{"id":1465,"date":"2015-08-20T06:11:33","date_gmt":"2015-08-20T06:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.candelalearning.com\/americanyawphist118x15x1\/?post_type=chapter&p=1465"},"modified":"2015-08-20T06:11:33","modified_gmt":"2015-08-20T06:11:33","slug":"the-rise-of-inequality-2","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/sanjacinto-atdcoursereview-ushistory2-1\/chapter\/the-rise-of-inequality-2\/","title":{"raw":"The Rise of Inequality","rendered":"The Rise of Inequality"},"content":{"raw":"
\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_1428\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"1000\"]\"A<\/a> The Breakers, Vanderbilt residence, Newport, R.I., ca.1904. Library of Congress<\/a>.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nIndustrial capitalism realized the greatest advances in efficiency and productivity that the world had ever seen. Massive new companies marshaled capital on an unprecedented scale and provided enormous profits that created unheard-of fortunes. But it also created millions of low-paid, unskilled, unreliable jobs with long hours and dangerous working conditions. Industrial capitalism confronted Gilded Age Americans with unprecedented inequalities. The sudden appearance of the extreme wealth of industrial and financial\u00a0leaders\u00a0alongside\u00a0the crippling squalor of the urban and rural poor shocked Americans.\r\n\r\nThe great financial and industrial titans, the so-called \u201crobber barons,\u201d including\u00a0railroad operators such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, oilmen such as J.D. Rockefeller, steel magnates such as Andrew Carnegie, and bankers such as J.P. Morgan, won fortunes that, adjusted for inflation are still among the largest the nation has ever seen. According to various measurements, in 1890 the wealthiest one-percent of Americans owned one-fourth of the nation\u2019s assets; the top ten percent owned over seventy percent. And inequality only accelerated. By 1900, the richest ten percent controlled perhaps ninety percent of the nation\u2019s wealth.\r\n\r\nAs these vast and unprecedented new fortunes accumulated among a small number of wealthy Americans, new ideas arose to bestow moral legitimacy upon them. In 1859, British naturalist Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution through\u00a0natural selection in his On the Origin of Species<\/i>. It was not until the 1870s, however, that those theories gained widespread traction among the majority of biologists, naturalists, and other scientists in the United States, and, in turn, challenged the social, political, and religious beliefs of many Americans. One of Darwin\u2019s greatest popularizers, the British sociologist and biologist Herbert Spencer, applied Darwin\u2019s theories\u00a0to society and popularized the phrase \u201csurvival of the fittest.\u201d The fittest, Spencer said, would demonstrate their superiority through economic success, while state welfare and private charity would lead to social degeneration\u2013it would encourage\u00a0the survival of the weak.\r\n
\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_1429\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"1000\"]\"A<\/a> \"Five Cents a Spot,\" unauthorized immigration lodgings in a Bayard Steet tenement, New York City, ca.1890. Library of Congress<\/a>.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n\u201cThere must be complete surrender to the law of natural selection,\u201d the Baltimore Sun<\/i> journalist H. L. Mencken wrote in 1907. \u201cAll growth must occur at the top. The strong must grow stronger, and that they may do so, they must waste no strength in the vain task of trying to uplift the weak.\u201d By the time Mencken wrote those words, the ideas of social Darwinism had spread among wealthy Americans and their defenders. Social Darwinism identified a natural order\u00a0that extended from the laws of the cosmos to the workings of industrial society. All species and all societies, including modern humans, the theory went, were governed by a relentless competitive struggle for survival. The inequality of outcomes was to be not merely tolerated, but encouraged and celebrated. It signified the progress of species and societies. Spencer\u2019s major work, Synthetic Philosophy,\u00a0<\/i>sold nearly 400,000 copies in the United States\u00a0by the time of his death in 1903. Gilded Age industrial elites, such as steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, inventor Thomas Edison, and Standard Oil\u2019s John D. Rockefeller, were among Spencer\u2019s prominent followers. Other American thinkers, such as Yale\u2019s William Graham Sumner, echoed his\u00a0ideas. Sumner said, \u201cbefore the tribunal of nature a man has no more right to life than a rattlesnake; he has no more right to liberty than any wild beast; his right to pursuit of happiness is nothing but a license to maintain the struggle for existence.\u201d\r\n\r\nBut not all so eagerly welcomed inequalities. The spectacular growth of the U.S. economy and the ensuing\u00a0inequalities in living conditions and incomes confounded many Americans. But as industrial capitalism overtook the nation, it achieved political protections.\u00a0Although both major political parties facilitated the rise of big business and used state power to support the interests of capital against labor, big business looked primarily to the Republican Party.\r\n\r\nThe Republican Party had risen as an antislavery faction\u00a0committed to \u201cfree labor,\u201d but it was\u00a0also an ardent supporter of American business. Abraham Lincoln had been a corporate lawyer who defended railroads, and during the Civil War the Republican national government took advantage of the war-time absence of southern Democrats to push through a pro-business agenda. The Republican congress gave millions of acres and dollars to railroad companies. Republicans became the party of business, and they dominated American politics throughout the Gilded Age and the first several decades of the twentieth century. Of the sixteen presidential elections between the Civil War and the Great Depression, Republican candidates won all but four. Republicans controlled the Senate in twenty-seven out of thirty-two sessions in the same period. Republican dominance maintained a high\u00a0protective tariff, an import tax designed to shield American businesses from foreign competition, a policy Southern planters had vehemently opposed before the war but now could do nothing to prevent. It provided\u00a0the protective foundation for\u00a0a new American industrial order, while Spencer\u2019s social Darwinism provided moral justification for national policies that minimized government interference in the economy for anything other than the protection and support of business.","rendered":"
\n
\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

The Breakers, Vanderbilt residence, Newport, R.I., ca.1904. Library of Congress<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Industrial capitalism realized the greatest advances in efficiency and productivity that the world had ever seen. Massive new companies marshaled capital on an unprecedented scale and provided enormous profits that created unheard-of fortunes. But it also created millions of low-paid, unskilled, unreliable jobs with long hours and dangerous working conditions. Industrial capitalism confronted Gilded Age Americans with unprecedented inequalities. The sudden appearance of the extreme wealth of industrial and financial\u00a0leaders\u00a0alongside\u00a0the crippling squalor of the urban and rural poor shocked Americans.<\/p>\n

The great financial and industrial titans, the so-called \u201crobber barons,\u201d including\u00a0railroad operators such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, oilmen such as J.D. Rockefeller, steel magnates such as Andrew Carnegie, and bankers such as J.P. Morgan, won fortunes that, adjusted for inflation are still among the largest the nation has ever seen. According to various measurements, in 1890 the wealthiest one-percent of Americans owned one-fourth of the nation\u2019s assets; the top ten percent owned over seventy percent. And inequality only accelerated. By 1900, the richest ten percent controlled perhaps ninety percent of the nation\u2019s wealth.<\/p>\n

As these vast and unprecedented new fortunes accumulated among a small number of wealthy Americans, new ideas arose to bestow moral legitimacy upon them. In 1859, British naturalist Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution through\u00a0natural selection in his On the Origin of Species<\/i>. It was not until the 1870s, however, that those theories gained widespread traction among the majority of biologists, naturalists, and other scientists in the United States, and, in turn, challenged the social, political, and religious beliefs of many Americans. One of Darwin\u2019s greatest popularizers, the British sociologist and biologist Herbert Spencer, applied Darwin\u2019s theories\u00a0to society and popularized the phrase \u201csurvival of the fittest.\u201d The fittest, Spencer said, would demonstrate their superiority through economic success, while state welfare and private charity would lead to social degeneration\u2013it would encourage\u00a0the survival of the weak.<\/p>\n

\n
\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

“Five Cents a Spot,” unauthorized immigration lodgings in a Bayard Steet tenement, New York City, ca.1890. Library of Congress<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThere must be complete surrender to the law of natural selection,\u201d the Baltimore Sun<\/i> journalist H. L. Mencken wrote in 1907. \u201cAll growth must occur at the top. The strong must grow stronger, and that they may do so, they must waste no strength in the vain task of trying to uplift the weak.\u201d By the time Mencken wrote those words, the ideas of social Darwinism had spread among wealthy Americans and their defenders. Social Darwinism identified a natural order\u00a0that extended from the laws of the cosmos to the workings of industrial society. All species and all societies, including modern humans, the theory went, were governed by a relentless competitive struggle for survival. The inequality of outcomes was to be not merely tolerated, but encouraged and celebrated. It signified the progress of species and societies. Spencer\u2019s major work, Synthetic Philosophy,\u00a0<\/i>sold nearly 400,000 copies in the United States\u00a0by the time of his death in 1903. Gilded Age industrial elites, such as steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, inventor Thomas Edison, and Standard Oil\u2019s John D. Rockefeller, were among Spencer\u2019s prominent followers. Other American thinkers, such as Yale\u2019s William Graham Sumner, echoed his\u00a0ideas. Sumner said, \u201cbefore the tribunal of nature a man has no more right to life than a rattlesnake; he has no more right to liberty than any wild beast; his right to pursuit of happiness is nothing but a license to maintain the struggle for existence.\u201d<\/p>\n

But not all so eagerly welcomed inequalities. The spectacular growth of the U.S. economy and the ensuing\u00a0inequalities in living conditions and incomes confounded many Americans. But as industrial capitalism overtook the nation, it achieved political protections.\u00a0Although both major political parties facilitated the rise of big business and used state power to support the interests of capital against labor, big business looked primarily to the Republican Party.<\/p>\n

The Republican Party had risen as an antislavery faction\u00a0committed to \u201cfree labor,\u201d but it was\u00a0also an ardent supporter of American business. Abraham Lincoln had been a corporate lawyer who defended railroads, and during the Civil War the Republican national government took advantage of the war-time absence of southern Democrats to push through a pro-business agenda. The Republican congress gave millions of acres and dollars to railroad companies. Republicans became the party of business, and they dominated American politics throughout the Gilded Age and the first several decades of the twentieth century. Of the sixteen presidential elections between the Civil War and the Great Depression, Republican candidates won all but four. Republicans controlled the Senate in twenty-seven out of thirty-two sessions in the same period. Republican dominance maintained a high\u00a0protective tariff, an import tax designed to shield American businesses from foreign competition, a policy Southern planters had vehemently opposed before the war but now could do nothing to prevent. It provided\u00a0the protective foundation for\u00a0a new American industrial order, while Spencer\u2019s social Darwinism provided moral justification for national policies that minimized government interference in the economy for anything other than the protection and support of business.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t

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