The Gilded Age

 

Ulysses S. Grant

Horatio Seymour

Jim Fisk

Jay Gould

Thomas Nast

Horace Greeley

Jay Cooke

Roscoe Conkling

James G. Blaine

Rutherford B. Hayes

Samuel Tilden

James A. Garfield

Chester A. Arthur

Grover Cleveland

 Benjamin Harrison

“Ohio Idea”

“waving the bloody shirt”

“Black Friday”

Tweed Ring

Credit Mobilier Scandal

Whiskey Ring

Belknap scandal

General amnesty act

Panic of 1873

Resumption Act of 1875

Bland-Allison Act of 1878

Greenback Labor Party

Gilded Age

Grand Army of the Republic

Stalwarts

Half-Breeds

 

                           1870- 1900

  1. The United States in 1876
    1. Centennial Exhibition Celebrates Progress and Technology
    2. Economic Depression and Social Strife
  2. An Industrial Economy
    1. Agriculture and Industry
      1. Agricultural expansion
        1. production spurt
        2. new technologies
        3. falling prices
      2. Industrial expansion
        1. leading industries: machinery, iron, and steel
        2. reasons
        3. emergence of business cycles
    2. Railroads
      1. Wave of railroad construction
      2. New technology and managerial methods
      3. Economic and cultural impact
      4. Public regulation
      5. Railroad mergers
    3. Big Business
      1. The rise of big business
      2. Structural characteristics of big business
        1. distinct operating units
        2. hierarchical management with salaried executives
      3. Changes in business practice
        1. mass distribution
        2. mass production
      4. Paths to bigness
        1. vertical and horizontal integration
        2. pools, trusts, holding companies, and mergers
      5. Regulation
        1. by the states
        2. Sherman Anti-Trust Act
    4. Industry and Technology
      1. Emergence of science-based industries
      2. New technological systems
        1. railroads
        2. telegraph
        3. telephone
        4. electricity
      3. Sources of technological advance
        1. European scientists
        2. independent inventors
        3. corporate research labs
  3. The Center and the Periphery
    1. The South
      1. Dependence on agriculture, particularly cotton
      2. Persistent poverty
    2. The West
      1. The peopling of the trans-Mississippi West
        1. sources of migration
        2. desire to settle and farm
        3. challenge of farming: aridity
      2. Trend away from consolidation
        1. farming
        2. cattle ranching
      3. Extractive industries tied to global markets and outside capital
  4. Classes
    1. Changes in Class Structure
      1. Emergence of a national elite
      2. Rise of the new middle class
      3. Huge and growing working class
    2. Jobs and Incomes
      1. Divisions within the working class
        1. skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled
        2. men vs. women
      2. Workplace hazards
        1. physical dangers and disease
        2. job insecurity
      3. Impact of workplace technology
    3. Immigrants and Migrants
      1. Scope of immigration
      2. Sources: "new" vs. "old" immigrants
      3. Global phenomenon
      4. Immigrants a significant proportion of the working class
    4. Social Mobility
      1. The ideology
      2. The reality

 

Summary

 

·      President Grant, a politically naïve war hero, presided incompetently over a postwar Era of Good Stealings.  An outraged faction of Liberal Republicans frightened regular Republicans into a modest amount of house cleaning.

·      The Panic of 1873, “Crime of 1873,” deflation, and depression led to debtor agitation for free coinage of silver.

·      The far-reaching Compromise of 1877 settled the disputed election of 1876 by allowing the orderly inauguration of Hayes, ending Reconstruction, and guaranteeing white supremacy in the South.

·      Such Lilliputian presidents as Hayes, Garfield, and Arthur restored honesty and a measure of public confidence in government, culminating in the landmark Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883.

·      Narrowly winning the mudslinging campaign of 1884, the Confederacy-tainted Democrats showed under Cleveland that they could be safely entrusted with the Presidency.

·      Dismayed by the mounting Treasury surplus, Cleveland urged tariff reduction and paid the political price by being narrowly defeated for re-election.