D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt
(1931), is the classic portrayal of the Populists as Two subsequent works, Edward L. Ayers’s
embattled farmers hurling defiance at Wall Street Promise of the New South (1992) and Robert C.
and the robber barons in a last-ditch defense of McMath’s American Populism (1993), synthesized
their simple, honest way of life. Bowed but unbro- many of the older perspectives and presented a bal-
ken by the defeat of their great champion, William anced view of the Populists as radical in many ways
Jennings Bryan, in the presidential election of 1896, but also limited by their nostalgia for a lost agrarian
past.

For further reading, see page A16 of the Appendix. For web resources, go to http://college.hmco.com.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

24

Industry Comes of Age

ᇻᇾᇻ

1865–1900

The wealthy class is becoming more wealthy; but the poorer class is
becoming more dependent. The gulf between the employed and the
employer is growing wider; social contrasts are becoming sharper;

as liveried carriages appear; so do barefooted children.

HENRY GEORGE, 1879

A s the nineteenth century drew to a close, nation. The unparalleled outburst of railroad con-
observers were asking, “Why are the best men struction was a crucial case. When Lincoln was shot
not in politics?” One answer was that they were in 1865, there were only 35,000 miles of steam rail-
being lured away from public life by the lusty attrac- ways in the United States, mostly east of the Missis-
tions of the booming private economy. As America’s sippi. By 1900 the figure had spurted up to 192,556
Industrial Revolution slipped into high gear, tal- miles, or more than that for all of Europe combined,
ented men ached for profits, not the presidency. and much of the new trackage ran west of the
They dreamed of controlling corporations, not the Mississippi.
Congress. What the nation lost in civic leadership, it
gained in an astounding surge of economic growth. Transcontinental railroad building was so costly
Although in many ways still a political dwarf, the and risky as to require government subsidies. The
United States was about to stand up before the extension of rails into thinly populated regions was
world as an industrial colossus—and the lives of unprofitable until the areas could be built up; and
millions of working Americans would be trans- private promoters were unwilling to suffer heavy ini-
formed in the process. tial losses. Congress, impressed by arguments plead-
ing military and postal needs, began to advance
The Iron Colt Becomes an Iron Horse liberal money loans to two favored cross-continent
companies in 1862 and added enormous donations
The government-business entanglements that in- of acreage paralleling the tracks. All told, Washington
creasingly shaped politics after the Civil War also rewarded the railroads with 155,504,994 acres, and
undergirded the industrial development of the the western states contributed 49 million more—a
total area larger than Texas.

Grasping railroads tied up even more land than
this for a number of years. Land grants to railroads

528

The Railroad Age 529

Pacific Mountain Central Eastern
Time Time Time Time

Seattle

Tacoma WASH. GREAT NORTHERN RR (1893) CANADA

MONT. RR (1883) N. DAK. MINN. L. Superior ME.

NO RTHERN PACIF I C Duluth

L. Huron VT.

OREG. L. Michigan N.H.

IDAHO S. DAK. WIS. L. Ontario N.Y. Boston
NEB. MASS.
MICH. CENTRA L RR
WYO. Chicago R.I.
YORK
CENTRAL PACIFIC RR (JUNCTION, 1869) L. E rie PA. CONN.
UNION PAC IFIC RR NE W New York
(1 869)
OHIO N.J.

Salt Lake Pittsburgh Philadelphia
City
San IOWA ENNSYLVA NIA RR Washington, D.C. DEL.
Francisco MD.
NEV. Denver ILL.
St. Louis
UTAH MO. P IND.
TERR.
Kansas City W.VA. VA.
FE RR (18 84)
CALIF. COLO. KY. RA ILWAY
KANS.
ATLA NT IC & PA CI FIC RR SA N TA HERN N.C.

Los Angeles ARIZ. OPEK A & INDIAN ARK. TENN. SOUT
TERR.
ATCHISON T
PACIFIC TERR. S.C.
OCEAN ATLANTIC OCEAN
SOUTHER N PAC I FIC
N. MEX. MISS. Savannah
RR (1884 ) TERR. ALA.

El Paso GA.

TEXAS LA.

Pattern of Land Grants New Orleans

One square mile held by FLA.
government or sold
MEXICO
Right of way: 100 yards wide

One square mile granted 0 500 Miles
to railroad

Primary federal land grants to railroads 0 500 Kilometers

Federal Land Grants to Railroads
The heavy red lines indicate areas within which the railroads might be given specific parcels of land. As shown
in the inset, lands were reserved in belts of various widths on either side of a railroad’s right of way. Until the
railroad selected the individual mile-square sections it chose to possess, all such sections within the belt were
withdrawn from eligibility for settlement. The “time zones” were introduced in 1883 (see p. 534), and their
boundaries have since been adjusted.

were made in broad belts along the proposed route. Granting land was also a “cheap” way to subsidize a
Within these belts the railroads were allowed to much-desired transportation system, because it
choose alternate mile-square sections in checker- avoided new taxes for direct cash grants. The rail-
board fashion (see the map above). But until they roads could turn the land into gold by using it as
determined the precise location of their tracks and collateral for loans from private bankers or, later, by
decided which sections were the choicest selec- selling it. This they often did, at an average price of
tions, the railroads withheld all the land from other $3 an acre. Critics were also prone to overlook the
users. President Grover Cleveland put an end to this fact that the land did not have even that relatively
foot-dragging practice in 1887 and threw open to modest value until the railroads had ribboned it
settlement the still-unclaimed public portions of with steel.
the land-grant areas.
Frontier villages touched by the magic wand of
Noisy criticism, especially in later years, was the iron rail became flourishing cities; those that
leveled at the “giveaway” of so valuable a birthright were bypassed often withered away and became
to greedy corporations. But the government did “ghost towns.” Little wonder that communities
receive beneficial returns, including long-term pref- fought one another for the privilege of playing host
erential rates for postal service and military traffic. to the railroads. Ambitious towns customarily held

530 CHAPTER 24 Industry Comes of Age, 1865–1900

out monetary and other attractions to the builders, and with juicy loans and land grants available, the
who sometimes blackmailed them into contributing “groundhog” promoters made all possible haste.
more generously. Insiders of the Crédit Mobilier construction com-
pany reaped fabulous profits. They slyly pocketed
Spanning the Continent with Rails $73 million for some $50 million worth of breakneck
construction, spending small change to bribe con-
Deadlock in the 1850s over the proposed transconti- gressmen to look the other way.
nental railroad was broken when the South seceded,
leaving the field to the North. In 1862, the year after Sweaty construction gangs, containing many
the guns first spoke at Fort Sumter, Congress made Irish “Paddies” (Patricks) who had fought in the
provision for starting the long-awaited line. One Union armies, worked at a frantic pace. On one
weighty argument for action was the urgency of bol- record-breaking day, a sledge-and-shovel army of
stering the Union, already disrupted, by binding the some five thousand men laid ten miles of track. A
Pacific Coast—especially gold-rich California— favorite song was,
more securely to the rest of the Republic.
Then drill, my Paddies, drill;
The Union Pacific Railroad—note the word Drill, my heroes, drill;
Union—was thus commissioned by Congress to Drill all day,
thrust westward from Omaha, Nebraska. For each No sugar in your tay [tea]
mile of track constructed, the company was granted Workin’ on the U.P. Railway.
20 square miles of land, alternating in 640-acre sec-
tions on either side of the track. For each mile the When hostile Indians attacked in futile efforts to
builders were also to receive a generous federal protect what once rightfully had been their land, the
loan, ranging from $16,000 on the flat prairie land to laborers would drop their picks and seize their rifles.
$48,000 for mountainous country. The laying of rails Scores of men—railroad workers and Indians—lost
began in earnest after the Civil War ended in 1865, their lives as the rails stretched ever westward. At
rail’s end, workers tried their best to find relaxation
and conviviality in their tented towns, known as
“hells on wheels,” often teeming with as many as

Railroads Span the Nation 531

ten thousand men and a sprinkling of painted pros- The Central Pacific, which was granted the
titutes and performers. same princely subsidies as the Union Pacific, had
the same incentive to haste. Some ten thousand
Rail laying at the California end was undertaken Chinese laborers, sweating from dawn to dusk
by the Central Pacific Railroad. This line pushed under their basket hats, proved to be cheap, effi-
boldly eastward from boomtown Sacramento, over cient, and expendable (hundreds lost their lives in
and through the towering, snow-clogged Sierra premature explosions and other mishaps). The tow-
Nevada. Four farseeing men—the so-called Big ering Sierra Nevada presented a formidable barrier,
Four—were the chief financial backers of the enter- and the nerves of the Big Four were strained when
prise. The quartet included the heavyset, enterpris- their workers could chip only a few inches a day
ing ex-governor Leland Stanford of California, who tunneling through solid rock, while the Union
had useful political connections, and the burly, Pacific was sledgehammering westward across the
energetic Collis P. Huntington, an adept lobbyist. open plains.
The Big Four cleverly operated through two con-
struction companies, and although they walked A “wedding of the rails” was finally consum-
away with tens of millions in profits, they kept their mated near Ogden, Utah, in 1869, as two locomo-
hands relatively clean by not becoming involved in tives—“facing on a single track, half a world behind
the bribery of congressmen. each back”—gently kissed cowcatchers. The colorful
ceremony included the breaking of champagne bot-
tles and the driving of a last ceremonial (golden)
spike, with ex-governor Leland Stanford clumsily
wielding a silver sledgehammer.* In all, the Union
Pacific built 1,086 miles, the Central Pacific 689
miles.

Completion of the transcontinental line—a
magnificent engineering feat for that day—was one
of America’s most impressive peacetime undertak-
ings. It welded the West Coast more firmly to the
Union and facilitated a flourishing trade with Asia. It
penetrated the arid barrier of the deserts, paving the
way for the phenomenal growth of the Great West.
Americans compared this electrifying achievement
with the Declaration of Independence and the
emancipation of the slaves; jubilant Philadelphians
again rang the cracked bell of Independence Hall.

Binding the Country with Railroad Ties

With the westward trail now blazed, four other
transcontinental lines were completed before the
century’s end. None of them secured monetary
loans from the federal government, as did the Union
Pacific and the Central Pacific. But all of them
except the Great Northern received generous grants
of land.

*The spike was promptly removed and is now exhibited at the
Stanford University Museum.

532 CHAPTER 24 Industry Comes of Age, 1865–1900

The Northern Pacific Railroad, stretching from The last spike of the last of the five trans-
Lake Superior to Puget Sound, reached its terminus continental railroads of the nineteenth century was
in 1883. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, stretch- hammered home in 1893. The Great Northern,
ing through the southwestern deserts to California, which ran from Duluth to Seattle north of the North-
was completed in 1884. The Southern Pacific rib- ern Pacific, was the creation of a far-visioned Cana-
boned from New Orleans to San Francisco and was dian-American, James J. Hill, a bearlike man who
consolidated in the same year. was probably the greatest railroad builder of all.
Endowed with a high sense of public duty, he per-
In 1892 James Baird Weaver (1833–1912), ceived that the prosperity of his railroad depended
nominee of the Populists, wrote regarding the on the prosperity of the area that it served. He ran
railroad magnates, agricultural demonstration trains through the “Hill
“In their delirium of greed the managers of Country” and imported from England blooded bulls,
our transportation systems disregard both which he distributed to the farmers. His enterprise
private right and the public welfare. Today was so soundly organized that it rode through later
they will combine and bankrupt their weak financial storms with flying colors.
rivals, and by the expenditure of a trifling
sum possess themselves of properties which Yet the romance of the rails was not without its
cost the outlay of millions. Tomorrow they sordid side. Pioneer builders were often guilty of
will capitalize their booty for five times the gross overoptimism. Avidly seeking land bounties
cost, issue their bonds, and proceed to levy and pushing into areas that lacked enough potential
tariffs upon the people to pay dividends upon population to support a railroad, they sometimes
the fraud.” laid down rails that led “from nowhere to nothing.”
When prosperity failed to smile upon their coming,
they went into bankruptcy, carrying down with
them the savings of trusting investors. Many of the
large railroads in the post–Civil War decades passed
through seemingly endless bankruptcies, mergers,
or reorganizations.

Railroad Abuses 533

Railroad Consolidation Two significant new improvements proved a
and Mechanization boon to the railroads. One was the steel rail, which
Vanderbilt helped popularize when he replaced the
The success of the western lines was facilitated by old iron tracks of the New York Central with the
welding together and expanding the older eastern tougher metal. Steel was safer and more economical
networks, notably the New York Central. The genius because it could bear a heavier load. A standard
in this enterprise was “Commodore” Cornelius Van- gauge of track width likewise came into wide use
derbilt—burly, boisterous, white-whiskered. Having during the postwar years, thus eliminating the
made his millions in steamboating, he daringly expense and inconvenience of numerous changes
turned, in his late sixties, to a new career in railroad- from one line to another.
ing. Though ill educated, ungrammatical, coarse,
and ruthless, he was clear-visioned. Offering supe- Other refinements played a vital role in rail-
rior railway service at lower rates, he amassed a for- roading. The Westinghouse air brake, generally
tune of $100 million. His name is perhaps best adopted in the 1870s, was a marvelous contribution
remembered through his contribution of $1 to efficiency and safety. The Pullman Palace Cars,
million to the founding of Vanderbilt University in advertised as “gorgeous traveling hotels,” were
Tennessee. introduced on a considerable scale in the 1860s.
Alarmists condemned them as “wheeled torture
chambers” and potential funeral pyres, for the

534 CHAPTER 24 Industry Comes of Age, 1865–1900

wooden cars were equipped with swaying kerosene of the continent that Thomas Jefferson had pur-
lamps. Appalling accidents continued to be almost chased from France in 1803. Settlers following the
daily tragedies, despite safety devices like the tele- railroads plowed up the tallgrass prairies of Iowa,
graph (“talking wires”), double-tracking, and (later) Illinois, Kansas, and Nebraska and planted well-
the block signal. drained, rectangular cornfields. On the shortgrass
prairies of the high plains in the Dakotas and Mon-
Revolution by Railways tana, range-fed cattle rapidly displaced the buffalo,
which were hunted to near-extinction. The white
The metallic fingers of the railroads intimately pine forests of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota
touched countless phases of American life. For the disappeared into lumber that was rushed by rail to
first time, a sprawling nation became united in a prairie farmers, who used it to build houses and
physical sense, bound with ribs of iron and steel. By fences.
stitching North America together from ocean to
ocean, the transcontinental lines created an enor- Time itself was bent to the railroads’ needs.
mous domestic market for American raw materials Until the 1880s every town in the United States had
and manufactured goods—probably the largest its own “local” time, dictated by the sun’s position.
integrated national market area in the world. This When it was noon in Chicago, it was 11:50 A.M. in St.
huge empire of commerce beckoned to foreign and Louis and 12:18 P.M. in Detroit. For railroad opera-
domestic investors alike, as well as to businesspeo- tors worried about keeping schedules and avoiding
ple who could now dare to dream on a continental wrecks, this patchwork of local times was a night-
scale. mare. Thus on November 18, 1883, the major rail
lines decreed that the continent would henceforth
More than any other single factor, the railroad be divided into four “time zones.” Most communi-
network spurred the amazing industrialization of ties quickly adopted railroad “standard” time.
the post–Civil War years. The puffing locomotives
opened up fresh markets for manufactured goods Finally, the railroad, more than any other single
and sped raw materials to factories. The forging of factor, was the maker of millionaires. A raw new
the rails themselves generated the largest single aristocracy, consisting of “lords of the rail,” replaced
source of orders for the adolescent steel industry. the old southern “lords of the lash.” The multi-
webbed lines became the playthings of Wall Street,
The screeching iron horse likewise stimulated and colossal wealth was amassed by stock specula-
mining and agriculture, especially in the West. It tors and railroad wreckers.
took farmers out to their land, carried the fruits of
their toil to market, and brought them their manu- Wrongdoing in Railroading
factured necessities. Clusters of farm settlements
paralleled the railroads, just as earlier they had fol- Corruption lurks nearby when fabulous fortunes
lowed the rivers. can materialize overnight. The fleecings adminis-
tered by the railroad construction companies, such
Railways were a boon for cities and played a as the Crédit Mobilier, were but the first of the
leading role in the great cityward movement of the bunco games that the railroad promoters learned to
last decades of the century. The iron monsters could play. Methods soon became more refined, as fast-
carry food to enormous concentrations of people fingered financiers executed multimillion-dollar
and at the same time ensure them a livelihood by maneuvers beneath the noses of a bedazzled public.
providing both raw materials and markets. Jay Gould was the most adept of these ringmasters
of rapacity. For nearly thirty years, he boomed and
Railroad companies also stimulated the mighty busted the stocks of the Erie, the Kansas Pacific,
stream of immigration. Seeking settlers to whom the Union Pacific, and the Texas and Pacific in an
their land grants might be sold at a profit, they incredible circus of speculative skullduggery.
advertised seductively in Europe and sometimes
offered to transport the newcomers free to their One of the favorite devices of the moguls of
farms. manipulation was “stock watering.” The term origi-
nally referred to the practice of making cattle thirsty
The land also felt the impact of the railroad—
especially the broad, ecologically fragile midsection

Reforms in Railroading 535

by feeding them salt and then having them bloat nalists and politicians in profusion. One railroad
themselves with water before they were weighed in man noted in 1885 that in the West “no man who
for sale. Using a variation of this technique, railroad has money, or official position, or influence thinks
stock promoters grossly inflated their claims about he ought to pay anything for riding on a railroad.”
a given line’s assets and profitability and sold stocks
and bonds far in excess of the railroad’s actual value. Railroad kings were, for a time, virtual industrial
“Promoters’ profits” were often the tail that wagged monarchs. As manipulators of a huge natural
the iron horse itself. Railroad managers were forced monopoly, they exercised more direct control over
to charge extortionate rates and wage ruthless com- the lives of more people than did the president of
petitive battles in order to pay off the exaggerated the United States—and their terms were not limited
financial obligations with which they were saddled. to four years. They increasingly shunned the crude
bloodletting of cutthroat competition and began to
The public interest was frequently trampled cooperate with one another to rule the railroad
underfoot as the railroad titans waged their brutal dominion. Sorely pressed to show at least some
wars. Crusty old Cornelius Vanderbilt, when told returns on their bloated investments, they entered
that the law stood in his way, reportedly exclaimed, into defensive alliances to protect precious profits.
“Law! What do I care about the law? Hain’t I got the
power?” On another occasion he supposedly threat- The earliest form of combination was the
ened some associates: “I won’t sue you, for the law is “pool”—an agreement to divide the business in a
too slow. I’ll ruin you.” His son, William H. Vander- given area and share the profits. Other rail barons
bilt, when asked in 1883 about the discontinuance granted secret rebates or kickbacks to powerful
of a fast mail train, reportedly snorted, “The public shippers in return for steady and assured traffic.
be damned!” Often they slashed their rates on competing lines,
but they more than made up the difference on non-
While abusing the public, the railroaders competing ones, where they might actually charge
blandly bought and sold people in public life. They more for a short haul than for a long one.
bribed judges and legislatures, employed arm-
twisting lobbyists, and elected their own “creatures” Government Bridles the Iron Horse
to high office. They showered free passes on jour-

It was neither healthy nor politically acceptable that
so many people should be at the mercy of so
few. Impoverished farmers, especially in the Mid-
west, began to wonder if the nation had not escaped
from the slavery power only to fall into the hands of
the money power, as represented by the railroad
plutocracy.

But the American people, though quick to
respond to political injustice, were slow to combat
economic injustice. Dedicated to free enterprise
and to the principle that competition is the soul of
trade, they cherished a traditionally keen pride in
progress. They remembered that Jefferson’s ideals
were hostile to government interference with busi-
ness. Above all, there shimmered the “American
dream”: the hope that in a catch-as-catch-can eco-
nomic system, anyone might become a millionaire.

The depression of the 1870s finally goaded
the farmers into protesting against being “rail-
roaded” into bankruptcy. Under pressure from organ-
ized agrarian groups like the Grange (Patrons of

536 CHAPTER 24 Industry Comes of Age, 1865–1900

Husbandry), many midwestern legislatures tried to discrimination against shippers and outlawed
regulate the railroad monopoly. charging more for a short haul than for a long one
over the same line. Most important, it set up the
The scattered state efforts screeched to a halt in Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to admin-
1886. The Supreme Court, in the famed Wabash ister and enforce the new legislation.
case, decreed that individual states had no power to
regulate interstate commerce. If the mechanical Despite acclaim, the Interstate Commerce Act
monster were to be corralled, the federal govern- emphatically did not represent a popular victory
ment would have to do the job. over corporate wealth. One of the leading corpora-
tion lawyers of the day, Richard Olney, shrewdly
Stiff-necked President Cleveland did not look noted that the new commission “can be made of
kindly on effective regulation. But Congress ignored great use to the railroads. It satisfies the popular
his grumbling indifference and passed the epochal clamor for a government supervision of railroads, at
Interstate Commerce Act in 1887. It prohibited the same time that such supervision is almost
rebates and pools and required the railroads to entirely nominal. . . . The part of wisdom is not to
publish their rates openly. It also forbade unfair destroy the Commission, but to utilize it.”

What the new legislation did do was to provide
an orderly forum where competing business inter-
ests could resolve their conflicts in peaceable ways.
The country could now avoid ruinous rate wars
among the railroads and outraged, “confiscatory”
attacks on the lines by pitchfork-prodded state leg-
islatures. This was a modest accomplishment but by
no means an unimportant one. The Interstate Com-
merce Act tended to stabilize, not revolutionize, the
existing business system.

Yet the act still ranks as a red-letter law. It was the
first large-scale attempt by Washington to regulate
business in the interest of society at large. It heralded
the arrival of a series of independent regulatory com-
missions in the next century, which would irrevoca-
bly commit the government to the daunting task of
monitoring and guiding the private economy. It fore-
shadowed the doom of freewheeling, buccaneering
business practices and served full notice that there
was a public interest in private enterprise that the
government was bound to protect.

Miracles of Mechanization

Postwar industrial expansion, partly a result of the
railroad network, rapidly began to assume mam-
moth proportions. When Lincoln was elected in
1860, the Republic ranked only fourth among the
manufacturing nations of the world. By 1894 it had
bounded into first place. Why the sudden upsurge?

Liquid capital, previously scarce, was now
becoming abundant. The word millionaire had not
been coined until the 1840s, and in 1861 only a
handful of individuals were eligible for this class.

The Rise of the Trusts 537

But the Civil War, partly through profiteering, cre- 1876. A teacher of the deaf who was given a dead
ated immense fortunes, and these accumulations man’s ear to experiment with, he remarked that if he
could now be combined with the customary bor- could make the mute talk, he could make iron
rowings from foreign capitalists. speak. America was speedily turned into a nation of
“telephoniacs,” as a gigantic communication net-
The amazing natural resources of the nation work was built on his invention. The social impact
were now about to be fully exploited, including coal, of this instrument was further revealed when an
oil, and iron. For example, the Minnesota–Lake additional army of “number please” women was
Superior region, which had yielded some iron ore by attracted from the stove to the switchboard. Tele-
the 1850s, contributed the rich deposits of the phone boys were at first employed as operators, but
Mesabi Range by the 1890s. This priceless bonanza, their profanity shocked patrons.
where mountains of red-rusted ore could be
scooped up by steam shovels, ultimately became a The most versatile inventor of all was Thomas
cornerstone of a vast steel empire. Alva Edison (1847–1931), who as a boy had been
considered so dull-witted that he was taken out of
Massive immigration helped make unskilled school. His severe deafness enabled him to concen-
labor cheap and plentiful. Steel, the keystone indus- trate without distraction. Edison was a gifted tin-
try, built its strength largely on the sweat of low- kerer and a tireless worker, not a pure scientist.
priced immigrant labor from eastern and southern “Genius,” he said, “is one percent inspiration and
Europe, working in two twelve-hour shifts, seven ninety-nine percent perspiration.” Wondrous de-
days a week. vices poured out of his “invention factory” in New
Jersey—the phonograph, the mimeograph, the dic-
American ingenuity at the same time played a taphone, and the moving picture. He is probably
vital role in the second American industrial revolu- best known for his perfection in 1879 of the electric
tion. Techniques of mass production, pioneered by light bulb, which he unveiled after experimenting
Eli Whitney, were being perfected by the captains of with some six thousand different filaments. The
industry. American inventiveness flowered luxuri- electric light turned night into day and transformed
antly in the postwar years: between 1860 and 1890 ancient human habits as well. People had previ-
some 440,000 patents were issued. Business opera- ously slept an average of nine hours a night; now
tions were facilitated by such machines as the cash they slept just a bit more than seven hours.
register, the stock ticker, and the typewriter (“liter-
ary piano”), which attracted women from the con- The Trust Titan Emerges
fines of home to industry. Urbanization was
speeded by the refrigerator car, the electric dynamo, Despite pious protests to the contrary, competition
and the electric railway, which displaced animal- was the bugbear of most business leaders of the day.
drawn cars. Tycoons like Andrew Carnegie, the steel king; John
D. Rockefeller, the oil baron; and J. Pierpont Mor-
One of the most ingenious inventions was the gan, the bankers’ banker, exercised their genius in
telephone, introduced by Alexander Graham Bell in devising ways to circumvent competition. Carnegie
integrated every phase of his steel-making opera-
Regarding the exploitation of immigrant tion. His miners scratched the ore from the earth in
labor, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) the Mesabi Range; Carnegie ships floated it across
wrote in 1860, the Great Lakes; Carnegie railroads delivered it
to the blast furnaces at Pittsburgh. When the molten
“The German and Irish millions, like the metal finally poured from the glowing crucibles into
Negro, have a great deal of guano in their the waiting ingot molds, no other hands but those
destiny. They are ferried over the Atlantic, in Carnegie’s employ had touched the product.
and carted over America, to ditch and to Carnegie thus pioneered the creative entrepreneur-
drudge, to make corn cheap, and then to lie ial tactic of “vertical integration,” combining into
down prematurely to make a spot of green one organization all phases of manufacturing from
grass on the prairie.”

538 CHAPTER 24 Industry Comes of Age, 1865–1900

mining to marketing. His goal was to improve effi- The Supremacy of Steel
ciency by making supplies more reliable, controlling
the quality of the product at all stages of production, “Steel is king!” might well have been the exultant war
and eliminating middlemen’s fees. cry of the new industrialized generation. The mighty
metal ultimately held together the new steel civiliza-
Less justifiable on grounds of efficiency was the tion, from skyscrapers to coal scuttles, while provid-
technique of “horizontal integration,” which simply ing it with food, shelter, and transportation. Steel
meant allying with competitors to monopolize a making, notably rails for railroads, typified the domi-
given market. Rockefeller was a master of this strat- nance of “heavy industry,” which concentrated on
agem. He perfected a device for controlling bother- making “capital goods,” as distinct from the produc-
some rivals—the “trust.” Stockholders in various tion of “consumer goods” such as clothes and shoes.
smaller oil companies assigned their stock to the
board of directors of his Standard Oil Company, Now taken for granted, steel was a scarce com-
formed in 1870. It then consolidated and concerted modity in the wood-and-brick America of Abraham
the operations of the previously competing enter- Lincoln. Considerable iron went into railroad rails
prises. “Let us prey” was said to be Rockefeller’s and bridges, but steel was expensive and was used
unwritten motto. Ruthlessly wielding vast power, largely for products like cutlery. The early iron horse
Standard Oil soon cornered virtually the entire snorted exclusively (and dangerously) over iron
world petroleum market. Weaker competitors, left rails. When in the 1870s “Commodore” Vanderbilt of
out of the trust agreement, were forced to the wall. the New York Central began to use steel rails, he was
Rockefeller’s stunning success inspired many imita- forced to import them from Britain.
tors, and the word trust came to be generally used to
describe any large-scale business combination. Yet within an amazing twenty years, the United
States had outdistanced all foreign competitors and
The imperial Morgan devised still other was pouring out more than one-third of the world’s
schemes for eliminating “wasteful” competition. supply of steel. By 1900 America was producing as
The depression of the 1890s drove into his welcom- much as Britain and Germany combined.
ing arms many bleeding businesspeople, wounded
by cutthroat competition. His prescribed remedy What wrought the transformation? Chiefly the
was to consolidate rival enterprises and to ensure invention in the 1850s of a method of making cheap
future harmony by placing officers of his own steel—the Bessemer process. It was named after a
banking syndicate on their various boards of direc- derided British inventor, although an American had
tors. These came to be known as “interlocking stumbled on it a few years earlier. William Kelly, a
directorates.” Kentucky manufacturer of iron kettles, discovered

Captains of Industry 539

that cold air blown on red-hot iron caused the metal
to become white-hot by igniting the carbon and
thus eliminating impurities. He tried to apply the
new “air boiling” technique to his own product,
but his customers decried “Kelly’s fool steel,” and
his business declined. Gradually the Bessemer-
Kelly process won acceptance, and these two “crazy
men” ultimately made possible the present steel
civilization.

A revolutionary steel-fabricating process was
not the whole story. America was one of the few
places in the world where one could find relatively
close together abundant coal for fuel, rich iron ore
for smelting, and other essential ingredients for
making steel. The nation also boasted an abundant
labor supply, guided by industrial know-how of
a high order. The stage was set for miracles of
production.

Carnegie and Other Sultans of Steel

Kingpin among steelmasters was Andrew Carnegie, fisted in business, he was not a monopolist and
an undersized, charming Scotsman. As a towheaded disliked monopolistic trusts. His remarkable organi-
lad of thirteen, he was brought to America by his zation was a partnership that involved, at its maxi-
impoverished parents in 1848 and got a job as a mum, about forty “Pittsburgh millionaires.” By 1900
bobbin boy at $1.20 a week. Mounting the ladder of he was producing one-fourth of the nation’s Besse-
success so fast that he was said to have scorched the mer steel, and the partners were dividing profits of
rungs, he forged ahead by working hard, doing the $40 million a year, with the “Napoleon of the
extra chore, cheerfully assuming responsibility, and Smokestacks” himself receiving a cool $25 million.
smoothly cultivating influential people. These were the pre–income tax days, when million-
aires made real money and profits represented take-
After accumulating some capital, Carnegie home pay.
entered the steel business in the Pittsburgh area. A
gifted organizer and administrator, he succeeded by Into the picture now stepped the financial giant
picking high-class associates and by eliminating of the age, J. Pierpont Morgan. “Jupiter” Morgan had
many middlemen. Although inclined to be tough- made a legendary reputation for himself and his
Wall Street banking house by financing the reorgan-
Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) wrote in 1889, ization of railroads, insurance companies, and
“The man who dies leaving behind him banks. An impressive figure of a man, with massive
millions of available wealth, which was his to shoulders, shaggy brows, piercing eyes, and a bul-
administer during life, will pass away bous, acne-cursed red nose, he had established an
‘unwept, unhonored, and unsung,’ no matter enviable reputation for integrity. He did not believe
to what uses he leaves the dross which he that “money power” was dangerous, except when in
cannot take with him. Of such as these the dangerous hands—and he did not regard his own
public verdict will then be: ‘The man who hands as dangerous.
dies thus rich dies disgraced.’ ”
The force of circumstances brought Morgan
and Carnegie into collision. By 1900 the canny little
Scotsman, weary of turning steel into gold, was
eager to sell his holdings. Morgan had meanwhile
plunged heavily into the manufacture of steel pipe

540 CHAPTER 24 Industry Comes of Age, 1865–1900

tubing. Carnegie, cleverly threatening to invade the other patent medicines, but not until 1859 did the
same business, was ready to ruin his rival if he did first well in Pennsylvania—“Drake’s Folly”—pour
not receive his price. The steelmaster’s agents hag- out its liquid “black gold.” Almost overnight an
gled with the imperious Morgan for eight agonizing industry was born that was to take more wealth
hours, and the financier finally agreed to buy out from the earth, and more useful wealth at that, than
Carnegie for over $400 million. Fearing that he all of the gold extracted by the forty-niners and their
would die “disgraced” with so much wealth, Car- western successors. Kerosene, derived from petro-
negie dedicated the remaining years of his life to leum, was the first major product of the infant oil
giving away money for public libraries, pensions for industry. Burned from a cotton wick in a glass chim-
professors, and other such philanthropic pur- ney lamp, kerosene produced a much brighter
poses—in all disposing of about $350 million. flame than whale oil. The oil business boomed; by
the 1870s kerosene was America’s fourth most
Morgan moved rapidly to expand his new valuable export. Whaling, in contrast, the lifeblood
industrial empire. He took the Carnegie holdings, of ocean-roaming New Englanders since before the
added others, “watered” the stock liberally, and in days of Moby Dick, swiftly became a sick industry.
1901 launched the enlarged United States Steel Cor-
poration. Capitalized at $1.4 billion, it was America’s But what technology gives, technology takes
first billion-dollar corporation—a larger sum than away. By 1885, 250,000 of Thomas Edison’s electric
the total estimated wealth of the nation in 1800. The light bulbs were in use; fifteen years later, perhaps
Industrial Revolution, with its hot Bessemer breath, 15 million. The new electrical industry rendered
had come into its own. kerosene obsolete just as kerosene had rendered
whale oil obsolete. Only in rural America and over-
Rockefeller Grows an seas did a market continue for oil-fired lamps.
American Beauty Rose
Oil might thus have remained a modest, even a
The sudden emergence of the oil industry was one shrinking, industry but for yet another turn of the
of the most striking developments of the years dur- technological tide—the invention of the automo-
ing and after the Civil War. Traces of oil found on bile. By 1900 the gasoline-burning internal combus-
streams had earlier been bottled for back-rub and tion engine had clearly bested its rivals, steam and
electricity, as the superior means of automobile
propulsion. As the century of the automobile
dawned, the oil business got a new, long-lasting,
and hugely profitable lease on life.

The Rise of Rockefeller 541

John D. Rockefeller—lanky, shrewd, ambitious, forced the lines to pay him rebates on the freight
abstemious (he neither drank, smoked, nor swore) bills of his competitors!
—came to dominate the oil industry. Born to a fam-
ily of precarious income, he became a successful Rockefeller thought he was simply obeying a
businessman at age nineteen. One upward stride law of nature. “The time was ripe” for aggressive
led to another, and in 1870 he organized the Stan- consolidation, he later reflected. “It had to come,
dard Oil Company of Ohio, nucleus of the great trust though all we saw at the moment was the need to
formed in 1882. Locating his refineries in Cleveland, save ourselves from wasteful conditions. . . . The
he sought to eliminate the middlemen and squeeze day of combination is here to stay. Individualism
out competitors. has gone, never to return.”

Pious and parsimonious, Rockefeller flourished On the other side of the ledger, Rockefeller’s oil
in an era of completely free enterprise. So-called monopoly did turn out a superior product at a rela-
piratical practices were employed by “corsairs of tively cheap price. It achieved important econ-
finance,” and business ethics were distressingly low. omies, both at home and abroad, by its large-scale
Rockefeller, operating “just to the windward of the methods of production and distribution. This, in
law,” pursued a policy of rule or ruin. “Sell all the oil truth, was the tale of the other trusts as well. The
that is sold in your district” was the hard-boiled efficient use of expensive machinery called for big-
order that went out to his local agents. By 1877 ness, and consolidation proved more profitable
Rockefeller controlled 95 percent of all the oil than ruinous price wars.
refineries in the country.
Other trusts blossomed along with the Ameri-
Rockefeller—“Reckafellow,” as Carnegie had can Beauty of oil. These included the sugar trust, the
once called him—showed little mercy. A kind of tobacco trust, the leather trust, and the harvester
primitive savagery prevailed in the jungle world of trust, which amalgamated some two hundred com-
big business, where only the fittest survived. Or so petitors. The meat industry arose on the backs of
Rockefeller believed. His son later explained that bawling western herds, and meat kings like Gus-
the giant American Beauty rose could be produced tavus F. Swift and Philip Armour took their place
“only by sacrificing the early buds that grew up among the new royalty. Wealth was coming to domi-
around it.” His father pinched off the small buds nate the commonwealth.
with complete ruthlessness. Employing spies and
extorting secret rebates from the railroads, he even These untrustworthy trusts, and the “pirates”
who captained them, were disturbingly new. They
eclipsed an older American aristocracy of modestly

542 CHAPTER 24 Industry Comes of Age, 1865–1900

successful merchants and professionals. An arro- of-the-fittest theories of Charles Darwin. “The mil-
gant class of “new rich” was now elbowing aside the lionaires are a product of natural selection,”
patrician families in the mad scramble for power concluded Yale Professor and Social Darwinist
and prestige. Not surprisingly, the ranks of the William Graham Sumner. “They get high wages and
antitrust crusaders were frequently spearheaded by live in luxury, but the bargain is a good one for soci-
the “best men”—genteel old-family do-gooders who ety.” Despite plutocracy and deepening class divi-
were not radicals but conservative defenders of sions, the captains of industry provided material
their own vanishing influence. progress.

The Gospel of Wealth Self-justification by the wealthy inevitably in-
volved contempt for the poor. Many of the rich,
Monarchs of yore invoked the divine right of kings, especially the newly rich, had pulled themselves up
and America’s industrial plutocrats took a some- by their own bootstraps; hence they concluded that
what similar stance. Some candidly credited heav- those who stayed poor must be lazy and lacking
enly help. “Godliness is in league with riches,” in enterprise. The Reverend Russell Conwell of
preached the Episcopal bishop of Massachusetts, Philadelphia became rich by delivering his lecture
and hardfisted John D. Rockefeller piously acknowl- “Acres of Diamonds” thousands of times. In it he
edged that “the good Lord gave me my money.” charged, “There is not a poor person in the United
Steel baron Andrew Carnegie agreed that the States who was not made poor by his own short-
wealthy, entrusted with society’s riches, had to comings.” Such attitudes were a formidable road-
prove themselves morally responsible according to block to social reform.
a “Gospel of Wealth.” But most defenders of wide-
open capitalism relied more heavily on the survival- Plutocracy, like the earlier slavocracy, took its
stand firmly on the Constitution. The clause that gave
Congress sole jurisdiction over interstate commerce
was a godsend to the monopolists; their high-priced
lawyers used it time and again to thwart controls by

The Rich and the Poor 543

Industrial millionaires were condemned in clever corporation lawyers could wriggle. But it was
the Populist platform of 1892: unexpectedly effective in one respect. Contrary to
“The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly its original intent, it was used to curb labor unions
stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few or labor combinations that were deemed to be
. . . and the possessors of these, in turn restraining trade.
despise the Republic and endanger liberty.
From the same prolific womb of Early prosecutions of the trusts by the Justice
governmental injustice we breed the two Department under the Sherman Act of 1890, as it
great classes—tramps and millionaires.” turned out, were neither vigorous nor successful.
The decisions in seven of the first eight cases pre-
the state legislatures. Giant trusts likewise sought sented by the attorney general were adverse to the
refuge behind the Fourteenth Amendment, which government. More new trusts were formed in the
had been originally designed to protect the rights of 1890s under President McKinley than during any
the ex-slaves as persons. The courts ingeniously other like period. Not until 1914 were the paper jaws
interpreted a corporation to be a legal “person” and of the Sherman Act fitted with reasonably sharp
decreed that, as such, it could not be deprived of its teeth. Until then, there was some question whether
property by a state without “due process of law” (see the government would control the trusts or the
Amendment XIV, para. 1). There is some question- trusts the government.
able evidence that slippery corporation lawyers
deliberately inserted this loophole when the Four- But the iron grip of monopolistic corporations
teenth Amendment was being fashioned in 1866. was being threatened. A revolutionary new princi-
ple had been written into the law books by the Sher-
Great industrialists likewise sought to incorpo- man Anti-Trust Act of 1890, as well as by the
rate in “easy states,” like New Jersey, where the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. Private greed
restrictions on big business were mild or nonexis- must henceforth be subordinated to public need.
tent. For example, the Southern Pacific Railroad,
with much of its trackage in California, was incorpo- The South in the Age of Industry
rated in Kentucky.
The industrial tidal wave that washed over the
Government Tackles the Trust Evil North after the Civil War caused only feeble ripples
in the backwater of the South. As late as 1900, the
At long last the masses of the people began to mobi- South still produced a smaller percentage of the
lize against monopoly. They first tried to control the nation’s manufactured goods than it had before
trusts through state legislation, as they had earlier the Civil War. The plantation system had degener-
attempted to curb the railroads. Failing here, as ated into a pattern of absentee land ownership.
before, they were forced to appeal to Congress. After White and black sharecroppers now tilled the soil
prolonged pulling and hauling, the Sherman Anti- for a share of the crop, or they became tenants, in
Trust Act of 1890 was finally signed into law. bondage to their landlords, who controlled needed
credit and supplies.
The Sherman Act flatly forbade combinations in
restraint of trade, without any distinction between Southern agriculture received a welcome boost
“good” trusts and “bad” trusts. Bigness, not bad- in the 1880s, when machine-made cigarettes
ness, was the sin. The law proved ineffective, largely replaced the roll-your-own variety and tobacco con-
because it had only baby teeth or no teeth at all, and sumption shot up. James Buchanan Duke took full
because it contained legal loopholes through which advantage of the new technology to mass-produce
the dainty “coffin nails.” In 1890, in what was
becoming a familiar pattern, he absorbed his main
competitors into the American Tobacco Company.
The cigarette czar later showed such generosity to
Trinity College, near his birthplace in Durham,
North Carolina, that the trustees gratefully changed
its name to Duke University.

544 CHAPTER 24 Industry Comes of Age, 1865–1900

Industrialists tried to coax the agricultural northern-dominated railroad interests. Railroads
South out of the fields and into the factories, but gave preferential rates to manufactured goods mov-
with only modest success. The region remained ing southward from the north, but in the opposite
overwhelmingly rural. Prominent among the boost- direction they discriminated in favor of southern
ers of a “new South” was silver-tongued Henry W. raw materials. The net effect was to keep the South
Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution. He tire- in a kind of “Third World” servitude to the North-
lessly exhorted the ex-Confederates to become east—as a supplier of raw materials to the manufac-
“Georgia Yankees” and outplay the North at the turing metropolis, unable to develop a substantial
commercial and industrial game. industrial base of its own.

Yet formidable obstacles lay in the path of A bitter example of this economic discrimina-
southern industrialization. One was the paper bar- tion against the South was the “Pittsburgh plus”
rier of regional rate-setting systems imposed by the pricing system in the steel industry. Rich deposits of

SPINDLES IN NEW ENGLAND SPINDLES IN COTTON STATES Cotton Manufacturing Moves South,
(by thousands) (by thousands) 1880–1980 Textile manufacturing
usually looms large in the early stages of
8,632 1880 561 industrial development. In later stages it
gives way to higher-technology businesses.
10,934 1890 1,570 This trend can be seen here, both in the
migration of textile manufacturing to the
13,171 1900 4,368 southern United States and in the decline
in the number of spindles in the United
15,735 1910 10,494 States as a whole since the 1930s, as
developing Third World countries
18,287 1920 15,231 became major textile producers.

11,351 1930 18,586

5,279 1940 17,641

3,739 1950 17,673

269 1980 16,795

The New South 545

American Industry in 1900 By the end of the nineteenth century, once-rural America boasted the
world’s largest industrial output—a development with enormous consequences for politics, diplomacy,
and family life.

coal and iron ore near Birmingham, Alabama, Henry W. Grady (1851–1889), editor of the
worked by low-wage southern labor, should have Atlanta Constitution, urged the new South to
given steel manufacturers there a competitive edge, industrialize. In a Boston speech in 1889, he
especially in southern markets. But the steel lords of described the burial in Georgia of a
Pittsburgh brought pressure to bear on the compli- Confederate veteran:
ant railroads. As a result, Birmingham steel, no mat-
ter where it was delivered, was charged a fictional “The South didn’t furnish a thing on earth for
fee, as if it had been shipped from Pittsburgh. This that funeral but the corpse and the hole in
stunting of the South’s natural economic advan- the ground. . . . They buried him in a New
tages throttled the growth of the Birmingham steel York coat and a Boston pair of shoes and a
industry. pair of breeches from Chicago and a shirt
from Cincinnati, leaving him nothing to carry
In manufacturing cotton textiles, the South into the next world with him to remind him of
fared considerably better. Southerners had long the country in which he lived, and for which
resented shipping their fiber to New England, and he fought for four years, but the chill of blood
now their cry was “Bring the mills to the cotton.” in his veins and the marrow in his bones.”
Beginning about 1880, northern capital began to
erect cotton mills in the South, largely in response
to tax benefits and the prospect of cheap and
nonunionized labor. (See the chart at left.)

546 CHAPTER 24 Industry Comes of Age, 1865–1900

The textile mills proved a mixed blessing to the company mill towns. Entire families—often derided
economically blighted South. They slowly wove an as “hillbillies” or “lint-heads”—worked from dawn
industrial thread into the fabric of southern life, but to dusk amid the whirring spindles. They were paid
at a considerable human cost. Cheap labor was the at half the rate of their northern counterparts and
South’s major attraction for potential investors, and often received their compensation in the form of
keeping labor cheap became almost a religion credit at a company store, to which they were habit-
among southern industrialists. The mills took root ually in debt. But despite their depressed working
in the chronically depressed piedmont region of conditions and poor pay, many southerners saw
southern Appalachia and came to dominate utterly employment in the mills as a salvation, the first
the communities in which they were located. steady jobs and wages they had ever known. With
many mills anxious to tap the cheap labor of
Rural southerners—virtually all of them white, women and children, mill work often offered desti-
for blacks were excluded from all but the most tute farm-fugitive families their only chance to
menial jobs in the mills—poured out of the hills and remain together.
hollows to seek employment in the hastily erected

Examining the Evidence 547

The Photography of Lewis W. Hine The pell-mell also celebrated as one of the fathers of documentary
onrush of industrialization after the Civil War photography. Why might Hine’s graphic images have
spawned countless human abuses, few more objec- succeeded in stirring public opinion more power-
tionable than the employment of children, often in fully than factual and statistical demonstrations of
hazardous jobs. For decades, reformers tried to the evil of child labor? Given Hine’s own reform
arouse public outrage against child labor, and they objectives, can his photographs—or any so-called
made significant headway at last with the help of “documentary” images—be taken at face value as
photography—especially the photographs of Lewis literal, accurate information about the past?
W. Hine (1874–1940). A native of Wisconsin, Hine in
1908 became the staff photographer for the National
Child Labor Committee, an organization committed
to ending child labor. This 1909 photo of young “dof-
fers,” whose job it was to remove fully wound bob-
bins from textile spinning machines, is typical of
Hine’s work. He shows the boys climbing danger-
ously on the whirling mechanism, and his own cap-
tion for the photo names the mill—“Bibb Mill No. 1,
Macon, Georgia”—but not the boys, as if to under-
line the impersonal, dehumanizing nature of their
work, and the specific responsibilities of their
employer. His other subjects included child workers
on Colorado beet farms, in Pennsylvania coal mines
and Gulf Coast fish canneries, and in the glass,
tobacco, and garment trades. Hine’s images con-
tributed heavily to the eventual success of the cam-
paign to end child labor in the New Deal era. He is

The Impact of the New ture declined in relation to manufacturing, America
Industrial Revolution on America could no longer aspire to be a nation of small free-
hold farms. Jefferson’s concepts of free enterprise,
Economic miracles wrought during the decades with neither help nor hindrance from Washington,
after the Civil War enormously increased the wealth were being thrown out the factory window. Tariffs
of the Republic. The standard of living rose sharply, had already provided assistance, but the long arm of
and well-fed American workers enjoyed more physi- federal authority was now committed to decades of
cal comforts than their counterparts in any other corporation curbing and “trust-busting.”
industrial nation. Urban centers mushroomed as
the insatiable factories demanded more American Older ways of life also wilted in the heat of the
labor and as immigrants swarmed like honeybees to factory furnaces. The very concept of time was revo-
the new jobs (see “Makers of America: The Poles,” lutionized. Rural American migrants and peasant
pp. 734–735). European immigrants, used to living by the languid
clock of nature, now had to regiment their lives
Early Jeffersonian ideals were withering before by the factory whistle. The seemingly arbitrary dis-
the smudgy blasts from the smokestacks. As agricul- cipline of industrial labor did not come easily and
sometimes had to be forcibly taught. One large

548 CHAPTER 24 Industry Comes of Age, 1865–1900

corporation simultaneously instructed its Polish with dependence on wages came vulnerability to
immigrant workers in the English language and in the swings of the economy and the whims of the
the obligations of factory work schedules: employer. The fear of unemployment was never dis-
tant. A breadwinner’s illness could mean catastro-
I hear the whistle. I must hurry. phe for an entire family. Nothing more sharply
I hear the five-minute whistle. defined the growing difference between working-
It is time to go into the shop. . . . class and middle-class conditions of life than the
I change my clothes and get ready to work. precariousness of the laborer’s lot. Reformers strug-
The starting whistle blows. gled to introduce a measure of security—job and
I eat my lunch. wage protection, and provision for temporary
It is forbidden to eat until then. . . . unemployment—into the lives of the working class.
I work until the whistle blows to quit.
I leave my place nice and clean. Finally, strong pressures for foreign trade devel-
I put all my clothes in the locker. oped as the tireless industrial machine threatened to
I must go home.

Probably no single group was more profoundly
affected by the new industrial age than women. Pro-
pelled into industry by recent inventions, chiefly the
typewriter and the telephone switchboard, millions
of stenographers and “hello girls” discovered new
economic and social opportunities. The “Gibson
Girl,” a magazine image of an independent and ath-
letic “new woman” created in the 1890s by the artist
Charles Dana Gibson, became the romantic ideal of
the age. For middle-class women, careers often
meant delayed marriages and smaller families. Most
women workers, however, toiled neither for inde-
pendence nor for glamour, but out of economic
necessity. They faced the same long hours and dan-
gerous working conditions as did their mates and
brothers, and they earned less, as wages for
“women’s jobs” were usually set below those for
men’s.

The clattering machine age likewise accentu-
ated class division. “Industrial buccaneers” flaunted
bloated fortunes, and their rags-to-riches spouses
displayed glittering diamonds. Such extravagances
evoked bitter criticism. Some of it was envious, but
much of it rose from a small but increasingly vocal
group of socialists and other radicals, many of
whom were recent European immigrants. The exis-
tence of an oligarchy of money was amply dem-
onstrated by the fact that in 1900 about one-tenth
of the people owned nine-tenths of the nation’s
wealth.

A nation of farmers and independent producers
was becoming a nation of wage earners. In 1860 half
of all workers were self-employed; by the century’s
end, two of every three working Americans
depended on wages. Real wages were rising, and
times were good for workers who were working. But

Embattled Labor Unions 549

saturate the domestic market. American products strikebreakers (“scabs”) and employ thugs to beat
radiated out all over the world—notably the five- up labor organizers. In 1886 Jay Gould reputedly
gallon kerosene can of the Standard Oil Company. boasted, “I can hire one-half of the working class to
The flag follows trade, and empire tends to follow the kill the other half.”
flag—a harsh lesson that America was soon to learn.
Corporations had still other weapons in their
In Unions There Is Strength arsenals. They could call upon the federal courts—
presided over by well-fed and conservative judges—
Sweat of the laborer lubricated the vast new indus- to issue injunctions ordering the strikers to cease
trial machine. Yet the wage workers did not share striking. If defiance and disorders ensued, the com-
proportionately with their employers in the benefits pany could request the state and federal authorities
of the age of big business. to bring in troops. Employers could lock their doors
against rebellious workers—a procedure called the
The worker, suggestive of the Roman galley “lockout”—and then starve them into submission.
slave, was becoming a lever-puller in a giant mecha- They could compel them to sign “ironclad oaths” or
nism. Individual originality and creativity were “yellow-dog contracts,” both of which were solemn
being stifled, and less value than ever before was agreements not to join a labor union. They could
being placed on manual skills. Before the Civil War, put the names of agitators on a “black list” and cir-
the worker might have toiled in a small plant whose culate it among fellow employers. A corporation
owner hailed the employee in the morning by might even own the “company town,” with its high-
first name and inquired after the family’s health. priced grocery stores and “easy” credit. Often the
But now the factory hand was employed by a cor- worker sank into perpetual debt—a status that
poration—depersonalized, bodiless, soulless, and strongly resembled serfdom. Countless thousands
often conscienceless. The directors knew the worker of blackened coal miners were born in a company
not; and in fairness to their stockholders they house, nurtured by a (high-priced) company store,
were not inclined to engage in large-scale private and buried in a company graveyard—prematurely
philanthropy. dead.

New machines displaced employees, and The middle-class public, annoyed by recurrent
though in the long run more jobs were created than strikes, grew deaf to the outcry of the worker. Ameri-
destroyed, in the short run the manual worker was can wages were perhaps the highest in the world,
often hard hit. A glutted labor market, moreover, although a dollar a day for pick-and-shovel labor
severely handicapped wage earners. Employers does not now seem excessive. Carnegie and Rocke-
could take advantage of the vast new railroad net- feller had battled their way to the top, and the view
work and bring in unemployed workers, from the was common that the laborer could do likewise.
four corners of the country and beyond, to beat
down high wage levels. During the 1880s and 1890s, The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887)
several hundred thousand unskilled workers a year of Brooklyn, the most distinguished (and
poured into the country from Europe, creating a notorious) clergyman of the era after the Civil
labor market more favorable to the boss than the War, said,
worker.
“The trade union, which originated under the
Individual workers were powerless to battle European system, destroys liberty. I do not
single-handedly against giant industry. Forced to say a dollar a day is enough to support a
organize and fight for basic rights, they found the working man, but it is enough to support a
dice heavily loaded against them. The corporation man. Not enough to support a man and five
could dispense with the individual worker much children if a man insists on smoking and
more easily than the worker could dispense with the drinking beer.”
corporation. Employers could pool vast wealth
through thousands of stockholders, retain high-
priced lawyers, buy up the local press, and put
pressure on the politicians. They could import