Gilded Age

{{bronze}}[[File:69workmen.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Ah, the First Transcontinental Railroad!<sup><small>Largely built by underpaid Chinese immigrants who were the victims of harsh racism.</small></sup> Oh, the modern industry!]]
{{uspolitics}}The '''Gilded Age''' is variously said to have begun around the end of the [[American Civil War]] to the end of [[Reconstruction]], and ended somewhere between 1893 (using the Panic of 1893 as a bookend) and 1900. While the [[Industrial Revolution]] had already begun, it was during this period that the [[USA]] truly moved toward an industrial manufacturing base rather than an agricultural one. Some of the famous people from this period should be familiar to people who have studied American history: Andrew Carnegie,<ref group=note>Introduced a method of producing steel that made it cheap enough to be viable, which was crucial for building cities up as they were hitting peak population density for the height of buildings beforehand.</ref> John Rockefeller,<ref group=note>The richest person in American history, his net worth peaked at $340 billion adjusted to inflation, and at one point he controlled 1.5% of America's economic output, he had a virtual monopoly over the oil industry (and this was BEFORE automobiles were introduced to the then-emerging middle class).</ref> Cornelius Vanderbilt,<ref group=note>Owned a railroad empire.</ref> JP Morgan,<ref group=note>Banking philanthropist responsible for the founding of several modern day corporations, such as General Electric and AT&T.</ref> and Samuel Gompers.<ref group=note>A leader of the then-emerging labor movement.</ref> It is also the time when the nation overtook the [[United Kingdom]] as the world's industrial powerhouse, in part due to the south finally being brought into the industrial age, and some of the South's ''de facto'' slaves migrating to the less racist Northern cities.

The "Gilded Age" moniker comes from the title of the book ''The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today'' by [[Mark Twain]] and Charles Dudley Warner, written in 1873. The "gilding" is supposed to represent the opulent "[[gold]]en" facade of the era which hid the rotten core. It's common to portray the Gilded Age as a [[golden age]] ([[ironic]] considering what we just said) of magnificent technological advancement or a dark age of complete corruption. Like so many other eras, it had its ups and downs and the real picture lies somewhere between both of these caricatures. Carnegie, for one, was representative of the period in many ways. He was one of the most innovative [[business]]men in history but approved egregious anti-[[trade union|labor]] tactics behind closed doors as in the {{wpl|Homestead_strike|Homestead Strike}}.

==Things we got==
*"Captains of Industry" or "Robber Barons," depending on your [[political]] perspective.
*Trusts, also known as cartels. (Yay to the [[free market]]!)
**Standard [[Oil]] - the largest of the trusts, whose descendants include ExxonMobil and [[Chevron]].
*Railways everywhere, and, as a result, modern timekeeping. To avoid collisions and increase efficiency, railroad companies introduced standardized time systems, then nicknamed railway time, and pushed the development of much more accurate timepieces (watches).
*The AFL (American Federation of Labor, not American Football League), and the birth of organized labor as a whole, perhaps as a response to the domination of the [[working class]] by the Captains of Industry, which later became the AFL-CIO after it merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
*[[YMCA|The Y]].
*[[Social Darwinism]].
*The 
Starvation Army
 [[Salvation Army]].
*The fastest period of economic growth for the US,<ref>[http://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/HIST312-Industrialization-and-Economic-Growth-FINAL.pdf Industrialization and Economic Growth,] Saylor Foundation</ref> despite which parts of the era are now referred to as the {{wpl|Long Depression}} (see below).
*Urbanization.
*[[Taylorism]].
*[[Private defense agency|Private defense agencies]].
*Changing [[gender]] roles. [[Women]] working in agriculture had been integrated into the workforce to some degree as they often worked alongside men on farms. With increasing industrialization, women stayed home while the men went out to work. However, the invention of the sewing machine made domestic work easier and more young women achieved financial independence due to new [[job]] opportunities, most often at textile mills. It was in this milieu that the [[Feminism|suffrage and women's labor movement]] was born (many looked back to the similar experiences of the Lowell Mill Girls earlier in the century.<ref>[http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5714 The Lowell Mill Girls Go On Strike, 1836], [[George Mason University]]</ref>) This did not really come into play until [[World War I]], when women went into factories to support the war effort, in the absence of the men (who were overseas 
dying in holes
 fighting in ditches).
*The [[Ku Klux Klan|Klan]].
*Sterilization in surgeries.

==Libertarian crankery==
[[File:The Bosses of the Senate by Joseph Keppler.jpg|thumb|right|300px|"The Bosses of the Senate," an 1889 political cartoon whose message should be obvious.]]
Because of the fact that the Gilded Age was one of low [[tax]]es and [[tariff]]s and little regulation, it is often brought up as a counter-example to [[libertarian]] pipe dreams. Some libertarians will dismiss it as cronyism of the [[spoils system]] and political bribery,<ref group=note>As well as due to both the presence of economical [[protectionism]], and (for non US libertarians at least) the existence of gummint-backed central banks in so many countries</ref> just as many [[communism|commies]] disown [[Soviet Russia]]. Others, again, recast the Gilded Age as a golden age.<ref group=note>Rather than gold plated. See, e.g. [http://crookedtimber.org/2010/04/11/adventures-in-libertarian-blind-spots/ Adventures in Libertarian Blind Spots]</ref> Of course, they always think they will be the next J.P. Morgan, rather than a [[coal]] miner or meat packer. Let's take a look at some ways in which the Gilded Age was not so pleasant:
*Labor wars. [[Strike]]s and outbreaks of violence became more common as a result of unsafe work conditions and low pay.<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20121016194623/http://academicamerican.com/recongildedage/topics/gildedage2.html The War between Capital and Labor]</ref> In fact, times were such that employers could—and did—hire/bribe police to directly attack striking workers, sometimes even supplying axe handles to assist them (and leave no ambiguity about how they expected the strike to be broken).
*[[Jim Crow laws]].
*Private defense agencies, a favorite "[[Utopia|theoretical]]" means of [[privatization|privatizing]] [[law enforcement]] proposed by [[Anarcho-capitalism|some libertarians]], actually existed during this period. They were mostly used as espionage agents to spy on and prevent the organization of labor as well as strikebreakers (i.e., private armies, "Pinkertons"). For the logical extension of the private law enforcement, see the Death Specials.<ref>https://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com/2008/10/17/death-special/</ref>
*While the period overall saw unprecedented economic growth, as aforementioned it also contained the ''longest recorded economic contraction'' in US [[history]]. (65 months, to be exact. For comparison, the 1929-1933 contraction during the [[Great Depression]] lasted "only" 43 months.)<ref>[http://www.nber.org/cycles/cyclesmain.html US Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions], NBER data</ref> It was actually this depression, lasting from 1873-1879, that was originally called the "Great Depression," and subsequently renamed the "Long Depression."<ref group=note>The Long Depression often, globally, refers to the period 1873-1896. The depression hit different nations at different points and affected them in different ways, naturally. The US went into a boom after it lifted out of depression in 1879, which helped its economy overtake that of the UK which saw more stagnation during this period. The US economy would not completely [[boom and bust|nosedive]] again until 1893. The numerous ups and downs have led it to be characterized as a "long-wave depression."</ref> The Panic of 1873 was caused by a [[banking crisis]] in [[Europe]], which spread its financial contagion to the US and popped a financial and railroad bubble, leading to the market crash.<ref>[http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/55175.html The Depression of 1929 is the wrong model for the current economic crisis], Scott Reynolds Nelson</ref> Some libertarians will [[cherry-picking|cherry-pick statistics]] (such as the continuous decline in prices since the Civil War and expansion of monetary base) to [[bullshit]] the depression out of existence. However, they [[wilful ignorance|ignore]] the beating that wages took and the overall decline in growth during this period.<ref>For a fuller treatment, see David Glasner and Thomas F. Cooley. "Crisis of 1873" in [http://books.google.ca/books/about/Business_Cycles_and_Depressions.html?id=e1ZEPd_pQnoC&redir_esc=y ''Business Cycles and Depressions: An Encyclopedia''] (1997), and Philip Sidney Bagwell and G. E. Mingay. [http://books.google.ca/books/about/Britain_and_America_1850_1939.html?id=lpg9AAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y ''Britain and America, 1850-1939: A Study of Economic Change''] (1970).</ref> The business cycle during this era became exceptionally harsh. While the economy generally boomed again in the US in the 1880s, it still suffered periods of contraction from 1883-1885 and 1887-1888. Two more large-scale bank panics would come in the 1890s, with the Panics of 1893 and 1896. This backdrop of wild economic swings (which hurt farmers especially) set the stage for the rise of the [[Free Silver]] movement, [[populist]] candidates like [[William Jennings Bryan]], and eventual attempts at stabilization such as the [[Federal Reserve]].
*Virtually non-existent safety laws and regulations.<ref>[http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/mono-regsafepart02.htm Factory Inspection Legislation], US Department of Labor</ref> Got your legs chopped off in an industrial accident? There's no workman's compensation, so you most likely better get used to panhandling. Not to mention the progressive illnesses you might not even know you had until later in life, like {{wpl|phossy jaw||.}} Oh boy! Also, you'd better hope your industrial accident didn't damage the machinery, or your (now erstwhile) employer was likely to bill you for the damage - and the courts would back him up.
*[[Child labor]]. Libertarians like to claim that increasing wealth caused child labor to disappear to a great extent during this period. However, to what extent the decline in child labor over the period of the 1880s to the 1920s was economic or social in nature is still in dispute (especially depending on the location and industry) and the Industrial Revolution ''itself'' drove demand for child labor (kids could reach into the nooks and crannies, and you didn't have to pay 'em as much!). Child labor was not fully cracked down on until the Great Depression.<ref>See for a brief overview of working conditions [http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/2004/1/04.01.08.x.html The History of Child Labor in the United States: ''Hammer v. Dagenhart''] by Sharron Solomon-McCarthy; a case study of canneries, Martin Brown, Jens Christiansen, and Peter Philips. [http://www.econ.utah.edu/~philips/soccer2/Publications/Canning/Child%20Labor%20BHR.pdf The Decline of Child Labor in the US Fruit and Vegetable Canning Industry: Law or Economics]. ''The Business History Review'', Vol. 66, No. 4, Winter 1992; and a comparison with the UK, [http://eh.net/encyclopedia/child-labor-during-the-british-industrial-revolution/ Child Labor During the British Industrial Revolution], Carolyn Tuttle, Economic History Association.</ref> Ironically, the free marketeers of the time argued that child labor was pretty damn awesome because it "built character" (though strangely, few of them put their ''own'' children to work), and to restrict child labor would be an [[Socialism|infringement on their economic freedom]], ultimately leading to economic doom!
*{{wpl|Company town|Company towns||}}, which were often little more than shantytowns and tent cities where the company dictated everything: You were paid with company scrip, shopped at company stores, voted for the company-approved candidate, and, in some cases, were told when it was time for lights out at night. [[Wal-Mart|Sound familiar]]?
*The market did not, in fact, drive ''all'' economic growth. Railroads, those great hubs of industrialization, were built with the aid of federal land grants and subsidies such as those enacted by the {{wpl|Pacific Railway Acts||,}} not to mention large-scale interventionism abroad, especially in the [[Caribbean]] and [[Central America]], which literally gave the monopoly over lives and politics to a number of US-backed companies.

==External links==
*[http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraid=9 The Gilded Age], University of Houston

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note|2}}

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

[[Category:United States history]]
[[Category:Economics]]
[[Category:Libertarianism]]

Categories: United States history, Economics, Libertarianism