Gilded Age

Question 1

TU improvements in the Gilded Age (Wages, industry, membership, AFL, politics, compensation)

Answer 1

• Wages increase by 60%
• Demand increased due to expansion of industry
• Craft-unions grew eg creation of AFL in 1886 which tried to link all unions. Some business willing to work with it.
• Influence in national and local politics
• Sickness clubs which provided compensation

Question 2

TU lack of progress in Gilded Age (inequality, unskilled wages, contracts, conditions, strike violence, divisions, capitalism and courts)

Answer 2

• Inequality and poverty eg 2% owned 30% of wealth
• Unskilled worker’s wages 30% of skilled
• Mechanization decreased demand
• ‘Contract system’ meant workers could be laid off
• Few rights and long hours
• Violence of Haymarket damaged labour power
• Divisions and arrival of immigrants
• Govt and courts favored employers and there was a general lack of intervention

Question 3

AA progress in Gilded Age

Answer 3

• Literacy 1/2 AAs can read by 1895
• Grassroots activism eg Washington and economic advantages
• More AA religious groups
• More AA professionals
• Right to vote and sharecropping gave minimal independence

Question 4

AA limited progress in Gilded Age

Answer 4

• Growth in segregated transport in 1881
• Plessy vs Ferguson 1896
• Segregation and ghettos eg 5000 AAs in Chicago
• Voting clauses restrict right to vote
• Last AA congressman retires in 1901
• Violence and lynchings in the South
• Disproportionate amount of AAs arrested

Question 5

NAs progress under Gilded Age

Answer 5

• Conflict with Custer suggested to some Americans that there needed to be a change in policy
• Virginia and Pennsylvania set up off-reservation boarding schools providing domestic and vocational training as quality on reservations was poor
• Education allowed AAs to find better jobs such as working in Indian agency offices or interpreters
• Reservations gave the opportunity for farming communities
• Reservations gave better healthcare improving life expectancy etc
• Reservations allowed tribal life to continue
• Navajo tribe gained from reservation life eg gained over 5 million acres of land and successful at farming sheep and goats

Question 6

NA rights didn’t improve under Gilded Age

Answer 6

• Reservations were a failure as they lost land and rights
• Hard life on reservations and poor land
• Government subsidies low and often cut when needed elsewhere
• 1890 Massacre at Wounded Knee destroyed the Sioux
• NAs are unable to adapt to allotment policy and so sell of their lands
• Erodes women’s rights as land given to heads of families

Question 7

Women’s rights improved under Gilded Age

Answer 7

• 600, 00 involved in demonstrations in temperance and many of these also supported suffrage
• WCTU was white, middle class women which gave the movement a good reputation. Many who had been active church members got involved with this movement.
• Industrial growth and the war meant more women were in work eg in Atlanta women were 1/3 of workforce. Rise in textiles employed many women.
• Economic growth meant more white collar workers and by 1880s clerical work was open to women
• Women could join Trade Unions
• Urban growth allowed more education opportunities eg 35 Nursing school by 1890 and rise in co-educational schools
• YWCA, 1867 was set-up to care for the welfare of young urban women

Question 8

Women’s rights didn’t improve in the Gilded Age

Answer 8

• Comstock Laws 1873 and rise in illegal abortions
• Less oppurtunities and lower pay
• Divisions eg WCTU and WOMPR and also being excluded from AA Civil Rights. Many women disliked them too.
• Association with Temperance diluted message of equal rights
• Influx of migrants in 1880s and 1890s led to Southern and Eastern European women working in domestic and sex work.
• It was still hard for married women to work and young single women ended up in low payed work
• Double standard meant men didn’t feel they needed to help with domestic chores