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The UNITED STATES, 1865-1900 (6 of 8)

Andrew Carnegie, circa 1878

There was a succession of Republican presidents, from Grant in 1869, followed by Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877, Garfield in 1881, Chester Arthur following Garfield's assassination that same year, and Grover Cleveland beginning in 1885. From its inception, the Republican Party, according to historian H.W. Brands, had been two two parties, "...one stressing social issues, starting with anti-slavery and extrapolating to Radical Reconstruction; the other emphasizing economics, in particular aid to business."

As usual, people with lots of money were able to accumulate more wealth faster than others, and conflict of opinion existed as to whether wealth should be more equitably distributed. Those who were paying wages were not thinking about a greater purchasing power for the masses improving the economy and business in general. Often they worried about competition and about the cost of labor, and they wanted to keep wages as low as possible. Their attitude was that if an employee did not like the pay, the long hours and other working conditions he could quit and go elsewhere. The common worker, on the other hand, would have liked a nice carriage, good clothes and all that belonged to the wealthy, and he would have liked to work fewer hours with more pay and a more spacious home. He also had his parents and in-laws to worry about. There was as yet in the United States no social security or Medicare.

The super-rich were living in great homes, entertaining lavishly and often taking pleasure trips abroad -- as was the fashion. They were leaving money for their children to live in idleness or to devote themselves to "service" if they wished. Many envied or hated the few who were super-rich, but it is not clear that had their wealth been distributed among the masses that it would have amounted to much for each individual.

The super-rich did not like throwing their money away or spending it on needless things -- which had helped them to accumulate their wealth. There was little philanthropy by the wealthy in the 1880s, but before Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie died they would be spending their money to the benefit of society.

Carnegie had been denied a formal education but as a boy in Scotland he had access to a library -- the Tradesman's Subscription Library, where he had listened to readings and discussions of books. Grateful, he would establish more then 2,500 libraries across the United States. in the latter part of the century he estabished schools and universities in the United States, 660 libraries in Britain and Ireland, 125 in Canada, libraries in Australia, New Zealand, Serbia, the Caribbean, and Fiji. His first library in the United States opened in 1889.

Carnegie was a Social Darwinist. He believed that superior people could pick themselves up by their bootstraps and by their hard work as he had. Public libraries, he believed, would give innately superior people an access to reading that would help them do that. He was not Marxist: he did not believe in working people advancing themselves through the labor movement. He believed that if the unexceptional had their way, inefficiency and sloth would result.

Labor unrest had increased in the 1870s, among railway workers and coal miners, and it had extended to factory workers. Police aided by cavalry had been used against strikers. Workers had won in Pennsylvania in 1877 when mine owners gave in and gave their miners a 10 percent wage increase, but most often the strikers had lost.

In 1886, in Chicago, labor agitation and a strike against reduced wages at the International Harvester plant in Chicago produced what became known as the Haymarket massacre. Congress had made the eight-hour day law for federal employees, but people laboring in the private sector in Chicago were still calling for it. People running the city were tied to business interests and hostile to labor organizing. At Haymarket Square, the police broke up a pro-labor rally, during which someone threw a bomb at the police, killing eight policemen, wounding more than fifty other policemen and killing four civilians. A fear of terrorism and "red scare" swept through various other cities. In Chicago, prosecutors were determined to convict someone for the bomb throwing, and the jury system failed. Support for the accused was worldwide. Five labor leaders -- self-proclaimed anarchists -- were sentenced to death and executed. One was alleged to have committed suicide in prison, and two others were given life in prison.

Pro-labor, annual international May Day observances followed, dedicated to the creation of an eight-hour day, which would not be realized in the United States for people other than government workers until well into the 20th century.

At the end of the 1800s, unionized workers would be only 3 percent of the population. The real wages of non-Southern workers had been rising since 1840, at an average rate of 1.5 percent per year. [note] And women were 18.3 percent of those sixteen or older earning wages outside the home.

Book

Progress and Poverty: an Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions, by Henry George, 1879. Online book.

George was concerned about poverty and progress. He was popular and of some influence in Britain. He theorized that everyone owns what he or she creates but everything in nature, most importantly land, belongs equally to all humanity. He was the most influential proponent of the land value tax, an early supporter of the secret ballot. He preferred government issued notes such as the greenback rather than gold. He left the Republican Party and became a Democrat.