GILDED
By: Basya Kasinitz
What’s inside: 1. Industrialization 2. Captains of industry or robber barons? 3. Where did they live? 4. Homestead Strike 5. Mary Lease 6. Democracy? Have things changed?
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Before Industrialization...
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Industrialization “The last third of the 19th century saw the United States transformed by the Industrial Revolution, from a predominately agricultural nation that ranked well behind England, Germany and France to the world’s most formidable industrial power by 1900.� 3 2
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...But Industrialization came with a growing disparity between the haves and have-nots...
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Who were the people with a “silver spoon”? How did they get so wealthy?
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With industrialization came new booming industries. A select few individuals rose to the tops of these industries ...
Andrew Carnegie Industry: Steel
Cornelius Vanderbilt Industry: Railroads
These business leaders amassed immense wealth from these industries. Some might say they were “captains of industry” because they created jobs, manufactured cheap goods and donated money to charity. Their critics called them “robber barons” because they exploited workers and bought political power.
Henry Clay Frick Industry: Steel
JP Morgan Industry:Banker and financier of Wall st.
3. Where did these Vanderbilt’s NYC “captains of Mansion industry” or “robber barons” live? Their houses often tried to copy the palaces of the european aristocracy.
Vanderbilt’s Summer home in Newport, RI
Carnegie’s NYC Mansion
Henry Clay Frick’s NYC mansion
FUN FACT: The Carnegie and Frick mansions, along with Vanderbilt’s summer home, are now museums!
How The Other Half Lives By Jacob Riis
In 1890, Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives:Studies Among the Tenements of New York was published. This piece of photojournalism depicted life in the slums of New York City.
The people shown in these images were most likely factory workers who were paid low wages.
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How did workers speak out against inequality?
The Homestead Steel Mill Strike
The Homestead Steel Mill owned by The Carnegie Steel Company Workers at the Homestead steel mill were part of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers - A strong trade union at the time. But Carnegie was determined to break this union to boost productivity2 and revenue...
...so Henry Clay Frick, the plant manager stepped up demands. This ultimately led the workers to strike. In this letter from Frick to Carnegie concerning the Homestead strike, Frick describes his plans to sneak private armed guards into the mill to disband the strike.
In this telegram from Carnegie to Frick, Carnegie gives Frick his full support. He says to “never employ one of these rioters” and to “let grass grow over them.”8
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The hired guards, with the help of the local governor's militia, were able to overpower the strikers. The union was disbanded and workers were forced to accept lower wages and longer hours. This uprising showed how difficult it was for workers to speak out against their employers, especially when government seemed to side with the employers. To Carnegie, implementing longer hours and lower pay would increase his profits.
While some workers unionized and used strikes to speak out, some used public speech as a way to call out inequality and the unchecked power of the “robber barons�.
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Mary Elizabeth Lease was an orator.
She made a living by giving riveting speeches in support of underdogs: labor unionists, suffragettes and, in the summer of 1890, Kansas farmers. In her speech in Topeka Kansas she said:
"Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street and for Wall Street. . . .Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. . . ."9 Like factory workers, farmers also felt the effects of growing inequality. The combination of failing crops, predatory loans and high shipping rates to transport crops to market made most farmers feel helpless while the rich got richer.
6. Increasingly workers began to say, “If I as, as a member of this society lack the ability to pay my bills, and to feed my family then I am not a free citizen of a healthy republic. I’m something, something else, something that the Founding Fathers would not recognize.”6 -Edward T O’Donnell, Historian
How can we have a democracy when some people are so much richer than others? How can wealth inequality undermine democracy?
Do we still face some of these problems today? Do we have “robber barons” or “captains of industry” today?
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Francis Guy, Tontine Coffee House, N.Y.C., ca. 1797, New-York Historical Society, Inventory Number: 1907.32. Theo R Davis, “The New York Elevated Railway, “Harper’s Weekly, 7 September 1878, Vol. 22 No 1,132 Collection of the New-York Historical Society Library. Visions of America, 468 “The Silver Spoom, The Wooden Spoon, No Spoon At All,” Harper’s Weekly, 14 February 1847, New-York Historical Society Library. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Jacob Riis.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., October 7, 2019. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacob-Riis. Helen Dobrowsk, “The Gilded Age”PBS. Public Broadcasting Service. Accessed April 16, 2020. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films /gilded-age/#cast_and_crew. History.com Editors. “Homestead Strike.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, October 29, 2009. https://www.history.com/topics/industrial-revolution/ homestead-strike. “Resources on the 1892 Homestead Steel Strike @ Pitt Archives: Carnegie Steel & Pinkertons.” LibGuides. Accessed April 16, 2020. https://pitt.libguides.com/c.php?g=12523&p=66317. Zinn, Howard (2005). A People's History of the United States. New York: HarperCollins. pp. 288. CC inspire, llc. “The Breakers.” Newport Mansions. Accessed April 16, 2020. https://www.newportmansions.org/explore/the-break ers.
