Key Concept 6.3 - The Gilded Age produced new cultural and intellectual movements, public reform efforts, and political debates over economic and social policies.
- How did people react to the new social structure?
- How did debates emerge over the government?
How did people react to the new social structure?
In this industrial America, standards of living had increased, the middle class had grown larger, but most of all, the wealth inequality from the rich and poor ballooned. Many people during this time had adapted Darwinian evolution to apply to social structures, coined as social darwinism. This ideology justified the social inequality as a survival of the fittest, and if you were the rich you were meant to be rich.
Other adaptations of this was Carnegie's gospel of wealth. In this, he argued that all the money of the society would be best funneled into the rich, as they are the only ones suitable to use the money for public good. Through this, he believed that the rich are both the most deserving of the money, but also that they have a responsibility to help and better society. He implemented this himself with the creation of many endowments for libraries and the creation of museums. Another influential corporate owner, Vanderbilt, had spent a lot of money in the creation of Vanderbilt University.
There were various other viewpoints that challenged these social darwinistic ideas. One of these was the social gospel movement, which used Christian morals to justify reformation of society. Socialists had also looked to challenge the current society by creating an equal labor run society. An influential socialist during this time was Eugene V. Debs. Like the socialist, Utopian societies had pushed for communal ownership and lessened class systems. Farmers had looked towards the social constructs as a result of unrestricted corporate power, leading them to push for government regulation of the economy. These demands were loosely met with the creation of the Interstate Commerce Committee and the Sherman Anti-trust Act. With all these challenges to the unbalanced class system, it had still persisted.
How did debates emerge over the government?
The political parties during this time had, like it did before, differ over their opinions on the role of the government in the economy. The North had voted Republican and preferred Tariffs, as can be seen with the McKinley Tariff. The South had voted Democratic and had major pushback against the McKinley Tariff. The Republicans had also upheld the Gold Standard for the economy while the Democrats had championed the idea of bimedalism to coin silver and consequently inflate the economy.
Although political parties capturing popular sentiments over businesses and the government, reformers had taken a more individual approach. Many reformers had argued that the government was corrupted by greed on all levels, as seen locally with political machines like Tammany Hall in New York, and nationally with senators elected by state legislatures. Many of these reformers had been middle-class women, and they sought to grant equality to women. They had organized efforts such as the Women's Christian Temperance Movement and the National American Women's Suffrage Association to both gain more autonomy and push for political change. Other women had become social workers to support the poor and immigrants. One prominent example would be Jane Addams and her Hull House in Chicago that inspired many other settlement houses in the rest of America.
Other reform movements continued the American fight against racism towards African Americans. Despite accomplishing the 13th, 14th, and 15th, the court case Plessy vs Ferguson had created the "separate but equal" doctrine which upheld segregation. Others used a social darwinistic ideology to justify racism through an supposed smaller skull size of African Americans. These set backs did not stop the reform movements that were led by Booker T. Washington, who took a passive individualistic take on fighting racism, and W.E.B. DuBois, which fought for immediate rights for African Americans from the government.