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Following the devastation of the Civil War period and the unrest of the Reconstruction era, the United States saw a span of societal prosperity and monumental economic progress called “The Gilded Age”. Specifically, the Gilded Age offered a solution to the prevalent issue faced during the Reconstruction era; the nation needed a new labor system to replace the horrific slavery arrangement. Streamlined by the railroad industry and the rise of massive businesses, the United States transitioned from a predominantly agrarian culture to one characterized by heavy urbanization and seemingly infinite wealth. However, because the control over this wealth was in the hands of a very select number of people, monopolies emerged and the Gilded Age revealed itself as a time of economic inequality and vast corruption. In an attempt to resolve the Gilded Age’s internal hardships, a momentous political movement called Progressivism introduced reforms that restructured America’s economy to better represent the more equality-oriented interests of the common man. It is important to note that Progressivism itself was both split into and competing with other various economic and political “perspectives” (including Social Darwinism, Populism, and Protestantism), ultimately resulting in a nationwide debate to finally determine.
There is no doubt that the revolution of Gilded Age industrialization drastically changed the American lifestyle, but was it for the better? At first glance, the explosion of the railroad, steel, and factory industries painted a picture of ultimate success for corporate capitalism. But to meet the growing demand for industrial workers in commercial cities, the United States experienced a vast population surge between 1870-90. To add to the already present social tension, immigrants were harshly discriminated against and placed in inhumane living conditions. Eventually, they assimilated into the new working culture, shifting the general American population’s hatred towards the large business owners that financed the country’s capitalistic ventures, namely Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, and JD Rockefeller. Propaganda in the form of cartoon editorials emerged as a public attempt to villainize the “robber barons”. Perhaps the most widely known cartoon depicted the industry owners as obese men donned in clothes labeled “trusts”, indicating their complete control over the monopolies of business. Furthermore, they are seen blocking the entrance to the Senate indicating that the wealthy had vast control over America’s political scheme. Eventually, the population’s disenchantment with corporate capitalism is what allowed the influence of the aforementioned “alternative parties” like Social Darwinism, Populism, and Protestantism to reign free and strive to settle the volatility of American society. But because disregarding corporate capitalism meant rejecting its expansive benefits, each perspective’s ideology maintained what they believed to be capitalism’s best traits, all while contending 4 of its foundational principles: perspectives on big business, political orientation, distribution of wealth, and government involvement.
Perhaps the earliest and most well-founded perspective regarding capitalism was of a religious standpoint. The Protestant population, boosted by the influx of Irish immigrants, emphasized the values of individualistic honest work and prudence over brute, animalistic labor, Often, one of the only ways to gain political momentum against the capitalists in the 1870s was to adopt a religious tone [9.4,9.5,9.6 yellow]. The more individualistic Protestant beliefs played hand in hand with the non-interventionist beliefs of laissez-faire economics, which asserted that “The business should decide what wages to pay, the conditions of their factories, what prices to charge, and what labeling to put on their products” (Source 9.19b). However, the laissez-faire system became subject to interpretation and transformed into an argument for “the virtue of self-interest”, called Social Darwinism, which served as an adaptation of Darwin’s “survival of the fittest ” ideology. At the helm of Social Darwinism was Andrew Carnegie himself, who sought justification for the excessive wealth produced by Carnegie Steel, claiming that “the right of the laborer to his hundred dollars in the savings bank, and equally the legal right of the millionaire to his millions” (9.1 Carnegie wealth). Although it may seem that Social Darwinism directly contends the moral foundations of Protestantism, it encourages philanthropy as well, but only because the Social Darwinists felt it was a social obligation to donate some of their wealth to the “inferior” poor. Although Protestantism and Social Darwinism both inserted large sums of wealth into the American economy, there was little done to address problems relating to workers’ jobs.
The Social Darwinist principles set by the “robber barons” in the 1870s and 1880s largely suppressed the voices of populist groups that existed before the Gilded Age, like the Knights of Labor. Despite the Civil War ending several decades before, the life of the working man was not too dissimilar from the objectifying, inhumane slavery system. But unlike the buildup to the abolition movement, anger over working and living conditions were voiced relatively immediately, in the form of the Populist Party. The party that “had emerged out of the cooperative crusade organized by the Farmer’s Alliance in the 1880s”.
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