The+Gilded+Age



media type="custom" key="12146838" The antebellum era in America of “honor” and “truth” and “transcendental” spirituality came to an abrupt end with the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. By the time that bloodbath was over, besides some 600,000 live human beings many could comment “honor” and “truth” were also casualties. America after the Civil War was ruled by steel, power, and money. It was the age of Andrew Carnegie and Jay Gould. It was the transcontinental railroad. It was the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, a marvel of engineering for the time complete with electric lights! The late 19th and 20th centuries world of steel, electricity, skyscrapers, and vast impersonal business forces made the ideas of Wordsworth’s “Psalm of Life” seem positively quaint, old-fashioned – if not obsolete. And yet… yet… to some even in the early 21st century the idea to not “Be not like dumb, driven cattle ! / Be a hero in the strife!” are not everywhere out of fashion and ignored.

media type="custom" key="12146846" In this fictitious account of a man from the 19th century who travels to our present time, we find the clash between the older ethos of “honor” and more modern sensibilities which would seem to do just about anything to make a buck. But were the “old fashioned” ideas of honor, truth, and beauty” mere window dressing for entitled nobles who lived apart from the daily struggles of the working masses who were not born with a “silver spoon in their mouth”? Or could we learn from these “obsolete” values of the past? What would those from the past say if they could see how we live today? What we have done with the world they made?

media type="custom" key="12146858" The antebellum South had a vision of life as “traditional," emphasizing local control, a small government with few taxes - an agricultural economy of independent small farmers, dominated by a planter aristocracy and slavery. Society had clear gradations with a distinct hierarchical structure - people knew their place. Life did not change much. The rhythms of life were traditional, and Southern society looked to the past. In contrast, the Northern vision of the future emphasized a relentless innovation, aggressive individualism, social fluidity, advanced science and high technology – a modern colossus of capitalism and industry, ready to take its place among the “great powers” of the earth. It had little time for the past or for Negro slavery. Northern society looked to the future. But let us ask the following question: during and after the Civil War, did the United States of America follow the wrong path? Have we done those political and economic things we should not have done? Would Thomas Jefferson look at our world and be ashamed? Be disappointed in us? How about Alexander Hamilton? George Washington? Andrew Jackson? Ben Franklin? Henry David Thoreau? Think about the way in which you, your friends, your family, your neighbors, your school, and your society lives. The good, the bad, the ugly. Keep these questions in your mind as you watch these images of the contemporary America we have built and live in, and take a step back and ask, “Is this good? Bad? Both?” What do you think as you watch this video and think?

media type="custom" key="12146862" It seems as if the United States had been waiting to see the outcome of the Civil War in terms of whether we would be a country dedicated to capitalist expansion using free labor and looking towards an urban future, or a slave state country focused on agriculture and the rural past. But once that answer was definitively settled the country exploded with economic activity in a flurry of railroad building and corporate expansion. The combination of vast natural resources and human ingenuity to bring technological breakthroughs to a large market protected by legal norms made the United States ripe ground for economic growth and wealth creation. In particular, we will look at the advent of cheap steel and electricity to galvanize economic growth in railroads, skyscrapers, elevators, subways, and bridges to help enable the modern “vertical” city such as New York in the late 19th century. The Brooklyn Bridge, in particular, serves as the embodiment of this new way of life made possible by steel and electricity. And steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, in particular, embodies the “Gilded Age” in his person and career.

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media type="custom" key="12146882" The Gilded Age saw the modernization of business practices from an age, in retrospect, that looked like it was done by amateurs. Superstar businessmen such as Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller were quick to centralize operations with strict accounting for how much cash the corporation had on hand, as well as which parts of the company were making or losing money. They also used economies of scale to reduce expenses and cut out middle men, while spending top dollar on the best scientific talent to innovate and continually come up with a better product. The result was that rivals could not compete with the quality or the low prices of the “Robber Barons,” and they were soon often put out of business or bought out. Soon enough the economic life of late nineteenth century America was in the hands of a shirking number of “captains of business.” But as their power and wealth increased, grave concerns arose about the role these businessmen served in society. Corruption in politics? Unfair business practices? The big fish eating the smaller fish? Economic thuggery? Did they basically rob the American people to acquire their wealth? Andrew Carnegie claimed that the “man who died rich, died disgraced,” and many of these men gave huge amounts of their wealth to charities and other philanthropic concerns. But can you make money unethically and then launder it afterward and make it all right? What you are obviously seeing is the spectrum swinging strongly away from Jefferson and towards Hamilton in the dialectic of American political and economic history.

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media type="custom" key="12146906" This famous speech from the movie “Wall Street” shows the capitalist ethos as derived all the way down from the “invisible hand” theories of Adam Smith in its claim that self-interest pursued by many private individuals will increase the wealth of the nation much better than top-down policies dictated by government. From the very beginnings this materialist conception of society as based on making money and apotheosizing greed has been controversial, and as we talk about the rise of modern business and corporations in America this is a good speech to have in mind. “Greed is good.”

media type="custom" key="12146914" During the Gilded Age the bosses themselves were very organized and had a common front to present to society and their workers. But the workers in Andrew Carnegie’s steel factories and John Rockefeller’s oil refineries were slow to organize, and they countered manifold obstacles in their efforts to form “labor unions” and militate for higher pay and better working conditions. Both labor and management seemed positioned to endure a confrontational relationship, and neither side could very much see the other’s point of view: the result was several bitter and violent labor-management conflicts at the end of the 19th century. But labor and capital and their symbiotic (if dysfunctional) relationship was not going to go away in the industrial age of American economic power, and labor would endure most of its failures with an eye to coming back stronger in the 20th century to gain the right to “collectively bargain” and gain “social justice.” It is all about trying to adapt the traditional ideas of American democracy from Jefferson and Jackson to a new economic order that is urban and industrial rather than rural and agricultural. It would take time for the political system to catch up with the economic changes, and there would be much contention involved. But if there was plenty of bad and ugly in the Gilded Age, there was also much for which the “Robber Barons” could claim credit. The country was overall wealthier, and the economic changes had made life undoubtedly easier and better for millions of Americans. Do you really want to dial back the history to the pre-industrial age where life was poorer, harder, and shorter? But what about all the new difficulties arisen from the new urban, industrial lifestyle? It is a complicated mix of the good, bad, and ugly.

media type="custom" key="12146922" At almost exactly the time when a bigger country (the USA) was defeating a smaller country (the CSA), the British natural scientist Charles Darwin was making his observations about the natural world at the Galapagos islands as he visited them as a voyager on the HMS Beagle. In his treatise “On the Origin of Species,” Darwin postulated that through random mutations through generations certain creatures were better able to garner resources and attract mates, thereby having a better chance of surviving and passing down their DNA to descendant. Thus, over thousands and millions of years creatures evolve and change, and they either survive in this way of go extinct in the process of “natural selection.” This theory seemed to provide a natural explanation for the origin and evolution of our species from its roots in the primordial ooze, and many claimed that “Darwin killed God.” There opened a serious rift between faith and science that painfully persists to this day, although who is to say that perhaps evolution itself was not a part of God’s plan? Must science and faith be enemies?

media type="custom" key="12146934" It was might convenient that as this “competition for survival” in the natural world was explained at exactly the time in the social world seemed to confirm this: stronger businesses ate up smaller ones, larger countries colonized smaller ones, and the gap between the rich and poor exploded. For many it would appear that the theory of evolution among animals competing for resources and survival merely supports the status quo of the Gilded Age: the wealthy were wealthy because they were worthy, while the poor were poor because they were inherently unable to compete and were inferior. This pseudo-science of “Social Darwinism” seemed to hold that it was normal and “natural” that the poor might starve and go extinct, just like the dinosaurs. In terms of human dating, an evolutionary anthropologist would say that a man looks for a “beautiful” young woman who appears fertile, while a woman looks for a “strong” man who has the power and resources to protect her and her offspring in the vulnerable time or pregnancy and infancy. Hard-coded into our genes over millions of years of survival on the plains of Africa, our reproductive urges and desire to propagate the species might influence us in ways we don’t consciously understand. It brings up this piquant question: Are human mating rituals really all that different from those of the rest of the animal species? Was the coupling of your parents that produced you very different than the dogs down the street in heat?

media type="custom" key="12146940" You reach a certain age in the middle of middle school and then it hits you like a truck: the glands start pumping chemicals through your body that greatly affect your mood and actions. This is the onset of puberty, and it signals the beginning of sex changes which indicate early maturity. In short, you are no longer a “child,” even if you are still far from being an adult; it is perhaps that awkward time known as “adolescent” when the body changes, all is confusion, and one grapples with powerful new feelings and impulses. This is a famously difficult time in life, but successfully navigating and maturing past adolescence is crucial to becoming a well-adjusted, healthy adult. But oh! The chemicals! How they afflict! Our brains… awash in the bath of testosterone.. the dopamine, the serotonin! Argh! Is this what makes us “human”? Unbelievable highs and impossible lows? Is this a good thing? Might it be better to be a child forever? What would Shakespeare say? What about the artistic glories of our civilization built around love and the glorification of life? What about Dante and Petrarch, and their Beatrice and Laura? “Soul mates”? Love and marriage? “Until death do us part”?

media type="custom" key="12146950" It is a truism that to fall in love is to suffer a sort of short-term mental illness, and the symptoms for falling in love are identical to those suffered by textbook manic depressives: mania and feelings of bliss, then alternating with anxiety, insomnia, and extreme depression. You can be fond of someone and like them very much, but once you move past that boundary and are “in love” it is a whole other world. You are at your most vulnerable and dependent, and at the same time you are at your most capable of joy and fulfillment. So many students in our class claim they have never been in love before. Would you look forward to what is happening in this video? To be "love sick"?

media type="custom" key="12146964" This lively speech seems to answer, in the opinion of one woman, many of the questions posted in the last few videos. “Why love?” indeed!

media type="custom" key="12146978" In his grave Jefferson would have writhed in pain to see what America had become by 1890, at least in its urbanizing capacity. From millions of years of evolution to a relatively late adjustment to an agricultural lifestyle which endured for thousands of years, America had changed from primarily a rural nation of farmers to increasingly a nation of manufacturers in cities. And this change accompanied a rapid acceleration of human culture that manifested itself in many disciplines: music, technology, science, etc. Truly, by 1890 we lived in the “accelerated” culture that Henry David Thoreau decried decades earlier. And compared with Mexico or India (or even the American south), the United States had lost touch with its traditional roots – a trend that would only increase in the 20th century.

media type="custom" key="12146988" The “New Immigrants” from the rural areas of southern and eastern Europe brought a mix of foreign language, foreign religion, and foreign cultures into a United States which hitherto had seen much immigration from regions outside of Western Europe. These Italian Roman Catholics and Russian Jews had never lived in a city before, and now there were in New York City. These country folk were now part of the diverse and exciting but dangerous and often unhealthy cities that factories, steel, and electricity had given rise to in the United States. Critics claimed Europe was vomiting and that these newcomers would ruin the United States, while others claimed America was the refuge for the tired and the poor yearning to breathe free and make a new start in a better country.

media type="custom" key="12146998" As immigrants approached Ellis Island and gained a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty, so would begin their new adventure in helping to build modern America – changing the country, and in turn being forever changed by it – another chapter in the American Experience and immigration. Like the Irish before them and the Scots Irish before them, native born Americans claimed these “new immigrants” were could not be assimilated into the body politic and would ruin the country. But like other immigrants before them, the Italians and Slavs would prove to make good Americans. To this day Italian or Jewish Americans are almost no different than any other Americans and suffer almost no discrimination.

media type="custom" key="12147010" The Mafia is a historical reality in American history – the dark underbelly of the Italian immigrant experience of organized crime that mostly preyed on members of the same ethnicity. And there was a Jewish organized crime back in the day, as well as many Mexican American street gangs and organized criminal syndicated today. It was a tempting but ominous choice to turn to crime to make your way in a new country, and in the life of Vito Corleone it would be one where the sins as well as the wealth from crime would be visited onto the next generation, with devastating effects.

media type="custom" key="12147050" To walk the streets in the lower east side of Manhattan in 1905 would be a heady experience: in Little Italy, you might as well be in Naples or Sicily; in other neighborhoods, it is as if you were in a “shtetl” in orthodox Jewish eastern Europe where life was in Yiddish. An incredible diverse place, and if you let your imagination flow in watching this video clip you can almost feel as if you were there – just like today, where the struggle between the good, the bad – where the ugly rages in the human heart – in both immigrant and native-born alike.

media type="custom" key="12147066" The westward migration of American onto the Great Plains would have to wait until the Civil War settled certain national questions of purpose and leadership in the United States. But once that question was settled by the secession of the Southern Democrats in 1861, the country moved aggressively to fill places like Kansas and Nebraska with “free soilers” ready to make it the “breadbasket” of America, if not the world. The Transcontinental Railroad Act, Homestead Act, and the Morrill Land-Grant Acts meant that the West would be developed. This of course meant the corralling of Native Americans and buffalo on the Great Plains, and this tragically and painfully took place. And then the railroad allowed isolated settlers to try and build farms on the open expanses of the Great Plains – an economically precarious undertaking, subject to inclement and extreme, drought, prairie fires, social isolation, etc. And then there were the silver and copper mines and miners, and then the cowboys during the period of the “open range” and “long drive.” What this meant for America was in some ways simple: the country would have meat from down in Texas and corn and grain from the plains that move by railroad to Chicago for processing before being delivered to the rest of a hungry country. The perceptive reader can clearly see our modern America taking shape in front of your eyes.

media type="custom" key="12147078" This video explains the myths versus the realities of outlaws, gangs and posses in the old west of cowboys in the age of the open range. Our understanding of this history has been irreparably damaged by Hollywood movies and cheap novels. Try to see how it really was in history.

media type="custom" key="12147082" Farmers had once been the “most precious part of the state.” It were farmers that Jefferson led to victory over the Federalists in the “Revolution of 1800.” It were farmers who Andrew Jackson had led to victory in 1828 as he took back government from the “special interests” and corrupt “insiders” who bent government to favor the few over the many. Farmers had made up the vast majority of the population under Jeffersonian and Jacksonian Democracy, and they had basically run the country. But farmers in America by the late 19th century were on the verge of becoming bankrupted peasants – sharecroppers, renters, persons in desperate economic circumstances. Overproduction, international competition, high tariffs, and expensive farm technology all combined to result in farms mortgaged to the hilt – or worse. And the government, controlled by Republican business sympathizers, did almost nothing to help farmers. The political reaction of farmers to the crisis in the business of farming crystallized in the Populist movement in the West and South. Like a tornado on the Great Plains this emotional political movement sought to use the power of government to remediate the ills of farmers – to bring “social justice” to the West and to the farm.

media type="custom" key="12147088" The farmer uprising that formed and gave power to the Populist Party would ultimately justify that old saying that in American political life third parties “sting only once and then die.” The Populists congealed behind the idea of legislative relief for farmers by, among other measures, the adoption of bimetallism which would prompt inflation and relief for debtors. Democrat William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska would seek to lead “Silver Democrats” against “Gold Democrats” in the Democratic Party nominating convention of 1896 with his famous “Cross of Gold” speech, and he enjoyed huge success – becoming the Party’s candidate in the national election and gaining support for silver on the Democratic Party platform. In effect, he stole the Populist Party’s position for the Democratic Party, coopting their support and killing off their momentum. And in the resulting national election Bryan would lose to Republican William McKinley in what I call “the last stand of the farmers.” Never again would a national election be waged primarily on the farm vote, and this election shows just how much the nation had changed since the days of Jefferson and Jackson. A crucial weakness in Jenning’s position was his inability to win the support of urban factory workers for complicated cultural reasons. Power by 1896 was in the “steel belt,” and farmers and rural America was on the defensive; and this is a trend which would persist until currently only some five percent of Americans work in agriculture. Ultimately, the election of 1896 was a victory for the forces of conservatism and the Republican Party based mainly among industrialists in northern cities. To be more specific, look at the electoral votes from New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois. And who controls the votes in those states? As America prepares to start the 20th century, the nation has drastically changed since just the beginning of the Civil War. The modern America of steel and electricity in 1900 was prepared to take its place on the world stage with the other great powers such as Great Britain, France, Germany, and Russia.

media type="custom" key="12147098" Dating back to approximately the year 2000 we human beings have gained the capacity to examine our genome in detail – to be able to read “the book of life.” Many thinkers have proclaimed that the 21st century shall be the “genomic century” of fabulous and fantastic medical therapies and genetic enhancements. Clearly, we can more easily see the genetic components of diseases and character traits. But to what extent are we a combination of the DNA given to us by our parents? Our predilection to diseases such as cancer, mental illness, Down ’s syndrome, or alcoholism? Intelligence, for example, is largely inherited, as is skill in sports. But how important is this “nature” we are born with? Are we trapped by our DNA into certain limits? And how important is our “nurture” – our families, the culture we grow up in and sets expectations and rules for us, the media scape which occupies so many of our hours as we stare at screens. “Nature” or “nurture”? Or what combination of both combines to make us who we are? And to what extent are we free to make our own decisions about the person we wish to become? To what extent are we limited and controlled by hereditary and social forces that sometimes we don’t even know are there? Will these issues only become more important as make more scientific breakthroughs as this “genomic century” proceeds?

media type="custom" key="17199242" A few concluding thoughts to end our Darwin and the "propagation of the species" unit with...

media type="custom" key="12147106" The young man – standing on “her steps with my heart in my hands” – would do just about anything to make their relationship work. But it is for naught; she is impossible – “just like a maze / where all of the walls all continually change.” It will not work, and the young man finally concludes that “I'm starting to see / maybe it's got nothing to do with me.” This young woman has major relationship issues, stemming from the fact that her father abandoned her when she was a child. She has struggled ever “since the day she saw him walking away [and] now she's left, cleaning up the mess he made.” The statistics show that children whose parents have divorced are more likely to divorce themselves when they grow up. The same could be said for sexual abuse victims, who often tragically move to abuse others as a result. Boys who see their fathers beat up their mothers often do the same to their wives decades later. Often we grow up to realize with a shock that we have become just like our own parents, and this is something many as teenagers said they would never do! To what extent are we trapped by the circumstances of our family and past? Products of parental DNA and family social dynamics? To what extent can we consciously choose to chart our own path in life independent of parents and family? There are plenty of children whose parents were alcoholics who do not become addicted to alcohol themselves; they obviously made certain choices to not repeat the mistakes of their parents. And there are plenty of happily married parents who see their children get divorced. In short, having happily married parents does not mean you will be happily married. Having a father who used violence at home doesn’t mean you will. Having a father who abandoned you does not doom you to failed romantic relationships. It is just not that simple. Or is it?

media type="custom" key="12147110" The 1890s has been described by one historian as a “reckless decade” that saw bitter and violent labor strikes between workers and factory owners, as well as anger and resentment by farmers against the rest of the country that seemed to be forgetting them. The gap between the rich and the poor had widened enormously during the Gilded Age, even if overall the country was more prosperous than before. Cries for “social justice” rang loud over the land both in city and country. But what about the role of violence in this call for “justice”? Let’s look at this complicated question through the lens of activists like Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and the radical labor union the International Workers of the World (the “Wobblies”). Goldman had a long history of urging violence against the capitalist bosses who held their workers as “wage slaves” and had contributed to the assassination of President William McKinley, but she could also see that violent action seemed to harm more than help her cause. On principle she was against violence in movements for social justice, yet she saw that any real political change would inevitably be violent. Goldman’s opinion about the uses and abuses of violence was ambivalent and complicated. What do you think?

media type="custom" key="12147116" This is a haunting 1894 song written by Vaudeville singer Charles Lawler typifies the New York of that era with its impoverished German, Irish, eastern European, and Italian immigrants. A popular folk tune of its day, Lawler's song became only more so in 1924 when Alfred E. Smith used it in his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1924. It has come to typify the New York of that time in the popular imagination.

media type="custom" key="12147130" The forces moving the United States towards empire in the late 19th century were not dissimilar to what moved the Europeans to do the same earlier: pride in power, economic opportunity, political aggrandizement and military bases on a worldwide scale, etc. When all the other “great powers” were building empires, what would be the penalty to not having one? For remaining a relatively small-scale national enterprise? “The strong do what they want; the weak suffer what they must,” one ancient historian concluded. American imperialists like Theodore Roosevelt concluded it was time to move abroad with the American empire. The decaying Spanish empire was ripe for the picking both close to home in Puerto Rico and Cuba, as well as in Asia in the Philippines… and the stage was set for what the Secretary of State called “that splendid little war” – the Spanish-American War of 1898.

media type="custom" key="12147140" American President William McKinley was a veteran of the Civil War and had seen what war was like with his own eyes. He was not familiar to re-visit the phenomenon a second time with Spain over the uprising in Cuba, much to the chagrin of Republicans in and outside of his administration (sometimes called “jingoes”) who pushed for war. The “yellow press” sensationalizing the violence in Cuba, however, kept this irritation between the two countries over Cuba inflamed, and with the explosion that destroyed the “U.S.S. Maine” there was little McKinley could do but ask Congress for a declaration of war which he immediately received.

media type="custom" key="12147150" It took only three months, and American troops suffered much more from inefficiency, disease, and boredom than they did from Spanish gunfire. With the “Rough Riders” in Cuba and the attack by Commodore Dewey at Manila Bay, Americans thrilled to the successful news of American forces victorious in the Spanish American War and seemed to put north-south divisions of the Civil War behind them. And the result of this war? Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines? Yet it would seem the United States rushed into a war without clearly thinking through whether it wanted an empire, or what it would do with them foreign lands. The national conversation about what to do with a foreign land like the Philippines would be vigorous and contention, taking place after the war. Maybe the United States should have had this conversation before it decided to go to war in the first place.