The Gilded Age

Question 1

Key strikes of the Gilded Age in the 1870s

Answer 1

1873 Pennsylvania Coal Miners’ Strike

• Brought down by Pinkerton Agents
• 19 main leaders were hung

1877 The Great Railroad Strike

• 2/3 of the nation paralysed
• This disrupted the mail system, a federal government priority, thus allowing the president to send 60,000 soldiers

Question 2

Key strikes of the Gilded Age in the 1890s

Answer 2

1892 Homestead Steel Strike

• Crushed by Pinkerton agents who fired on the crowd
• By 1900 there was not a single unionised steel plant

1894 Pullman Strike

• 250,000 workers revolted as wages were cut by 25%
• Crushed by federal troops

Question 3

Federal acts and policies to counter strikers

Answer 3

1850, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency
- This was used to infiltrate strikes, e.g Molly Maguires and the Homestead Steel Strike

1890 The Sherman Anti Trust Act
- This was used to bar the rights to unionise

Question 4

Increase in wages, increase in inequality

Answer 4

Over the Gilded Age real wages increased by 60% for skilled workers

Economic growth was at 7% over the period

By the 1870s a bricklayer would earn $3 a week whilst an unskilled worker would only earn $1.30

Question 5

Inclusive labour unions

Answer 5

Knights of Labour established 1969 included both women and AA, fighting for shorter days and an end to child labour

• Peak member ship at 700,000 in 1886
• However the union collapsed 1886 with the Haymarket affair where anarchists turned a strike into violent protest, killing 7 policemen

Question 6

Exclusive labour union

Answer 6

The American Federation of Labour 1886 replaced the KOL

• By 1914 it had 2 million members
• It excluded women and AA championing the white male workers

Question 7

Conditions for workers, 1 stat

Answer 7

In 1889 2,000 rail workers were killed in accidents

Question 8

Progressive development of African Americans in the Gilded Age

Answer 8

Booker T Washington’s Tuskegee institute established 1881

• Offers training for the development of the AA community
• The Atlanta Compromise of 1895 demonstrated his want for the development of AAs in order to develop

Literacy rate rise from 5% in 1865 to 65% in 1895

By 1900 there were 47,000 high level AA professional and 30,000 business owners

Question 9

Ghettoisation of the AA population, concentration in the south

Answer 9

23,000 AA lived in Harlem which became almost a separate city within New York with worse public amenities and conditions

Almost 90% of AA lived in the South

Question 10

Lynchings

Answer 10

Between 1885 and 1900 there were 2000 unpunished lynchings, 155 in 1892 alone

Ida B Well’s campaign in 1884 to stop lynchings did not result in any change in policy

The lynching problem was never sorted out

Question 11

AA political rights developments

Answer 11

The Gilded Age brought the erosion of AA political rights

1877 compromise lead AA voting rights being handed to the states

• This lead to white primaries
• Voting taxes
• Literacy and knowledge tests

In 1890 Mississippi drafts a new constitution to exclude AA from voting, the voting rate drops from 67% to 5.7%

Williams v. Mississippi 1898 undermines the right to vote and leads to more voting qualification

Question 12

Development of segregation

Answer 12

The 1877 compromise marked the beginning of the Jim Crow Era

The 1883 Civil Rights Cases ruled the Civil Rights Act 1875 unconstitutional thus opening the floodgates to segregation

1887 Florida becomes the first state to legislate railway segregation

1896 Plessy v. Ferguson rules that segregation was constitutional as long as facilities are separate but equal

Question 13

Example of positive development for Native Americans

Answer 13

The Navajo

• In 1864 they were forced to march 300 miles to a reservation
• Their goat population increased from 15,000 to 1.7 million between 1864 and 1892
• In the same time the land increased from 4 to 10.5 million
• Population rose from 8,000 to 22,000

For some NA the Dawes Act, giving 160 acres to each family was positive

Question 14

Example of broken treaties and the Plains war

Answer 14

• 1868, the 2nd Treaty of Fort Laramie was broken in 1874 when gold was discovered
• The Sioux lost 22.8 million acres in the ensuing war which included the Battle of Little Bighorn 1876 and the defeat at Wounded Knee in 1890.
• 200 civilians and chief sitting bull were massacred

Question 15

Demise of the population and the Buffalo

Answer 15

Buffalo population of 60 million in 1800 and 1,000 in 1900

By 1900 only 100,000 of the 240,000 plains Indians population remained

Question 16

Developments in the political rights of Native Americans

Answer 16

• In 1871 the Indian Appropriation Act ruled that tribes were no longer foreign nations that the federal government could make treaties with
• Elk v. Wilkins ruled that NA could not become citizens
• The Dawes Act caused a u turn from this saying that cultivation of allotments for 25 years could earn citizenship
• Also allotment policy lead to the destruction of the tribe

Question 17

Developments in assimilation

Answer 17

• The boarding schools, e.g Carlisle Indian School established in 1879
• The Dawes Act 1887, each family is given 160 acres to become americanised

Question 18

Exploitation of NA with regards to land allocation

Answer 18

• Reservations were the very poorest land which were the least desirable for white settlers
• With allotment NA were given the poorest land in the reservations the rest being sold off to white settlers, between 1887 and 1934 2/3 of their land was lost

Question 19

Development in women’s employment

Answer 19

• The number of women in domestic work fell by half whilst the number of women in clerical occupations increased 10 fold between 1870 and 1900
• Women only made up 17% of the workforce in 1900
• This specialisation in certain employment like clerical and textile work established a gender wage gap

Question 20

Women in unions

Answer 20

• The Knights of Labour, established in 1869 was inclusive of women, many of whom made up their 700,000 strong membership in 1886
• By the mid 1880s there were 133 women assemblies and 50,000 union members
• The AFL which, after its founding in 1886, became the main national union group did not work with women
• Only 2% of the unionised workforce was made up of women in 1900

Question 21

Development in women’s suffrage activism

Answer 21

• The NWSA and the AWSA was formed in 1869, fusing in 1890 for a unified suffrage movement, however membership did not pick up until after the Gilded Age in 100,000 members in 1915
• 1869 Wyoming then 1870 Utah were the first states to give women the vote in state elections

Question 22

Development in women’s temperance activism

Answer 22

• 1874 the Women’s Christian Temperance Union WCTU was founded by Frances Willard with 20,000 members by 1920, again this movement only picked up after the Gilded Age
• The Anti Saloon League allied with the WCTU and was founded in 1893

Question 23

Development in reproductive rights and education

Answer 23

1873 Comstock laws banned the transportation of information about and physical contraception

By 1900 half of all high school graduates were women, however this was seen as a place to meet eligible husbands not to launch a career