VOL. 3 EPISODE 3: CLASS VIOLENCE IN THE GILDED AGE
The Industrial Revolution created a divide between the wealthy and the poor. The result? Class warfare on the streets of America. We discuss the Gilded Age in all its volatility and bloodshed.
“Kill my boss? Do I dare live out the American Dream?”
- Homer Simpson
INTRODUCTION [00:00-03:31]
In the Spring of 1899, in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, employees at a local mine went on strike because their bosses refused to recognize their labor union—the Western Federation of Miners. Unions were a powerful tool for workers. They allowed members to collectively negotiate with their employers and, if necessary, go on strike.
Business owners, however, attempted to keep the mine open and profitable by bringing in new workers. They even hired a private army to escort the new employees inside. To prevent that from happening, the strikers loaded up the mine with 3000 pounds of dynamite…and blew it up.
Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg quickly sent in troops to put down the strike and restore order.
Then, six years later, on the night of December 30th, 1905, Steunenberg, now a private citizen, was returning to his home. As he opened his gate, a hidden package of dynamite suddenly exploded, killing the former governor. Police arrested a man named Harry Orchard who claimed he had been hired by the Western Federation of Miners to get revenge on Governor Steunenberg.1
This violent incident was only one in a long struggle between workers and business owners during America’s Industrial Revolution.
Industrialization transformed America. Factory work—industry—replaced agriculture as the foundation of America’s economy. The Nation urbanized as rural Americans took industrial jobs in the cities, and it became more diverse as immigrants from overseas came to do the same. Their labor produced unprecedented amounts of wealth, but it was hoarded by a new class of industrial capitalists.
The last three decades of the 19th century, when the Industrial Revolution occurred, are called the Gilded Age. Mark Twain coined the term.2 Gilded means to be covered in gold, but the connotation is negative. It implies that the gold is covering up and disguising something’s true value, hiding the rotten or rusted thing underneath. It’s a good name for this time period.
The rich got richer, while the workers suffered in poverty. The conflict between America’s workers and business owners grew so intense that it bordered on class warfare.
Historians call it the struggle between labor and capital. In other words—manpower vs. money.
Today we are going to tell the story of industrialization and the class violence it spawned.
Let’s dig in.
—Intro Music—
[Welcome to American History Remix, the podcast about the overlooked and underexplored parts of American history. We’re glad you’re here!]
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION [03:31-09:56]
Class distinctions have always been present in America, but industrialization made those distinctions more pronounced. The Industrial Revolution was when, as the name suggests, industry replaced agriculture as the basis for the economy. It did not happen fast. In fact, it took about a century.
The first wave of the Industrial Revolution in America is called the Market Revolution.
It had two sources—transportation and machine technology. The first railroad boom in America occurred between the 1820s and 40s. The transportation network linked together the previously disconnected nation. Meanwhile, new water and steam-powered machines allowed businesses to mass-produce products. And those products could now be shipped nationwide.
The Market Revolution was a powerful transformation, but it was centered in the northeastern states where the transportation network was strongest.
The second wave of the Industrial Revolution occurred in the closing decades of the 19th century. It was like the Market Revolution…but on steroids.
It was sparked by a post-Civil War railroad boom. In a five-year period between 1868 and 1873, Americans built 29,589 miles of railroads.3
The primary example being the first Transcontinental Railroad which, completed in 1869, connected Sacramento to Omaha. The second Transcontinental Railroad, completed in 1883 connected the Puget Sound with Lake Superior.4 The Southern Pacific Railroad connected New Orleans to San Diego in 1885, then extended into the Pacific Northwest two years later.5
There were more. But you get the picture.
Composited digital restoration of the 1887 map entitled Diagram of the Transcontinental lines of road Showing the Original Central Pacific and Union Pacific And their Competitors. United States Pacific Railway Commission Report to the Congress of the United States Senate Executive Document No. 51 (50th Congress, 1st Session) (original map)DigitalImageServices.com (digital reconstruction & restoration), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
The railroads enabled easier and faster transportation. In 1850, the trip from New York City to San Francisco took eight months overland or required sailing around South America. By 1905, the same trip took only three and a half days by train.6 And railroads in the West allowed the entire nation to tap into the region’s natural resources.7 The coal mines of Colorado, for example, literally fueled railroad engines. Cowboys from Texas brought cattle to the rail lines to ship them east to feed American cities.8
The railroads fueled related industries as well, especially iron and steel. The roads themselves were built with steel, as were the railroad cars.9 Cities like Pittsburg and Chicago developed robust metal industries to meet the demands of the growing railroad network. Between 1870 and 1910, the number of iron and steel workers in the nation increased by a staggering 1200%.10
As the iron and steel industries grew, manufacturers began producing mechanical farm equipment, such as the iron reaper and the steam-powered grain thresher.11 It sounds boring, but it’s actually really important. Mechanized farming was simply more efficient than plowing a field by hand.12 To produce 20 bushels of wheat in 1830 took a minimum of 60 hours. By 1890, the same work could be done in 4 hours.13
Beginning in the 1870s, bonanza farming became popular in places like California and the Dakotas. Gigantic farms, 7000 acres on average, produced massive harvests via mechanized farming.14
Those harvests flowed on to Europe, where the surplus reduced the cost of food and undercut European peasants. Many of whom then migrated to the United States to join the growing industrial work force.15
And that is why the steam-powered grain thresher is actually important.
Another ingredient in industrialization was the harnessing of new sources of energy. During the Market Revolution, Americans utilized waterpower machines. By the end of the century, waterpower was replaced by steam, gas, and electricity. Cities like Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Chicago, each rich with coal deposits, became large industrial centers.16 In 1882, inventor Thomas Edison opened an electric power plant in New York City, providing power to local businesses and the homes of the wealthy.17
Together, these developments created an economic feedback loop. Railroads connected the Nation, the steel industry allowed for mechanical farming, farming grew more efficient, and Americans left the farms to work in factories in the cities fed with food brought in by the railroads. See how it was all connected?
Rather than a series of events, the Industrial Revolution is better understood as multiple developments—railroads, iron, mechanical farming, factories, fuel, urbanization, etc.—all benefiting from and contributing to each other.
The result transformed the American economy. In 1800, most Americans lived and worked on their own farms. In 1880, commerce overtook agriculture and became the largest sector in the American economy.18
Oswego Starch Factory (T. Kingsford & Sons) located in Oswego, New York, illustration, circa 1876. See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
TITANS & ROBBER BARONS [09:56-12:24]
As America industrialized, small artisan shops were replaced by gigantic corporations. The men who owned them amassed unimaginable wealth and power. They became so-called titans of industry, often denounced as “Robber Barons” who got their wealth by ruthless and immoral means. There were lots of them, but we’ll mention two.
Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish immigrant to America. He built a steel mill in 1875 that he continually expanded over the following decades. He kept costs low by suppressing worker wages and replacing skilled workers with machine labor whenever possible. Rather than simply molding steel, he bought mines where the iron ore was extracted and sought to control the entire production process.19 Carnegie dominated his industry.
Adjusted for inflation, he’d be worth about $309 billion today, making him one of the wealthiest men in American history.20
Andrew Carnegie. Theodore C. Marceau, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Another titan was J.D. Rockefeller, the world’s first billionaire.21 In 1870, he founded Standard Oil in Cleveland, Ohio. It was a lucrative business. Oil was used for lamp light as well as lubrication for all those fancy new machines.
Standard Oil then began buying up other oil companies, consolidating control of the resource. Rockefeller made secretive deals with railroad companies, allowing him to ship his product at a reduced rate. He could therefore sell oil at a cheaper price and undercut his competitors.22 Shady deals worked out well for him. Within ten years, Rockefeller controlled 90% of the Nation’s oil supply.23
There were not yet any laws prohibiting monopolies. And so, Rockefeller and Carnegie seized control of their industries and became two of the wealthiest men to ever live.24
1904 cartoon depicting Standard Oil as an evil octopus. See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
INEQUALITY & WORKING CONDITIONS [12:24-15:04]
But while the upper class got wealthier, the workers struggled to survive.
The poverty line in the 1880s was $500 a year. 45% of industrial workers lived just barely above that line. 40% lived below it. Which means, if my math is correct, only 15% of laborers lived comfortably above the poverty line.25
The employees in Andrew Carnegie’s factories worked 12-hour shifts for 6, sometimes 7, days a week. They labored next to open furnaces with molten iron, burning at an incredible 3000 degrees. They were easily injured, maimed, or killed on the job.28 There was no workman’s compensation, no minimum wage, and no social security for laborers.29
Likewise, miners worked under the constant danger of cave-ins or dynamite accidents. Working in a mine is dangerous anywhere, but injuries and deaths occurred more frequently in American mines than they did in countries like the UK or Germany.30
But the railroads were the most dangerous industry of all. By 1890, an average of 1567 railroad workers died each year. Another 19,000 were injured.31 Between 1890 and 1917, 72,000 railroad men were killed on the job. Nearly 2 million were injured.32 It wasn’t cool, exciting stuff like when a mine blew up. They died or lost limbs doing boring regular work—coupling the cars, setting the hand breaks, falling off the top of a moving car.33 I guess that one is kinda cool.
One observer at the time remarked that factories, mines, and railroads were producing “an army of cripples.”34
HEALTH [15:04-17:13]
Things weren’t much better for the lower class when they returned home from work. The urban poor lived in crowded tenement housing. A building boom in the 1880s and 90s saw the construction of sixty-thousand new tenements in New York City alone. Tenements had three or four rooms per apartment, four apartments to a floor, and one bathroom per floor, except when they only had an outhouse in the courtyard.35
In 1900, a government study found that over 255,000 people lived in tenements in New York City, but only 306 of them had access to a bathroom in their building. Those who had a bathroom were better off…I guess…but not by much. In one building, city officials found that a shared sink was used by a baker for water, a fishmonger to wash his fish before sale…and a third neighbor used the sink as a urinal.36
Jacob Riis, "Lodgers in a Crowded Bayard Street Tenement--'Five Cents a Spot'." Jacob Riis, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Unsurprisingly, tenements were hotbeds for disease. They were overcrowded and poorly ventilated. Tuberculosis, cholera, and malaria were among the primary killers.37
But it wasn’t just the housing. Whole cities were dirty. The coal industry blanketed the city of Pittsburg in near constant smoke. One observer remarked, “Every street appears to end in a huge black cloud, and there is everywhere the ominous darkness that creeps over the scene when a storm is approaching.”38
Living in Mordor meant that the health of the American people declined by just about every measurable standard. Infant mortality increased, average life expectancy declined, and average adult height, which is indicative of childhood nutrition, also declined.39
CLASS COMPARISON [17:13-18:23]
While the poor lived in tenements, the Titans of Industry constructed mansions for themselves. Andrew Carnegie, for example, built a 64-room mansion next to Central Park with electricity, an elevator, a wine cellar, bedrooms for his servants, bedrooms for his guests, and bedrooms for his guests’ servants.40
The contrast was hard to ignore. President Rutherford B. Hayes warned, “free government cannot long endure if property is largely in a few hands and large masses of people are unable to earn homes, education, and a support in old age.”41
"The protectors of our industries." February 7, 1883. Cartoon showing Cyrus Field, Jay Gould, William H. Vanderbilt, and Russell Sage, seated on bags of "millions", on large raft, and being carried by workers of various professions. Date 7 February 1883. Library of Congress, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Despite all the economic progress, the lower class was left worse off than before. This disparity between the wealthy and the poor is key to understanding the social tensions of the era.
PANIC OF 1873 [18:23-20:24]
With more Americans than ever relying on an employer for wages, the cyclical ups and downs of business impacted Americans like never before.
In 1873, a financial crisis rocked the Nation. What we now call “recessions,” Americans at the time called “panics.” So, it’s called the Panic of 1873. I, for one, am glad we changed the name.
Triggered by an economic crisis in Europe, the US stock market crashed in the fall of ‘73. It didn't recover until 1879. Between 1873 and ‘78, railroad stocks declined by 60%. Within the first five years of the Panic, half of all iron molders closed. In 1873 alone, there were 5000 bankruptcies. In 1878, there were 10,000.42
Unemployment was a new concept, and records from the time are incomplete. But current estimates are that in 1878, national unemployment was probably 15%.43
Americans were shocked by the situation. When the poet Walt Whitman observed the number of homeless and vagrant workers on the streets, he offered a dire warning: “If the United States, like the countries of the Old World, are also to grow vast crops of poor, desperate, dissatisfied, nomadic, miserably-waged populations…then our republican experiment, notwithstanding all its surface-successes, is at heart an unhealthy failure.”44
GREAT RAILROAD STRIKE OF 1877 [20:24-24:01]
The Panic of 1873 put additional stress on the lower class. Having struggled enough, the workers rebelled in what is called the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.45
It began when the president of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad decided to cut the wages for his workers on the same day that he approved a dividend for company shareholders. He expected the workers would fight back, but he assumed it would be easy to quell. He misjudged the situation. On July 14th, 1877, workers on the B&O in Camden, New Jersey walked off the job. The strike then spread to Maryland. The workers then began a blockade, blocking all freight traffic and demanding their wages be restored.46
Then, the strike spread across the country. Although it began with railroad workers, other laborers soon joined in. As one historian said, “the strike ignited social tensions that had been developing for a decade.”47
The American public was already frustrated with the railroad companies. Trains crossed through cities, cutting through neighborhoods, literally crushing people who got in the way. In major cities, hundreds of people died every year.48 So, when the railroad workers went on strike, the people rose up in revolt.
As the strike spread, it also turned violent. In Martinsburg, West Virginia a striker was shot and killed by a militiaman.49 In Baltimore, the local militia was met by an angry crowd pelting them with stones. Some militiamen relented, while others fired into the crowd. In the end, one soldier and twelve civilians were killed, including a 15-year-old newsboy.50
But it was in Pittsburgh where the real action happened. There, militiamen attempted to end the blockade and clear the tracks of the strikers, women, and children, and again allow the trains to run. There are conflicting versions of what exactly happened next, but someone fired a gun. Then, the militia fired into the crowd and killed somewhere between 10 and 20 people, again the record is unclear. Their deaths only further enraged the city. The crowds grew, and the militiamen abandoned their posts. The mob gained control of the railroad yards then destroyed, looted, or burned 2000 railroad cars, 40 buildings, and a 3-mile stretch of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The riot only ended when they ran out of things to destroy.51
"A Steeple-View of the Pittsburgh Conflagration." Engraving showing the burning of Union Depot and Pennsylvania Railroad yards, Pittsburgh, PA during Great railroad strike of 1877, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Like the Panic itself, the strikes frightened many Americans who expected their country to be free from class conflict. A New York Times article lamented “The days are over in which this country could rejoice in its freedom from the elements of social strife which have long abounded in the old countries.”52
SOCIAL DARWINISM [24:01-25:51]
There was more to the class divide than wages. Business leaders at the time embraced an idea called Social Darwinism. They took the ideas of Charles Darwin regarding the evolution of species through natural selection and applied them to public life—to business. “The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest,” said J.D. Rockefeller, “the working out of a law of nature and of God.”53
The era’s biggest proponent of Social Darwinism was William Graham Sumner, a professor of economics and sociology at Yale.54 “Competition is a law of nature,” he said. He admitted it creates inequality, but who cares? It leads to progress. Equality and giving to those in need would “favor the survival of the unfittest.” According to Sumner if you want to improve society, let the poor and the weak die. They hold society back.55
Social Darwinism was a brutal philosophy, but it allowed the Titans of Industry to rationalize their wealth and success. Their ruthless actions were simply in accordance with nature. If others did not succeed, it was because they were weak and unfit to survive.56
CORRUPTION [25:51-26:57]
Big business even held sway over the government. Railroad companies often sold discounted stocks to congressmen in exchange for federal contracts.57
The most egregious example was the Credit Mobilier scandal. Credit Mobilier was a dummy corporation created by the Union Pacific Railroad, the western branch of the first Transcontinental Railroad. The builders of the line offered politicians discounted stock in the company in exchange for federal funding.
"The Bosses of the Senate." Political cartoon by Joseph Keppler, first published in Puck, circa January 23, 1889. Joseph Keppler, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Several politicians were implicated, and a congressional investigation in 1872 also found that then Vice President Schuyler Colfax had accepted bribes from Credit Mobilier while serving in Congress in the 1860s.58
The upper class had power, wealth, and influence and frequently wielded the power of the State against the workers.
ORGANIZED LABOR [26:57-27:48]
The poor could do little as individuals. Workers came to realize their only hope was in joining together.59 That’s where the unions came into play.
The Knights of Labor was founded in 1869 in Philadelphia and became one of the most powerful unions of the era. By the 1880s, they had chapters across the country and included workers from a multitude of industries: iron workers in Chicago, grocery clerks in Omaha, telegraph workers in Atlanta, etc.60 Likewise, a federation of diverse trade unions, called the American Federation of Labor, or AFL, was formed in 1886.61
CLASS & RACIAL VIOLENCE [27:48-30:26]
This brings us to another dimension of the story—race. Today, we’re focused mostly on class violence, but the line between class and racial violence was often blurry.
For example, the Knights of Labor accepted Black and female members into their union, but they and the AFL supported Chinese immigration restriction.62
Even after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, white hostility towards Chinese laborers simmered. And, as we’ve seen, tensions could easily turn violent. The events in Rock Springs, Wyoming capture the situation well.
There, the Union Pacific Railroad employed white and Chinese workers in the mines that the company owned. Whenever there was a labor dispute with white workers, the company would bring in Chinese workers who would accept lower pay. Workers of European descent grew frustrated with both the company and with Chinese laborers. In September of 1885, frustration boiled over, and white miners lashed out at both.
"The Massacre of the Chinese at Rock Springs, Wyoming." Illustration of the 1885 riot and massacre of Chinese-American coal miners, by white miners. See file page for creator info.
A mob of 100 to 150 armed men surrounded Rock Springs’ Chinatown. They shot Chinese workers at random and set their homes on fire. Some burned to death inside, while others were shot as they fled their flaming homes. A few escaped to the surrounding hills and died of their wounds or exposure. The mob then turned on their railroad bosses and ordered them to flee the town. When it was all done, the mob had killed about 50 Chinese workers. Some were buried, but many were left to rot in the street.
The events in Rock Springs were not an isolated incident. In Tacoma, WA, a white mob likewise burnt down their Chinatown and forced the city’s Chinese to leave.
In the minds of many laborers, there was little distinction between worker rights and white worker rights.63
THE GREAT SOUTHWEST RAILROAD STRIKE [30:26-33:19]
Union power was consistently challenged by business owners. A major test of union power came in 1886 when worker protests again erupted across the Nation, as they had in 1877. It comprised of 1400 separate strikes in which 600,000 American workers walked off the job.64
Though diverse and nationwide, the strikes had two epicenters—the Southwest and Chicago.
In the Southwest, businessman Jay Gould had amassed a railroad empire. He owned 15,000 miles of rails stretching from Illinois to Texas to Colorado. Gould earned his title as a “Robber Baron.” He once bragged that he could “hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.”65
The workers disagreed. In 1885, when Gould cut their hours and pay, they fought back. Railroad workers in Missouri walked off the job. Then, the strike spread through Texas, Kansas, Indiana, and Illinois. Within weeks, Gould was forced to restore worker wages and agreed to employ members of the Knights of Labor.66
The workers were showing their power…but it didn’t last.
In March of 1886, one employee in Marshall, Texas was fired simply for attending a union meeting, a clear breach of the agreement they made a year before. The Knights of Labor had to strike again or lose their credibility.67
It’s dubbed the Great Southwest Railroad Strike. 200,000 workers joined in from Illinois, Texas, Kansas, Arkansas, and Missouri…and it quickly turned violent.
In the wake of the violence, public support for the strike dwindled. The courts then ruled that the strike inhibited the government’s ability to deliver the mail, and they were ordered to stop. The Knights of Labor had to give up—they gained nothing from the strike and lost the battle for public opinion.70
HAYMARKET [33:19-36:36]
Let’s turn to Chicago. One of the goals of the Knights of Labor was to end the practice of working 10 to 12-hour shifts and establish an 8-hour workday.71 To support this goal, they planned to protest on May 1, 1886. It was nationwide, but they centered their attention on Chicago. In that city alone, perhaps as many as 60,000 workers joined the strike, and 350,000 joined nationwide. America’s industrial production ground to a standstill.72
It seemed like the strikers were heading toward victory, but the struggle continued. On May 3rd, police officers beat and shot strikers outside the McCormick Plant in Chicago, leaving four men dead. To protest the killings, on the following day, three thousand workers held a rally in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. The event was well under control, as labor leaders simply gave a series of speeches.
…But then someone, and to this day we don’t know who, but someone threw a bomb into the crowd and killed a police officer. In the ensuing chaos, the police officers began firing into the crowd (and likely at themselves). In the end, seven policemen and four workers were dead. Another sixty were wounded.73
Explosion that set off the Haymarket Riot in 1886. See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
The bombing inspired public hysteria, and police soon arrested eight anarchists. Anarchists, if you don’t know, reject all forms of government and hierarchy. All denied any involvement with the bombing. Nevertheless, the men were tried and convicted. Four were executed, and one man committed suicide in his cell. The other three served terms in prison.
The trial was a complete sham. The men were radicals, but there was no evidence they threw the bomb.74
The Nation’s workers were shocked by the trial and its injustice. But it worked to the advantage of the business community. One observer noted that “the bomb was a godsend to the enemies of the labor movement.”75
Anarchists made up only a tiny minority of Americans, but their presence frightened the public. Business owners and elites associated anarchists with those who simply wanted an 8-hour workday. And since anarchism developed in Europe in the wake of its industrial revolution, many came to associate anarchism with immigrants.
SHERMAN ANTITRUST ACT & THE COURT [36:36-39:27]
The social and economic instability of the Gilded Age produced what one historian called a “search for order.” Though not all Americans supported the labor movement, many sought to somehow stabilize their chaotic society.78 By the 1880s, Americas’ traditional commitment to laissez-faire policies, in which people and businesses were free to operate without government interference, was challenged by the general distrust of the monopolies, which people at the time called trusts. Congress then, for the first time, made serious efforts to regulate the economy.79
It passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890, which gave the federal government the power to block or breakup monopolies that were “in restraint of trade.”80 This was not an anti-capitalist policy. On the contrary, Congress was trying to keep the free market from eating itself.
The regulation, however, was initially ineffective, because the Supreme Court, in a series of cases, consistently ruled in favor of the trusts. In 1895, the Court ruled that the Act did not apply to manufacturing, thus gutting the law of much of its power. Then, in another case that same year, the Court ruled that a strike led by a labor union was what actually restricted free trade.81 In a case from 1897, the Court decided that an individual could legally quit their job at a railroad, but a group collectively quitting was detrimental to the public interest and therefore illegal. The Court thereby affirmed the rights of business owners to request government intervention, a.k.a. soldiers, to end a labor strike.82
The Supreme Court Justices were operating out of an older philosophy that oppression and tyranny came from governments, usually in the form of taxation, like when the British taxed the American Colonies. This was the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson, and it’s not wholly wrong. What the justices failed to recognize was that the world had changed. In an industrialized society, oppression could just as easily come from big business as it could come from government.83
HOMESTEAD [39:27-43:30]
The next major showdown between labor and capital came in Homestead, Pennsylvania, just outside of Pittsburgh.
There, Andrew Carnegie owned a huge steel plant. It employed 4000 workers who were members of a union called the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers.84 Carnegie sought to crush that union.
In 1892, his manager Henry Clay Frick reduced wages by 20%, brought in new employees who were not members of the union, and built an 11-foot-high fence topped with barbed wire around the factory to lock out any potential strikers.85
Frick controlled the mill…but the workers controlled the town of Homestead. New workers would have to pass through the town to get to the factory. So, the old workers tried to block them.86
Homestead was located on a river. On July 6th, Frick sent a private police force of 300 men, called Pinkerton men, down the river by barge in an attempt to gain control of Homestead. The men were armed, but so was the town. The fighting looked more like a battle than a strike.
The Pinkertons tried to take the town but were forced to retreat back to the barge, so the workers tried to sink it. They set a lumber barge on fire and tried to collide it with the Pinkertons’. They also threw dynamite. They loaded a train car with oil, set it on fire and tried to run it off the tracks into the barge. They never sunk the boat, but the Pinkerton men surrendered that evening.87
The battle of the landing of the barges with the Pinkertons against the strikers at the Homestead strike of 1892. Arthur G. Burgoyne, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
It seemed like a victory for labor, but on July 10th, the governor sent 8500 militiamen to Homestead. They gained control of the town and protected the new workers.88
However, the chaos wasn’t over. Andrew Berkman was a Russian born anarchist who ran an ice cream shop in Massachusetts—as one does. Seeing the events at Homestead as part of an international class struggle, he traveled to Pennsylvania and attempted to assassinate Henry Clay Frick. He shot and stabbed him but was bad at murder, because Frick survived. Frick claimed that Berkman was acting on behalf of the union. It wasn’t true, but anarchists, as one historian put it, “rarely missed an opportunity to make a bad situation worse.”89 His actions only helped blur the lines between worker rights and anarchism.
The workers were so severely crushed that another major steel mill strike didn’t occur until the late 1930s.90 With the factory running once again, Carnegie secured more power over his workers. The company reduced wages and eliminated breaks. In the hot and dangerous factory, exhausted workers were more prone to accidents. The death rate in Carnegie’s iron and steel mills doubled between 1870 and 1900. All the while, Carnegie made a fortune.91 Ironically, Carnegie also devoted himself to philanthropy. He personally donated $350 million to various causes. He gave to museums and built a concert hall. He crushed the workers at Homestead and then built a library there.92
PANIC OF 1893 [43:30-44:43]
In 1893, just one year after the Homestead strike, the United States entered into yet another financial panic.
In May of that year, a rope-making business called the National Cordage Company collapsed. It’s strange that a rope-making company could wreck the economy, but it did. It took down several banks which had invested in it. Federal deposit insurance didn’t exist yet, so when a bank collapsed, average depositors saw their savings disappear. The scared public began withdrawing their savings from banks, banks stopped offering loans, and businesses laid off workers. The depression lasted four years, and it was brutal.93
"Nomads of the Street." Street children in their sleeping quarters, New York. Jacob Riis (1849-1914), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
In American cities, unemployment reached as high as 25%. The Nation saw an increase in both mental breakdowns and suicides. In the winter months, many of the poor and homeless froze to death on the city streets.94 The situation only added to the conflict between the classes.
PULLMAN [44:43-47:53]
This leads us to the Pullman Palace Car Company, which built railroad cars. To house their factory workers, they built the town of Pullman outside of Chicago. The town offered homes, shops, churches, and libraries to company employees who paid rent to live there.95
In 1894, in the midst of the economic panic, the company decided to cut wages for their workers by 30-50%. But they did not reduce the rent workers paid to live in Pullman. They also continued to offer dividends to stockholders.
Political cartoon from the Chicago Labor newspaper from July 7, 1894 which shows the condition of the laboring man at the Pullman Company. The employee is being squeezed by Pullman between low wage and high rent. Chicago Labor newspaper, July 7, 1894., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
In response, the American Railway Union organized a strike, led by Eugene V. Debs. 250,000 workers in 27 different states boycotted the company and halted transportation between Chicago and the West Coast.
The Illinois governor was sympathetic to the workers, so the Pullman company reached out directly to the federal government.96 They had an ally in Richard Olney. He had been a railroad lawyer, served on the board of several railroads, and remained on their payroll, all while serving as Attorney General under President Grover Cleveland. He had some sympathy towards the workers but feared a successful strike at Pullman would threaten “the entire organization of society.”97
Olney argued that interference of railroad service disrupted the U.S. Mail. It was therefore within the federal government’s power to end the strike. He ordered strikers to return to work. They refused, and he sent in federal troops on July 5, 1894.98
The soldiers only escalated the situation. Over the following days, the mob retaliated and destroyed property belonging to the railroads. They burnt down several empty buildings in Chicago, blocked railroad tracks, and set dozens of railcars on fire…. But here’s the thing—neither Pullman employees nor railroad workers made up the majority of the mob. The people of Chicago were rebelling. After two nights of violence and destruction, federal troops killed six members of the mob, and the riot finally subsided on July 7th.99
For his part in leading the strike, Eugene V. Debs was arrested for “conspiracy to obstruct the mail.” While in prison he read the works of American and European intellectuals, later converted to socialism, and ran for president five times. He never won.100
MERGER MOVEMENT & GLOBAL INSTABILITY [47:53-49:18]
As Americans recovered from the economic depression, business leaders consolidated their power. The recession had left several railroad companies vulnerable, and the wealthiest Americans bought them up. During the recession, $2.5 billion dollars’ worth of railroads were sold. In the end, nearly 3000 mergers resulted in 300companies controlling half of the Nation’s manufacturing power.101
And the instability and violence continued. In 1901, a few months into President William McKinley’s second term, a young anarchist named Leon Czolgosz shot the President in Buffalo, New York. McKinley died a week later. Czolgosz was the son of Polish immigrants and blamed McKinley for the plight of American laborers.102
Class struggle was indeed a global phenomenon. Anarchists also killed the President of France in 1894, the Prime Minister of Spain in 1897, and the Prince of Austria in 1898.103 Class violence was one of the defining symptoms of industrialization everywhere.
ROOSEVELT & THE PROGRESSIVE ERA [49:18-52:06]
This raises an important question—how the hell do you stop the violence? There was no simple solution. The struggle reached well into the 20th century.
But movements cause counter movements; revolutions cause counter revolutions. The next era of American history, roughly the first two decades of the twentieth century, is called the Progressive Era. It was a response to the Gilded Age. Since the beginning of industrialization, there were grassroots movements to fix and reform society. Those movements finally gained strength in the early 1900s, as more Americans sought to remedy the ills brought by the Industrial Revolution.104
Teddy Roosevelt demonstrates the changing national mood. Becoming president after the assassination of William McKinley, Roosevelt was the first president to use the government to challenge the power of business.
In 1902, when coal miners from Pennsylvania went on strike, Roosevelt didn’t send federal troops to end it. He threatened a federal takeover of the mine, if the owners did not agree to negotiate. They had no choice but to accept Roosevelt’s deal, and he brokered a compromise between the workers and the company.105
In 1904, when the railroads owned by J.P. Morgan and James J. Hill planned to merge into one gigantic corporation, Roosevelt had the Justice Department block the merger. The case went to the Supreme Court, and the Court ruled in favor of Roosevelt, claiming the government had the right to block the merger under the Sherman Antitrust Act.106
Likewise, in 1911, the Supreme Court ruled that Rockefeller’s Standard Oil was monopolistic, and the gigantic corporation was broken up. Today, Exxon Mobil, Amoco, Sunoco, Conoco, and Chevron are all the heirs of Standard Oil.107
At the same time, various overlapping movements called for economic reform, workplace safety laws, fire codes, voting reform, public sanitation, public health, prohibition, immigration reform, etc. Each of these reform movements, in their own way, sought to bring order to a chaotic society.
CONCLUSION [52:06-54:13]
The Industrial Revolution transformed the country. The new economy produced wealth that was unimaginable in prior ages. Yet class conflict seems to be an unavoidable consequence of industrialization. Inequality of wealth, economic volatility, oppression of workers, and the violent conflict between the classes—the Gilded Age was a chaotic era.
The labor struggle did not end when the Gilded Age came to a close, but Americans in the Progressive Era took steps to curb the power of the Robber Barons and empower the workers by using the government.
Whereas the Founding Fathers wanted to limit the power of government to protect the people from tyranny, Americans in the Progressive Era sought to use government to protect people from the oppression of private business. One philosophy for a pre-industrial society, another for a post.
The reform movements were by no means a total success, but the Progressive Era of the early 20th century doesn’t make any sense if we don’t understand the social and economic crises of the Gilded Age.
Thanks for listening.
[American History Remix is written and produced by Will Schneider and Lyndsay Smith. For the latest updates, be sure to follow us on Instagram and Threads. Check out our website for episode transcripts, recommended reading, and resources for teachers. That’s AmericanHistoryRemix.com.]
REFERENCES
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NOTES
1 William S. Greever, The Bonanza West: the Story of the Western Mining Rushes, 1848-1900 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963), 280-83.
2 Rebecca Edwards, New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age: 1865-1905 (Oxford University Press, 2010), 4.
3 Richard White, The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 217.
4 Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011), 48-50, 220-221.
5 White, Railroaded, 205-09; “Oregon and California Railroad,” Oregon History Project, accessed December 17, 2024, https://www.oregonhistoryproject.org/articles/historical-records/oregon-and-california-railroad.
6 Edwards, New Spirits, 40.
7 Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), 23.
8 Steven Hahn, A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910 (New York: Penguin Random House, 2016), 333-35.
9 William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992), 312-13.
10 Edwards, New Spirits, 61.
11 Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, 312-13. Edwards, New Spirits, 43.
12 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 218-29.
13 Edwards, New Spirits, 43.
14 Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 335-36.
15 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 220.
16 Edwards, New Spirits, 39.
17 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 504; Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America, 68.
18 White, The Republic for Which it Stands, 217.
19 Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 344.
20 “Andrew Carnegie’s Story,” Carnegie Corporation of New York, accessed December 17, 2024, https://www.carnegie.org/interactives/foundersstory/#!/.
21 Natalie Burclaff, “Rockefeller: Making of a Billionaire,” Library of Congress Blogs, January 14, 2020, https://blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/2020/01/rockefeller-billionaire/.
22 Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 345.
23 Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America, 85.
24 Edwards, New Spirits, 250.
25 Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America, 90.
26 Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America, 43.
27 Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America, 91.
28 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 662; Edwards, New Spirits, 1.
29 Edwards, New Spirits, 61.
30 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 525.
31 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 526.
32 Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America, 91.
33 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 526.
34 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 524.
35 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 512-13.
36 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 513.
37 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 480, 515.
38 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 494-95.
39 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 477-78.
40 “Carnegie Mansion: Architecture & Interiors,” Cooper Hewitt, accessed May 3, 2024, https://www.cooperhewitt.org/carnegie-mansion-history/.
41 Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1966), 45.
42 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 260-68.
43 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 269.
44 Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America, 70.
45 Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 413.
46 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 346; Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 413-14.
47 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 349.
48 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 349.
49 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 347.
50 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 350.
51 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 350-51.
52 Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 416.
53 Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America, 84-85.
54 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 447.
55 “William Graham Sumner on Social Darwinism,” in Voices of Freedom: A Documentary History, ed. Eric Foner (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011), 2:38.
56 Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), 45-46.
57 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 118.
58 “Smiler,” United States Senate, accessed December 18, 2024, https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Smiler.htm; White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 255-57.
59 David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865–1925 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 2.
60 Edwards, New Spirits, 200.
61 Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 462-63.
62 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 553; “Condemning and Combatting Anti-Asian Racism,” AFL-CIO, accessed July 16, 2024, https://aflcio.org/about/leadership/statements/condemning-and-combating-anti-asian-racism.
63 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 520-22. Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 478; “The Rock Springs Massacre,” Wyoming History, last modified November 8, 2014, https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/rock-springs-massacre.
64 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 518.
65 Then, he bought control of the New York World newspaper and Western Union telegraph, gaining control of key communication lines as well as transportation. Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 420-21.
66 Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 420-21.
67 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 532.
68 Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 422-23.
69 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 533-34.
70 Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 422-23.
71 Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America, 89-90.
72 Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 422.
73 Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 423. Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America, 90.
74 Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 423-24.
75 Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America, 90.
76 Edwards, New Spirits, 247-8. White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 544.
77 Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 424.
78 Wiebe, The Search for Order, passim.
79 Walter Nugent, Progressivism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 13-14.
80 Robert W. Cherny, American Politics in the Gilded Age: 1868 - 1900 (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 1997), 90-92.
81 Edwards, New Spirits, 250.
82 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 818-19.
83 Edwards, New Spirits, 252.
84 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 661. Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 441.
85 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 665.
86 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 666.
87 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 666-67.
88 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 667.
89 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 668.
90 Nugent, Progressivism, 25-26.
91 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 670.
92 White, Republic for Which it Stands, 673. “Philanthropy of Andrew Carnegie,” Columbia University Libraries, accessed May 3, 2024, https://library.columbia.edu/libraries/rbml/units/carnegie/andrew.html.
93 Edwards, New Spirits, 217-18.
94 Edwards, New Spirits, 218.
95 Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 441.
96 Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 441-42.
97 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 784.
98 Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 442.
99 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 786-77.
100 Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 442-44; White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 787. “Eugene V. Debs,” AFL-CIO, accessed July 16, 2024, https://aflcio.org/about/history/labor-history-people/eugene-debs.
101 Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 458.
102 Thomas C. Sutton, “William Mckinley,” in The Presidents and the Constitution: A Living History, ed. Ken Gormley (New York: New York University Press, 2016), 325.
103 Julián Casanova, “Terror and Violence: The Dark Face of Spanish Anarchism,” International Labor and Working Class History 67 (Apr. 2005), 82.
104 Nugent, Progressivism: A Very Short Introduction, 74.
105 Nugent, Progressivism: A Very Short Introduction, 38.
106 Nugent, Progressivism: A Very Short Introduction, 39.
107 Edwards, New Spirits, 44.