“The deskilling of workers by rapid mechanization and growth of the factory system, as well as the commercialization of agriculture, which impoverished farmers, put most Americans under the control of capital: railroads, banks, and large corporations.  The small producer –the backbone of a free labor economy and the antislavery Republican Party– became increasingly obsolete in the new economic order of industrial capitalism.  Before the Civil War, both the slave and free states were predominantly agrarian.  After it, heavy industry started dominating the national political economy even though agriculture also contributed to the nation’s rapid economic ascent.” –Sinha, RISE AND FALL, p. 348

Image Gateway

Gast painting

 

Overview 

“This association of poverty with progress is the great enigma of our times,”  –Henry George, Progress and Poverty (1879)

 

Timeline

  • 1873    Panic begins with downturn lasting for several years
  • 1877    Farmers’ Alliances begin to organize in Texas
  • 1877    Great Railroad Strike creates widespread unrest
  • 1886   Protests and violence at Haymarket Square in Chicago
  • 1892   Peoples’ Party organizes for presidential campaign
  • 1893   Panic begins with an even deeper downturn than 1873
  • 1894   Federal government intervenes in railroad strike
  • 1896   McKinley defeats Bryan in heated presidential contest
  • 1900   US leads world in manufacturing output
  • 1901  J.P. Morgan organizes US Steel, the first billion dollar company

Some Key Statistics 

  • Nearly 100 people died during Great Railroad Strike of 1877 with an estimated $40 million in property damage.
  • 1850 = 9,000 miles of RR tracks across US // By 1900 = 190,000 miles of RR tracks across US
  • By the late 1880s, the Knights of Labor had over 700,000 members and the Farmers’ Alliances had over 1.5 million members.
  • Between 1895 and 1904, nearly 4,000 companies (representing about 1/5 of the national economy) merged with rivals, creating conglomerates such as DuPont, General Electric, and US Steel.
  • By 1900, the richest 10 percent of Americans owned an estimated 90 percent of the nation’s wealth.
  • Republicans won 12 out of 16 presidential elections between Civil War and Great Depression.
  • Nearly 80 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the 1896 presidential election.
  • In total, during the period around the turn of the 20th century, more than 1,000 socialists won political office in the US.  Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs received 6 percent of the popular vote in 1912.

Featured Videos

Historian H.W. Brands offers an overview of the Gilded Age through profiles of three capitalists:  John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J.P. Morgan, in this hour-long videotaped lecture.  Social studies teacher Tim Betts provides a somewhat shorter and snappier summary of the same information in a music video parody called “Robber Barons.”