Transcript The Gilded Age The Era of Robber Barons and Labor Violence

The Gilded Age
The Era of Robber Barons and Labor
Violence
Setting the Scene…
» In September of 1873, the nation
experienced the largest economic
crash in its history.
» The crash was the consequence of
over-speculation in the railroad
industry which, in turn, brought
down many of the nation’s largest
banks.
Panic!
» October 1873
Run on the
Fourth
National Bank,
No. 20 Nassau
Street in New
York City
Depression
» A five year
depression
followed the
crash - a
depression that
was especially
devastating for
the growing
number of
urban poor.
Making Money from the Crash
» But as ordinary
Americans
suffered, the super
rich used the crisis
as an opportunity
to buy up
foundering
competitors.
» J.P. Morgan was
one of these men
who wanted to get
rid of “wasteful
competition.”
Robber Barons
Carnegie
Rockefeller
Vanderbilt
Mc Cormick
“Morganizing”
» For the largest manufacturing companies
in the U.S. – those with guaranteed
contracts and the ability to make rebate
deals with the railroads – the panic years
were golden.
» The nation’s wealthiest men had enough
capital reserves to finance their own
continuing growth.
» For smaller industrial firms that relied on
seasonal demand and outside capital, the
situation was dire. As capital reserves
dried up, so did their industries.
» Led by the financial wizardry of Morgan,
the Robber Barons attacked free market
competition by buying out their smaller
competitors at rock bottom prices.
» By 1890, over 1800 millionaires lived in
the United States; half of them lived in
New York City where their lives were
marked by conspicuous consumption thereby helping them to earn their
label, the Robber Barons.
» In 1883, after the
completion of their
New York City
mansion, the
Vanderbilt’s threw a
party that showcased
their immense wealth,
as well as the wealth
of their millionaire
friends.
» The picture is of Mrs.
Vanderbilt as Electric
Light. Her gown
glitters with an
unknown number of
real diamonds.
» The Lucky Rich" by Charles Dana Gibson.
» Gibson, creator of the "Gibson Girl," fondly
satirized the American rich, depicting elegant
young men and women in courtship and
warning of the perils of unhappiness in
marriages based on monetary concerns.
» As the panic deepened, ordinary Americans
suffered terribly.
» Between 1873 and 1877, as many smaller
factories and workshops shuttered their doors,
tens of thousands of workers – many former
Civil War soldiers – became transients.
» The terms “tramp” and “bum” became
commonplace American terms.
As both the wealth
of robber barons
and the
unemployed
soared, so did the
resentment of the
workers and their
families.
Relief rolls
exploded in major
cities, with 25
percent
unemployment
(100,000 people)in
New York City
alone.
» Unemployed workers demonstrated in Boston,
Chicago, and New York in the winter of 187374 demanding public work.
» In New York’s Tompkins Square in January
1874, police entered the crowd with clubs
and beat up thousands of men and women.
Labor Violence
» The most violent strikes in American history
followed the panic, including by the secret
labor group known as the Molly Maguires in
Pennsylvania’s coal fields in 1875, when
masked workmen exchanged gunfire with
the “Coal and Iron Police,” a private force
commissioned by the state.
» A nationwide railroad strike followed in 1877,
in which mobs destroyed railway hubs in
Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Cumberland,
Maryland.
» This is a photo of the burning of the Union
Railroad Depot in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in
August, 1877 - a result of the railroad strike.
» .
» But when the Depression was over in
1880, conflict between the Robber
Barons who were richer than ever, and
the urban poor, who were poorer than
ever, increased rather than diminished.
» Working conditions were horrendous
during the Gilded Age. In 1889 alone,
22,000 railroad workers were killed or
injured on the job according to the
records of the Interstate Commerce
Commission. Thousands of others died
or were crippled in the nation’s mines,
steel mills, and textile mills.
» Not only were workers angry about poor
working conditions and mistreatment at the
hand of industrial owners, they also loathed
losing their jobs to local or imported
strikebreakers and detested the efforts of
management to destroy their unions.
» As many employers shut down their plants and
attempted "to starve" their employees out of
the union, violent outbreaks occurred in the
North, South, and West, in small communities
as well as in large metropolitan cities.
Haymarket Riot - Breaking the Union
» Perhaps the worse of the riots, as well as
the most famous of all riots occurred in
Chicago’s Haymarket Square in 1886.
» This is an engraving of
the seven anarchists
sentenced to die for
the death of police
officer Degan's. An
eighth defendant, not
shown here, was
sentenced to 15 years
in prison.
» Four were put to
death, one committed
suicide in prison, and
two had their
sentences commuted
to life imprisonment.
» While workers reacted against the denial of what
they regarded as their rights to belong to labor
unions and resorted to strikes if and when
conditions were unbearable, the outcome of their
violent behavior never changed the course of events
- the owners won and the workers lost.
» Thus, America’s Gilded Age witnessed deep and
sometimes violent divisions over the definition of
freedom in a rapidly industrializing society.
» The battle continued into the 20th Century - a battle
pitted the Robber Barons - proponents of Social
Darwinism and laissez faire who saw freedom as the
opportunity to pursue economic interests without
outside restraints, against workers - those who
believed freedom lay in collective efforts to create
safe industrial opportunities for ordinary Americans.