chapterEIGHTEIGHT

The Gilded Age:The Gilded Age:The story of America’s sordid underbelly

GILDED AGEGILDED AGE• Book by Mark Twain

about 1870s– Term applied to post-

Civil War time period

• Description of poverty and corruption during time period of phenomenal industrial and economic growth

LAISSEZ-FAIRELAISSEZ-FAIRE• The free market is best

left to its own devices – it is self-correcting.– Government should not

interfere.

• Market will be driven by everyone’s self-interest – not by brotherly kindness.– Yet it will work out for

everyone.

CREDIT MOBILIERCREDIT MOBILIER• Credit Mobilier company charged

Union Pac $94 million for constructionthat cost at most $44 million.– Gov’t officials bribed w/ cheap CM stock– Made public during campaign of 1872

• Looked bad for Republicans– Speaker of House (Schuyler Colfax, later VP)– Representative (James Garfield, later Pres)

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• Political party gives jobs to supporters as a reward for working toward victory.

• Weak presidents from Lincoln to TR– Nice guys, inoffensive, from swing state (OH)– VP was only to balance the ticket

• Therefore, parties became vehicles for seeking office and dispensing patronage

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• Rutherford B. Hayes – 1st to buck trend– Morally upright (compare

to Grant’s admin)– Appoints qualified

independents– Fires unnecessary

employees• Including Republican

Chester A. Arthur

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• Rutherford B. Hayes– Many in own party are upset.

• Especially when he removedChester A. Arthur from hisposition as customs collector in NY

– No chance to run for President again– The party splits.

• Stalwarts: supported Grant & spoils system• Half-breeds: wanted to reform spoils system• (Independents: wanted to abolish spoils system)

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• Next election, 1880– Republicans eventually decide on

James A. Garfield, a half-breed– They name Chester A. Arthur,

a Stalwart as his VP candidate– (“Waving the bloody shirt”

brings down Dems)

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• James A. Garfield wins (barely).– By July, takes a vacation from office seekers.

(Half-breeds opposed the spoils system.)– In a train station, shot by Charles Guiteau.

• Guiteau proclaims upon his arrest,“I am a Stalwart!Arthur is now Presidentof the United States!”-------------------------------------------->

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• Chester A. Arthur – not what you expect– Prosecuted Star Route Frauds– Vetoed $18 million measure for rivers/harbors– Vetoed Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882– Allied himself w/ civil service reformers

• “Gentleman George” Pendleton• Pendleton Civil Service Act

– Independent commission established to evaluate the appropriateness of public officeholders

IMMIGRATIONIMMIGRATION11

• 2 distinct waves

• Steerage, ghettos, tenements

• Political machines, bosses, graft– Dominated city politics– Tammany Hall &

Boss Tweed

IMMIGRATIONIMMIGRATION22

• Reforms– How the Other Half Lives– Dumbbell tenements– Social gospel movement– Settlement movement

(Hull House)

• Other reactions– Nativism– Purity crusades