1865_to_1900_as_the_“Age_of_Organization”

1865 to 1900 as the “Age of Organization” The end of the Civil War until the beginning of the Twentieth Century was a time of rapid, all encompassing change for the United States. New methods of industry changed the nation into one that first resembled the modern United States. Big business and commerce became the primary influences for a newer, larger style of government that regulated trade and acted as an arbitrator between industry and the new working class. Cities grew ever larger as the factories required large amounts of labor to be nearby, and people in the cities and the countryside organized themselves to protect their interest. “Economy of scale” became the national bywords, and the yeoman farmer and artisan largely disappeared from the culture. The growth of industry was the dominant factor of change during the period. The Civil War had spurred industrial development in the North to a degree unimaginable in the rest of the world. While the North was well on its way to becoming an industrial powerhouse before the war, fielding and supplying the armies accelerated the process. Facing superior generalship in the Southern Army, the North relied on a war of attrition. The North was much better suited to this type of warfare as their industrial base was ten times as large as the South’s. Likewise the North’s modern infrastructure allowed them to move troops and supplies much more efficiently than the Confederate states. The effort required to mobilize and train the enormous Northern Army produced a large pool of men skilled in organization on a large level, and these men would prove instrumental in the later growth of industrial America. The North enforced a naval blockade around the south for the duration of the war. While it was not entirely effective at first, in time it closed off all foreign trade with the secessionist states. In response to the blockade southern industry developed faster than it had during the pre-war period, but even so at a much slower rate than what developed in the North. Skilled labor shortages plagued the South throughout the war, and slave labor, skilled and unskilled, was a major component of the Southern workforce. The war destroyed much of the infrastructure the South had had before the war, and what little was left was well disorganized and more suited to an agrarian export economy rather than a modern industrial one. The emergence of a strong central government would be a hallmark of the organizational age as well. The southern form of government was a major handicap to their war effort as well as their disparity of industry. They had seceded on the basis of state rights, and consequently the Confederate States had a decentralized government that made coordinating the war effort difficult. The states had difficulty deciding who was to pay for the war effort, and the physical question of where to fight created dissension. The northern government, led by the firm hand of Lincoln, in conjunction with a homogeneous Congress of Republicans, effectively managed a concentrated war effort. The northern government managed to enact an income tax to finance the war effort, and the capital wealth held by the North was used as collateral for bond sales. The end of the war saw the Southern economy devastated. The emancipation of the slaves had two major effects on the plantation system that was the core of the South’s economy. First, the slaves were not anxious to return to the plantation style of work. Share cropping, which gave the cropper a higher degree of freedom than under the plantation system, seemed to be the answer. Freedman would essentially rent land, paying the planter with a share of the yearly harvest. Initially conceived as a temporary solution, sharecropping would lead to prolonged indebtedness of the landless classes and hold the South in an agrarian economy. The second major effect of emancipation was the sudden loss of much of the South’s capital, which had been slaves. “This country without slave labor would be completely worthless,” wrote a Confederate lieutenant in 1863, and he was for the most part correct (McPherson 107). Planters were unable to secure loans for the day-to-day operations of their estates. Republican lawmakers enacted high taxes intended to break up the plantations, and “one-fifth of the entire area of Mississippi…fell into the hands of the state for nonpayment of taxes (Foner 69).” Reconstruction, however, did not significantly change the balance of power in the South. Initially the process of rebuilding the South was left almost entirely to the Southern states. Blacks were left landless and state and local governments passed laws, known as black codes, in an attempt to force them to work at their former plantations. After southern mismanagement of Reconstruction became clear, the federal government imposed military rule over the former Confederate states. The Army and various federal agencies such as the Freedman’s Bureau set about helping the Blacks with their problems. Congress passed the Civil Rights act of 1866 in response to the black codes, and the 14th and 15th amendments protecting citizen’s rights under the federal government and granted universal manhood suffrage respectively. By 1873 reconstruction had run its course, and national support for the black cause was waning. Although a small middle class of professionals had emerged, the South remained under the sway of the numerically small old-money planting class. Industry had made inroads into the southern economy, but northern ownership of most of the South’s post-war railroads and factories made the area the economic backwater of the nation. The Civil War paved the way for western expansion on a scale not imagined before. Movement westward had been slowed by the antebellum question of slavery. Once the war started the Republicans were free of Southern resistance to set up governments and infrastructure in the western territories. The end of hostilities saw a new urgency in the countries move westward. May 10th, 1869 saw the completion of the transcontinental railroad at Promontory Point. The line was symbolic of the countries ongoing expansion. “Manifest destiny” was the term expansionist used to justify the movement westward, which in most cases meant the destruction of the indigenous peoples and their cultures. Settlers and prospectors came into direct conflict with the Indians, and the Federal government was forced to act. Unsympathetic to the Indian’s aims, the Federal government sent troops westward to force the often-nomadic Indians onto reservations. The buffalo, which provided the Plains Indians with their solitary source of shelter, food, and clothing, were virtually wiped out by the Army and professional hunters who found buffalo hide to be a valuable commodity. Gold was discovered in California in 1848, and Americans rushed into the area to prospect. Very few found enough gold to make a living, but many stayed west in the new communities that had been formed to meet the miner’s needs. Other valuable minerals such as copper and silver were present in the West, and large mining corporations were formed to extract them. Company towns were established to house the workers. Government and infrastructure followed the settlements westward. Railroad lines were laid to facilitate the movement of goods and people. Railroad companies were granted large tracts of land by the Federal Government to encourage growth. Railroads sold land along the lines in an effort to populate the regions. Their main goal was to generate a customer base for their services. The arid climate found when passing the 98th line of longitude was not suitable to small-scale farming and the life of a prairie settler was not an easy one. When railway stock speculation burst in 1873, the railroad companies were forced to sell large amounts of land at low prices to new organizations that constructed bonanza farms. These farms covered several thousand acres, and were run like a modern business. The Homestead Act of 1862 granted 160 acres to settlers who often found the amount of land to small to farm profitably, and investors consolidated these tracts into large farms as well. New technologies such as the McCormack Reaper allowed larger farms to become very profitable. Large cattle ranches were established in the southwestern plains. Large herds of cattle were moved to railheads hundreds of miles away, creating the legend of the American cowboy. The reality of the cattleman’s life was different than the popular conception. The cowboy most often worked for a large corporation, often financed by English investors. The pay was low and the work was hard. Many cowboys were minorities or young men who work for a ranch for a short time and then moved on to a better station in life. Barbed wire and the ever-advancing railheads ended the great cattle drives, but the cowboy has taken on a mythical status in American culture. The industry domination of the North and West was rooted in new organizational and business concepts that were developed after the War of 1812. Congress funded internal improvements that sparked the growth of industry and the railroads. America’s abundance of natural resources and long coastline made the country suitable to commerce and America, as an island continent, was free from the threat of war that always loomed over the European powers. The nation turned its energies to industry on a grand scale. The American railroad network was most symbolic of the country’s industrial prowess in the Gilded Age. Railroads were extremely expensive to build. Stock and bonds were sold to help finance their construction and the government facilitated their growth with land donations and other assistance. Railroads generated huge sums of new wealth for the nation and the world. Construction and steel producing firms garnered billions of dollars in contracts and their investors acquired vast fortunes. Industry could now move goods faster and cheaper than ever, allowing them to invest more money in research and development and yet more infrastructure. Once the railroads were built, the challenge was to make them profitable. Competition could be severe and efficiency was a must. A railroad manager had to ensure that his trains were on time, not at risk of colliding with another train on the same track, and, to ensure peak efficiency, had a full load on the way there and returning. Large customers were wooed with kickbacks and rebates, and special rates were given with an eye to economies of scale. Professional soldiers like George McClellan and Issac Trimble were hired to manage the railroads using military style organization. According to Harold C. Livesay “Only one organization, the military, had experience moving large quantities of men and materials across long distances” ( Livesay 40). Men such as Andrew Carnegie and Tom Scott propelled the Pennsylvania Railroad to regional dominance by cost accounting and the personal accountability of their workers. Men were promoted on the basis of their abilities, and the management of the successful railroads was treated as a science. The railroads were the first business enterprise to use a modern bureaucracy, and would be an example for many other large industries after the Civil War. Andrew Carnegie took his experience learned in the telegraph and railroad businesses and built an empire based on steel mills. Using a technique that would be later known as vertical integration, Carnegie purchased the aspects of production and transportation that had before been supplied by outside concerns. He made it a point to know exactly what his cost were for a ton of steel, and exactly what his competitors were, and made it a point to undersell them by watching his cost rather than his profits. Everything was measured and sales forecast were made well in advance so that success was assured. Carnegie took pains to incorporate the latest technologies in his mills and captured a large share of the market away from the once dominant English producers. Carnegie’s abilities, however, were not so much in producing steel, but lay in his ability to set up an efficient bureaucracy that enabled him to trust the day to day operations of his many concerns in the hands of the most ! capable men. As a result, Carnegie made a fortune. John D. Rockefeller pioneered the use of another new business practice, called the trust, in the oil industry. Using the same cost counting and bureaucratic practices as the railroads and steel industries, Rockefeller was able to produce the newly valuable oil at a lower cost than other companies. Profits were used to buy out competitors directly or force them into his Standard Oil Trust, a huge conglomeration of oil related companies directly but covertly controlled by Rockefeller and his associates. Other industries quickly realized the benefits of the trust system. The United States Government was quick to aid the development of industry, but slow to correct its excesses. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve Bank were not started until well into the 20th Century. Overpriced stock was sold to investors on a regular basis. Insider trading was rampant, and over-speculation was a direct cause of the recession of 1873. Government did, however, regulate the tariffs, which were the primary way the United States collected revenue and protected national industry. Tariff levels were adjusted often to meet political needs and to adjust the income of the federal government. Reliance on the tariff to protect internal markets harmed American industry as much as it helped, and by the end of the Ninetieth century President McKinley had decided to do away with the tariffs in favor of open trade and reciprocity (Williams 156). The federal government’s power grew increasingly during the Gilded Age. The defeat of the South and the states rights credo had proved that Americans were ready for a strong, centralized nation. The recession of 1893 saw Americans unhappy with Grover Cleveland and the Democrats for not taking decisive action to restore the economy. The Republicans won the next congressional and presidential elections on the basis of a strong, central government that would not hesitate to pass laws in the national interest. The growing middle class had become impatient with the inefficiency associated with the spoils system, where civil service positions were awarded on the basis of party loyalty. President Arthur passed the Pendleton Act of 1883 that instigated a civil service exam and campaign fund lobbying laws to further the professionalism of the federal government. Affluent bedroom communities followed the lead of the industrial organizational trend and hired city managers instead of mayo! rs to conduct day-to-day business. The old mistrust of big government was giving way to a new acceptance of a competent, well-organized Washington. The country had grown large and complex. The Spanish-American war of 1898 solidified sectional reconciliation and raised America to the ranks of a world power with far-flung territories that needed the strong hand of a central power. The United States was now a world leader in industry and agriculture, but many Americans believed that Washington was not governing in their interest. Industry had made a small percentage of the population enormously wealthy, but the people who worked as laborers in the new industrial economy were subject to horrible working conditions and low pay. The freedom of piecework and the artisan’s shop had been replaced by the drudgery of the time clock and the twelve-hour day. Craftsmen were undersold by manufactured goods and forced to work in factories. Job security was low, and most of the workforce in the factories was unskilled. Women and children were employed in place of men many factories because they could be paid less than men. To make matters all the worse, employees before large industry had most likely had worked in direct contact with an owner, but in the factories an employee might not ever see an owner, let alone have the chance to talk with one. Workers began to organize so their concerns could be voiced. Early attempts at forming unions met with little success. Early organizations such as the National Labor Union and the Knights of Labor advocated a union composed of skilled and unskilled laborers, women, and African-Americans. Ironically, diversity, which gave the early unions their numerical strength, was to be their downfall. Workers from different areas and in different industries saw little need to support others, and governing the dissimilar groups with their often-divergent political aims was difficult. The federal government and the middle classes viewed unions with suspicion. Socialist and anarchist agitators were present in the unions in small numbers, but a fearful public imagined the labor organizations were bent on violent revolution. Eastern mine workers had proved ready to resort to violence to achieve their aims in the past. Labor strikes were broken at bayonet point by state and federal troops when serious economic interests were threatened. The Railroad Strike of 1877, Haymarket Square Riot in 1886, and the Homestead Strike of 1892 all resulted in significant loss of life and damage to property. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 was designed to hamper the growth of corporate monopolies, but was ironically used most often in it earliest days against labor unions. Samuel Gomper’s AFL was a union that won considerable influence advancing skilled labor on a basis of consumerism, not revolution. Eschewing the earlier union’s ethos of utopia and political reform, the AFL narrowed its aims. Arguing for “eight hours for what we will” the AFL’s members concentrated on a shorter working days and higher pay. Realizing the futility of trying to establish a centralized union composed of skilled and unskilled workers from different industries, Gompers admitted only skilled workers into a federation composed of smaller unions. His understanding not only of the necessity of organization, but of what type of organization to use to best effect is an indication of the degree of complexity of thought given to the subject during the period. Farmers organized too, though their spatial differences tended to make them political by default. The Grange was a farmer’s social organization that sponsored cooperatives and education programs. It quickly became politicized, and farmers were awakened to the possibilities of their numbers. Farmers organized the Populist, or People’s Party, in 1892 and nominated former Union general James B. Weaver. Running on a plank of farmer’s issues such as lower tariffs, civil rights, and strict regulation of the transportation industries, Weaver became the first third party candidate to win a million votes, but the rest of the party had not fared as well (Williams 68). The party had managed to unify farmers across the country but appeals to urbanites and laborers had failed. The movement quickly lost steam and the party effectively merged with the Democratic Party for the 1896 elections. Southern farmers faced different problems than those in the rest of the country. The old planter class had retained their grip on the political machines of the state and passed the states’ fiscal burdens onto the backs of the smaller farmers and merchants. Making the small farmers pay the larger share of taxes not only saved the planters money but had the added benefit of forcing the newly freed blacks back to the plantations to work for cash otherwise unobtainable from subsistence farming. The effect was that white and black small farmers alike found it difficult to hold onto their land, and many became sharecroppers. White farmers did organize in groups such as the Populist Party, but their inherent racism towards blacks made them poor allies for the inclusive movements of the rest country. The new industrial economy had made the country more prosperous than ever, and Americans were confronted with a variety of ways to spend their money. Consumerism became the new national religion, and advertising agencies began to influence public opinion heavily. Wily advertisers introduced products that had never before been seen, and convinced Americans that they needed them. Foodstuffs were bought prepackaged. Railways and catalogues meant that goods were sold in markets before inaccessible. The country was beginning to look alike thanks to pre-made clothing produced in large mills. Industry had helped to create a national identity on a large scale. Not all Americans were able to take advantage of the new prosperity, however. While unskilled laborers and small farmers were able to organize and win at least the smallest concessions from the powerful interests that controlled the country, African-Americans living in the south suffered a period of setbacks. Reconstruction’s end in 1873 had left the blacks at the mercy of their former masters, and the southern states quickly found quasi-legal ways to restrict blacks rights. African-Americans were largely disenfranchised, and black political power in the south was ended. An unspoken racial code dominated the social structure of the south until the 1960’s. Blacks were understood to be second class people, and all of their activities were segregated from the whites. Lynching and chain-gangs were used to keep the blacks on a lower social rung, and blacks were used as the scapegoat for many of the south’s problems (Rabinowitz 141). The newspapers that were such a dominant part of Americans lives solidified national opinions. Hearst and Pulitzer were newspaper magnates who typified the “yellow press” journalism prevalent in the period. Responsible news reporting gave way to a sensational style designed to sell more papers. National concerns paid huge sums to have their product’s advertisements in the papers, and the newspaper market was vicious. Appealing to the basest of emotions, these papers turned the nation rabid against Spain in 1898, which helped push America into the Spanish-American war, which of course, made for great news and sold a lot of newspapers. Sports of all type grew in public popularity during the Gilded Age. Bicycling became a national craze in the 1890’s and boxing, thanks to the introduction of the Marquis of Queensberry’s rules, gained wide acceptance. The sports that grew the most, however, were the team sports of football and baseball. The fields and fresh air of the sports suggested a sorely needed return to nature for the indoor working and dwelling urbanite. Team sports emphasized teamwork and strategy, both important Victorian ethics. A. G. Spalding used his fame as an all-star pitcher to open a sporting good’s concern and soon Spalding was the first example of backward vertical integration, actually purchasing the suppliers of his equipment. Spalding used the new business techniques being developed across the nation and was soon the master of a world wide sporting goods empire. Julian Curtiss, an associate of Spalding, alluding to the British Empire, wrote that Spalding’s company was “an organization on which the sun never sets (Levine 94).” The end of the gilded age saw the country moving onto the world stage as a modern country with limitless possibilities. Immigrants continued to pour in from around the world on the premise that America was a place of freedom and opportunity. The power of industry had made enough the country great, and the electorate was soon to empower the people who had suffered at industries hands in the upcoming Progressive Era. New organization methods had moved the United States from the Jeffersonian model to Hamilton’s model of an industrial state. That model is still with us today, and the great organizations of the United States have been the mold in which the modern world has been cast. Bibliography: Longman, 1975, 213 pp, note on sources, index McPherson, James M., For Cause & Comrades: Why Men Fought In The Civil War Oxford University Press, 1997, 178 pp, appen, index Williams, R. Hal, Years of Decision: American Politics in the 1890s Waveland Press Inc., 1978 158 pp. appendix, footnotes, index, suggested readings